Spring Fever (31 page)

They heard a horn honking out on the street, and Pokey ran to the plate-glass picture window and looked out. “See here? Pete’s guys just pulled up, and your movers are right behind them. Why don’t you grab some clothes and head over to our house? The boys won’t be back from Pete’s mom’s house until two. You can get a shower and change into some halfway decent clothes and still have plenty of time to get to the closing. I’ll stay here and supervise. You know how I love to boss around men with trucks.”

“That would be great,” Annajane said. “Are you sure Pete’s okay with me staying with you guys for a couple of days? Just until I find a place of my own? I mean, I really could go to the Pinecone Motor Lodge…”

“Pete probably won’t even notice you’re there,” Pokey said. “With everything going on at the new furniture store, he barely notices I’m there half the time. You, on the other hand, will probably get tired of the wild bunch way before we get tired of you. The boys are superexcited you’re coming. Denning even offered to let you sleep in his tree fort, which is saying a lot. You know he’s pretty antigirl these days.”

“That’s the second best offer of a crash pad I’ve had from a member of your family in the past couple days,” Annajane said drily.

“Fascinating! Who made the first and best offer?” Pokey asked.

“Sophie did. I stopped by to check in on her after she got home from the hospital Monday. She heard me telling Mason my tale of woe about having to move out of the loft early, and she just piped up and invited me to sleep in her daddy’s room.”

“She didn’t!”

“Oh yes, she did.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Pokey snickered.

They heard footsteps in the stairwell, so Pokey opened the door with a grand sweep, and the room began to fill with men and furniture dollies.

“Okay, then, I’m outta here,” Annajane told Pokey. “Just as soon as I find the carton with all my clean underwear.”

*   *   *

At eight that night, Annajane wearily dragged her suitcase onto the front porch of Pete and Pokey Riggs’s cheerful pale blue Dutch colonial revival home. She opened the heavily carved mahogany front door with her hip and walked in unannounced, letting the door bang behind her.

The sound of a television echoed in the high-ceilinged hallway. She stepped out of her shoes and left them on the worn rug at the foot of the stairs.

“Is that you?” Pokey called from the direction of the back of the house. “If it is, come on back. We’re in the den, and it’s cocktail time.”

Annajane made her way toward the den, stepping over a spilled box of Legos, a green rubber dinosaur, and an enormous cardboard box of Pampers. She found her best friend sprawled out on her back on an overstuffed bottle-green damask sofa, with her bare feet resting in her husband’s lap.

Pete Riggs stood up and gestured toward a silver cocktail shaker resting on a tufted leather ottoman in front of the sofa. “Care for a martini?”

“I would kill for a martini,” Annajane said gratefully. She slumped down into a wing chair and looked around the room suspiciously. “It’s awfully quiet around here. Where are the heathens?”

“It’s grown-up time,” Pete said, handing her a pint Mason jar. “Hang on a sec,” he added, plunking an olive into her drink. “Now you’re ready.”

“The rule around here is, everybody under the age of eight has to be in bed by eight,” Pokey said. She was noisily slurping on a large chocolate Blizzard. “It’s the only way we keep our sanity.”

Pete rejoined his wife on the sofa. “So—did your closing go all right? We were starting to get a little worried when we didn’t hear from you earlier in the day, but Pokey didn’t want to jinx things by calling you.”

“We closed,” Annajane said. “There was some minor panic when one of the loan documents still hadn’t arrived at noon, but by the time we finished signing all the other paperwork, the courier had arrived with it. I’m no longer a homeowner.”

“You’ll find something else just as nice,” Pokey said. “Here in Passcoe—right?”

Annajane sipped her martini appreciatively. “I guess. Susan Peters showed me three more listings this afternoon. That’s where I’ve been all this time.”

“And?” Pete asked. His red hair shone dully in the light from a pair of antique brass sconces on the wall behind the sofa, and, close up like this, Annajane noticed with a start that he was beginning to get just the slightest hint of silver around his temples and paunch around his midriff. He wore a pink button-down oxford cloth shirt, rumpled khaki slacks, and oxblood penny loafers with no socks.

She was struck by how much he’d changed since the first time Pokey brought him home to meet her family. Pete Riggs was a twenty-four-year-old stud, a rich, cocky kid from Charleston, who’d started on the varsity golf team all four years at Wake Forest, and he was enrolled in grad school when he’d met Pokey and gotten her pregnant right before the end of her senior year at Chapel Hill.

The Baylesses had been devastated, but Sallie had assured Pokey the family would take care of her and the baby, no matter what. Nobody could have predicted that Pete Riggs would do what he did—drop out of grad school, marry Pokey, and get a job working in his family’s furniture business. And the biggest surprise, to everybody, including Pokey and Pete, was that the two of them would make a success of all of it—including marriage, parenthood, and, eventually, running and expanding Riggs Home Fashions.

“It’s hopeless,” Annajane said of her house hunt. “The cottage on Mimosa—the one she thought I’d be so crazy over? It’s Old Lady Harrison’s house. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have bothered to take a look.”

“Eeewww,” Pokey said, wrinkling her nose. “Mama used to make me sell her Girl Scout cookies every year when we were kids. She used to pay for the cookies with nickels and dimes that looked like they’d been scraped up out of a sewer or something. That house was nasty way back then, and she’s been dead and gone at least ten years. I don’t think anybody’s lived in that house since she died.”

“Correction,” Annajane said. “There’s a family of raccoons living there now. Or maybe squirrels. I didn’t get past the living room, where they’d been nesting in an old sofa, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“What else did you look at?” Pete asked, absentmindedly stroking Pokey’s hair. “How about Clay Snider’s house? I hear he and Whitney have split up.”

“Yeah,” Pokey said excitedly. “The Snider’s house is fabulous. We went to a Christmas party there a couple years ago. You would love what they’ve done with the kitchen. They blew out the whole back of the house, and there’s a patio and a pool house…”

“Susan sent me the link to their Web site. I’d love that house even without the patio and pool house. But alas, I do not have the eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars they’re asking,” Annajane said. She reached over to the tray on the ottoman and helped herself to a handful of roasted peanuts.

“I looked at a totally mediocre brick ranch over on Rosewood. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath, with a crazy floor plan. You actually have to walk through the master bedroom to get to the living room. But it was only eighty-nine thousand. And then I saw a butt-ugly contemporary house out past the country club. Gray cinder-block walls, smoked plate-glass windows—which were all across the whole front of the house. You’d feel like you were on display for anybody who drove past.”

She sighed and took another sip of her martini, smacking her lips dramatically. “If Pete would promise to make me a martini like this every night, I might just threaten to move in here with you guys.”

Pete raised his own Mason jar in a mock salute. “I live to serve.”

“You know you can stay here as long as you like,” Pokey said. “What have you decided about going back to work?”

“You’re going back to work at Quixie?” Pete said.

“Maybe,” Annajane allowed.

“You are,” Pokey said. “You must. For my sake and the sake of my unborn child. Not to mention the rest of my whole nutty family.”

“It’s gonna depend on Davis,” Annajane said. “If he won’t listen to any of my ideas for a new marketing plan, it’s a waste of my time to go back to work. And I really, really do not want to be around Celia. Especially now.”

“Whooo,” Pete chuckled. “I hear old Celia is pretty fired up about you, Annajane darlin’.”

“What did you hear?” Pokey demanded, tugging at Pete’s arm. “Tell!”

“Aw, no,” Pete demurred. “I didn’t really hear anything. Just a little trash talk in the men’s grill at the club today.”

“Peterson James Riggs, you better spit out what you heard at the club right this minute,” Pokey exclaimed. “It’s no fair teasin’ us.”

“Yeah, Pete,” Annajane urged. “Tell. Come on, sticks and stones may break my bones and all that.”

“You know I don’t usually listen to that mess,” Pete groused. “I was walking past Matt Kelsey at lunch, and I just heard him tell Ben Gardner that Celia was accusing you of being a home wrecker.”

“You know Bonnie Kelsey is the one spreading that talk,” Pokey said. “Her and Celia, that little bitch!” She pounded Pete’s knees for emphasis. “Who does she think she is, coming into town and trying to take over Quixie and my brother?”

“Hey!” Pete protested. “Don’t kill the messenger. I’m not agreein’ with her. I’m just reporting. Anyway, who cares what those two girly men Matt Kelsey and Ben Gardner gossip about over lunch?”

Annajane plucked the olive from her half-empty drink and sucked on it. “It’s a small town,” she said finally. “And Mason is running the biggest business in it. People are always gonna talk about him, and the Baylesses. Face it. It comes with the territory.”

“I might have to face it, but I don’t have to like it,” Pokey said. “Every place I go in town, somebody comes up and asks me if the boys are gonna sell Quixie. I’m getting really sick of telling people it’s just a rumor.”

“Jax Snax is no rumor, baby,” Pete muttered. “They want Quixie, and they want it bad. The question is whether Mason or Davis is going to prevail. And how your mama’s gonna vote.”

“What about me?” Pokey demanded. “Don’t you think Daddy left me any say in what happens to Quixie?”

“I sure hope he did,” Pete said. “But let’s face it, honey—you’ve not worked for the company since you were a teenager, and you never worked in management. Knowing your daddy like I do, I’ve got a feeling that when he divvied up the pie, he saved the biggest, juiciest pieces for your brothers. And your mama.”

“I guess we’ll find out who gets what next week,” Pokey said. “But I called Davis today, and I told him flat out, if he lets Quixie close down, or move from Passcoe, I will never forgive him.”

“What did he say to that?” Annajane asked.

“Oh, he just tried to bullshit me,” Pokey replied. “Said nobody’s discussin’ closing it down or moving it. He says Jax Snax will only make the company better.”

“And him richer,” Pete quipped.

Pokey picked up the remote control from the tray on the ottoman. “All right y’all, enough talking about business. I am ready for some mindless television for an hour or so before I call it a night. Which is it—HGTV or Food TV?”

“You mean food porn or decorator porn?” Pete grabbed a pillow and wedged it under his wife’s head. He stood up and dropped a kiss on Pokey’s forehead. “I think I’ll go watch baseball upstairs.”

Annajane experienced a familiar pang of jealousy at Pete’s tenderness toward Pokey. Her friend had so much—a home and a husband who adored her—and three rowdy but healthy children, with a fourth on the way. Did Pokey appreciate just how blessed she was? Or how hollow and envious Annajane sometimes felt in her company?

“Check on the boys, will you?” Pokey called absentmindedly while she flipped channels. “Make sure Denning isn’t up there messin’ with one of those doggone video games.”

An hour later, after they’d both grown bored with
Real Housewive
s and
Bridezilla
shows, Pokey handed off the remote to Annajane.

“It’s all yours,” she said, yawning.

“Nope,” Annajane said. “I’m going to bed, too. I’ve got to save my energy for going back to Quixie in the morning.”

“Good for you,” Pokey said, nodding her approval. “And what about Mason? What’s going to happen with you two?”

“Leave it be, Pokey,” Annajane warned. “Everything is happening too fast. We’re friends, okay? Can we just leave it at that for now?”

“Friends with benefits?” Pokey chirped. “Look, I just don’t want you to let Celia Wakefield screw things up by guilt-tripping you,” Pokey said. “You and Mason didn’t do anything wrong. Not deliberately anyway. You acted honorably, so just hold your head high and ignore Celia.”

“Celia, ugh,” Annajane said. “I am not looking forward to running into her tomorrow.”

“Oh my God,” Pokey said suddenly. “I forgot. I finally did call Angela—my sorority sister, the one who’s a buyer for Belk?”

“Does she know Celia?” Annajane asked.

“She’d heard of her, but she didn’t really have any dirt on her. However, she did give me the name and phone number of a friend of hers who might know more about the details of Celia’s clothing business,” Pokey said. She reached in her pocket and handed over what looked like the page from a Bob the Builder coloring book that had been written on in red crayon.

“Her name is Katie Derscheid,” Pokey said, yawning widely again. “I wasn’t sure how to spell it. Just call her and mention Angela Hooker’s name.”

*   *   *

At some point in the evening, Annajane dimly recognized the sound of rain on the roof and the brush of tree limbs against the windowpanes. She opened one eye and saw a jagged flash of lightning streaking across the deep blue sky outside. She snuggled deeper into the down comforter and pulled a spare pillow over her head to drown out the noise, glad not to be out in the storm.

She drifted off to sleep again, but maybe an hour later was aware of a shaft of light streaming in through the doorway. She lifted her head off the pillow and spied a small, forlorn little body standing in the doorway.

It was Petey, clad in his cotton Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, sucking his thumb and trailing a bedraggled but much-loved blue silk bordered blanket.