“Oh, no.”
As Carl carefully ferried her Mustang over the final rise in the driveway, she saw huge trestle tables arranged in front of her grandparents’ cabin, balloons, streamers—her aunts and uncles milling around with big platters of food. And, oh, hell, her grandpa brought out the kegerator.
Her whole family had gathered together for a pig smoke.
“Aw, come on, you knew they wouldn’t let you come back without a party,” Carl told her.
“I know, but it’s everybody, all at once, and I did just ram my car into a mountain to avoid hitting a damn deer. I’m in shock here.”
“Duff says you haven’t had a good visit home in years. Your family’s happy to see you. Stop being a precious pain in the ass about it and be grateful.”
“Thank you for your wisdom, redneck Oprah,” she muttered. When she realized how close they were getting to the house, she reached out to touch his arm. His firm, smooth, strong arm, which was just as warm and solid as she remembered.
Focus, McCready.
“Do me a favor. Stop here. Don’t pull the car any closer. I don’t want everybody seeing the damage and freaking out.”
Carl slowed the truck, staring down at her hand on his arm and frowning. She curled her fingers into a fist and slowly pulled her arm back. “Sorry.”
Carl nodded sharply, bringing the truck to a stop a good forty yards from the family. Marianne climbed down from the truck while Carl got out and loped back around to the Mustang’s trunk, where he dragged Marianne’s luggage out.
“I can get that,” she protested as her family scrambled up the hill.
“Not near as fast as I can,” he said, closing the trunk and tossing her a smaller duffel. He picked up her two largest suitcases and used those powerful arms to haul them toward her approaching relatives.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“I just don’t want to see Miss Tootie upset,” he grumbled as they trudged over the rise.
“Butterbean!” Her grandfather, E.J.J., hobbled on his bad knee, throwing his arms wide as he scooped her into a hug. Marianne grinned against his chest. Silver-haired and gap-toothed, her grandpa was a veritable giant, a little stooped and creaky but still big and sturdy as a barn. He couldn’t lift her off the ground like he used to, but the smell of Old Spice and peppermint was comforting.
“Hey, Grandpa,” she said, sighing.
“Did you try to take out the deer population of Sackett County all on your lonesome?”
Several wet noses snuffled against Marianne’s ankles. She didn’t have to look down to know it was the first wave of the ever-cycling pack of dogs Tootie kept. They were like her canine hype men. “Well, you never let me hunt when I was a kid.”
“That was for the safety of the human population of Sackett County.” Another pair of arms dragged her out of E.J.J.’s and pulled her close. Duffy, just as tall and rangy as their grandfather, but with considerably less stooping and a head full of wavy reddish-brown hair. “Your aim sucks.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
“As soon as he got done with Mr. Gaskill, he got a call from the sheriff. Delia Turnbow slipped and fell gettin’ out of the shower this mornin’. Her daughter went over to check on her after she didn’t answer her phone, but it was too late,” Duffy said. “He’s taking care of her now but promised he and Frankie will be back before we eat.”
“Poor Miss Delia.” She sighed.
“Dad was real sorry, but you know his motto.”
“ ‘Death doesn’t care about people or their plans,’ ” they said together as Duffy gave her one last squeeze.
“It’s good that you’re home, Manny.”
She hugged her brother tighter. Duffy hadn’t been able to master the subtleties of Marianne as a toddler, and had garbled her name into Manny. She immediately regretted the closer hug as his thick beard scratched against her cheek.
“Gah, stop, it’s like being hugged by Sasquatch.” Marianne feigned disgust while shoving him away. She patted her brother’s cheek, taking in his bright blue eyes, twinkling with sibling-torturing amusement. She waggled her hand at his chin. “You have about half a barbecue sandwich stuck in there.”
Duffy pulled back to smack at his gingery beard, knocking away imaginary crumbs.
“Oh, Duffy, you fall for that every time,” an irritated feminine voice sounded behind him.
Behind her, Carl snickered. While most of their classmates had whimsical nicknames for their grandparents that grated on the ear like a bad gospel choir solo—Mawmaw, Peepaw, Meemaw—Duffy and Marianne had never called their grandmother anything but her nickname. Because when your grandmother went by Tootie, you really didn’t need to dress it up.
Tootie was wearing a bright pink-and-green plaid work shirt and a pair of extreme mom jeans. Her fluffy cloud of white hair framed her former-china-doll face. As usual, she was accompanied by a half dozen dogs of all breeds and sizes, all crowding around her legs, snuffling, sniffing, barking. The woman had always been a little odd about her dogs. It had started with a beagle-mix mutt she’d found on the side of the road when Junior was a kid. She’d just kept adding to her pack until it reached biblical proportions.
Tootie wasn’t a hoarder, per se; all the animals were clean and well fed and received regular vet care. There were just so many of them, given the run of the McCready property.
“Still trying to assemble a redneck dogsled team?”
“Well, I have to uphold my reputation as the small-town crazy lady.”
“To be honest, Tootie, you kind of settled into your eccentric senior phase a little early.”
“You’ve always been a smartass.” Tootie pulled Marianne’s hands into hers. “Let me look at you.”
Marianne pursed her lips, trying not to shiver under the glaucomic scrutiny. “You’re too skinny. The big city just starved the paddin’ right off of you.”
“Nope, that was an intentional combination of avoiding carbs and doing Pilates.”
“You’re not too old for me to make you cut a switch,” Tootie told her.
“Oh, you’ve never spanked any of us and you know it,” Marianne told her.
“Yeah, but a little threatenin’ is good for kids. Keeps ’em guessin’.”
“This is why you’re not allowed to supervise the church nursery anymore.”
“Why’d y’all park up there?” Tootie demanded, pointing to the front end of Carl’s rig.
Carl rubbed a large hand against the back of his neck. “It’s too hard to turn the truck around with a car hooked up to it, so I stopped up there.”
Marianne flashed him the briefest of grateful smiles.
Tootie shrugged. “Carl, shug, I made you up a plate,” she said, taking a carefully wrapped packet of food from Marianne’s aunt Leslie. A small, compact woman with fading strawberry-blond hair, Leslie was one of the few relatives Marianne had who didn’t say much unless provoked. She kissed Marianne on the cheek and gave her a wink.
“Thank you, Miss Tootie,” Carl said, his tanned cheeks going ruddy.
“Duffy said you had to work today and I didn’t want you going hungry. I put some of my special potato salad in there. And some of Leslie’s ‘cornbread.’ ” Tootie’s thin lips curled into a smirk around her too-white-to-be-real teeth.
“You don’t have to say the word ‘cornbread’ like that, Tootie,” Leslie grumbled.
“I’m just sayin’—” Tootie began.
Marianne stood between them and held up her hands like a traffic director. “Nope, no, we’re not going to have the ‘when you add sugar it becomes cake’ argument again. I just got home. I don’t have the strength.”
“Marianne, I’ll be heading out,” Carl said before Tootie wrapped him up in one of her surprisingly strong bear hugs.
Marianne swallowed heavily, realizing it was th
e first time he’d spoken her name that day. Her eyes darted toward his face as he was released from Tootie’s grandmaternal grip. He wasn’t smiling or frowning . . . or anything, really; his expression was absolutely neutral, which was decidedly unhelpful. “I’ll get an estimate together for you tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to make her own face just as unreadable.
Carl walked away, raising his hand by way of a good-bye. And Marianne couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit hurt at being dismissed with so little energy. She knew she probably deserved it, but it didn’t stop the sting. As her family members shouted their good-byes, Marianne dragged her bags toward the cabins. Duffy took one and gave an exaggerated shiver.
“What?” Marianne demanded.
“Oh, the cold front comin’ off of you two. It’s enough to give a man frostbite of the undercarriage.”
Marianne grimaced. “Gross. I don’t want to think about your undercarriage. And we’re not cold. We’re just civil, which is pretty good for us, considerin’ we haven’t talked in about four years.”
“I guess,” Duffy muttered. “Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t go messin’ around Carl’s head too much. It took him a while to get over you, and I don’t think I could live through listening to that much tragic country music again.”
“How long did it take?” she asked.
“Manny.” He sighed. “I hate to break it to ya, but you’re not the center of my universe. It ain’t like Carl and I sit around paintin’ each other’s toenails, pinin’ for the day ya come home. And it ain’t a coincidence that I’ve avoided talking to you about this for years. I don’t want to be in the middle. Carl’s like a brother to me. And you’re a pain in the ass Mom insists is my full-blooded sibling and not some orphan we found on the porch—Ow!”
“Oh, what girl wouldn’t be curious about that?” Marianne shook the hand that stung from slapping his arm. “So he never asked about me in all that time?”
“He was pretty pointed about not asking about ya, if ya get my meanin’,” Duffy said before seeing her expression and sighing. “It took a while. But he’s better now. He’s datin’ again. Don’t go messin’ that up to get closure or whatever.”
“Trust me, I’m closed. That won’t be a problem. Besides, I don’t think I should be takin’ romantic advice from somebody whose marriage can be described as ‘off and on.’ ”
Duffy nodded. “Fair enough.”
Marianne snorted as they reached the trestle tables, which were practically groaning under the weight of the food. The centerpiece was the whole roasted pig that her grandpa and Uncle Stan would have spent all day slow-roasting on the brick smoker behind E.J.J.’s house. Mr. Porky was surrounded by thunder-n-lightning—a chilled mix of cucumbers and onions marinated in spiced vinegar—baked beans, biscuits the size of a man’s fist, corn on the cob, and the holy trinity of cold salads: pasta, potato, and pimento cheese. She scanned the table for the—yep, Tootie had made the roast polenta, molded in the shape of a pork chop for her vegetarian father. Uncle Stan tried to razz Junior about it out of Southern duty, but when Junior explained what he’d seen on his autopsy table that led to a low-fat, high-fiber diet, Stan turned green and never mentioned it again.
“Well, I see you made it back.”
Marianne turned to see her mother, Donna, standing on the porch, a glass trifle dish displaying the contents of a seven-layer salad. The seven layers were an unnecessarily complex and nutritionally deviant arrangement of lettuce, peas, bacon, cheese, cucumbers, onions, and then somehow mayonnaise mixed with sugar came into play. Marianne tried not to judge Southern cuisine too harshly, but this one was lost on her.
Donna McCready was a slender woman with bright coppery hair, a color that had leached into Duffy’s own curly locks but left Marianne’s untouched. Her face was angular, and would have been harsh if not for the softening effect of her large whiskey-colored eyes. Her mouth was set in an unhappy line that Marianne was all too familiar with. Her mama was angry with her, but she was too nice to express that. Hell, Mama was too nice to express anger with anybody—to the point that Marianne worried that repressed anger was going to end up permanently twisting Donna’s personality or turn into an aneurysm or something.
Donna had been raised a nice Southern girl, almost to a fault. But she’d never quite fit into the Aigner-and-pearls set at the Lake Sackett First Baptist Church. She’d enjoyed fishing too much and couldn’t bake to save her life. Leslie had made all of Duff and Marianne’s birthday cakes since they were toddlers. But Donna was too nice to say anything rude to the Sunday School ladies who had no problem being downright bitchy to her. Marianne suspected that it was because her mother was so different that she didn’t feel she had a right to retaliate in bitchy kind. Donna felt it was enough that she was tolerated. She didn’t want to rock the boat.
For now, it just came out as passive-aggressive disappointment. Which was fun.
“Hey, Mama.” Marianne wrapped her arm around Donna’s shoulders for a hug that wasn’t returned, what with seven layers of “salad” between them. Duffy took the last of her luggage inside their parents’ cabin while the rest of the family gathered around the trestle tables.
“Have a seat. Everything’s ready,” Donna said briskly, crossing the patch of yard to put the salad on the table.
Donna had never wanted Marianne to leave for college. It wasn’t as if she were the first McCready to move away for school. Her dad had, her uncle Bob had, even her cousin Frankie was going to mortuary school part-time in Decatur. It was just that Marianne was the one McCready who had no plans to come back.
Marianne took a deep breath. Right. Emotional repression with a side of roast pork.
E.J.J. sat at the head of the table in his old cane rocker, with everyone else arranging themselves close to their favorite dishes for discreet seconds and thirds. The table was lit with citronella candles, a bug-blocking necessity at this time of year. Her father and his assistant-in-training, Cousin Frankie, weren’t there, of course. And neither was her uncle Stan, which wasn’t shocking, even with his involvement in the smoking process.
Stan McCready was the saddest of sacks, moving like a ghost in the background of the family. He was a nice enough guy, a bit of a drunk when she was a kid but not an angry one. He’d been sober for about ten years now, but he’d never gotten over his wife, Linda, running off with their daughter, Margot, never to be seen again. He had a cabin in the compound, too, but had abandoned it years before, preferring to live in the apprentice’s apartment at the funeral home. He said his cabin was too quiet without his family. Marianne didn’t see how sleeping one floor above a morgue would be much more lively, but she didn’t argue.
Aunt Leslie was flanked by her husband, Bob, a sweet man who excelled at the organizational side of funeral planning but left the sales to E.J.J. He was comfortable and relaxed now, chatting with her grandparents, but when speaking to someone not directly related to him, he had the unnatural ability to say the worst possible thing at any given time. It was really better for him to stick with paperwork.
It wasn’t unusual for a family celebration to be missing people, because as her daddy said, death didn’t stop because you had a picnic planned. But this was nice, everybody sitting together under the purpling sky, so busy filling their bellies that they didn’t have time to ask her pointed questions.
“So, what will you be doing with yourself for the summer?” Donna asked.
This was what Marianne got for thinking she was in the clear. She stalled for time, reaching down to feed some pork to one of the dogs, who were all hovering under the table in hopes of catching dropped food.
“I’m not sure. You were the one all fired up for me to come home,” Marianne said.
“Well, it’s not like you had plans for yourself.”
“Mama, I had a job at a law firm, which I liked. I have friends in the city. I
have a life. But here I am for the next three months because you told me it was more important than anything I had going, without givin’ me any actual details. Which, while we’re talking about it, is passive-aggressive and not real helpful.”
“You need to talk to your daddy,” Donna said.
“I know. I need to call more often. I’ve just been busy.”
“No, you need to talk to him,” her mother insisted, her dark brows creasing.
Marianne tilted her head and stared at her mother, who intervened on her father’s behalf only when she didn’t think Junior would speak for himself. Donna and Junior were partners. Her parents weren’t head over heels in love, like Bob and Leslie. They had a lasting relationship built on friendship. They were steady and calm, suited to each other. Marianne thought maybe it had made her a little more susceptible to Carl’s moonshine-and-moonlight bullshit.
“I will, Mama. I promise.”
Donna nodded jerkily. Tootie handed Marianne a plate loaded with pulled pork, cheese grits, seven-layer salad, plus potato, pasta, and pimento. Marianne’s jeans felt like they were shrinking already.
“You’re gonna come down to work at the office with me, right?” Uncle Bob asked, drawing Marianne’s attention. “You’re the only other person in the family who understands my filing system. Frankie files everything under D for dead.”
“I suppose so,” Marianne said, struggling to lift the corners of her mouth into a smile. Her family knew she wasn’t chomping at the bit to work at the funeral home. They just didn’t need to know that she wanted to throw the bridle, burn the barn, and run like hell.
Marianne was proud of what the family business represented: generations of McCreadys providing the community with what it needed most, sympathy and distraction. But she had no interest in fishing or funeral planning. She admired her family for being able to confront death and comfort people in their time of need, but the very idea gave her the willies. It was an open secret in the family. Everybody knew her brother would take over the marina operation one day, just like everybody knew that Frankie was the undertaker heir apparent. But Marianne’s future at the business was never discussed, as if not mentioning her lack of interest would change it.