Cancel the Wedding (7 page)

“It's a shame,” she said wistfully. “Of course people used to get married so much earlier and have babies so much earlier. It gave you a better shot at the older generation still being alive when the great-grandbabies came. I think Jimmy may be the only fourth left in town.”

I was trying to give the impression that I was following her. “Mm hmm, Jimmy? The fourth?”

“The story goes that Jimmy's mother, Sarah, was in labor in one room and her husband's grandfather was dying in the next room, so Dr. Mathews was running back and forth trying to get Jimmy to go ahead and be born while trying his best to keep that old man from dying.”

I finished my drink, careful to put the empty glass on a coaster. “That's awful. Although I suppose there's a lot to be said for living a long life and—”

“Well, you know to be named a fourth, James Tillman Calhoun
the fourth
, he had to be born while James Tillman Calhoun
the first
was still alive.”

Logan piped up. “Who makes up these rules?”

But Mrs. Chatham was patently ignoring questions she deemed unworthy of an answer. She was on a personal mission to impart some tiny bit of proper naming pedigree to us poor ignorant souls.

She waved her hand in the general direction of the front door and the town square beyond it. “You probably met Jimmy at the coffee shop.”

Oh my gosh, I actually knew someone in her story. “We did meet Jimmy. He doesn't seem like a
fourth
.” I had a very clear mental image of Thurston Howell the third in my mind when I heard “the fourth” and Jimmy—that skinny, bearded man with an easy smile and an arm full of tattoos who was laughing at me in the coffee shop—did not seem like he belonged in an ascot with Lovey on his arm.

Mrs. Chatham said, “No? Well, looks can fool you. Jimmy owns half that block. Maybe the whole block.” She laughed at her own joke.

She wished us luck on our search for the Rutledge family line and then glanced over her shoulder at the gentleman at the bar who was surrounded by a pack of men in suits. There was clearly something about him she found distasteful. She leaned in to us and said pointedly, “Names are important. Name and family are the only things a person can't buy.”

I wasn't sure what she meant by that but then again I wasn't sure of much about this place. It was a town of contradictions. The lake was hiding a town, the bearded slacker behind the coffee counter was James Snooty Something the fourth and owned a huge chunk of the town, and we outsiders may be the long-lost Huntley Rutledges. Whatever that meant.

We said our good-nights to her and she made us promise we would call on her if we needed anything. I didn't tell her about scattering the ashes or that most of what we were looking for was probably under a whole lot of water.

Logan and I packed up our things to head up to the room. I checked the time to make sure it wasn't too late and then I called Leo. I hadn't been able to get hold of him all day.

As soon as he answered I knew I'd woken him up. I practically whispered, “Hey, it's me. I'm sorry. You're asleep. I'll call you in the morning.”

I could hear Leo rubbing his face. “No, it's fine. How's it going?”

“Good, sort of. Maybe weird is a better answer. It turns out the town of Huntley is underneath the lake. They drowned the town so it's not even here anymore.”

“Hmm. That is weird.” He sounded unimpressed. “When are you sprinkling the ashes?” I heard him yawn. He probably wanted an exact time and date that he could put into his schedule and then check off once the chore was finished. The thought irritated me.

“I'm not sure, but I'll let you know. Go back to sleep; we can talk tomorrow.” I was absentmindedly following Logan up the stairs.

“Okay, 'night.”

I disconnected the call and found myself staring at the phone. I'm not sure why. We got into the room and I threw my phone into my open suitcase.

Logan watched my beloved cell phone fly precariously through the air and when it landed she gave me a knowing look. “Are you and Leo fighting?”

“No, we don't fight.”

“Maybe you should start.”

I ignored that. How could picking a fight help matters? She and I got ready for bed and then climbed into the tall four-poster queens. I sighed and kicked my foot out so that it wasn't being trapped by the sheet.

“What?” Logan asked me.

“What d'you mean?”

“You did that moany thing. My mom does it when she's thinking about something.”

“I think I'm just frustrated about today. I'm beginning to realize just how much we don't know. If that makes sense.”

“What do you mean! We found out there's a super creepy underwater town, and that Grandma got all of her weird stuff from growing up here. I mean the ‘bless her heart' thing and the monograms all over the place? These people put their letters on anything that sits still. They are totally wiggy about names.” She yawned. “I bet that's why she named my mom Georgia, 'cause it's where she was from.”

“I wonder why she named me Olivia?”

Logan shrugged. “Maybe we'll find out tomorrow.”

“Maybe. Good-night, Lugnut.”

“ 'Night, Livie.”

All night I had dreams of my mother. She was swimming in the dark lake late at night. I was trying to follow her but she kept turning a corner into one of those jagged coves, going just out of sight. I could see the splashes of water being kicked up by her feet and sparkling in the reflection of the moonlight. Then the dream changed and I was in a boat chasing her and I was finally catching up.

I woke up to the realization that it was Tuesday, a workday, and I was not on my way to work. That's a pretty great Tuesday. I tossed a pillow onto the sleeping lump in the next bed. It moaned. “Hey, Logan. There's no work today!”

“Ibmsleepingoway.”

“What?”

Logan sat up in a huff. “I said I'm sleeping. Go. Away.” She put the pillow over her face and went back to sleep.

Not that a teenage girl isn't a little slice of joy in the mornings, but I decided to start my day without her. I got ready quickly and then headed down to Viscount James Something the fourth's coffee shop to redeem myself after the whole waiter fiasco of the day before. I went straight to the counter to place my order and then waited there like a local until the food was ready. I cleared all of my work e-mails and returned a few calls while I was standing there.

Jimmy passed my order across the counter and winked as he said “good girl” for figuring out how it was supposed to work.

I decided that we needed to hit the cemetery at some point and at least see if they had any conditions regarding the deposit of my mother. I called Huntley Memorial Gardens while I ate my breakfast. The sweet woman who answered the phone had such a thick country accent that we had a hard time communicating. She didn't really understand what I was asking for and I didn't really understand her answers. This was a conversation that would need to take place face-to-face, so I thanked her for her help and hung up.

I went back up to the counter to get some food to take to Logan. While I waited I asked Jimmy about the library and the local paper. The library wouldn't open until eleven o'clock, so he told me where the newspaper office was as he handed me the to-go bag. There weren't quite as many people out and about in the square this morning. Hazy rays of sunshine were breaking through the trees overhead and there were distant sounds of sprinklers bursting to life.

I followed the directions Jimmy had given me across the dewy grass to the other side of the square. The newspaper's office was located in an old house that must have been rezoned at some point as a commercial building. I was hoping the archives were digital because there was no way they could store much in the way of paper copies in that small building.

The old, white house had a tiny front patch of a lawn with a wrought-iron post announcing that this was the
Tillman Free Press
. The post was dripping in gnarled vines of star jasmine to the point where you could barely read the words on the sign.

To my great surprise Elliott was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of the small office with his feet propped up on the porch rail typing away on a laptop. His eyes never left the computer screen as I climbed up the stairs, but a small playful smile appeared on the side of his face.

I didn't bother trying to hide the fact that I was surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”

He finished typing something and then looked up at me, amused. “Every time you see me you ask me why I'm here. You do realize that I live here, right?”

“Sorry, that did sound rude. I'm just surprised to see you again.” I peeked through the window to see if there was anyone official looking inside that I could speak with. I could hear a phone ringing incessantly but no one seemed to be around to answer it. “Do you know when someone from the paper will be in?”

Elliott closed the lid to his laptop. “Yes, right now. I'm the paper.”

“You're the what?”

“I am the paper. I own the newspaper.”

“Oh, you do? That's weird, although I guess that explains what you're doing here.”

He looked at me with a sort of delighted confusion. “Do you say everything that pops into your head the second it shows up there?”

I sighed. “I do.” I sat down on the rocking chair next to him. “It's a really bad habit. I have no filter. Sorry.”

“Actually, I find it incredibly refreshing.”

The phone began ringing again. I waited for a moment, thinking he would rush in there to pick it up, but instead he just rubbed his face and sort of grumbled. I pointed toward the phone. “Aren't you going to answer that?”

“No.” We waited for the ringing to stop before he spoke again. “So how are you today? I mean about everything? The lake and Huntley.”

“Okay, I guess. It wasn't really what I was expecting to find.” I shrugged because there wasn't anything else I could say about it.

“Holy drowned town, Batman.”

That made me laugh. “Exactly. That's why I'm here. I was hoping Logan and I could go through the newspaper archives to see if we can start doing some research about the town and my mom.”

“Sure. I'd be glad to help you. Do you know what you're looking for?”

“No, not really. I just need to start looking.” The phone started again. My eyebrows rose at him, questioning.

He crossed his arms in a tight knot and pursed his lips, holding his ground. “I'm not supposed to be in the office today, which she knows, so I couldn't possibly answer that. And my cell phone doesn't work out here. I am legitimately and innocently unavailable.”

“Oh, got it. Girl trouble. Women love it when you avoid their calls.” I pointed back and forth between the office and his rocking chair. “Nicely done.” The racket finally stopped. She'd given up, whoever she was.

Elliott gave me an exasperated look. “Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes, I do want your help. I won't make any more comments about the way you're treating your lady friend.” I changed the subject. “So how long have you been the official face of the
Tillman Free Press
?”

“We just had our second anniversary.”

Oh no, they were a brand-new publication. There may not be any archives to go through. I didn't want to waste his time. “The paper's brand-new then. So, uh . . . what were you doing before you started it?”

“I didn't start it. I just reopened it. So yes, there are archives that you can access.”
Busted.
He leaned back in the chair. “I was an engineer for years but just decided it wasn't for me.”

“Really? That's funny. I work for an engineering firm.” That was another thing that had snuck up on me out of nowhere and imposed its squatter's rights on my life.

When I finished my undergraduate degree in art history, I imagined myself in the depths of some museum somewhere restoring great works of art. Probably in one of the smaller more remote cities of Eastern Europe, because I was oh so tragically hip. Or maybe teaching? I thought I could work at the university with my mother, mentoring brilliant but misguided youths. She in the history department, me in the art department. But then again I could barely manage my niece and I had known her for her whole life. And Logan could be a real pain in the ass. Maybe mentoring wasn't really up my alley.

But there would definitely be coffee. In my mind I was always holding a steaming mug of coffee while inspiring the minds of today's youth or clearing away the dust from long-forgotten masterpieces. Hopefully I was someplace cold while OD'ing on all this fantasy coffee.

Fantasy was a good word for it because a BA in art history roughly translated into “unemployable, slightly pretentious asshole.”

After graduating I worked in a coffee shop for almost a year, which was not nearly as mind-altering as one would expect. Then I entered law school. I figured if I was going to be an asshole I might as well get paid for it.

My first summer break during law school found me interning with a large international construction firm. I was assigned to the Due Diligence Department. It was mind-numbingly boring work researching various codes and ordinances particular to the local area in which a new building was being constructed. They always needed the information yesterday and the pace was insane. And I was really, really good at it. At the end of the summer they offered me a job making a stupid amount of money so I packed my soul into a little shoebox, along with my BA diploma and one year of law school, and tucked them all under my bed. Then I got myself a fancy new wardrobe and a lease on a Range Rover. Full asshole transformation complete.

That had been almost ten years ago and although I had moved up through the department the only place left to go was the department head. And since that position was currently held by the devil, and the devil wouldn't die, I was pretty much out of options in that particular firm.