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Jane wearing anything I noticed particularly, or even anything I could definitely say was brand new. Her shoes were not expensive and were all well worn. It seemed to me Jane had not enjoyed her money at all; she’d lived in her little house with her Penney’s and Sears wardrobe, buying books as her only ex- travagance. And she’d always struck me as content; she’d worked until she’d had to retire, and then come back to substitute at the library. Somehow this all seemed melancholy, and I had to shake myself to pull out of the blues.
What I needed, I told myself briskly, was to return with some large cartons, pack all Jane’s clothing away, and haul the cartons over to the Goodwill. Jane had been a little taller than I, and thicker, too; noth- ing would fit or be suitable. I piled all the flung-down clothes and tossed the shoes on the bed; no point in loading them back into the closet when I knew I didn’t need or want them. When that was done, I spent a few minutes pressing and poking and tapping in the closet myself.
It just sounded and felt like a closet to me. I gave up and perched on the end of the bed, think- ing of all the pots and pans, towels and sheets, maga- zines and books, sewing kits and Christmas ornaments, bobby pins and hair nets, handkerchiefs, that were ~ 45 ~
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now mine and my responsibility to do something with. Just thinking of it was tiring. I listened idly to the voices of the couple working in the back bedroom. You would have thought that since they lived together twenty-four hours a day they would’ve said all they could think of to say, but I could hear one offer the other a comment every now and then. This calm, inter- mittent dialogue seemed companionable, and I went into kind of a trance sitting on the end of that bed. I had to be at work that afternoon for three hours, from one to four. I’d have just time to get home and get ready for my date with Aubrey Scott . . . did I re- ally need to shower and change before we went to the movies? After going up in the attic, it would be a good idea. Today was much hotter than yesterday. Cartons . . . where to get some sturdy ones? Maybe the Dumpster behind Wal-Mart? The liquor store had good cartons, but they were too small for clothes packing. Would Jane’s bookshelves look okay stand- ing by my bookshelves? Should I move my books here? I could make the guest bedroom into a study. The only person I’d ever had as an overnight guest who didn’t actually sleep with me, my half brother Phillip, lived out in California now.
“We’re through, Miss Teagarden,” called the hus- band half of the team.
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I shook myself out of my stupor.
“Send the bill to Bubba Sewell in the Jasper Build- ing. Here’s the address,” and I ripped a piece of paper off a tablet Jane had left by the telephone. The tele- phone! Was it hooked up? No, I found after the repair team had left. Sewell had deemed it an unnecessary expense. Should I have it hooked back up? Under what name? Would I have two phone numbers, one here and one at the town house?
I’d had my fill of my inheritance for one day. Just as I locked the front door, I heard footsteps rustling through the grass and turned to see a barrel-chested man of about forty-five coming from the house to my left.
“Hi,” he said quickly. “You’re our new neighbor, I take it.”
“You must be Torrance Rideout. Thanks for taking such good care of the lawn.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to ask about.” Close up, Torrance Rideout looked like a man who’d once been handsome and still wasn’t without the old sex appeal. His hair was muddy brown with only a few flecks of gray, and he looked like his beard would be heavy enough to shave twice a day. He had a craggy face, brown eyes surrounded by what I thought of as sun wrinkles, a dark tan, and he was wearing a green ~ 47 ~
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golf shirt and navy shorts. “My wife, Marcia, and I were real sorry about Jane. She was a real good neigh- bor and we were sure sorry about her passing.” I didn’t feel like I was the right person to accept condolences, but I wasn’t about to explain I’d inherited Jane’s house not because we were the best of friends but because Jane wanted someone who could remem- ber her for a good long while. So I just nodded, and hoped that would do.
Torrance Rideout seemed to accept that. “Well, I’ve been mowing the yard, and I was wondering if you wanted me to do it one more week until you get your own yardman or mow it yourself, or just what- ever you want to do. I’ll be glad to do it.” “You’ve already been to so much trouble . . .” “Nope, no trouble. I told Jane when she went in the hospital not to worry about the yard, I’d take care of it. I’ve got a riding mower, I just ride it on over when I do my yard, and there ain’t that much weed eating to do, just around a couple of flower beds. I did get Jane’s mower out to do the tight places the riding mower can’t get. But what I did want to tell you, someone dug a little in the backyard.”
We’d walked over to my car while Torrance talked, and I’d pulled out my keys. Now I stopped with my fingers on the car door handle. “Dug up the ~ 48 ~
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backyard?” I echoed incredulously. Come to think of it, that wasn’t so surprising. I thought about it for a moment. Okay, something that could be kept in a hole in the ground as well as hidden in a house. “I filled the holes back in,” Torrance went on, “and Marcia’s been keeping a special lookout since she’s home during the day.”
I told Torrance someone had entered the house, and he expressed the expected astonishment and disgust. He hadn’t seen the broken window when he’d last mowed the backyard two days before, he told me.
“I do thank you,” I said again. “You’ve done so much.”
“No, no,” he protested quickly. “We were kind of wondering if you were going to put the house on the market, or live in it yourself . . . Jane was our neigh- bor for so long, we kind of worry about breaking in a new one!”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” I said, and left it at that, which seemed to stump Torrance Rideout. “Well, see, we rent out that room over our garage,” he explained, “and we have for a good long while. This area is not exactly zoned for rental units, but Jane never minded and our neighbor on the other side, Macon Turner, runs the paper, you know him? ~ 49 ~
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Macon never has cared. But new people in Jane’s house, well, we didn’t know . . .”
“I’ll tell you the minute I make up my mind,” I said in as agreeable a way as I could.
“Well, well. We appreciate it, and if you need any- thing, just come ask me or Marcia. I’m out of town off and on most weeks, selling office supplies believe it or not, but then I’m home every weekend and some afternoons, and, like I said, Marcia’s home and she’d love to help if she could.”
“Thank you for offering,” I said. “And I’m sure I’ll be talking to you soon. Thanks for all you’ve done with the yard.”
And finally I got to leave. I stopped at Burger King for lunch, regretting that I hadn’t grabbed one of Jane’s books to read while I ate. But I had plenty to think about: the emptied closets, the holes in the backyard, the hint Bubba Sewell had given me that Jane had left me a problem to solve. The sheer physi- cal task of clearing the house of what I didn’t want, and then the decision about what to do with the house itself. At least all these thoughts were preferable to thinking of myself yet again as the jilted lover, brood- ing over the upcoming Smith baby . . . feeling some- how cheated by Lynn’s pregnancy. It was much nicer ~ 50 ~
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to have decisions within my power to make, instead of having them made for me.
Now! I told myself briskly, to ward off the melan- choly, as I dumped my cup and wrapper in the trash bin and left the restaurant. Now to work, then home, then out on a real date, and tomorrow get out early in the morning to find those boxes!
I should have remembered that my plans seldom work out.
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Chapter Three
A
Work that afternoon more or less drifted by. I was on the checkout/check-in desk for three hours, making idle conversation with the patrons. I knew most of them by name, and had known them all my life. I could have made their day by telling each and every one of them, including my fellow librarians, about my good fortune, but somehow it seemed immodest. And it wasn’t like my mother had died, which would have been an understandable transfer of fortune. Jane’s legacy, which was beginning to make me (almost) more anxious than glad, was so inexpli- cable that it embarrassed me to talk about it. Every- one would find out about it sooner or later . . . mentioning it now would be much more understand- able than keeping silent. The other librarians were ~ 52 ~
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talking about Jane anyway; she had substituted here after her retirement from the school system and had been a great reader for years. I’d seen several of my co-workers at the funeral.
But I couldn’t think of any casual way to drop Jane’s legacy into the conversation. I could already picture the eyebrows flying up, the looks that would pass when my back was turned. In ways not yet real- ized, Jane had made my life much easier. In ways I was just beginning to perceive, Jane had made my life extremely complicated. I decided, in the end, just to keep my mouth shut and take what the local gossip mill had to dish out.
Lillian Schmidt almost shook my resolution when she observed that she’d seen Bubba Sewell, the lawyer, call to me at the cemetery.
“What did he want?” Lillian asked directly, as she pulled the front of her blouse together to make the gap between the buttons temporarily disappear. I just smiled.
“Oh! Well, he is single—
now
—but you know Bubba’s been married twice,” she told me with relish. The buttons were already straining again. “Who to?” I asked ungrammatically, to steer her off my own conversation with the lawyer. “First to Carey Osland. I don’t know if you know ~ 53 ~
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her, she lives right by Jane . . . you remember what happened to Carey later on, her second husband? Mike Osland? Went out for diapers one night right af- ter Carey’d had that little girl, and never came back? Carey had them search everywhere for that man, she just could not believe he would walk out on her like that, but he must have.”
“But before Mike Osland, Carey was married to Bubba Sewell?”
“Oh, right. Yes, for a little while, no children. Then after a year, Bubba married some girl from Atlanta, her daddy was some big lawyer, everyone thought it would be a good thing for his career.” Lillian did not bother to remember the name since the girl was not a Lawrence- ton native and the marriage had not lasted. “But that didn’t work out, she cheated on him.”
I made vague regretful noises so that Lillian would continue.
“Then—hope you enjoy these, Miz Darwell, have a nice day—he started dating your friend Lizanne Buckley.”
“He’s dating Lizanne?” I said in some surprise. “I haven’t seen her in quite a while. I’ve been mailing in my bill instead of taking it by, like I used to.” Lizanne was the receptionist at the utility company. Lizanne was beautiful and agreeable, slow-witted but ~ 54 ~
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sure, like honey making its inexorable progress across a buttered pancake. Her parents had died the year be- fore, and for a while that had put a crease across the perfect forehead and tear marks down the magnolia white cheeks, but gradually Lizanne’s precious routine had encompassed this terrible change in her life and she had willed herself to forget the awfulness of it. She had sold her parents’ house, bought herself one just like it with the proceeds, and resumed breaking hearts. Bubba Sewell must have been an optimist and a man who worshiped beauty to date the notoriously un- touchable Lizanne. I wouldn’t have thought it of him. “So maybe he and Lizanne have broken up, he wants to take you out?” Lillian always got back on the track eventually.
“No, I’m going out with Aubrey Scott tonight,” I said, having thought of this evasion during her recital of Bubba Sewell’s marital woes. “The Episcopal priest. We met at my mother’s wedding.”
It worked, and Lillian’s high pleasure at knowing this exclusive fact put her in a good humor the rest of the afternoon.
Ididn’t realize how many Episcopalians there were in Lawrenceton until I went out with their priest. ~ 55 ~
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Waiting in line for the movies I met at least five members of Aubrey’s congregation. I tried to radiate respectability and wholesomeness, and kept wishing my wavy bunch of hair had been more cooperative when I’d tried to tame it before he picked me up. It flew in a warm cloud around my head, and for the hundredth time I thought of having it all cut off. At least my navy slacks and bright yellow shirt were neat and new, and my plain gold chain and earrings were good but—plain. Aubrey was in mufti, which defi- nitely helped me to relax. He was disconcertingly at- tractive in his jeans and shirt; I had some definitely secular thoughts.
The movie we picked was a comedy, and we laughed at the same places, which was heartening. Our compat- ibility extended through dinner, where a mention of my mother’s wedding prompted some reminiscences from Aubrey about weddings that had gone disastrously wrong. “And the flower girl threw up at my own wed- ding,” he concluded.
“You’ve been married?” I said brilliantly. But he’d brought it up on purpose, of course, so I was doing the right thing.
“I’m a widower. She died three years ago of can- cer,” he said simply.
I looked at my plate real hard.
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“I haven’t dated too much since then,” he went on. “I feel like I’m pretty—inept at it.”
“You’re doing fine so far,” I told him.
He smiled, and it was a very attractive smile. “From what the teenagers in my congregation tell me, dating’s changed a lot in the last twenty years, since last I went out on a date. I don’t want—I just want to clear the air. You seem a little nervous from time to time about being out with a minister.” “Well—yes.”
“Okay. I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect you to be perfect. Everyone has attitudes and opinions that are not exactly toeing the line spiritually; we’re all trying, and it’ll take our whole lives to get there. That’s what I believe. I also don’t believe in premarital sex; I’m waiting for something to change my mind on that issue, but so far it hasn’t happened. Did you want to know any of that?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. That’s just about exactly what I did want to know.” What surprised me was the amount of relief I felt at the certainty that Aubrey would not try to get me to go to bed with him. Most dates I’d had in the past ten years, I’d spent half the time worried about what would happen when the guy took me home. Especially now, after my passionate involvement with Arthur, it was a load off my mind ~ 57 ~