Spring Fever (52 page)

“That’s a nice story,” Annajane said. “Too bad it’s not true.”

“You’re calling me a liar?” Sallie asked, her face deadpan.

“I guess I am,” Annajane said.

54

Sallie flicked her cigarette into the sink, then turned on the tap to wash away the telltale ashes. She regarded Annajane as she might have regarded a cockroach who’d had the bad luck to wander into her immaculate kitchen.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think happened?”

“I know for a fact that Glenn was having chest pains that morning,” Annajane said. “Voncile called him on his cell phone, because she was concerned that he’d missed the company Christmas party.”

“Did she now?” Sallie asked.

“Even she could tell, just from his voice on the phone, that he was having problems breathing. He admitted that he wasn’t feeling well. Voncile begged him to call his cardiologist or to go to the emergency room, but he told her you were right there, taking good care of him.”

“Cardiologist?” Sallie said. “I wasn’t aware at the time that he had a cardiologist. Just one of the many secrets Glenn kept from me.”

“You’re a liar,” Annajane said. “You knew he was on heart medication. Blood pressure meds, too. You had to know. If he was having … whatever, that he couldn’t perform in bed…”

“Who said he was having problems in bed?” Sallie asked. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to have respect for your elders?” She tsk-tsked. “This is really not a topic for polite conversation, Annajane dear.”

“I’m tired of polite conversation,” Annajane said. “So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

“Oh, please do,” Sallie said.

“Voncile talked to Glenn at around ten o’clock that morning. He was having chest pains, which you had to have known. But you did nothing. I ran into you at the country club when you were arriving around noon. You knew he was probably having a heart attack. Did you hide his meds from him? Did you watch him gasping for breath, Sallie?”

“Absurd,” Sallie said. “Glenn was fine when I left the house. He was watching the Carolina game and cussing a blue streak about the defense.”

“The Carolina game? At noon? Really?” Annajane said mockingly. “That’s interesting, because Mason was watching the game much later that afternoon. You know, it would be easy to look it up on the Internet, what time that game started. Are you sure that’s right?”

“It was some football game,” Sallie said. “I was so mad; I was distracted. But I do know that Glenn was fine when I left that house. He was alert and watching the game. And that’s all that matters.”

“Voncile told me she tried to call Glenn’s cell again before noon,” Annajane said. “But the call went right to voice mail. So she called the house and she talked to you. Don’t you remember that, Sallie?”

“It was an awful day. My husband died that day, remember?”

“Voncile remembers it, because she was so worried about Glenn. You told her he was fine, but he was taking a nap.”

“I just told her that to get her off the phone. He was watching the game!” Sallie repeated. “Glenn hated to be disturbed when he was watching football. The whole house could have burned down around him, and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

Annajane shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he was in full-blown cardiac distress. I think you knew it, and you were so pissed at him, you deliberately left him there to die.”

She stood inches away from Sallie, whose back was to the sink. “Did he ask you to get his heart meds, Sallie?”

“No!”

“Did he ask you to call 911?”

“No!”

“Did you stand there and watch him dying? Was he already unconscious when you left to go play bridge at the country club? Were you surprised to come home that afternoon and find him still alive? Is that why you called 911 when you did? Because you knew it was already too late?”

Sallie stubbed her cigarette out in the sink and turned on the tap and then the garbage disposal. The metallic rattling filled the room until she switched it off. She washed her hands, dried them, then carefully applied moisturizing cream to each of her elegantly manicured hands.

“I loved my husband,” she said calmly. “I took care of him until the very end. And you can’t prove otherwise.”

“You’re right. I can’t prove a thing,” Annajane said. “But I don’t have to. Mason and Pokey are already asking themselves the same things I just asked you. They don’t want to believe what you’re capable of. But I know. And you know. And that’s good enough for me.”

Annajane left Sallie standing in the kitchen. She let herself out the front door and didn’t look back. It was, she’d already decided, her last trip to Cherry Hill.

55

Mason pulled around to the front of the Pinecone Motor Lodge and parked in front of Annajane’s unit. It was Friday night, the week before Memorial Day, and she was still putting the wedding off, still refusing to move out of the damned Pinecone Motor Lodge. It was a nice enough place, he guessed, but he was tired of playing this cat-and-mouse game. He honked the horn twice. Nothing. He was going to have to do this the hard way. Her way. He strolled up to the door and knocked.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It’s the big bad wolf,” Mason answered. “Open up, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff…”

The door swung open. Annajane was barefoot, dressed in a pair of white shorts and a beat-up Braves jersey. His lucky jersey. “And then what?” she asked carelessly.

He smiled and tugged her by the hand. “Come on,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see.”

“Right now?” she protested. “Mason, I’ve got stuff to do. I told you that earlier today. I’ll come over in the morning, and we’ll fix bacon and pancakes for Sophie, but right now…”

“Right now, you’re coming with me,” he said. “Please?”

“Just let me change,” Annajane said. “I’m a mess. I was going to wash my hair.”

“You’re fine the way you are. In fact, perfect. Now let’s go.”

She finally managed to talk him into letting her put on a pair of sneakers and grab her phone, but five minutes later they were rolling through town in the Chevelle with the roof down, Journey blasting on the tape player.

“Are you going to tell me what the surprise is?” she asked.

“Wait and see,” he said.

When they approached the gates to Cherry Hill, the sight of the discreet
FOR SALE
sign gave her pause. It had been six weeks since Sallie had announced she was putting the estate on the market and abruptly decamped for her new house in Highlands, North Carolina.

The rusted wrought-iron gates were open, and Mason easily swung the car down the driveway.

“Mason,” Annajane said uneasily. “Look, I know it’s your childhood home and all, but I really don’t want to go up to the house tonight.”

“Relax,” he said, pulling her across the bench seat toward him. “I have no interest in going there, either.”

“Ever?”

His jaw muscle did that twitchy thing. “Mama offered to sell it to me. I told her no thanks. Pokey doesn’t want it either.”

“What about Davis?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t talked to him. But I doubt Sallie would sell it to him. They might be thick as thieves, but she has to know that if Davis did get the house, he’d tear it down in a minute, probably build mini-warehouses or something. Sallie’s funny about the place. She doesn’t want to live there anymore, but she doesn’t want it torn down, either.”

“I’m still shocked she put it on the market,” Annajane said.

“Yeah, well, she knows nobody around here has got three point two million to buy Cherry Hill. Listing it, that’s her way of thumbing her nose at everybody in Passcoe.”

“Especially me,” Annajane said.

He turned the car onto the dirt road leading to the lake house, but, to Annajane’s surprise, the road wasn’t dirt anymore. It had been paved so recently she could still smell asphalt and tar. The underbrush had been cleared, too; the huge old oaks picked clean of their coatings of kudzu; the shoulders stripped of the privet and weeds, with sod laid down; and ribbons of new shrubbery planted. She could see islands of azaleas and rhododendrons and camellias.

“Hey,” Annajane said, craning her neck to see the new landscaping. “What’s going on here?”

“The new owner made some improvements,” Mason said.

“Sallie sold off the lake house?” Annajane didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in her voice.

“She never came down here anyway,” Mason said, a bitter edge to his voice. “It was too primitive for her taste.”

“You were the only one in the family who ever really cared about the lake or the lake house,” Annajane said. “I wish you’d told me before it closed. It would have been nice to come back and look around again, for old time’s sake.”

“That’s what we’re doing now,” Mason said. “Once more, for old time’s sake.”

She caught a glimpse of something bright blue through the treetops as they got closer to the caretaker’s cottage.

“What’s happened here?” she asked, half-standing in her seat.

“You’ll see,” he said.

Without the tangle of fallen pine trees, kudzu, and privet, the old stone cottage stood proudly now on its point looking out over the lake, which could also be seen now. The blue she’d glimpsed earlier turned out to be a huge tarp that had been secured over the roof.

Annajane breathed a sigh of relief. “At least they didn’t tear the house down,” she said, turning to Mason. “If they’re fixing the roof, maybe they’re planning on trying to save the house?”

“Maybe,” he said, bringing the fun car to a stop at a new graveled parking court that had been laid to one side of the cottage. “Whoever bought the place has obviously got more dollars than sense.” He pointed past the house, and, even in the twilight, she could see the stacks of lumber and building materials and, beyond that, what looked like new pilings stretching out into the lake. “They’ve started rebuilding the dock. You believe that?”

“We used to talk about doing that,” she said quietly. “Remember? We were going to build a two-story boathouse? With a fireplace and a deck on the top level?”

“And a screened-in sleeping porch,” Mason added. He got out of the car and came around and opened her door. “Come on. Let’s take a peek inside.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to see. This was our special place, Mason. Even when it was rotting and falling down, I always thought, at the back of my mind, maybe someday we’d find our way back here. Knowing that can never happen now, even if it wasn’t ever really realistic, it’s just so unbearably sad.”

“Just one look,” Mason cajoled. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“No,” she said stubbornly. “Honestly, can we just go back to the Pinecone now? So I can wallow in self-pity for an hour or so?”

“Later,” Mason said.

She reluctantly allowed herself to be escorted to the door, noticing, along the way, the new flowerbeds; the new walkway constructed of worn, antique bricks; and, finally, the cottage’s front door, which had been newly sanded and painted a gleaming periwinkle blue.

“At least they kept my color for the door,” Annajane said. She pointed at the worn brass hardware, which had been buffed up, not to a garish bright gold, but to the mellow color of good old brass. “And they saved the old hinges and even the old knocker.”

Mason produced a key from his pocket and, noting her surprise, said only, “The new owner’s a decent guy.”

He let her walk in first. If the outside of the cottage was mostly unchanged, it was a different story inside. The tiny, cramped entry hall was gone. In fact, all the walls were gone.

She was standing in one large, airy room. It smelled of sawdust and cut pine, and what remained of the day’s light poured in through a wall of new windows overlooking the lake. The windows were open, and a slight breeze blew in off the lake. The water-stained plaster ceilings were gone, exposing age-darkened ceiling beams, and the old wooden floors were scarred and dusty, but intact.

“Oh my God,” Annajane said, her voice echoing in the empty room. “They’ve gutted it!”

“Look at the views of the lake,” he suggested. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Unbelievable,” she agreed. It was then she noticed a large old brass bed, situated in the right corner, near the fireplace, which looked like it had been recently reworked. The bed was dressed with white linens and an old quilt, which was neatly folded at the foot. A table had been fashioned from two-by-fours laid over a pair of sawhorses, and a couple of bright orange sheetrock buckets had been upended to use as chairs. There was a picnic basket on the table and a stub of a candle stuck into an empty wine bottle.

“Mason, look,” she said, pointing at the bed and table. “The new owners must be staying here. Now I really do feel like a trespasser. We need to go, before they come back.”

But he wasn’t listening to her. He walked over to the table, picked up a box of matches, and lit the candle.

“What?” But she knew. Maybe she’d suspected as soon as she saw the bank of new windows.

“The new owners are right here,” Mason said, giving her the brass skeleton key he’d used to open the front door. He took her by the hand and seated her on one of the buckets. He began extracting a number of foil-wrapped packets from the picnic basket, opening each one for her inspection. It wasn’t the stuff of a romantic picnic. No imported cheeses or fresh fruit, pâté or crusty french bread. Instead, the meal he offered consisted of ham sandwiches on mushy white bread with bright yellow mustard and crunchy pickles, individual bags of potato chips, and store-bought chocolate chip cookies.

“You remembered,” she marveled.

“Our first meal out here,” he said. “You packed the food and I brought the beer. A very deliberate seduction on my part.”

“Except the cookies I brought were oatmeal raisin. That was before I knew you were a raisin hater.”

“A rookie mistake. Could have happened to anybody,” he said graciously.

He sat on the bucket opposite hers and reached into the picnic basket one more time, bringing out two chilled bottles of Quixie. He unscrewed the caps and handed her one.

She took a drink. The essence of cherries lingered on her tongue and the bubbles tickled her nose. This taste thrilled her just as much as her first one had, nearly thirty years ago, at Pokey’s birthday party. It still tasted new and full of promise. Mason was watching her. He held up his bottle, and they clinked them together.