The Odds of Getting Even (17 page)

Three Thanksgiving Shockers

Thanksgiving brought three shocking twists of fate—one good, one puzzling, one jaw-dropping bad.

As usual, I didn't see them coming.

Dale biked over early that morning. “Queen Elizabeth's snappy,” he reported, shrugging out of his faded baseball jacket. “Mama says the puppies will come today or tomorrow. I'm getting on Liz's nerves, so I came to get on yours instead.” He frowned. “That didn't come out right. How can I help?”

“Hey Desperado,” I replied. “Ham biscuits in the kitchen.”

Dale padded back with a biscuit in each hand.

“Glad you're here, Dale,” the Colonel said. “I need reinforcements.” He checked the To-Do List Miss Lana made for him the night before. “Not doing that one, not that one, not that one. Here's one. ‘Get tables and chairs from the café.'”

He smiled at Dale. “Don't worry about Queen
Elizabeth,” he said. “She'll know how to handle the pups. She'll do fine.”

Next to Lavender, the Colonel's the best father Dale's got.

By eleven o'clock, we'd smoothed white tablecloths over the café tables and set them with Miss Lana's good china. Miss Lana put out the place cards and leaf-and-pinecone centerpieces, and whirled away to change clothes.

“Mo,” she called, “you've grown. If you'd like to try the Pilgrim outfit . . .”

“No, thanks. I'm going as a sixth grader from this century,” I called. “So is Dale.”

I found Dale in the kitchen, hovering over the ham biscuits. “Still hungry?”

“Just cleaning up,” he said, loading the last of the biscuits onto a dinner plate. “I thought I'd put them out for the raccoons.”

He's serving raccoons on Miss Lana's good china?

“Are you singing today?” I asked him.

“Me and Harm are. Miss Lana asked us. We're doing ‘Over the River and Through the Woods,' and a new country tune I wrote: ‘My Baby Said “Stuff This Turkey” and She Walked on Out the Door.' Newton likes it,” he added as he plopped a dollop of jelly on the side of the plate.

Jelly? For raccoons?

He opened the biscuit and peppered the ham—same as Mr. Macon peppers his ham biscuits at the café. Then it hit me: “That food's for your daddy,” I said.

He closed the biscuit. “Daddy eats early on holidays because Mama's usually thrown him out by dinnertime. It's a family tradition. You know that.”

“But Dale, he's not here. They found his orange jumpsuit . . .”

A scowl shuttled across his face. “What's the difference in me fixing a plate for a daddy who ain't coming and you setting a place for a mother who ain't coming?”

I gasped. The silence backed up between us like water behind a dam.

He turned to me. “I'm sorry, Mo. I don't know why I said that.”

His sudden hug pressed into my heart like a child's hand into clay. He grabbed his plate and blasted for the door, one shoe string flapping.

Miss Lana swayed in, fastening a pearl earring. I sized up her almost-normal Girl Next Door outfit. Light blue pumps, neat skirt, trim sweater. “Doris Day? 1950s?” I guessed.

“Close enough.” She smiled. “It's me, mostly. The Pilgrim outfit's available if you change your mind.”

Outside, Dale ran to the old sycamore stump, put Mr.
Macon's plate at its center, and carefully draped a linen napkin over the top as Miss Lana went up on her toes to snag a bowl from a cabinet shelf. “This was my grandmother's, Mo. Let's use it for the cranberry sauce. I'd love to feel her sitting at our table today.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, watching Dale scamper back to us.

She gazed out the window. “A plate for Macon, like always,” she murmured. She slipped an arm across my shoulders. “The comfort of the familiar, sugar. It's hard to let go of people, even when we know they're gone.”

High Noon. Enter Shock Number One.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Miss Rose called. She pushed open the door, her face flushed. “Everybody, this is Bill Glasgow.”

Her new boyfriend? And Dale didn't tell me he was coming?

The room froze: Me with a plate of deviled eggs in my hands. Harm holding one of Miss Lana's old-school vinyl albums over her record player. Grandmother Miss Lacy placing her coconut cake on the sideboard.

“Nice to meet you,” Bill Glasgow said, smiling. He stood tall and thin, his neat dark hair combed to his scalp. He wore a trim brown suit and bolo tie, and boots that looked like they knew how to dance.

As second-string hostess, I stepped forward. “Welcome,”
I said, very poised. “Mo LoBeau. May I take your hat?”

“Thanks,” he said, and handed me his Stetson.

A Stetson?
Miss Rose lassoed a cowboy?

Miss Rose smiled. “Bill, these are my friends.” Mr. Red ambled over to shake his hand, and the rest of the group followed. Miss Rose gave me a quick kiss. “I didn't think Bill would make it today,” she whispered. “I'll find Lana in a minute and let her know I brought an extra guest. She won't mind.”

Dale strolled in from the kitchen and screeched to a halt, the bowl of cranberry sauce quivering in his hands. “Hey Mama,” he said. “Are the puppies here?”

“Not yet, baby.”

“You must be Dale,” Bill said, holding out his hand. “Bill Glasgow. Nice to meet you.”

“Hey,” Dale said, his eyes glazing over. “I'd shake hands, but I got cranberries.” Bill let his hand fall to his side. Dale's been working on his social skills. Apparently he skipped the Meeting Mama's Boyfriend chapter. He took a deep breath. “I'm used to you on the telephone, but it's different in 3-D,” he said.

“Yep,” Bill said. “Without the phone I'm pretty solid.”

Dale's bowl of cranberry sauce tipped. “I guess Mama told you I'm the man of the house now. Harm and me been working out.”

“Message received,” Bill said, grabbing the bowl. “I hear you're a musician. I play a little mandolin. Nothing like you and Harm, but . . .”

Music. Dale relaxed. They strolled away, Bill matching his long stride to Dale's short one.

I darted into the kitchen. Lavender looked up from the store-cut veggies he'd moved to Miss Lana's platter. Even holding cauliflower, Lavender's melt-down gorgeous. “Your mama's here with a boyfriend,” I reported.

He swallowed so hard his tie bobbed. “Had to happen sooner or later, I guess,” he said, glancing toward the living room. “Mama's smart and beautiful. And lonely. What do you think of him?”

Lavender wants my opinion on a matter of the heart?

“She could do worse. In fact she already has, once.” I considered Bill Glasgow. “He looks at home behind his face.”

“Good recommendation,” he said. “Well, I hope he likes washed-up mechanics who can barely make the rent.”

“You aren't washed-up anything, and I'll take down anybody that says you are,” I said. He smiled, checked his reflection in the toaster, and smoothed his hair.

Could Lavender, who wears cool easy as he wears denim, be nervous?

He is! Lavender needs me.

I smiled the way Miss Lana smiles for me when my nerves skate too near a cliff. “You look handsome,” I said. “Real handsome. If you'd give me half a chance, I'd snatch you up and marry you before sundown. That's no lie.”

The nervous melted off his face.

“You? You're a baby,” he said, and grinned his old grin. “Thanks, Mo,” he said, and headed for the door.

At one o'clock, the Colonel and the turkey made their entrance.

The rest of us milled about looking for our names on the place cards. Harm grinned at me, looking rakish in Mr. Red's bow tie. Grandmother Miss Lacy settled between Harm and Mr. Red, her blue hair shimmering. Lavender sat by a twin.

“Bill,” Miss Lana said, “you're right over . . .” She looked around the table. “I'm so sorry! In the excitement I forgot to set . . .”

I looked at Dale and took a deep breath. “No, you didn't. Bill's right here,” I said, grabbing Upstream Mother's place card. “Miss Rose, you take my place and I'll take yours.”

“Are you sure, sugar?” Miss Lana whispered.

The butterflies swirled in my stomach. What was I thinking? We'd always set a place for Upstream Mother at our Thanksgiving table. That scared place inside me
folded in on itself, and I could barely breathe.

I looked up and caught Lavender's gaze, steady and sure as a lifeline. I walked toward him and my new place, by Dale.

Lavender caught my hand. “Hang on to that place card, Miss LoBeau,” he said. “I'll jump up and set her a place the minute she walks through the door.”

Nobody knows me like Lavender.

Shock Number Two got served up with the coconut cake and sweet potato pie.

Dale slumped beside me in a turkey-induced haze, his shirt dabbed with cranberry sauce. Miss Rose sat with her hand curled on the table, almost touching Bill's. Her talk flowed quicker and brighter than I ever heard, and Bill chimed in easy as second fiddle.

“Sweet potato pie, sugar?” Miss Lana said, slicing the cinnamon-colored pie.

“I can't,” I groaned.

“I can,” Dale said, sitting up. He looked at the window and jumped.

A shadow flitted by the window and Miss Rose, who sat with her back to it, shivered like somebody danced across her grave.

“Excuse us, Miss Lana,” I said, leaping to my feet.
“Dale and me got to walk. Harm does too, before he cramps up,” I added, very loud. Harm had just invited himself to stay at Grandmother Miss Lacy's until the fumes died at Mr. Red's.

“Thanks, Miss Thornton,” he said, and followed us to the door. “What's wrong?” he asked as we stepped onto the porch.

“Somebody's out here,” I said, surveying the backyard—Miss Lana's camellias, the Colonel's campfire pit, my old sandbox-turned-flowerbed.

Nobody.

Dale pointed to the sycamore stump. “Daddy's plate,” he said. “I left the napkin on top. Now it's folded to one side.” We thundered down the steps, to the stump.

“No footprints,” Harm said, searching the ground.

“He left the biscuits,” Dale said, and picked up the plate.

Bingo.

Beneath the plate, a pale blue paper. Harm picked it up and read:

NOT MACON.

THINK AGAIN.

“Same paper, same handwriting as before,” I said. “But who left it?”

We quickly searched the side yards and the café
parking lot. “Whoever it was, he's gone,” Harm said as we circled back to the stump.

Dale plucked a biscuit from the plate and studied the note. “‘Not Macon.' We already knew that.” He nibbled the biscuit. “Daddy's innocent. That's our given. Right? Like in a word problem.”

My stomach dropped.

Dale had never straight-out asked us about Mr. Macon before. But as far as I knew, the only person in town who thought Mr. Macon was innocent held a ham biscuit and wore cranberry sauce dribbled down his shirtfront.