Ciji Ware (54 page)

***

In the days following her extraordinary dinner with the singular Amadora Bendhar, Daphne was relieved to discover that she felt much less anxious about her relationship with Sim. And though she continued to fret about the awaited report concerning Maddy’s biopsy, she even began to feel more relaxed about the unwelcome “visitations.”

Unfortunately, this feeling of budding personal serenity lasted exactly three days. On Saturday morning her cousin picked up the downstairs extension and called up the stairwell excitedly, “Sim’s on the phone! He’s back at Gibbs Hall.”

Why wasn’t he standing on Maddy’s veranda, knocking on her door—as promised? Daphne wondered with a mild jolt of annoyance. She walked to her desk and lifted the receiver.

“Well, welcome back,” she said when Maddy hung up downstairs. “When did you get in?”

“Late last night, in the middle of all that rain,” Sim answered.

Daphne sensed immediately the slight chill on both sides of the conversation. An awkward pause followed, and then he continued to speak while she stared out the upstairs office window at a cluster of dark, roiling clouds gathering on the Louisiana side of the river. The weather was sultry. The rain had been soaking the countryside on and off for a day and a half.

“I could only drive about ten miles an hour down the highway from the Jackson airport. By eleven o’clock last night it was a monsoon.”

“Poor you! Was the flight horrible, too?” she asked sympathetically.

“Pretty bumpy.” Another pause. Then Sim said finally, “Look, Daphne, I’m afraid I can’t get into town for a while. My book editor arrived from New York this morning.”

“Were you expecting him?” she asked, surprised.

“I’d known that he wanted to get together sometime this month,” Sim replied, “but we got our signals crossed because I accepted that last-minute magazine assignment and flew off without telling him. Our deadline to get the coastal bird book to the printers is next week. My cell phone died in the jungle and he couldn’t reach me to tell me he was coming in today.”

That’s right, Daphne remembered, attempting to stem a wave of disappointment. Sim had used his mobile phone to leave a message with Maddy that his bush plane had engine trouble. A rush of remorse for her selfish reaction prompted her to blurt, “Sim
…
look
…
I-I wanted to say that I realize what a tough trip you had and I’m really sorry I—”

Sim cut her off before she could finish her sentence.

“The message that Greg was heading here from New York was waiting for me when I got in at midnight. I slept about three hours, then got up, and went back to the Jackson airport this morning to pick him up. Bailey has been good enough to give him a guest room in the main house while we work on the captions.”

He clearly was not in the mood to discuss anything personal.

“You sound absolutely beat. Can you get some rest, at least, before you have to tackle all this?” she asked, trying to sound like a good sport.

“Not likely, given the deadline.”

Daphne recognized that cool, preoccupied tone of voice. She’d heard it from Rafe Oberlin often enough.

“Oh. Sure. Well… of course. What can you do?” she said, attempting a dignified retreat. “I’m pretty busy too right now. I’m playing for an engagement party at the Governor Holmes House on Sunday afternoon, plus three shows this weekend.” Impulsively she added, “If you get your work done, maybe you and your editor could catch our last set at the Under-the-Hill Saloon tomorrow night? I’d love to meet this slave driver.”

“From the red pencil marks on the pages he’s brought with him, I doubt we’ll finish in time. I have to take him back to Jackson to catch a plane early Monday and then I’m going to head pretty far north up the Trace for a couple of days. Bailey spotted some great crested flycatchers, and I want to track them while we know they’re around.”

Another awkward pause. Daphne felt as if she were in the sixth grade forcing a male classmate to keep talking to her on the phone.

“Sim,” she said in a low voice. “What’s wrong? It feels as if you’re still way off in the jungle.”

“I can’t go into it right now,” he replied tersely.

“No?” she shot back, angry now. “Well, what a shame. First things first, right?” She knew she was being childish and unreasonable, but she couldn’t hold back her disappointment at his air of chilly detachment.

“Greg McKinney has flown in from New York, Daphne. Leila’s feeding him breakfast right now, and then we have to start revising the manuscript. I still have a long list of Audubon birds to capture on film before autumn, and then
write
the other damn project. What do you expect me to do, here?” he declared, making no attempt to cloak his exasperation.

He was exhausted.

He was also frazzled, jet-lagged, and feeling behind the eight ball.

I’m making excuses for him
, Daphne thought.

There was no ignoring the fact that Sim Hopkins was distant—bordering on rude—for the first time since they’d met. It would appear that the honeymoon was over.

Wow… that didn’t take long…

Daphne blinked away tears that fogged her view of yet another impending storm that had blown up from the Gulf of Mexico.

“Here’s what I expect,” she said in a choked voice. “I expect you to tell me straight out what’s going on with you, and I expect you to act like a
friend
.”

She heard Sim heave a sigh as she continued to gaze out the windows while rain began falling in a steady stream. She waited a few more seconds for him to speak, and when he remained silent, she murmured, “Well
…
good luck with your projects. And y’all take good care, y’hear?”

During the split second she waited to hear if Sim would offer something conciliatory, she realized that she hadn’t told him about Maddy’s cancer scare. Then she gently hung up the phone, knowing
exactly
, now, how it must have felt to be the former Mrs. Simon Hopkins.

***

Stormy weather hung over Natchez all weekend, the air as dark and gloomy as the black mood that held Daphne in its grip. The bad weather drastically reduced the size of the audience Saturday night at the Under-the-Hill Saloon. At one a.m., when the lights were turned off and the last stragglers drifted onto Silver Street, she half expected Sim to emerge from the shadows and take her for a ride along the river as a peace offering. He didn’t appear, however, and Daphne drove with Althea to Bluff House in a deepening funk.

Sunday, she arrived at the Governor Holmes House on Wall Street a half hour before the time the engagement party was slated to begin. She parked her Jeep in front of the old brick residence that had been transformed into an elegant bed-and-breakfast. The innkeeper was a man who had returned to the South after thirty years serving as manager of the celebrated Algonquin Hotel in New York. He was famous among locals and visitors to Natchez alike for his warm hospitality, scrumptious breakfast fare, and his distinctive attire, which consisted of black silk knee socks and impeccable Bermuda shorts secured by a revolving wardrobe of fancy suspenders.

“The weather’s too chancy for us to hold the party in the courtyard,” Bob Pully explained in the soft Virginia drawl of his childhood, “so I’ve set up cocktails in the parlor in front of the fireplace instead. Will you be all right stuck in that corner over there?” he asked apologetically.

Before Daphne could nod agreement, a gust of wind ripped a branch off the mammoth oak rooted in the side yard and hurled the amputated limb against the house with a crash. Startled, Daphne and Bob dashed to the window on the left of the carved, white wooden fireplace and peered out. The exterior atmosphere had taken on a peculiar greenish tinge, as if they were looking out on Emerald City in
The
Wizard
of
Oz.

“Tornado weather,” Bob murmured grimly.

“In June?” Daphne protested. “This kind of stuff is supposed to happen in springtime, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be over by now?”

“Anytime you have moist, hot air colliding with a mass of cool air from the West, you’d better start watching for funnels, honey chile,” he advised with a worried smile. He glanced at his watch. “You need any help settin’ up?”

“No, thanks,” Daphne said. “I’ll just start tuning the harp, but where do you want Willis and the group to play, since we won’t be outside? They’re due here in forty-five minutes.”

Bob pointed through a door that opened to a center hallway leading toward the middle of the house. “The foyer?” he suggested.

“That should work just fine,” Daphne assured him. “Everything looks gorgeous, as if you’d planned to have the party inside from the beginning.”

“Bless you,” said Bob, heading back to the kitchen to check on last-minute arrangements with his small staff. He called over his shoulder, “The engaged couple knows to come downstairs right at noon. When the first guests come wanderin’ in, just start playin’ your little heart out.”

***

It was an engagement party that neither the happy couple, nor their family and friends, nor Daphne, Bob Pully, and his staff of Thelma and Lucille would ever forget. By twelve thirty, the wind had grown so fierce that the boisterous toasts could not be heard over its roar. Just as the groom-to-be raised a glass of champagne in honor of his betrothed, a piercing blast from the tornado warning system, less than a block down the street, sliced through the sound of the storm raging outside. For a full minute, the horn’s ear-splitting decibels left Daphne feeling as if she were plucking imaginary harp strings. From the wide door at the entrance to the parlor, Bob Pully loudly clapped his hands to gain everyone’s attention.

“I hate to interrupt, but y’all’ve
got
to get to a safe place! Here’s what I want you to do,” he shouted over the wail of the siren as the group of twenty guests turned around, mouths agape. Swiftly and calmly, Bob assigned groups of four to make a dash for interior bathrooms scattered throughout the old house. “Pull a mattress off one of the beds, get into the tub, and put the mattress on top of you—and
stay
put
till you can hear y’self think again!” He looked at Daphne, and said, “Do you mind goin’ into the powder room under the stairs? It’s only got room for one person.” He pulled a beige silk brocade cushion off the sofa. “Here,” he shouted over another crack of thunder. “Crouch down under the sink and put this over your head and shoulders.”

Just then, a crackling round of lightning, followed immediately by rolling thunder, rent the air. The startled mother of the bride-to-be screamed as the rain, furiously lashing the windowpanes, shattered one square of glass nearest the fireplace. Daphne ran to the window on the opposite side of the room and thought she saw a funnel cloud faintly visible in the direction of the river. She suddenly thought of Willis and the band driving into downtown Natchez in the battered McGee van, and of Cousin Maddy, alone at Bluff House—and felt her heart lurch.

And
what
about
Sim
and
Bailey
at
Gibbs
Hall?
she wondered in a rush. The wind could do terrible damage to old plantation houses and flatten all the beautiful trees on the Trace.
And
what
about
the
poor
birds?

As if to reinforce her fears, the tree that had earlier lost a branch gave a groan, followed by an ominous sound of bark splitting, as its roots were yanked skyward by the falling trunk. She was relieved to realize that the mammoth pine had fallen away from the two-hundred-year-old brick house. By the time Daphne squeezed herself into the diminutive bathroom and wedged the couch’s seat pillow between the bottom of the sink and her back, the screech of splintering trees and howling winds had become deafening.

She winced when another tree cracked and crashed to its death somewhere nearby. And then, strangely and suddenly, the wind’s roar began to fade, and all Daphne could hear was the rain
…
a steady downpour that seemed destined never to stop.

Chapter 23

June 25, 1806

Simon Hopkins the Younger peered through the downpour and grabbed his heavy cloak from the peg near the back door. He slipped out of Hopkins House and swiftly made his way to the stable and saddled his horse.

The rain hadn’t cooled things down at all, he thought with annoyance, urging his horse down the path through the woods. Even when it let up a bit, hot, damp mist hung in the air and rose from the saturated leaves underfoot. Dark clouds overhead threatened another downpour and served to trap sultry air like a lid on a pot of steaming rice. Simon had already sweated through his frock coat and shirt, and his cravat had become a wilted tangle of linen. Though his cloak made him still more uncomfortable, without it he would have been a thoroughly sodden mess by the time he arrived for dinner with the widow, Daphne Whitaker Stimpson, of Devon Oaks Plantation. Despite the rain and his discomfort, young Simon would willingly ride through the eye of the storm to pay this call.