A Peach of a Pair Page 24

  “Oh, really?” I teased. “What have you learned from just talking to me on the phone?”

  “Nettie, if you don’t get off, your father will pitch a fit when the bill comes,” Mother hollered from the kitchen.

  “You’d better make it snappy,” I laughed. “My mother says I have to hang up.”

  “Give me your number, and I’ll call you back on my dime.”

  “Quick. Tell me everything you know,” I teased, expecting one of Remmy’s patented smart remarks. “I have to go help with breakfast.”

  “I know that you’re more than just a soft, beautiful creature who takes my breath away. You’re smart. So damn smart and strong. And somehow, you make a guy like me who prides himself on knowing everything actually feel good that I don’t know anything. Makes every moment with you my next best moment. A gift to open, to discover.”

  “Nettie!” Mother yelled.

  “Oh, my,” I breathed into the phone. “You really know how to make a girl fall for you, Remmy Wilkes,” I echoed his words.

  “I sure hope so.”

  Daddy and Uncle Doak came in from the fields starved; they came into the kitchen for coffee and to wash up. The minute Daddy walked through the door, Mama gave him a tentative look and jerked her head toward Sissy. I knew that she was as concerned as I was. Sissy looked worse than she did yesterday, like the impending wedding was killing her. The worried lines on Mother’s face said she was worried for the baby, and for her own baby.

  Daddy’s face was impassive. He loved Brooks, always had. They hunted and fished together all the time, especially after Brooks’s father died a few years ago. They tinkered with the cars together. Lamented over but loved Auburn football. Daddy had said on more than one occasion, if he could have picked a son out of the nursery at the hospital, it would have been Brooks, and having him as a son-in-law would be the next best thing. I guess it didn’t matter to him which daughter brought him into the family.

  Mother gave Daddy another cross look for him to say something.

  “You all right, Sissy?” his deep voice rumbled.

  “Yeah, Daddy, I’m fine.” He looked at Mother and shrugged, his job done.

  When breakfast was on the table, I went back to Nana’s to get Lurleen. She and Nana were sitting at the table, drinking coffee.

  “Breakfast is ready,” I said.

  When Lurleen rose, I cupped her elbow, but she asked for one of the hand-carved canes my late Grandpa Gilbert made that were sitting beside the front door. “I’ll go have a seat. You need to speak with your grandmother.”

  “But you said you weren’t feeling well. Sure you don’t want me to see you to the table, Lurleen?”

  “I’m well enough.” She smiled and patted my shoulder.

  I saw her out the front door, watched until she reached the table, and then walked back into the kitchen.

  “Sit down, Nettie.” I took the seat across from Nana, who looked as tormented as Sissy did.

  “If you’re worried about Brooks and Sissy, Nana, don’t. I don’t love him. I’m not sure I ever did, and I threatened his—life if he hurt her.”

  Nana looked down at her hands but not at me. “This isn’t about that. Your friend says I owe you an apology.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. I’m fine, really.”

  “She’s right, you know. At the very least, I owe you an apology for not speaking up when this whole mess started and then for letting your mother tell you the way she did. I know it made sense in her etiquette-obsessed mind, but it was cruel and wrong. And I owe Sissy, for letting this go as far as it has. My punishment is seeing that boy who doesn’t love her in the least by her side. Unfortunately, it’s her punishment too, but I am sorry, Nettie, so very sorry.”

  “Sissy and I come from strong stock, Nana.” I took her withered hands in mine. “I hope she’ll be strong enough to not walk down that aisle tomorrow, but if she’s not, I hope she and Brooks will learn to love each other.”

  • • •

  That’s a fine vehicle you have there, Miss Eldridge.” Daddy’s attempt at making breakfast conversation.

  “Lurleen, please. And goodness knows the car isn’t mine.”

  Daddy gave me a hard look like I’d bought something on time against his wishes. “It’s not mine either,” I said. “Lurleen and her sister, Emily, and I were traveling together when Miss Emily passed away in Biloxi. Someone loaned us the car; we have to return it after breakfast.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Miss—” Mother dropped the meat fork, then fumbled to pick it up, the color drained from her face. “Wait. You’re leaving? Nettie, this can’t be. You’re staying for the wedding. You just have to.”

  “No, Mother, I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t come for the wedding. I came to speak with Sissy and then I’m leaving to take Lurleen and Miss Emily home to Camden.”

  “It’s all right, Dorothy.” Daddy patted her hand. “The wedding will go off just fine. We’ll see Nettie in a few weeks at graduation.”

  “No, you won’t.” I swallowed hard. “I took a leave of—”

  “Your senses if you left school,” my father snapped.

  “Well, I did take a leave of absence, and I’m glad.”

  He swiped his mouth with his napkin and threw it in his plate. “You know? You women beat all. One getting knocked up. One completely crazy over some fool wedding. And you.” He pointed at me. “You’re the one who wanted the fancy education. If you’d stayed home and married Brooks right out of high school, none of this would have happened.”

  Uncle Doak, his sons, everyone including Mother went stock-still and quiet. While we may have very well lived on top of each other between the groves, all four families had made it a point to mind their own business as much as any Gilbert can.

  “I have things to say to Sissy that I won’t say in front of you all, but you should know that I’m glad I left school. At this very moment, if I had to choose between my degree or learning everything I learned from Lurleen and Miss Emily, I would throw it all away to know them. And for you to say I could have prevented this horrible wedding by marrying Brooks when I was as much of a child as Sissy is reprehensible.”

  “Don’t you sass me, young lady. You’re not too old for me to turn across my knee.” Daddy jabbed his finger at me.

  I stood and slapped my palms down on the ancient oak. “I’m not sassing you. I’m telling you the truth, which is something we don’t do enough of around here, but we should. Since Uncle Bill died, Aunt Opal has wanted to sell her house and move back to her family in Birmingham, but she was afraid to tell you all, afraid she’d lose you. And Griffin—”

  “Hey, don’t bring me into this.” He held up both hands. “I’m fine.”

  “How many times have you told me you wanted to go to college? How many times have you said you didn’t want to spend your whole life on this farm?”

  “Stop it, Nettie,” Mother snapped.

  “And you, Mother. How long are you going to pretend you’re happy when you’re too afraid to try to figure out what makes you happy? Because it sure as hell isn’t a bunch of rules and impeccable etiquette.”

  “Sit down, Nettie, now,” Nana huffed. When I did, Lurleen gave my hand a squeeze.

  “Thank you, Nana.” Mother swiped at her own tears.

  “Well, she’s right, Dorothy,” Nana bit out. “And every single one of us, including me, should be ashamed of the way we treated Nettie. We’re lucky to have her, and I will be sad to see her go, but she wants her own life. How that happened, I don’t know; we didn’t raise her that way. But at the very least, she deserves to live her life the way she sees fit.”

  “But your degree, Nettie.” Mother gave me a sorrowful look.

  “When the time is right, Mother, I swear I’ll go back to school and finish.”

  Everyone looked dumbfound
ed when Sissy spoke. “Will you ever come back home?”

  “Of course I will.”

  The rest of the breakfast went on record as being the most silent Gilbert family gathering ever. When the dishes were done, I excused myself from the kitchen and tugged Sissy out the door. We walked hand in hand in silence down into the pecan orchard to our tree, the one Daddy rescued us from when we were little, the one I’d rescued my baby sister from.

  “I hope you didn’t bring me here to climb that tree, because I’ve forgotten how. And I probably shouldn’t,” she added softly.

  “You haven’t forgotten anything. You know how to rescue yourself, Sissy. You always have.”

  “Not out of this mess.” Her face contorted with pain, shame, anger. Instinctively, she touched her belly, then looked at me and shoved her hands by her sides. “I’m so scared, Nettie.”

  I took her in my arms and held her while she cried, whispering how very much I loved her and nothing would ever change that.

  “I thought if I—I thought he’d love me. But he doesn’t, and it took—” She pointed to her belly. “This for me to figure out I don’t love him, not like I thought I did.”

  “Sissy, you don’t have to marry Brooks because Mother or Daddy say so. Tell them you don’t want to go through with this. If you want, you can go back to Camden with Lurleen and me.”

  Sissy’s eyes were downcast. Brow furrowed in pain. “I wanted to stop the wedding. A couple of days ago, I told them I lost the baby. Daddy said nothing. Mother said the invitations had already been sent out. She said not to tell Brooks until after the wedding. She told me there would be other babies.”

  “But you didn’t lose it,” I whispered. She shook her head and convulsed into tears.

  After a while, she swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I felt it move yesterday.”

  “What does it feel like?” I whispered, smiling, my hand going to her tummy. “Can I feel it too?”

  “I’m not sure; it’s so slight.” She moved my hand to her lower abdomen. “Aunt Opal told me it would feel like butterfly wings. I guess it does feel kind of fluttery.” I looked into her eyes and smiled. I loved her so much. It tore at me to see her so unhappy.

  “Come away with us, Sissy. Come back to Camden with Lurleen and me. We’ll raise the baby together. Lurleen would adore having a little one around.” But even Camden would treat Sissy no different than any other place would treat an unwed mother. “If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have to marry Brooks. There are homes you can go to—”

  “I even thought about that, especially after I lied about the baby to Mother and Daddy, but after I have it, I don’t think I can give it away.” I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. She pulled away just enough to see my face. “Why did you come back for me? I know I wouldn’t have.”

  “I have a very dear friend who lost her sister, got her back again, and then lost her forever. At first I thought I’d come home for her, to finally mend her biggest regret, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t want to lose you forever, Sissy. I couldn’t. I love you, Sissy. I forgive you.”

  “But I don’t deserve your love or your forgiveness.”

  “Hush now; I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  “I don’t know why,” she said against my chest. “Not after what I did, I don’t know how you can still love me.”

  “Because we are sisters.”

  30

  LURLEEN

  Lurleen worried herself sick waiting for Nettie to come back. She sat on that little bench between the rose and gardenia gardens. It was a peaceful place surrounded by satsuma trees full of tiny oranges as far as she could see on one side and a smaller grove that backed up to a pecan orchard on the other. And while it was a lovely, even intoxicating place to sit between such fragrant flowers, she still kept her eyes on the woods.

  Nettie had given Emily and Lurleen so much and she didn’t even know it. Then Lurleen had meddled perhaps where she shouldn’t have. She’d put this idea of an indestructible sisterhood in Nettie’s head, and Nettie had bought it hook, line, sinker, and half the pole because she wanted to. Needed to. Right now, Lurleen wasn’t even sure there was such a thing. All she had to go by was her and Emily, who would roll over in her beautiful blue casket if someone called her and Lurleen’s sisterhood ordinary.

  But then the girls came out of the woods, not hand in hand like Lurleen had hoped they might but walking lockstep with their arms around each other. Her heart stretched tight across her chest and she’d never been so grateful to be right in her whole life.

  Nettie spied her and the pair neared the bench, stopping in front of Lurleen with smiles on their tear-streaked faces.

  “Everything all right, dear?” Lurleen asked, already knowing the answer.

  Nettie gave her baby sister a squeeze and kissed the top of her head. The girl looked so longingly back at Nettie, it broke Lurleen’s heart in two, but the girl loved Nettie too much to ask her to stay.

  “I’m so sorry you lost your sister.” Sissy kissed Lurleen on the cheek. “Thank you for giving me back mine.”

  “No need to thank me, my dear.” Lurleen reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You never really lost her to begin with.”

  • • •

  What a piss-poor job,” Lurleen hissed. Even from the back of the viewing parlor, the casket didn’t look at all like Lurleen had hoped it would, not like the color of Sister’s eyes or the sky on a cloudless day; it was an institutional, washed-out blue, bordering on dull gray and not at all shiny like it was before it was painted. No. It was the exact color of a pair of eyes, blind from birth, cloudy gray ones g. damn it.

  Lurleen had pictured something gleaming and blue, something Emily would be proud to be buried in. Why, it was a wonder Sister wasn’t kicking and screaming to get out of the thing. Nettie cupped Lurleen’s elbow as they neared the hideous box, and Lurleen stopped just as a slice of Sister’s face came into view, her delicate nose, her forehead, silver curls. Just as Lurleen’s knees began to buckle, the pissant director hurried into the parlor, putting on his jacket like he’d just gotten out of bed.

  “What is this?” Lurleen snapped, waving at the monstrosity.

  “We did the best we could, ma’am,” he said in that undertaker tone that gave Lurleen the creeps. “I told you we’re not painters.”

  The thick uneven brush marks were evidence of that. Whoever the imbecile painter was, hadn’t even taken care to put masking tape on the hardware. Jagged, painted lines competed with fat splatters on the fine brass. “A five-year-old could have done a better job. And I told you I wanted the paint the color of her eyes or her dress. No one would wear a dress made out of this abominable hue.” She took a step closer and prayed her anger would get her through the next few moments because honest to God, it was impossible that Emily was gone from this world. That she was in a g.d. box.

  “I want,” she gritted out, utterly heartbroken and furious at God for taking Emily before her. Grateful Emily didn’t have to feel the loss Lurleen felt now. Sister was never coming back and the void she’d left, the void Lurleen had evaded, slammed into her, nearly knocking her to the ground.

  She wanted to collapse on her sister in a puddle of tears. Seep into the fabric of Emily’s pretty blue dress, and lie in state with her. Instead, she swallowed hard and straightened her backbone; the only thing she could do, a way to honor her other half. “I want my money back. For the hideous paint job. And a generous discount for ruining Sister’s coffin.”

  The undertaker didn’t say a word, just nodded and left the room. “I’m sorry,” Nettie said with her hand on Lurleen’s shoulder.

  Lurleen nodded and edged forward. Emily had too much makeup on for Lurleen’s taste; she would have loved the way she looked, as vibrant as a made-up corpse can. What the undertaker lacked in painting skills, he’d made up for with
the way Emily looked, like she was napping during Backstage Wife except her lips were a thin line, not pursed together making the gentle puffing sound. Her favorite earbobs didn’t make her lobes angry and red like they normally did, and when Lurleen kissed her forehead she was so very cold.

  Lurleen braced herself on the paint-spattered brass railing. Nettie pulled the items out of Lurleen’s purse that Emily never left the house without, her favorite shade of pink lipstick, her gloves, her mirrored compact, and presented them to Lurleen. Nettie froze and her eyes went wide when Lurleen turned her own pocketbook upside down, emptying the contents onto the floor. She held it open for Nettie to drop Emily’s things into and snapped it shut, slipping it into the casket beside Emily, who would die if she got to heaven without her pocketbook.

  Lurleen didn’t know how long she stood there. Too long for sure. Nettie picked up the items on the floor, put them in her own purse, and, in a hushed voice, asked Lurleen if she was ready to go. Lurleen shook her head and sat down on a chair in the front row, Nettie by her side. Lurleen let the memories and the grief wash over her. The good and the bad rolling in like the tide, the former far eclipsing the latter. She didn’t think she had any more tears left to cry, but she was wrong. Nettie cried with her, for Lurleen, and perhaps for her own sister.

  The man finally walked back into the viewing room, check in hand, and apologized all over the place for the paint. Lurleen nodded at Nettie; she helped Lurleen out of the chair and they left the parlor.

  Their last night in Biloxi was a stark contrast to their triumphant arrival. Lurleen did have Nettie walk her down to the ocean one last time, for Emily. The next morning they boarded the train. Someone must have told the porter about Lurleen’s loss. He put her and Nettie in their finest roomette and had a server check on them, bringing them meals so that they could grieve in private. Or maybe it was to make up for Emily, who was surely outraged for riding in cargo.

  After a million times, Nettie finally stopped asking if Lurleen was okay. It wouldn’t change anything.