“Actually, dear, I just got back,” Mary said, smiling cryptically, indulging herself. “From the past,” she added, seeing his brows raise. She suspected he’d been watching her from a courthouse window and knew she hadn’t been anywhere. What difference did it make now, anyhow? Matt was young enough to get over anything and old enough to understand the indiscretions of which he now suspected her and his grandfather guilty. She looked at him fondly. “You haven’t lived long enough to have a past, but you will someday.”
“I’ll soon turn thirty-five, creeping up there,” Matt said with a grin. “Now, come on, where are you going?”
“Nowhere, I guess.” She suddenly felt tired. She saw that Henry’s hunger pangs had driven him out on the sidewalk to look for her. She nodded toward her limousine, and he struck off eagerly toward Amos’s office.
“Henry’s gone for the car,” Mary said. “Walk me back to the corner, will you? It’s been a while since we talked.” She slipped her hand under Matt’s arm, wielding the cane with the other. “When are you going to marry, Matt? You can’t be hurting for choices.”
“You’d be surprised. Lots of choices, but none too choice. How is that great-niece of yours, by the way? Any hope she’ll be paying us a visit soon? You know, I haven’t seen her since Mister Ollie died. She was around sixteen or seventeen, I recall—already a beauty then.”
“Seventeen,” Mary murmured, her throat suddenly tightening. “She was born in 1956.”
It was something else she’d have to account for, her hand in keeping Matt and Rachel apart. Ever since they’d met the first time, when Rachel was fourteen, she’d speculated on the supreme irony of the two of them attracting each other and something coming of it down the line. At their second meeting—Ollie’s funeral—three years later, they had already developed into the breed they would become—Rachel the planter and Matt the lumberman—a combination that never would have worked… not for Somerset.
She’d felt the spark between them on that occasion, had seen the interest in Matt’s eye, the admiration in Rachel’s, and decided right there and then that the two should never be in Howbutker at the same time. It had not been difficult to arrange. Matt had already graduated from college by then, and for most of his young adult life his grandfather had had him out of town learning the business of Warwick Industries’ far-flung operations. When he did manage to get home for short visits and holidays, Mary had made sure that Rachel was occupied elsewhere. Any lingering curiosity her great-niece may have had about Percy’s handsome grandson, she’d discouraged by simply never bringing up his name and changing the subject when it invariably was. There was five years’ difference in their ages, and she’d counted on Matt being married by the time Rachel had graduated from Texas A&M and was ready to settle down.
Of course, all that conniving had happened a number of years before the full picture of the tragedy she was creating had begun to emerge… before Rachel’s falling-out with her mother and the breakup with her air force pilot. How could she have foreseen that Rachel—within sight of thirty and Matt nearly thirty-five, the same age difference between her and Percy—would be unmarried still? Matt had moved home for good. He had taken over as head of Warwick Industries, and, but for the codicil, Rachel would have been coming home, too…. She halted. What if she had destroyed another what-should-have-been? The thought was like a knife plunged into her lungs.
“Miss Mary, what is it?” Matt covered her clutching fingers with his hand, his brow furrowed in concern. “Tell me.”
Mary turned her disturbed gaze up to him. He had inherited his grandfather’s height and build and a rougher-cut version of his handsomeness. She had always preferred his face to Percy’s. It comforted rather than devastated and had an appeal entirely his own. She could see nothing of Percy’s wife, Matt’s grandmother, about him except his light brown hair and bright blue eyes. “How’s Lucy?” she asked.
Looking baffled, Matt eased into his grandfather’s grin. “Why, the same as always. Full of piss and vinegar. I just got back from a visit with her in Atlanta. Should I mention that you asked about her next time I talk to her?”
Mary threw up a hand. “Oh, good Lord, no! She might have a heart attack.”
Matt chuckled. “You two. I don’t suppose I’ll ever learn what came between you.” I imagine you have a pretty good idea already, Mary thought, amused, and wondered if Matt would question Percy about what he’d overheard. Probably not. He’d let the creek lie still, rather than go fishing. No telling what he might drag up that would embarrass his grandfather. It had all happened so long ago, anyway.
“I can see that you’re not going to relieve my curiosity,” Matt said, “so let’s go back to Rachel. When can we expect her next visit?”
“Oh, in about two or three weeks, I’d say,” Mary said, her attention on her limousine drawing up to the curb. It was white, ancient, and in impeccable running order, much as she’d once thought of herself. “Here’s Henry, so I’ll say good-bye, Matt.”
She gazed up at him through her sunglasses, a constriction suddenly in her throat. He’d always been such a good boy. She remembered when he and his mother, Claudia, Percy’s daughter-in-law, had come to live at Warwick Hall. Matt had been only a few months old. He had reminded her of Matthew, his namesake. Matt had been their rainbow after the storm. Pain swelled in her breast. “Matt—” she started to say, but to her dismay, a sob blocked her words.
Matt said, “Hey, here now… what’s this?” and drew her into his arms. “You look too lovely to cry.”
She felt in her purse for a handkerchief. “And you’re wearing too nice a jacket to cry on,” she said, finding a tissue and pressing it to a wet spot on his lapel, appalled at herself. “I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Memories do that to you sometimes,” he said, his expression gentle and knowing. “How about letting Granddad and me come down for a drink around six? He’s missed you this past month—more than I can say.”
“If you’ll promise not to say a word to him about my… behavior.”
“What behavior?”
Henry had come around to assist. “Aunt Sassie’s havin’ ham and black-eyed peas and collards and fried cornbread for lunch,” he said. “That’ll fix her up.”
“Sounds like just the ticket,” Matt said, but Mary caught the look he exchanged with Henry that belied his confidence. Before closing the door, he leaned in and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll see you this evening, Miss Mary. Okay?”
She patted his hand. “Okay,” she said.
But of course it wasn’t okay. She’d think of some excuse and have Sassie call down to Warwick Hall later with her apologies. After their month’s separation, Percy would have a fit, but she was in no state to see him. She needed her emotional and physical strength for her encounter with Rachel tomorrow, and she must still attend to that final task in the attic. “Henry,” she said, lifting her glasses to wipe away the last of her tears, “I’d like you to do something for me when we get home.”
Henry cast her a stricken look through the rearview mirror. “Before lunch, Miss Mary?”
“Before lunch. I want you to go up to the attic and open Mister Ollie’s World War One footlocker. Have Sassie get the keys from my top bureau drawer to unlock the lid. Leave the keys up there. Shouldn’t take too long, then you can have your ham and black-eyed peas.”
In the mirror, Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Miss Mary, you feelin’ all right?”
“I’m feeling sensible, Henry, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his tone expressing doubt.
Her eyes were dry by the time they turned into the wide, tree-canopied street of Houston Avenue, passing houses of grand proportions set back on rolling lawns in manicured order. “When we get to the house, let me out in front, Henry,” Mary instructed.
Henry shot her another bewildered glance through the rearview mirror. “In front of the house? You don’t want me t
o drive you round to the side door?”
“No, Henry, in front. Don’t bother to get out to help me. I can manage.”
“If you say so, Miss Mary. Now about Mister Ollie’s army trunk. How’ll I recognize it?”
“It’s the sickly green one pushed against the far right wall. His name is printed on it: CAPTAIN OLLIE DUMONT, US ARMY. You can’t miss it once you get the dust off. The lid hasn’t been opened in so long, you’ll probably need to use a crowbar.”
“Yes’m,” Henry said, drawing the limousine to a stop before a wide flight of verandah steps. He watched with anxious eyes as his mistress maneuvered herself out of the backseat and began her ascent to the white-columned porch. She waved him off as she was halfway up, but he waited to pull away until she’d reached the final step. A short while later, Sassie Two, so called because she was the second Sassie in her family to serve as the Tolivers’ housekeeper, flung open the front door and came out, demanding, “Miss Mary, what you doin’ out here? You know this heat ain’t good for you.”
“It’s not bothering me, Sassie, really.” Mary spoke from a deep white plantation chair, one of a number of pairs that graced the wide verandah. “I told Henry to drop me off in front because I wished to climb the steps again, to get the feel of entering my house by the front door. I haven’t done that in ages, and it’s been even longer since I’ve sat out here, observing the neighborhood.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to observe about the neighborhood ’cept the grass growin’. Everybody else is inside where it’s cool. And you ain’t goin’ to find a blade of that grass changed since the last time you sat out here, Miss Mary. Why’re you doin’ it now, of all times? Lunch is about ready.”
“Dinner, Sassie,” Mary corrected firmly. “Dinner is about ready. When did we southern folks start calling our noon meal lunch?”
“Oh, about the time the rest of the world did, I imagine.”
“Well, the rest of the world can be hanged. From now on, we have dinner here at noon. Dinner and supper. The world can have its lunch and dinner.”
Hands on her ample hips, Sassie regarded her mistress tolerantly. “That’s fine by me. Now about your dinner. Will you be ready for it in about ten minutes when Henry comes down from the attic?”
“That’ll be fine,” Mary said. “Did you give him the key to Mister Ollie’s trunk?”
“I did. What in the world do you want it opened for?”
“There’s something I need from it. I’ll go up after dinner and get it.”
“Can’t Henry find whatever it is?”
“No!” Mary barked, clutching the arms of the chair in panic. Sassie’s dark face flooded with alarm, and she added in a mitigating tone, “I’m the only one who knows what I’m looking for. It’s… something I must do myself.”
“Well, all right.” The housekeeper looked skeptical. “You want some iced tea?”
“No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Sassie. I know I’m acting a little odd today, but it feels good to kick the traces a bit.”
“Uh-huh,” Sassie murmured. “Well, now, I’m comin’ back to get you soon as Henry comes down.”
Mary sensed Sassie’s concerned backward glance and regretted causing her worry. No doubt she and Henry thought she was finally losing her mind. Something cold would have tasted good. She wished she hadn’t refused the offer of iced tea, but it was too much trouble for Sassie to have to come back.
She made herself comfortable and directed her gaze slowly up and down the avenue. The Toliver mansion sat high enough to permit a good view of the neighborhood from the verandah. Her great-great-grandmother had seen to that. How she loved this house, this street. Little about it had changed since she was a girl. The carriage houses were now garages, sprinkler systems had replaced the hand watering once done by the household help, and a few of the old trees had finally toppled, but the antebellum grace of the avenue remained the same, a small part of the South not yet gone with the wind.
Would Rachel ever appreciate what it had cost her to take this place away from her? Would the child ever fathom what it had been like for her to live the final weeks of her life knowing that she would be the last Toliver to reside in the family home place, the house her forebears had built? Most likely not. That would be asking an awful lot from the girl….
“Miss Mary, you talkin’ to yourself again.”
“What?” Startled, Mary squinted up at her housekeeper.
Sassie Two was standing in front of her. “You talkin’ to yourself again. And where are your pearls? You left here wearin’ ’em.”
Mary felt at her neck. “Oh, I left those for Rachel—”
“For Rachel? Oh, Lawsey, that does it. Miss Mary, you comin’ in outta this heat.”
“Sassie!” All at once, Mary’s mind cleared. The past dashed to pieces in the clarity of the present. She was herself again, and in charge. Nobody told her what to do, not even Sassie, who was family and had the right. Mary pointed her cane at the housekeeper. “I will come in when I’m good and ready. You and Henry go ahead and eat. Kindly fix me a plate and leave it in the oven.”
Showing no offense at Mary’s attempt to put her in her place, Sassie said, “Well, what about some iced tea?”
“No iced tea, Sassie. Bring me a glass of Taittinger’s from that bottle we keep in the refrigerator. Get Henry to open it. He knows how. On second thought, bring the bottle. Ice it down in a champagne bucket.”
Sassie’s eyes bulged. “Champagne? You want champagne in this heat? Miss Mary, you never drink alcohol nohow.”
“I am today. Now go on and do what I say before Henry perishes of hunger. I heard his stomach growling like a caged tiger in the car.”
Shaking her wiry gray head, Sassie retreated and returned with a tray bearing the commanded items. She set it down loudly on the table next to Mary. “Will that do?”
“Splendidly,” Mary said. “Thank you, Sassie.” She looked up at her housekeeper with a swell of profound affection. “Have I ever told you how much you mean to me?”
“Not near enough,” her housekeeper said. “Now, I don’t care what you say, Miss Mary, I’m comin’ out here to check on you ever’ so often, so you better be careful what you say to yourself if you don’t want no secrets let out.”
“I’ll be sure to guard my conversation with myself very carefully, Sassie. One other thing. Was Henry able to get the lid to Mister Ollie’s trunk open?”
“He did.”
“Good.” Mary nodded in satisfaction.
When Sassie had gone, she poured the flute full of champagne and brought the rim to her lips. She hadn’t imbibed anything stronger than a few sips of champagne on New Year’s Eve since she was a girl. She knew better. Alcohol had the power to take her back to times and places she’d striven nearly all her life to forget. Now she wanted to go back. She wanted to remember everything. This would be her last chance to return to the past, and the champagne would take her there. Sipping calmly, she waited for the arrival of her magic carpet. After a while, she felt herself spinning back into yesterday, and her journey had begun.
MARY’S STORY
Chapter Five
HOWBUTKER, TEXAS, JUNE 1916
In chairs ranged before the desk, Mary Toliver, age sixteen, sat with her mother and brother in the funereal atmosphere of Emmitt Waithe’s law office. A smell of leather and tobacco and old books reminded her of her father’s study at home, now closed with a black ribbon strapped across the door. Tears sprang to her eyes again, and she clasped her hands tighter, lowering her head until the moment of grief passed. Immediately she felt Miles’s consoling hand covering hers. On the other side of her brother, dressed completely in black and speaking through a veil covering her face, Darla Toliver gave a little exclamation of sympathy and said with annoyance, “I declare, if Emmitt doesn’t come soon, I’m sending Mary home. There’s no reason for her to have to sit through this so soon after burying her father. Emmitt knows how close they were. I can’t imagine what’s keepin
g him. Why can’t we simply tell Mary the contents of the will when she’s up to it?”
“Perhaps it’s mandatory for a legatee to be present on these occasions,” Miles said with the formal wordiness he’d taken to using since going away to college. “That’s why Emmitt insists she be here.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” Darla said, her tone unusually sharp toward her son. “This is Howbutker, darling, not Princeton. Mary is a minor recipient of your father’s will. There is not the least necessity for her to be here today.”
Mary listened to their dialogue with half an ear. She’d been so emotionally removed from them since her father died—from everyone—that Miles and her mother often discussed her as if she weren’t in their presence.
She still could not believe that she would wake up tomorrow and the day after that and all the tomorrows to come in a world without her father. The cancer had taken him too fast for her to adjust to his imminent death. It had been devastating enough to lose her grandfather five years before, but Granddaddy Thomas had lived to seventy-one. Her father had been only fifty-one, too young to lose all that he had worked for… all that he loved. For most of last night, she’d lain awake in her room and wondered what would happen to them now that her father was gone. What would become of the plantation? Miles wanted no part of it. That was common knowledge. He desired only to become a college professor and teach history.
Her mother had never cared much for Somerset and knew very little about its operation. Darla’s interest lay in being the wife of Vernon Toliver and the mistress of the mansion on Houston Avenue. To Mary’s knowledge, she had rarely ventured outside of town where the plantation began and stretched for acres and acres beside the road, almost clear to the next county. Dallas lay beyond and Houston the other direction, cities where her mother loved to take the train to shop and stay overnight.
Many Junes had come and gone, and her mother had never seen the fields starred with thousands of cotton blossoms ranging in colors of creamy white to soft red. Mary never missed a one. Now only she was left to thrill at the sight of the blossoms gradually giving way to hard little bolls until August, when suddenly—here and there upon the sea of green—could be spied a white fleck. Oh, to watch the whiteness spread after that, to ride out on horseback as she often did with her father and Granddaddy Thomas into that white-capped vastness billowing on its green undertow from horizon to horizon and know that it belonged to the Toliver family.