Waking Up in Dixie (20 page)

Something in the way he said it caught at Elizabeth’s heart.

Howe bent forward to look Patricia in the eye. “How about it,
princess? Could you let go and try to enjoy this with us? Please. For me?”

Patricia rolled her eyes, but relented. “I’ll try. But if you mention”—her voice dropped—“
sex
again, all bets are off.” She wiggled with an exaggerated shudder. “At your age. Ick!”

Charles laughed. “Way to go, Patti.” He turned to Elizabeth. “How about it, Mama-lama? I’d love to see you laugh, too.”

Elizabeth’s chest tightened to see the compassion in Charles’s face. It had been a long time since she’d laughed. Too long. When had she turned into the kind of person who worried more about messing up her hair or getting splashed than having fun on a roller coaster?

If she kept up that way, she’d end up turning into Howe’s mother, God forbid. Dear Lord, she realized, she was practically there already! “I’ll try, too,” she promised, feeling some of the tension inside her begin to ease merely from saying it. “But don’t expect miracles.”

Howe took her hand and gave it a quick kiss, his eyes welling. “Too late. Already got one. We’re all here together.” His voice thickened with emotion, tears escaping. “That’s a miracle, to me.”

Patricia wasn’t amused. “No crying, either, Daddy, or I’m outta here.”

Howe swiped at his eyes as they neared the front of the Fast Pass line again. “I’ll try, baby, but you’ll have to cut your old man some slack.”

“Mr. Whittington,” the boy he’d tried to bribe greeted him. “Glad to have you back so soon. Front car again?”

Elizabeth stepped between them. “Yes,” she answered with a smile.

“Right this way, then.”

This time, Elizabeth actually put her hands into the air and hollered all the way. And the next.

And pretty soon, they were all involved in the quest to see every attraction and ride every ride, no matter how juvenile, and Howe’s enthusiasm was so contagious, Elizabeth started laughing again. So did Patricia.

Charles recorded it all on his digital camera. And they talked as they ate in the restaurants—about the rides at first, then about Charles’s work and his renovations, and Patricia’s friends and social life. And somewhere between Space Mountain and the Hall of Presidents, they started to feel like a real family.

And by week’s end, Elizabeth was beginning to like the ridiculous, impulsive man who slept in the other bed of their hotel room.

If only they could have stayed there.

But reality forced them back to Whittington, and they weren’t even in the house before everything unraveled.

Tanned and more relaxed than she could ever remember being, Elizabeth almost made it home on the glow of their vacation. But on the plane, Howe sat beside Patricia and informed her that she couldn’t have her car back till she got a job—any job—and passed a quarter at the local community college. Unable to avoid eavesdropping, Elizabeth stifled a satisfied chortle to hear her husband’s bombshell. Good for him!

Patti did her best to talk him out of it, but Howe didn’t budge, so she sulked the rest of the way home, while Charles and Elizabeth chatted happily about his plans to redo the kitchen in his house.

When they got to Atlanta to drop Charles off, Patti asked him to put one of her suitcases in the seat so she could do her nails on the way home, then they left the city. Elizabeth noted the familiar landmarks on I-75 north from Midtown to Whittington with a growing sense of foreboding. Life in a bubble was one thing,
but reality another, and reality was waiting, primed and loaded, back home.

Sure enough, no sooner had they crossed the county line than Patricia stopped rummaging through her weekender and piped up with, “Daddy, could you drop me off at Gamma’s so I can pick up the rest of my things? And my car?”

“Sure, to the rest of your things,” Howe said lightly, then uttered a word their daughter had rarely heard from him. “No, to the car.”

Elizabeth glanced in the rearview mirror to see outrage on their daughter’s face. “But Daddy, I said I’d get a
job
like you wanted, even though it’s perfectly absurd. We don’t need the money.”

“We went through all this on the plane,” Howe said equably.

“Daddy,” she protested. “You’re not being fair. At least let me drive to school and my job. Judges let people with
DUIs
drive to work and school, for crying out loud.”

“This isn’t open to negotiation,” he told her.

Patti didn’t give up. “Please, Daddy. Be reasonable. I said I’d go to Grade Thirteen”—their local community college—“but how can I get to work or school if I don’t have a car?”

Howe smiled. “One of us will take you and pick you up.”

Patricia flounced against her seat, arms across her chest. “That is absurd. I’m in college. It would be mortifying to have my parents drive me. I have to be able to get places.”

“Patti,” Elizabeth reminded her, “we told you when we got you a car that you’d lose the keys if you flunked. You flunked
out
. At least we’re willing to give the car back after you pass a quarter.”

“Puh-leeze,” Patricia said. “I know this is all Mama’s idea,” she said to Elizabeth, glaring at her in the rearview mirror. “You never want me to have any fun. To be young. All you care about is what people think.”

“Patricia,” Howe warned, “I told you, do not speak to your mother that way. This subject is closed. End of discussion.”

Patricia’s tone went sly. “Mama’s always been jealous of me.”

Elizabeth gasped to hear her daughter speak such a wounding truth so boldly.

Howe almost ran off the road. “Patricia!” he reprimanded, glaring at her reflection. “Apologize to your mother at once.”

“Well, it’s true,” Patti retorted. “She’s always picked on me because she knows you love me more than her.”

Howe swerved onto the wide shoulder of the two-lane road, bloody murder on his face, then unlocked the doors and jumped out to jerk Patricia’s door open. “Get out. Now!”

Elizabeth had never seen him so angry. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of what he might do. “Howe, let it go,” she pleaded.

“Absolutely not,” he declared.

Patricia recoiled, wide-eyed, as her father leaned in and released her seat belt. “Ungrateful little shit,” he muttered as he grabbed her arm and levitated her to the shoulder beside him. “You are coming with me, young lady.”

Elizabeth erupted from the car to intervene, but Howe pulled Patricia onto the grass, away from her. “You are never,
ever
to speak of my wife”—his
wife,
not her mother—“that way again, do you understand?” he shouted.

Elizabeth hurried to them, alarms flashing,
anger, anger, anger.
Whittingtons didn’t do anger—not overtly, anyway. Just the cold, withering kind. “Howe, it’s all right,” she told him. “Let it go.”

He turned on her. “No, it’s not all right.” His face was livid. “This is my fault. I’m the one who spoiled her, and I’m putting a stop to it, right now. You don’t deserve this, Elizabeth. All you’ve ever done is try to be a good wife and mother, even when I was undermining your efforts to instill a little discipline in her. It’s about time she learned that the sun doesn’t shine out of her ass.”

Patricia regarded him with shock—and resentment. “Daddy!”

A car slowed, rolling down the passenger window. “Do you need help, ladies?” the well-dressed male driver asked her. “Is this man threatening you?”

Elizabeth said, “No,” at the same instant Patricia said, “Yes.”

“Patricia,” Elizabeth scolded, then turned to the Good Samaritan. “My daughter just had a temper tantrum, and my husband is trying to talk some sense into her.” Lord. She was explaining their private embarrassment to a total stranger on the side of the road.

The man wasn’t convinced. “You’re sure?” Horns honked behind him as traffic began to back up, but he didn’t budge.

Elizabeth approached his car. “It’s okay, really. You know teenagers these days. She finally got on my husband’s last nerve.”

The man took in Patricia’s petulant expression and nodded, his features clearing. “Been there, done that. Y’all have a nice day.”

Elizabeth prayed there wasn’t anybody they knew in the line of cars that started to go past.

Patricia burst into tears and wrenched free of her father.
“You’re not my father anymore! I hate you! I wish you’d
died
when you had that stroke. You’re mean.” She turned on Elizabeth. “I hate you both.”

Howe recoiled, stunned.

Before they could stop her, Patti flew to the car, grabbed her suitcase from the seat, then flagged down a middle-aged woman in a dark sedan. “Help! I need a ride!”

Elizabeth and Howe rushed to intercept her, but before they could get to her, she was in the car and accelerating away, a steady line of traffic behind them.

They’d never catch up. “Howe,” Elizabeth said, frantic, as she got back into the car opposite her husband. “Could you make out the license?”

“No,” he said. “It was one of these alternate plates. Some college, I think. I don’t even know if it was from Georgia.” He cranked the engine and put on the blinker to get back on the road in pursuit.

Panic gripped Elizabeth. God knows what could happen. “What kind of car?”

“Mercury? Maybe a Ford.” He inched closer to the line of slow-moving cars. “Damn. Why won’t anybody let us in?”

Probably because they’d caused the bottleneck. Or thought Patricia was an escaping kidnap victim. “What color was the car? Black?”

“No,” he said, “dark blue, I think.”

They hadn’t even gotten a decent description of the vehicle.

Elizabeth stuck her arm out the window and waved for somebody to let them in, desperate.

A woman in an SUV finally took pity.

“We need to call the police,” Elizabeth told Howe, groping for her blasted cell phone. “Who knows what could happen to her, going off with a total stranger?”

Howe laid a staying hand on her arm. “Patti’s not a minor. She left of her own free will. The police won’t be interested till she’s been gone three days.”

Elizabeth covered her face with her hands. He was right.

Howe reached over to give her forearm a reassuring squeeze. “Nothing’s going to happen to Patricia. Till she gets home, anyway. Then I plan to have a few words with her.”

“How can you be so calm?” she argued.

“Because she took off with Betty Crocker, for one,” he said, “not Ted Bundy. And because she’s been in a lot worse situations than this and managed to take care of herself.”

Elizabeth straightened. “What worse situations?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “But they worked out fine.”

She should have known Patricia was confiding in Howe, not her, but it didn’t feel good to be reminded. “But Howe, things are so crazy these days. What if—”

“She’ll be okay,” he affirmed. “Patti’s spoiled, but she’s not stupid. She can take care of herself.”

Elizabeth sank back into her seat. “So what do we do now? Wait for a policeman to show up on our doorstep with bad news?”

Howe shook his head. “She’ll probably be at Mama’s when we get home. I’ll give her some time to cool off, then I’ll go talk to
her and bring her home.” Eyes forward, he briefly lost focus. “I’m sorry I called her a ‘little shit.’ It just came out.”

“You couldn’t help it,” she told him. “It’s nothing I haven’t thought a million times. I just have the ability not to say it.” An ability Howe still lacked, under pressure.

His tell-all face revealed remorse.

Elizabeth was glad he’d taken up for her, called her his wife with such passion when confronted by Patti’s spiteful words. But it frightened her to think what it could end up costing. “I can’t believe she said those hateful things to you.”

“I can. And she meant them,” he answered. “At the moment, anyway.” He let out a sigh. “She got away with murder for a long time with me. It’s going to take time to set things straight, but I will.” He squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not giving up.”

He released her hand to press his fingers to his temple with a wince.

“Are you okay?” she asked. He’d done that several times in the past few days.

“Just a headache,” he said. “Nothing a few Advil won’t cure.”

Elizabeth frowned in concern. “I’ll call Dr. Clare. Maybe—”

“No, don’t do that,” he snapped, sounding more like the old Howe than he had since the stroke. “It’s just a headache. People have headaches.” He sniffed, forcing a smile. “Mine’s named Patricia.”

They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

Patricia wasn’t there when they got to the house. Howe unloaded the car, then called the credit cards and canceled Patricia’s,
asking the companies to notify him immediately if she tried to use them. Later, he called his mother, but Patricia wasn’t there.

When it came time for bed, Elizabeth tossed and turned for more than an hour, then put on her robe and crossed to Howe’s room. She knocked on the door.

Howe opened it a few seconds later, looking tousled and appealing in his silk pajama pants. “What is it?” he asked in concern. “Did you hear from Patti?”