Christmas Bliss (19 page)

Harry sipped his coffee and stared at me over the rim of the mug. I tried to look innocent.

“Okay, well, I better go,” I said, picking up a big tote bag I’d set out as part of my charade. I patted Jeeves on the head and kissed the end of Harry’s nose. “See you later, Dad.”

He shook his head. “I still can’t believe you got up at six in the morning to go stand in line at some estate sale. Weezie’s going to owe you big-time.”

*   *   *

The sun was just coming up as my car bounced down the bumpy drive leading toward Oak Point. The track ran through an abandoned field surrounded by rotting fence posts and rusted barbed wire, and as I rounded a bend in the road, I spotted a group of deer standing at the edge of the field, in the shadow of a cluster of pine trees. I rolled to a stop to watch them. Harry says deer are so prolific in the countryside around Georgia they’ve become a nuisance, but I never get tired of seeing them.

This group looked to be a doe and two fawns. They were nibbling on some kind of greenery, and at one point, the doe raised her head, pricked up her ears, and gazed in my direction.

“Hi, Mama,” I murmured. “I’m not gonna hurt you or your babies. Just passin’ through.”

I parked the car a few yards away from the farmhouse. Cindy’s van was gone, but a thin plume of smoke rose from the crooked brick chimney, so somebody, I hoped, was home. Did I hope to see Richard? I honestly couldn’t have said.

My hands were clammy as I knocked on the door. I waited a moment, then knocked again. And again.

“Aunt Opal?” I called loudly. “It’s BeBe. Are you there?”

My hand rested lightly on the doorknob. Should I try and go inside?

“Aunt Opal?”

I heard a sliding noise, and then a thump, followed by another slide.

“Hold your horses,” came the old woman’s voice. “I’m a-coming.”

The door opened a few inches, but she had the chain lock fastened. Opal was dressed in a pink flowered housecoat that hung down past her knees, with a moth-eaten man’s cardigan buttoned all the way to the neck. Her white hair was unbraided, and there were toast crumbs on her chin.

“I’m not supposed to let you in,” she announced, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

“Is Cindy home?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to say.”

I held out the package I’d tucked in the pocket of my jacket. It was a small, unwrapped box of chocolates, a Whitman’s Sampler, which I remembered she loved.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I just wanted to bring you a little Christmas gift. You can have sweets, can’t you? I mean, you’re not diabetic, right?”

“Doctor says my blood sugar is perfect,” Opal said. Her hand snaked out and snatched the candy back inside like a flash.

She balanced the box on a little makeshift shelf on her walker and lifted the lid, surveying the contents. She plucked one of the candies and held it up for inspection.

“I don’t get much chocolate these days. Cindy says it makes my bowels lock. The square ones—they’re the caramel, idn’t that right?”

“I think so.”

She popped the candy in her mouth, closed her eyes, and chewed slowly. I waited.

“Aunt Opal, I really need to find Richard. It’s very important. He’s here, isn’t he?”

She kept chewing, but opened her eyes. “That one was a cherry cream. I had a beau once, a long time ago, he’d bring me a whole box of chocolate-covered cherry creams. He got kilt in a car wreck out on U.S. 17. I don’t never eat a chocolate-covered cherry that I don’t think about that boy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “About Richard. He’s been staying here, hasn’t he?”

She was staring down at the candy, her gnarled finger poised over this one, then that one.

“Aunt Opal? Please?”

“Cindy told me not to say nothing.”

“She’s not home right now, is she?”

“Gone to work. At the Waffle House. I can’t let nobody in this house. No matter what.”

“Not even me? Just to see Richard?”

Her pale eyes met mine. “Just how far gone are you?”

“Eight months. And that’s why I need to see Richard. Because of the baby. Do you understand?”

“He ain’t here,” Opal said.

“Then … where?”

She closed her eyes, and for a moment or two, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep, standing up.

Opal unchained the lock and opened the door all the way. She pushed the walker onto the porch, shivering in the early-morning chill.

She raised her right arm and pointed off to the left. “He’s out there, in the garden, back near the river. But don’t you go telling Cindy I told you.”

I looked in the direction she’d pointed. “I won’t,” I promised.

*   *   *

There was frost on the ground, and drifts of dried fallen leaves crunched loudly underfoot. The wind shifted, and I could smell the tang of salt water and mud and marsh. Birds flitted about in the tops of trees. This had all been a grassy lawn at one time, but time and neglect had changed that. Sapling pine trees had sprung up in the place of Richard’s grandmother’s flower beds, their roots upending her carefully placed borders of sun-bleached seashells and rocks. I pushed aside branches and dead vines and kept walking.

The underbrush grew thicker, a nearly impenetrable thicket of privet, pines, palmettos, and other bushes whose names I didn’t know.

At one point, from somewhere up ahead, I heard what sounded like a footfall.

“Richard?” I called. “Is that you?”

No answer came. I walked on, and briers tore at my clothes and scratched my face and I heard the snap of a dead branch. “Richard?”

Finally I pushed through the underbrush and found myself standing on a sandy knoll. Directly ahead of me I could see an expanse of golden-green marsh grass, and past that, the brackish waters of the Little Ogeechee River. A dock stretched out over the grass, its silvery gray boards collapsed and rotted in places, and on the muddy bank nearby I spotted the bleached remains of an old john-boat.

Just in front of the bank was a small roped-off rectangle. Unlike the rest of Oak Point, this little patch had been lovingly maintained. A rough, whitewashed fence surrounded it, and waist-high evergreen shrubs marked each corner. A gate stood ajar, and I looked around for any signs of movement or life.

I pushed through the gate and into the garden. Waist-high dried corn- and okra stalks stood in straight rows, and rusted tomato cages held the remains of the summer’s crop. My boot struck something solid underfoot, but it was obscured by fallen leaves.

I bent over to see what I’d stepped on and saw a glint of pale stone. With the toe of my boot, I kicked away the foliage. A silvery-gray rectangle of chipped granite sparkled in the early-morning sun. There was writing—not carved, but handwritten in block letters with what looked like some kind of black marking pen. A thick covering of dirt obscured the words.

I dropped to my hands and knees and with both hands brushed away the rest of the dirt and leaves.

The writing had faded, but the letters were large enough to make out now.

Richard Hodges—February 17, 1966–April 22, 2011.

Loving son and brother.

A twig snapped and I looked up sharply, expecting to find Cindy Hodges glaring back at me.

Instead, Harry stood by the garden gate, his hands shading his eyes from the direct glare of the sunlight.

Chapter 22

Harry knelt down in the dead leaves and lightly touched the makeshift grave marker. His eyes met mine, and his brow was furrowed.

“Is that…”

“Richard. Yes, my ex.”

He nodded slowly. “So … there was no estate sale?”

“No. I lied to you.”

“This morning. And last night too.”

“You knew?”

“Lamest story ever, Babe. Since when do you go Christmas shopping at night? And come home with a single bag from Target?”

“I know. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I’m sorry. I hated lying to you.”

“Then why did you? Why not just tell me what was going on?”

I bit my lips and looked down at the scrap of granite that marked Richard’s last resting place.

“I was ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed. And oh, dear God, I was desperate.”

“Over this guy? He’s dead.”

“But I didn’t know that. Not until just now. I thought…” I pressed my lips together and closed my eyes for a moment.

When I opened my eyes, he was standing up, holding out his hand to me. I took it, and he hauled me to a standing position, then folded me gently into his arms. He held me for a long time. I felt the wind whipping off the river and heard the rasp of dried cornstalks rustling together. And my own sobs, muted against his chest.

*   *   *

We found a moss-covered concrete bench in a corner of the garden that faced out toward the river, so we sat, and that’s where I told him the whole sad, stupid story.

Harry listened and nodded. He was almost as good a listener as James Foley.

“You could have told me,” he said when it was all over. “It wouldn’t have made any difference to me.”

“I know. But it seemed like a huge deal to me. Insurmountable. All I could think about was finding Richard and getting that stupid divorce over and done with. And then there was the baby to think about. Our child! If Richard were still alive—legally, he would have been considered the father. And if anything had happened to me…”

I shuddered.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let it,” Harry said. And I knew he believed he could absolutely prevent anything from happening to me. “Anyway, it’s done now. Right?”

We heard a rustling behind us, and I halfway expected to see another deer when I turned around.

Cindy Hodges, grim-faced, stood at the garden gate.

*   *   *

“I guess y’all are gonna call the cops on me now, aren’t you?” She stood in front of us, arms crossed defiantly over her chest.

Harry raised one eyebrow. “Why would we do that?” He pointed toward the grave marker. “Did you kill him?”

“No! He just … up and died. He hadn’t been out of prison three months. Richard didn’t have anyplace else to go when he got out, so he moved in here with us. He was in bad shape when he got out. Congenital heart failure, the prison doctors told him. Our daddy had the same thing. I guess it runs on his side of the family. We finally got Richard on disability, and he was getting social security checks. Which helped a lot. As you can tell, things have gone downhill pretty bad around here.”

“Your husband?” I asked.

“Gone.” She shrugged. “Not that he was much use when he was around. So good riddance. Daddy left us pretty well fixed when he died, but Mama, well, she thought the Hodges were still what we used to be. She just had to keep up appearances. The big house in Ardsley Park, the country club memberships, it all cost a lot of money. And when she got sick, I’d promised her she’d never go into a nursing home, so between staying home and taking care of her, and the doctor bills, that ate up all the rest of the so-called Hodges family fortune. By the time Richard got out, it was all gone.”

“Except Oak Point,” I said.

“Which Daddy left to Richard,” Cindy said, her voice bitter. “I moved out here with Aunt Opal right after Mama passed. You can see how run-down it’s gotten. Richard, he had all kinds of grand schemes about fixing it up, selling off the land and building a subdivision with fancy million-dollar houses. But with the economy the way it was, and then, he really didn’t have any energy, as sick as he was.”

“When I came looking for him this week, why didn’t you just tell me he was dead? Why pretend he was still alive?”

Her face colored. “I was afraid, if you found out, you’d make trouble.”

“Trouble over what?” Harry asked.

But I already knew the answer to that one.

“You couldn’t tell anybody Richard was dead. Because then the disability checks would stop. So you buried him yourself and left his room just as it was, in case anybody like me came snooping around.”

“Which you did,” Cindy said. “I was pretty sure when we got home from church last night, somebody had been in the house. I found one of Richard’s shirts on the floor of the closet. You came back out here last night, didn’t you?”

“You actually broke into this house?” Harry asked, looking alarmed.

“The back door was unlocked,” I said, giving Cindy an apologetic look. “I didn’t take anything. I just wanted to find Richard. I knew you were lying when you said you hadn’t seen him.”

“That part wasn’t a lie,” Cindy said. “He’s been gone a long time.”

“What happens now?” Harry asked, looking from me to Cindy.

“I guess I start looking for a new place to live,” Cindy said.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because Opal and I have been living here on borrowed time,” Cindy said. “I’m tired of hiding out, worrying about the day you’d show up and kick us out.”

“I still don’t understand what’s going on here,” Harry complained. “How could BeBe kick you off your own family farm? Richard didn’t leave it to her, did he?”

“Richard? He never had a will. He was lousy at any kind of paperwork. Which was part of why he went to prison. Anyway, my little brother never really believed he’d die,” Cindy said. “Even as sick as he was, he was hatching schemes right up till the end.”

“You knew he’d never followed through on our divorce, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I buried him, and then I went looking through his papers, to see if he had a will or maybe a bank account we didn’t know about. I found the divorce papers in a file folder, along with the letter from that lawyer telling him he’d stopped doing the work because Richard’s check bounced,” Cindy said. “So as far as I knew, you two were still married. No will—that meant anything Richard had, including this farm, belonged to you.”

She looked around at the overgrown garden, the collapsing dock, and then back at the farmhouse. The rooftop was just barely visible above the tree line. “It’s not much, not to you. But it’s all Opal and I have.”

“I don’t want it,” I said hastily. “The only thing I ever wanted from Richard was a divorce. The farm, anything else, it’s yours. I’ll get James Foley, he’s my lawyer, to draw up the papers right away. In the meantime, I don’t see why anything has to change.”