Cancel the Wedding (28 page)

I was surprised that my mother had let her property get foreclosed on. How could she have let that happen? I said, “They cried the sale on the courthouse steps? What was the purchase price?”

“About two thousand dollars, plus thirteen months' worth of accrued property taxes.”

Ouch.
Two thousand dollars? Generations of Rutledges had owned that land, lived and died and been buried on that land. The same must have been true for the Joneses' property. How had she lost it? How had Janie Rutledge Jones managed to lose such a substantial piece of lakefront property to a carpetbagger named Emory Bryant at a fire sale on the courthouse steps?

I was starting to feel cheated for my mother. “Did you know her, Emory? Did you ever meet her?”

Emory cut me off. “If you don't need anything else I should get back to our dinner guests.”

Two thousand dollars. He did steal it. Legally maybe, but that's a steal.

I could have found that out in an hour's worth of searching. Why had I called Emory at home and rattled his cage? Now if he did have something to hide regarding the property he knew I was on to him. I was pacing the room, double-checking the locks.

Elliott came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. He was yawning and his eyes were puffy and red rimmed. “Emory is not going to hurt you. I don't understand why you're so worried about him.”

“I know you think I'm being paranoid, but there's something strange about the way he acts toward me and now he knows I'm investigating.”

Elliott wasn't going to entertain my suspicion about Emory any more this evening. He spun me around and steered me toward my room. “Come on. You're exhausted. I'm tucking you in and you're getting some sleep.”

I glanced at the front door. “Are you sure you locked it?”

He wasn't answering that question again either. He followed me into my room, demanded that I lie down. Elliott looked like he was about to fall over. “You're too tired to walk home. You should sleep here.” I thought about all of the different things that could mean. Then I remembered that Logan would be home any minute. “I mean you know, on the couch. If you wanted. Maybe keep an eye on things? There are extra blankets and pillows in the linen closet.”

That made him laugh for some reason and he kissed me on the forehead. “Sure. I'll guard the house tonight.” He was talking through his yawn. “I'll be right out there; don't worry. Good-night, Liv.”

“ 'Night.”

Several hours later I was still lying there staring at the ceiling. I strained my ears to try to hear Elliott's breathing from the other room. It was no use over the racket of the crickets and bullfrogs. It was hard to believe people thought of the country as a quiet place. I had never been to a city as loud as this lake was at night. I sat up and looked at the clock. It was after two. I tiptoed into the family room to peek at Elliott.

He was sleeping on the couch with a plastic badminton racket propped across his chest as a weapon. He had moved all of the back cushions to the floor making the couch a pretty decent-sized bed. I walked slowly and quietly over to him and gently pulled the racket out of his hand. He didn't move. I pulled the blanket back up onto his chest. He still didn't move. I poked at his hand. Then at his shoulder.

I sat down on the edge of the couch staring at him. I had to stifle a laugh. I picked up his right hand, held it aloft for a second, then dropped it on his chest. Nothing.

I leaned in and said in his ear, “You are the worst guard dog ever.”

A tiny sleepy smile moved across his face but he didn't say anything.

I whispered, “We've come to steal your women.”

In one groggy motion he wrapped his arm around my waist and rolled onto his side pulling me down until I was cradled in the couch with him. Tight in his grip. He nestled his face into the back of my neck, mumbling, “You can have the kid, but this one is mine.”

His warm breath was tangled in my hair and he was asleep again in moments.
This one is mine.
I held his hand and pulled it into my chest. Our feet were tangled together under the blanket. I closed my eyes, feeling safe for the first time all night, and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning to find Elliott propped up on his elbow watching me sleep. I smiled at him.

He brushed the hair away from my face and said, “Don't be alarmed but some bandits snuck in here in the middle of the night and I let them have Logan.”

“You are a terrible bodyguard.” I hit his elbow making him fall on me. Now he was at my mercy.

I wrapped my arms around him, not letting him back up, and said a proper good morning. I'm not sure how that would have ended if his phone hadn't started to clamber across the coffee table, ringing and vibrating.

He groaned and sat up to turn it off. “That's my alarm. I have meetings all morning.”

“Well, I can see why you need such a persistent alarm. You sleep like the dead.”

“My ninja-like reflexes were ready to spring into action if there had been an actual threat.”

I leaned over the edge of the couch and picked up the racket from the floor. I held it up as exhibit A. “With your plastic badminton racket?”

“When used correctly, that can be a weapon of deadly force.”

I tapped him on the head with the racket and offered to make him some coffee. He followed me into the kitchen and pulled a note off the refrigerator. It was from Logan; she had already left for camp. Which meant she had seen me sleeping on the couch with Elliott. I felt a wave of embarrassment. Was there no end to the debauchery that child would be exposed to by her aunt? At least we hadn't been doing anything. And we were fully clothed. I felt a tiny bit better.

Elliott balled up the note and swished it into the trash can like a basketball goal. He said, “I'm having dinner at my parents' house tonight. Come with me. You could finally meet everyone. Except Michael.”

I knew Michael was the second-youngest sibling and was going to college at the Citadel in South Carolina. Elliott had told me that Michael's major was French literature, but I was sure that had to be a joke. I kept meaning to look that up to see if it was really an available course of study at a military college.

I pulled two mugs from the shelf. “Right, Michael won't be there because he's in Paris or something? Reading French plays?”

Elliott squinted at me. “Why don't you believe me?”

“French literature? Really?” I poured us both coffee and handed Elliott's to him. Light and sweet, just like he liked it.

“You can ask my mom about it tonight.” He took my hand and started swinging it back and forth. “When you come to dinner with me.”

He looked so cute all disheveled from sleep. His hair was bent down at strange angles and he had lines from the pillow on his face. I was getting ready to tell him that I would go anywhere he wanted. Then I remembered what Logan had said about Elliott's mother being unhappy about his breakup with Amy.

I put my coffee down. “I think I'll pass on the family dinner this time. Your ridiculous lie about Michael and French lit are safe for another day.”

He must have known why I didn't want to go. “You have to meet them sometime.”

“I think it will have to be sometime
later
.”

He held my hand tighter. “They won't blame any of it on you.”

“Why not? I would if I were them.” I wasn't going to budge on this. “I'm just not ready for all that yet. Is that okay?”

He sighed. “No. But I can tell I won't be able to change your mind.”

He had to work all day and then he would be at his parents' for dinner. I wouldn't get to see him until tomorrow. I handed him his keys from the table.

Elliott was putting his shoes on, and he looked up at me. “What are you planning to do today?”

I shrugged. “Chores, I guess. I have to clear a bunch of work e-mails. I've been ignoring them for days.” Being on a leave of absence wasn't exactly the full stop I had hoped it would be.

Elliott went to the front door and turned to look back one last time. He smiled at me and again I thought,
This one is mine.

It was raining the day I was supposed to meet Elliott at the courthouse to search for some documents and maps. The Huntley County Courthouse sat up on a pediment overlooking Tillman's main square. It was constructed of the same local granite as the library and the other monumental buildings in Tillman, and it was the tallest structure for miles around.

I was watching the sheets of rain hit the lake below and hoping it would let up soon so I could walk to the courthouse without getting drenched when my doorbell rang. To my great surprise it was Buddy. He had looked so strong and robust up on the ridge, but he looked small and frail framed in my doorway. Behind him the blue hydrangeas bordering the walkway were sodden with water and drooping down, limp on the sidewalk. The asphalt on the street was steaming as the rain began to evaporate on impact.

I was so shocked to see Buddy standing there that I was slow to invite him in. He said, “Are you planning to leave me out here in the damn rain all day?”

“No, I'm sorry. Come in, Buddy. It's nice to see you again.” I took his umbrella from him, shaking it out a bit, and then led him into the family room. “I'm glad it's raining. Won't this help your trees?”

Buddy was wearing his uniform of old blue jeans and the tan windbreaker. He carried a brown paper sack crumpled over and darkened from getting wet. “This is too much damn rain all at once. My roots are already all pushed up to the surface.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I regretted bringing up the weather. I wasn't sure what he was doing here or how to entertain him so I fell back on years of polite manners drilled into me by my mother and began asking him how he was doing, if he'd like a drink, if I could get him a bite to eat. I was about to invite him to stay for dinner when he cut me off.

“Damn girl, I can't stay. I've got more things to do than sit around here with you all day. I just came to drop this off.” The brown paper bag fell apart when he opened it so he tossed it on the floor exposing the package inside. It was a shoebox wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. He handed the bundle over to me and said, “I found a few things of Nate's you might like to see. Not much, I didn't go climbing into the attic for you or anything.”

I pulled the box from the bag and opened it to find stacks of snapshots. It was the single largest cache of photographic evidence of Huntley, Georgia, I had been able to get my hands on yet. I think I gasped a little bit. I let my fingers thumb through the pictures: some of them were square black-and-white photos on thick paper with scalloped edges and others were glossy hypersaturated color with big white borders. I couldn't help but start crying.

My emotions were making Buddy fidgety. He started wringing his hands together. I discreetly wiped my eyes and pulled one of the pictures from the stack, at least pretending to be completely composed. It was a group of teenagers swimming in the river. The river was rushing over a waterfall of rocks, maybe twenty feet tall and sloped on an incline making a giant waterslide. The bank on the far side of the river that you could see in the photo was steep and covered with granite boulders and pine trees. There were a few kids standing at the top of the rushing water, waiting to slide down. One boy was in midtrip down the waterfall with a huge spray of water splashing him in the face. Wading in the shallow pool at the base of the slide were Janie and George. I moved over to sit next to Buddy and pointed at them in the picture.

“It's my mom and George.”

He squinted at the photo. “That's Oliver.”

“It is? How can you tell?”

One gnarled finger pointed to a scar, clearly visible, running across Oliver's chest. “You could always tell them apart by the scars. Oliver had a lot of scars.”

Buddy named the other kids in the picture. Nate was the one captured sliding down the waterfall, which was called Slide Rock. It was one of the many landmarks now sitting quiet and still underneath the lake.

I pulled out a slightly blurry black-and-white image showing a group of boys leaning on a truck. Arms crossed, faces tight, young men attempting to look cool for the camera. I tried to name them all. I managed to get Oliver, George, and Nate picked out of the lineup. The rest of the boys were people I hadn't met yet.

Buddy searched through the box looking for a particular picture and pulled it out when he found it. I recognized Nate standing comfortably with his arm around the waist of a girl. She must be Margaret. He was wearing a white jacket and a tie. Margaret had dark curly hair and she wore a yellow dress and a large purple wrist corsage. They were standing at the entrance of a barn; the huge wooden doors, dark with age, were swung open to a party. A hazy yellow light poured from the open barn, haloing the couple in a flattering glow.

Behind them the barn twinkled with strings of lights strung from the rafters. The walls were lined with rows of hay bales covered with horse blankets offering a place to sit. The barn was packed with kids similarly dressed, some of them blurry because they were dancing.

Buddy said, “This is Nate and Margaret at one of the parties. You probably don't care much about seeing them, but I put it in here because it shows the barn.”

“The barn?”

“Your mother really never told you anything.”

When Buddy told me about the barn I remembered Florence saying something about it. About the birthday party that George, Oliver, and Janie threw every year in the old barn on the Jones property. Buddy told me that when the kids were all little they would play party games, have cake, and bring in some of the baby farm animals to pet. But when they got older the parties got bigger with every kid in town planning whom to ask and what to wear for weeks. There was music on the stereo and dancing on the dance floor. There was plenty of food and punch, and nothing but trouble happening in the dark recesses behind the hay bales.