A Summer Romance (17 page)

“I got that for my granddaughter, Melissa,
last year,” Ms. Brandy said as she came around a corner.

“Is she pre-med?” Maggie asked.

“During her senior year of high school that
girl considered being everything from a doctor to an astronaut.
None of it really stuck,” she laughed.

“She’s in Hawaii now, right?” Maggie
remembered.

“Sure is, studying accounting of all things.
Accounting! Cuz obviously you need to go all the way to Hawaii to
study accounting!” Ms. Brandy rolled her eyes, but Maggie could see
that beneath her exasperation she genuinely missed her
granddaughter.

“You must miss her,” Maggie said
sympathetically. She thought briefly of her own mother and wondered
if she ever thought of her.

“Least I still got Lacey and all her
youngins to spoil,” Ms. Brandy said happily. “I heard baby Aaron
should be able to come home from the hospital next week. I know
poor ole Travis is countin’ down the days till Momma comes home to
help with all those little rug rats.”

Maggie laughed as she imagined the big hulk
of a man she’d met at the hospital changing diapers and filling
sippy cups.

“Are you related to Lacey?” she asked.

“Lacey is Melissa’s cousin on her father’s
side. But family’s family as far as I’m concerned. Both girls used
to stay with me all the time when they were growin’ up and now
Lacey’s babies call me Granny,” Ms. Brandy said proudly. “Melissa
will be back. She needed to strike out on her own for a bit, but
she’ll come home. She’s got too much family here to stay gone.”

“It must be nice to have such a big family.”
Maggie said wistfully. She’d never had any siblings or cousins
growing up. She never even had any playmates outside of school.

Most of her childhood had been spent alone
with her mother, learning how to be the perfect little lady, how to
keep quiet and look pretty, to have perfect manners and popular
opinions. Her father was always at the office or away on some
business trip and she’d only had one living grandmother, who’d been
a very stern woman that Maggie had always been somewhat frightened
of. Maggie realized that the housekeeper, Mrs. Burton, was the
closest thing she’d ever had to the kind of grandmother that Ms.
Brandy was.

“Family doesn’t have to be blood,” Ms.
Brandy told her, breaking into her sad reverie. “It’s the people
you choose to surround yourself with, the people who love you.
Family is what you make it.”

The sound of the door chime announced the
arrival of the first customer of the day. Ms. Brandy came around
the counter to greet the customer leaving Maggie with a few moments
to collect her thoughts before the next customer arrived.

The morning passed quickly and when it was
time for lunch Maggie walked to the grocery store to meet up with
Andi.

“I have a plan,” she told her friend as they
ordered lunch at their favorite café.

“Sounds devious,” Andi teased. “I’m in!”

“I’m staying in Georgia,” Maggie announced.
It felt good to say it aloud. It made her decision feel more
concrete.

“Oh, Maggie, that’s wonderful! I’m so glad
you’ve decided to stay,” Andi gushed, “but what about medical
school?”

“Mercer has a program in Savannah that I’m
going to look into,” Maggie told her.

“We could be roommates!” Andi squealed. “I
know where the Mercer campus is. It’s not that far from Savannah
State. This is perfect!”

Maggie laughed at her friend’s enthusiasm.
As she sat with Andi eating lunch and planning their future, Maggie
realized that if she had left Aaron wouldn’t have been the only
person she would have missed terribly. It may have taken her
twenty-four years but Maggie finally had a best friend and she’d
been worth the wait.

After lunch Ms. Brandy asked Maggie to help
her uncrate some new items that she’d recently purchased at an
estate sale. Maggie thoroughly enjoyed the task. It was like
discovering buried treasure.

She unpacked and polished a silver serving
set, which Ms. Brandy then priced and set out to display on an
antique sideboard. They added some new items to an already crowded
china cabinet and even hung a small crystal chandelier over a
Chippendale dining room set that occupied the front window display.
Next they unboxed some Tiffany-style lamps which they temporarily
set on the counter in the back. There was very little, if any,
table top space left in the entire store.

“There’s an old steamer trunk still in the
back of the truck,” Ms. Brandy explained. “We can put the lamps on
it, if you could just help me get it. That sucker was heavier than
I thought.”

“Oh, sure,” Maggie agreed as she followed
Ms. Brandy to the back door.

It took the women several minutes to
negotiate the heavy trunk from the bed of the truck onto a
dolly.

“I’d thought it was empty, but there must
still be something inside, as heavy as it is. Let’s see what we’ve
got,” Ms. Brandy said as they settled the trunk in a corner of the
shop. The lock on the front was secured and the key was missing.
Maggie watched in wonder as Ms. Brandy proceeded to pick the
lock.

“I’m not even going to ask where you learned
that,” Maggie said playfully.

“It’s best you didn’t know,” Ms. Brandy
confirmed. Once the lid of the trunk was popped the two women
leaned forward to see what was inside.

The trunk was stuffed with old magazines,
newspapers and photographs.

“We should sift through it,” Ms. Brandy
said. “You never know what we may find.”

Maggie began sorting through the items in
the trunk while Ms. Brandy greeted an arriving customer. She
gingerly laid the yellowed newspaper clippings in a pile, glancing
at the headlines as she did so. Some of the articles dated back to
World War II referencing major world events like Pearl Harbor.
Others were local interest pieces announcing spring cotillions and
Harvest festivals.

Below the newspaper clippings were old
photographs. Most were of soldiers with their loved ones. Maggie
sorted through them slowly, admiring the pictures as she stacked
them neatly. Then she came across a photo of two young women
dressed in billowing southern belle dresses standing in front of
Devereaux Manor. There was no mistaking the distinctive house.

“Whatcha got there?” Ms. Brandy asked
looking over her shoulder.

“I believe it’s a photograph of Devereaux
Manor. Do you know who this is standing in front of it?” Maggie
asked as she handed the photo to Ms. Brandy.

“Well, let’s see,” Ms. Brandy said as she
pulled her reading glasses down from the top of her head. “Oh! This
is Agnes Devereaux and Marge Garrison just before the spring
cotillion of ’53. Quite likely the last picture those two girls
ever took together.”

“Agnes Devereaux?” Maggie asked excitedly
“Which one?”

Ms. Brandy pointed to the girl on the right.
Maggie studied her image closely as if she could divine something
from the young girl’s image that would give her some insight into
the old woman’s actions. She was a beautiful girl, dressed in a
tulle gown with flouncing layers. Her dark hair was piled high on
her head in a sophisticated chignon with artfully placed ringlets
falling around her face. The most striking thing about her however
was the utter desolation in her expression.

Maggie looked to the other girl in the
photo. She was similarly dressed, although not nearly as pretty.
Her face seemed a bit pinched, her features plain, but her
expression at least was what you would expect to see on a young
woman about to attend a debutant ball.

“Who did you say the other girl was?” Maggie
asked.

“Marge Garrison, you know her as Marge
Bouchard,” Ms. Brandy answered.

“Mrs. Bouchard?!” Maggie exclaimed “She and
Ms. Devereaux were friends?”

“Not exactly,” Ms. Brandy said. “They were
cousins and came from the wealthiest family in the area. Back then
that practically made them royalty. Marge was actually a year older
than Agnes but had missed her coming out season the year before due
to being struck with the flu. Therefore the two were both being
debuted in the same year. It was quite the scandal at the time.
Marge needed desperately to find a suitor, but as you can see Agnes
was a much prettier girl. The whole town was buzzing with gossip
over which girl would land the best match.”

“How do you know all this?” Maggie asked,
realizing that Ms. Brandy couldn’t have been more than a toddler at
the time.

“What followed that night was the biggest
scandal this little town has ever seen and the story was still
being whispered about at my own cotillion fifteen years later,” Ms.
Brandy explained. “That’s how I knew exactly when that photo was
taken. That was the last year that cotillion was held at Devereaux
Manor, and also the last time that anyone would see Agnes
Devereaux.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the story goes that Agnes was the
belle of the ball, as everyone expected she would be. Every
gentleman in the hall was doting on her, asking to be placed on her
dance card. However people said that she looked distraught most of
the evening, barely smiling and only acknowledging her suitors to
the extent that courtesy demanded.

“People say that Marge was furious not only
that she was being blatantly ignored by most of the men in
attendance, but also that Agnes was disregarding the attention that
she so desired. They say that she confronted Agnes and the two
girls were seen out in the courtyard having what seemed to be a
heated discussion.

“Then Marge returned to the party and Agnes
didn’t. No one knew where Agnes had gone, no one expect Marge that
is. Everyone was whispering about where Agnes could have
disappeared to, but Marge feigned ignorance right up until the
moment when she destroyed that poor girl.”

“What do you mean? Where was she?” Maggie
asked.

“Well, the rumor goes that Agnes had
confided in Marge that she did not want to be at the ball at all.
Her father had forced her to attend because she was eighteen years
old and of marrying age. It was expected of her to be debuted, to
find a good match, and be married off by year’s end. If she didn’t,
her father would arrange a marriage for her. That was the custom of
the time, which was partly why Marge was so desperate for attention
that evening. She was already nineteen. If she did not succeed in
gaining the affection of a suitable gentleman then her father
already had one in mind, a business partner of his that was quite a
bit older than she was.”

Maggie understood the desperation that the
girls must have felt that evening. As Maggie’s eighteenth birthday
had approached she’d lived in fear of being informed that her
father was marrying her off to one of his business partner’s sons
to secure some sort of negotiation. She, however, had the option of
going out on her own, cutting ties with her family, leaving for
school, and making a life for herself. These girls, in the 1950’s,
didn’t have that option.

“But why didn’t Agnes want to be there?”
Maggie asked. “Wouldn’t she want to have her choice of husbands,
rather than leave it in the hands of her father?”

“Apparently she was already in love with a
young man who was not at the ball and would never be considered a
suitable match for her. He was a young farmhand who her father had
taken in when he was just a boy. He was an orphan. His own father
had died in an accident on the plantation when he was ten. Mr.
Devereaux had taken the boy in, converted an old barn into living
quarters for him, and allowed him to live on the property. He and
Agnes had grown up together.”

Maggie immediately thought of Aaron and
realized he was living in the same old barn that Ms. Devereaux’s
lover had lived in. Maggie also realized that this story must not
have a happy ending, because seventy years later Ms. Devereaux was
still living alone in the house, unmarried.

“What did Marge do?” Maggie asked, feeling a
sense of dread settling into the pit of her stomach.

“Agnes had confided in her that she was in
love with the farm boy and Marge had encouraged her to go to him.
She promised to keep her secret, to cover for her, and give her
this evening alone with him. Marge went back into the ball and
filled her dance card pretending as if she’d never seen Agnes
leave.

“Some say she waited until she’d secured an
offer of courtship from Charles Bouchard, others say that she was
pushed to it out of frustration because as the hours passed no one
stopped asking about Agnes. It was no secret that the two girls had
always been held in comparison over the years because they both
came from high standing families and were of similar age, and it
was also no secret that Marge never measured up to Agnes in beauty
or wit or kindness. It was quite evident that Marge had always been
jealous of Agnes. Many believe that she simply took this
opportunity to crush the other girl out of spite. Regardless of her
motive, what Marge did next destroyed Agnes.”

“She told them where Agnes had gone?” Maggie
guessed. Ms. Brandy nodded sadly.

“Agnes was found in the barn, wrapped in the
arms of her lover. Her reputation was destroyed. Her father was
furious. She was literally ripped from his arms. He was arrested
and charged with assault. Charges her father pressed with a
vengeance. He was hung for his ‘crimes,’ and Agnes was never seen
again.”

Maggie gasped in shock. “He was hung?! How
could they do that?”

“It was a different time, and Mr. Devereaux
was a very powerful man. He owned most of Sweetwater,” Ms. Brandy
explained.

“What do you mean they never saw Agnes
again? What happened to her?” Maggie asked.

“Her father had her committed to an
institution in Atlanta. They say he blamed her ‘unstable mind’ for
her immoral behavior. However, within a few months of that fateful
night her father died from a heart attack. Agnes was his only
child. Her mother had died during childbirth. He’d not changed his
living will and everything was left to Agnes: the plantation, all
his money, and his stock interests in most of the businesses in
Sweetwater. Agnes was a smart girl. She hired a lawyer, was
released from the institution, and declared cured. She’d moved back
into Devereaux Manor before the year was up. But she never came
into town again, has never been seen again,” Ms. Brandy
finished.