The Sassy Belles (15 page)

“Well, the results are a little delayed. Harry called to say
he’d got caught up in a meeting with Dan. He’ll be heading over to the station
in a while. I wanted to stop by and check on how you were doing since I had time
to kill. I drove by your house, but when I saw your car wasn’t there, I knew
you’d be here.” The tingling in my foot was finally stopping, but I began to
tingle elsewhere. Sonny was big. Overpowering. But there was something boyish
about him, too—a twinkle in his dark brown eyes that always made me feel good,
even after I married Harry. His size alone made me feel protected from the heavy
world I sometimes created. Okay, I can be a drama queen, it has been said.

I knew I couldn’t tell him about the letters I had just read.
They were too serious to share before I knew what they really meant, so I needed
to talk to Meridee first.

“Well, you were right. I’ve been here for a couple of hours.”
My intense reaction to him was unsettling, and I kept telling myself it was the
damp evening causing it, but I knew it wasn’t.

“We know that the results should be in before midnight. We’ve
ordered a late dinner. Some Chinese food, it should be there in about half an
hour. Whataya say? Hungry?”

Ten years,
I reminded myself as my
mind started planning all the ways I could keep Sonny here alone with me instead
of returning to meet Harry at the station. I twirled my wedding ring round and
round.
Hungry,
I thought.
That
doesn’t begin to describe how I’m feeling.
Maybe that’s why I wanted
him—I just needed strong arms to hold me. He was safe. Maybe it wasn’t about
sex, but a place to hide out from this crazy situation and the stress and
confusion that came with it.

I put one arm around his back in a halfhearted hug and said,
“Yeah, I’m a little hungry. I’ve just been sitting here kinda thinking and
listening to the rain, readin’ old love letters.”

“Oh, yeah? From who?” Sonny stepped closer and put his arm
around my back, my hip now pressed up against his toned thigh.

“Not from you,” I said, glancing up at him only for a
second.

“Who, then?” he playfully retorted. “Harry?”

“No, not even Harry,” I said. “They’re private.” And I let that
dangle in the air for a minute.

And then, unexpectedly, Sonny turned to me and, with a hand on
each shoulder, leaned down and kissed my forehead. Oh, dear God, his lips were
so warm and soft. I felt my other arm slip around him and I looked up at him
like a lost girl. That’s truly what I felt like at that moment. We were standing
in the darkness of someone else’s kitchen, with only the lamp of the distant
hall table light to provide any illumination. Our closeness was so powerful, so
intense, but also so wrong—which only made it all the more tempting.

Why am I doing this?
But that was
only a fleeting thought, cut off as suddenly as it appeared when he kissed me
again, but this time not on my forehead. His lips on mine were so tender, but he
pulled away quickly, astonished at himself. But I moved into him, telling him it
was okay. More than okay. He began to speak. I knew he wanted to apologize, but
I put my finger to his lips. My eyes let him know it was all right. He leaned
toward me again and I met him halfway. He kissed me like he meant it this time.
And so did I. It was long and tender, damp and warm, and I tingled all over from
my lips to my thighs. A shudder pulsed through me with each tilt of his head.
Before I was ready, he pulled away, my head still hanging sideways, my mouth
still open and hungry.

“I’m so sorry, Blake,” he said, speaking quick and breathless
and shaking his head. “I don’t even know what I was thinking,” he mumbled under
his broken breath.

“It’s okay.” I held his hand and spoke with tears stuck in my
throat. “Sonny, we’re both exhausted. It’s okay. We haven’t slept in days.” He
held me against him. This is what I loved and wanted. To be held by him. Sonny
could make the world go away with his big ol’ hugs. He always could. From my
memories of us back in the high school halls, his hands around mine, his arms
around the small of my back pressing me against him—it felt just the same now.
The same, and also completely different from being close to Harry. Especially
the Harry of the past few years. I never felt that sense of safety with Harry.
Harry’s emotions were buried deep. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure he had any
feelings about me anymore. Sonny’s emotions were close to the surface. At least
when it came to me. That was obvious that night.

I began to sob. Time seemed to have crawled by from Lewis
vanishing, to Vivi’s pregnancy, to Harry’s relationship with Lewis, to Meridee
and all of those letters—and all along, my feelings for Sonny were simmering
just under the surface. The release valve had been tapped with one kiss, and I
was flooded with emotion. It was an overload.

Sonny pulled me closer. Now aside from all of the other
concerns, there was this added complication. This kissing and feeling and
him.
Sonny caressed my hair, still in a ponytail. I
felt him loosen the band and slide it off my hair. My long waves fell loosely
down my back and around my face. He rubbed his hand down my hair and held it in
his grasp. I looked up at him and he kissed my tear-covered cheek, then wiped my
wet face with his fingertips. Too soft for a cop, I thought. His fingers felt
sweet to my skin and even sweeter to my soul. Sonny gazed down at me and smiled
slightly. He slipped one side of my hair behind my ear.

“You’ll always be part of me,” he said.

“It’s been a long day. I’m—”

He stopped me. “No regrets, remember?”

It was our high school motto. We were on-again, off-again so
much during that time that we began saying “No regrets” when we were off
again.

“Right. Never.”

Sonny backed away. “Chinese, thirty minutes?”

“I’ll get Vivi and be right behind you. Just let me lock
up.”

“You okay?” he asked.

“I grew up here, remember? I’m home.”

Once Sonny had left, I went back to the closet to put the
letters away properly. I needed answers, but did not know how to get them
without hurting Meridee. Questions swirled around in my mind: Did Lewis ever pay
her back? Did the “project” ever fly? What did any of that have to do with
Lewis’s disappearance? I just couldn’t make the information click.

And it was no wonder—since I could barely even walk straight
after that kiss with Sonny. Reading the letters had only made me want Sonny
more. They had reminded me of how much Harry had changed me, how much of myself
I had lost. And Sonny was a living, breathing reminder of all the parts of me I
had forgotten.

I didn’t want Chinese food anymore, and I definitely didn’t
want to see Harry. I was so angry at him for being such a bastard to Lewis all
his life and for dragging me into it. I could see Harry now as clearly as I
could see myself. And I knew I certainly couldn’t lay eyes on Sonny after
tonight. I was mad at myself for my weakness with him.

The women in my family were a lot of things, but weak was not
one of them. So, as I began to close up the house, I decided I was not acting
weak with Sonny. I
wanted
to kiss him. I was mad at
Harry and I wanted a kiss and I wasn’t going to Harry for it! So I took it from
Sonny. I was mad at Harry for not being altogether fair to Lewis and for being a
bit of a control freak with me. So I rationalized that all of this was Harry’s
fault. It was good to get that all settled.

All of this insanity made me think of Kitty. She always said,
“Never explain anything. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t
believe it!” She got away with quite a bit of bad behavior using that line. But
people came to expect it from her. They’d shake their heads and say, “Oh, that’s
just Kitty.”

Of course, she didn’t think her actions were at all
questionable. She’d drag home the hunky bartender from the corner dive once in a
while. The bartender might be thirty years her junior but nobody said a word.
They’d just shake their heads and say, “That’s Kitty.” That young bartender
might be there all night—no, he
would
be there all
night. Nobody ever raised an eyebrow. It was Kitty, carefree and crazy. With all
this stress piling up, I decided a big dose of Mother Kitty was just what I
needed. Like all good Southern girls, when something awful has happened, we
burst into tears and call our mothers, and I guess I’m no different from the
rest of them.

14

I
t was just after ten when I heard
the back door slam for the second time that night. I had high hopes that this
second visitation might result in a little less guilt than the first.

“Mother, I’m in here,” I called. I could hear her heels pad
across the tapestry carpet in the living room and turn to head into the kitchen
where I was waiting.

“Mama’s here, baby. What the heck is going on? You sounded
awful on the phone. What in the world is this hissy fit all about?”

Let me make something very clear. In the Deep South, sometimes
women cry and get very upset. These moments are known around here as hissy fits
and sometimes they’re called conniption fits. Now, don’t get these confused. The
hissy is short and loud and abrasive, often ending as quickly as it came on. The
conniption fit, on the other hand, is an unfortunate day-long event. It’s
chronic. There is clearly a difference and we don’t
have
them, we
pitch
them. That night I
was having what we can consider a major hissy fit. Kitty grabbed me as I stood
up and she held me tight against her ample bosom. Her rotund rear end looked
bigger than ever in her lime-green suit. I was so glad to see her—which was
actually quite a surprise. I needed to take that in for a minute. The sight of
Kitty making me happy was not an everyday occurrence.

Kitty and I had always been close, but had not always gotten
along. She was…hmm, how do I put it?
Different.

Kitty had been married a few times, and after she divorced
Dallas’s father several years ago she went back to telling everyone she was
“between husbands.” She was still in the real estate business and selling houses
and she was great at it, too. She had a very driven spirit and an outgoing
personality—maybe just a little too outgoing. Growing up, I hated the
endless parade of husbands. I knew my mother had a big heart and a lot of love
to go around, and I learned to accept that she had never found the right man to
settle down with. But she had a tendency to keep her relationships secret until
she was ready for her big announcement. It always began like this.

“Oh, Blakey, guess what?” And I knew,
Here
comes another fool.
She would sweep out her left hand from behind her
back to reveal the sparkling diamond on her ring finger. I think it was her way
of trying to protect me—an attempt to keep the bad apples away from me
completely. But even the ones she finally conceded to marry would never replace
my daddy. To Kitty’s credit, she never tried to push any of those men on me.
They were
her
husbands, not
my
fathers, and she never tried to force me to accept them as if
they were.

My dad had been a self-made man, a local politician, even
though he had been raised on the poor folk side of the tracks. He represented
those people well; he was the head of the local service clubs and had a personal
line to the governor’s office. He’d accomplished so much—all before he died in a
boating accident down on the Gulf Coast when I was six. I always thought Kitty
kept marrying because she was busy looking for him. Nobody would ever replace my
daddy. No one. I knew that, but Kitty kept right on trying.

Dr. Sandoval was husband number two. I liked him, but Kitty was
so loud and her real estate business drove him nuts. That marriage lasted about
six years. She would answer her phone seven days a week and never said no to a
client. Her career came first. I was as frustrated as he was with her lack of
attention, but when he finally had his nurse take his temperature one too many
times, Kitty had enough and sent him packing.

Kitty and I were so different. I wanted predictability and she
thrived on adventure. She was loud and ruthless and I was emotional and…well,
okay, I was loud, too. But at least I try to think before I speak! Not Kitty.
She was such an unpredictable mother, but she loved to love me and show me
off.

She carried a massive purse at all times and was quite round
herself, so she took up a lot of personal space. That purse. My God. It was like
Mary Poppins’s bag. I will never forget, as long as I live, the one day I was
late to school and I was eating buttery toast in the front seat of the car as we
drove. I was in seventh grade and it was an early morning and the skies were
overcast.

I said, “I’m getting crumbs all over me! I wish I had a plate.”
And my mother actually pulled a plate right out of her purse and said, “Here you
go, baby,” and just kept right on driving as if it were an everyday occurrence
to have a plate in your purse. I sat there with my toast and my mouth dropped
open. But that was just Kitty.

Though Kitty and I will never be the same, and she drove me
nuts most of the time with her sheer presence, this was one time I was thrilled
to feel the heavy weight of her purse on my back as she squeezed me tight. She
was quite obviously reveling in the fact that I needed her, something I’d never
admitted. As she held me tightly, I became limp in her arms and began to
cry.

“Baby, what is it? What did he do?” I loved her for that. For
just knowing what it was before I even said a word. And she immediately blamed
Harry—she was always on my side. “I know,” she soothed as I continued to cry. “I
always thought that stuffed shirt would eventually push you away.” Before she
could say another word, I pulled away.

“No, Mother, it’s not Harry. It’s me.”

“Well, baby, let’s go sit a minute and get this outta you,
okay? No time like the present to vent. I’m a big believer in venting.” We
walked back up the hall to the kitchen table and sat down.

“Spill it, sweetie. Mama’s listenin’.”

I told her everything. Not that I meant to, but the venting
thing was working. It felt so good to get it all out. I told her about Lewis,
the body parts, the DNA tests, the hot-pink-stained cigarettes in his condo. I
told her about seeing Dallas, and how she got a phone call after Lewis
disappeared. I was still tearing as I spilled. My soul kept shouting, “Watch
yourself, you’re with Kitty!” But, God, if I couldn’t trust my own mother then
things really were bad. She’d always been there for me before, and I had no
doubt she would be here for me now.

Kitty was a fixer, not a commiserator, though. She was another
Sassy Belle for sure; a strong Southern woman you can count on in a crisis,
smart as a whip and full of attitude. I had to remember that. Maybe deep down I
knew that. Once I spilled the dirty details, I wasn’t going to get, “Oh, poor
Blake. Mama’s here for you.” Instead, I’d get, “Oh, quit your whining, honey,
it’s not that bad. Don’t be a pain in your own ass. Let’s fix this.” And she’d
get to work fixing whatever it was at the moment. In other words, she was good
medicine for both a hissy fit
and
a conniption
fit.

I hesitated for about two seconds before I decided to tell her
about the letters. And then about Sonny.

“Oh, my word! I knew that cop still loved you. You know, I ran
into him about a year or so ago at Ruby Tuesdays? He had his significant other
with him, that milk-toast cardboard wifey, if you ask me. He asked about you,
and when he spoke of you, those big brown eyes of his just twinkled like the
night sky. He’s always gonna love you, Blake.”

“Mother, I’m married.” I chose not to tell her he had since
gotten a divorce. That would have opened up a huge can of Kitty worms!

“Well, for goodness’ sake, it was only a kiss. Any tongue?”

“Mother!” I winced.

“Well, no tongue, no sex, no harm…and no fun.” She burst out
laughing at herself. “I really don’t see the problem here. What else you
got?”

I shook my head and tears fell onto the table. “Please,” I
said. “I’m guilty.”

“Do you love him?”

“I did. I do. I just…I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe it was just the rain and the darkness and all of
this emotion. It’s understandable. Let’s just pretend it didn’t mean anything
and enjoy it for what it was. It did feel good, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Too good.”

“Maybe you are more like me than you wanna be. One’s just not
enough.” She smiled, only half joking. “Now, about those letters.”

I looked at my cell phone. Three missed calls. “I’d better call
Harry first. They were expecting me an hour ago for Chinese takeout at the
station.”

On the first ring, Harry picked up. “Blake! Thank God! Where
the hell…”

Before he could finish I told him Kitty had stopped by and I
had lost track of time. “No, everything’s fine,” I said. “Just catching up. Any
results yet?”

“Yes,” Harry replied. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve been
calling. The body parts do not belong to Lewis. The rest is inconclusive.”

“Well, that’s good news! At least we don’t have a murder,” I
said. “Go home and get some sleep and I’ll be home in about an hour.”

“I assume you ate something with her, then?”

“No, honey.”

“Lost your appetite when Kitty arrived?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing full well I lost it the minute Sonny
laid his lips on me and started making out with me in my grandmother’s moonlit
kitchen. “I’ll be home soon.”

As I was putting the cell phone in the pocket of my sweatpants,
I looked up to see the lime-green suit rummaging through the linen closet in the
hall.

“Mother!” I shouted.

“Blake, where are the letters? I’ve got to see them.” She kept
dragging things out and towels and sheets were falling to the floor in a
heap.

“Mother! Have you been in the sauce tonight or what?”

“Blake. This is family money we’re talking about. Oh, here they
are!” she announced. And she began walking back to the kitchen table with the
stack of letters from Lewis.

She got through all of them in about twenty minutes, then put
them all down on the table. She offered nothing but a “humph” as she chewed on
the stem of her bedazzled reading glasses.

“Well, it looks like the old woman gave away the farm. The
question is did she get it back?”

She began processing everything out loud about Lewis, Vivi,
even Dallas and the phone call. Finally, “There’s got to be more. More to this
that we don’t know. The only way to get the answers we need is to go straight to
the source.”

“Mother, Lewis is missing, possibly dead,” I reminded her. “Are
you planning a séance or something? You know I’m not a fan of those Ouija
boards.”

“Not Lewis, honey. We need to talk to Meridee.”

She stood up and put her glasses in her purse. “Now go home,
Blakey, and kiss your husband, and see how he makes you feel. If you really feel
guilty, you’re an ass, and that means you still care about being with Harry. But
if you feel the least bit justified or satisfied with Sonny, you better find out
why.” Well, that was Kitty—always ready with a game plan.

Kitty scooted her chair back under the kitchen table, pulled
and straightened her skirt, leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Mama loves you,
Blake. I’ll handle Meridee. Don’t you worry, she’ll never know you found those
letters. I’ll tell her I was looking for pictures to make a gift for her and I
stumbled upon them. Okay?”

“Mother, please be careful, and for once, use some tact. I can
get you a definition of that if you need it.”

Kitty giggled. “Good thing you’ve got my little sense of humor.
Your mama will be fine, don’t you worry your pretty little head. Go home now and
rest it on the pillow next to your man and leave the rest for me.” She turned
back to me just before she stepped out the door. “I know y’all weren’t really
plannin’ my birthday party the other day since all this mess was goin’ on. But,
there’s still a month before the big day, so baby, y’all have plenty of
time.”

She winked, grabbing her keys and her giant bag, and with a
jingle of her bangles, she was off.