Ellen squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
"Well, good riddance," she muttered, but she didn't mean it. She didn't mean it at all. She looked up at a mockingbird sitting on the topmost branch of an ancient oak tree. "What's the matter with me?" she asked.
The bird gave her no answer. She waited a moment, trying not to look at Dirk's departing back, and then she could stand it no longer. She turned and watched him walk back toward the farmhouse.
His shoulders were squared and his gait was strong and determined, but there was no jauntiness in his step. Her heart lurched crazily and she wanted to run after him, but she remained on the other side of the fence.
"This is where I belong," she told the bird.
Finally she made her way to her favorite place, but some of the magic was gone.
o0o
The Davy Crockett State Park was the site of the annual Stanford family reunion. Ellen parked her faithful Buick in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree and turned to her companions.
"This is it, gang. Time for our big performance."
"Why do I feel like a Christian being thrown to the lions?" Dirk asked.
"Don't worry. Gigi will protect you."
He looked at the large black hand gripping his shoulder. "That's what worries me."
Ruth Ann sniffed. "No need to make a federal case out of a simple matter." Reaching into her large handbag, she brought out a package of potato chips. "Come with me, Gigi. We'll have a little snack before lunch."
Gigi didn't need sign language to tell her what was going on. The sight of the bag of chips was enough. She released Dirk and happily exited the car with Ruth Ann.
"Saved by Old Sourpuss," he said dryly.
"Don't let her looks fool you," Ellen said. "She has a heart of gold."
"And the suspicious nature of a hedgehog." He dismissed his nemesis with a laugh. "Let's get on with the show."
Ellen stepped from the car and somewhat selfconsciously took Dirk's arm. The sun had passed its zenith and was beaming down on the reunion crowd.. Oppressive heat was rising from the ground in waves, wilting the chattering, milling Stanfords and their various husbands, wives, in-laws, and children. Ellen sent a little prayer winging upward that the deception would work.
As she led Dirk toward the crowd she glanced up at him to see his first reaction to her relatives. His expression was cool and detached, telling her nothing.
It had been like that since the incident beside the fence this morning. She wondered what he was thinking, then quickly decided that it didn't matter. Men with murky backgrounds and unknown professions didn't mix with women dedicated to lonely mountaintop research.
Suddenly she tensed, awaiting the fireworks as her great-aunt Hortense descended on them. Hortense had two claims to fame among the Stanfords: her razor tongue and her trumpet voice. She used both without mercy. A session with Aunt Hortense had been known to reduce the otherwise brave and hearty to a sniveling coward.
"So this is the fiance," Aunt Hortense said. Her watery gray gaze swept over Dirk from head to toe, then she turned to Ellen. "Nobody told me he had black eyes. I never did trust a man with black eyes."
Her loud condemnation of black-eyed men stemmed from personal experience. Her husband, a black-eyed, black-bearded giant of a man, had run off with another woman after fifteen years of wedded bondage to the formidable Hortense.
Ellen groaned silently. Why couldn't Dirk have met Aunt Gert or Uncle Henry first? Why couldn't it have been anybody except Aunt Hortense?
"Dirk, meet Aunt Hortense Winfield. Aunt Hortense, Dirk Smith—" She stopped, horrified. She couldn't even remember what his name was supposed to be!
"Caldwell, the Third," he said smoothly. Bending at the waist, he gallantly took Aunt Hortense's hand and lifted it to his lips. "You don't mind if I call you Aunt, too, do you?" He tucked her hand under his arm and began walking toward the covered pavilion. "Although I must say, you look much too young to be anybody's aunt."
He checked the reaction to his flattery and saw the lines in her face soften. Poor old lady, he thought. Probably some dark-eyed man had abused her trust.
Ellen watched with amazement as the legendary Stanford battle-ax lost some of her cutting edges. She shouldn't be surprised.. She had lost some of her own edges since Dirk had come into her life. She walked beside them and continued to marvel as he charmed her aunt.
"What do you think about Robert E. Lee?" he asked Hortense.
"He's one of the South's finest men. The salt of the earth," Aunt Hortense said.
"And Jefferson Davis?" Dirk asked as they passed under a mimosa tree in full bloom.
"It was a great day for the South when that man was born."
"They were men worthy of trust, wouldn't you say?" Dirk went on.
"I would swear by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee," Aunt Hortense vowed loudly.
Dirk's eyes twinkled. "They were black-eyed men."
Aunt Hortense's lace-up shoes skidded to a stop on the worn path. Dust whirled around them and settled in the pores of their skin.
"Young man, are you casting slurs on the South?" Aunt Hortense drew herself up to her full height. She had always prided herself on being able to look a body—man or woman—straight in the eyes. But even stretching her neck and standing almost on tiptoe, she couldn't get eye level with Dirk.
"No, ma'am," he said, and Ellen cringed at his fake drawl. "I'm trying to make a case for black- eyed men."
Aunt Hortense was solemn as a judge as she stood in the dusty path and pondered Dirk's statement. Then she tipped her head back and roared with laughter. Tears of mirth rolled from her eyes, settling in her wrinkles so that her face looked like a road map.
"I do declare." She whooped with joy. "Well, I do declare." Turning to Ellen she said, "Young woman, you've found yourself a treasure. A downright treasure. Any man who can stand up to this old battle-ax is worth hanging on to."
She patted Dirk's cheek and left the two of them, shaking her head as she went. "Who would have ever thought... a black-eyed man!"
After Aunt Hortense had disappeared into the crowd, Ellen looked up at Dirk. "Did they really?"
He feigned innocence. "Did who really what?"
"Did Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis have black eyes?"
"How should I know? I'm a Yankee."
"You're a fake."
But a charming one. Dangerously charming
. He casually threw his arm across her shoulders, and she felt a heat that had nothing to do with the weather. "Who are you, Dirk Smith Caldwell the Third?"
"I'm the man you've created. Your fiance. The man of your dreams." His arm tightened, and for a moment she thought he was going to bend down and kiss her.
She stood still, inhaling the too sweet fragrance of mimosa blossoms and looking into his eyes. An amber light shone briefly out of their depths, a spark of fire and tenderness that revealed the man beneath the facade, and then they became unreadable again, shuttered and as black as doom. She thought that she would never again smell mimosa blossoms without remembering that light in his eyes.
"Let's go, man of my dreams," she said lightly. "We mustn't keep the Stanfords waiting."
Ellen sat on the redwood bench, picking at her food and watching Dirk move among her relatives. She had to admit that he had done a wonderful job of playing her fiance. He had charmed everybody from Aunt Hortense all the way down to the dreadful Wilcox twins. Glenda Wilcox, the only Stanford woman said to have married beneath herself, had remarked as she sat down with her plate of fried chicken that she'd give a million dollars—if she had it—to have a man like that around the house. The way she had batted her dime-store eyelashes, glued on crooked and looking like two bats on her face, it was obvious she had more in mind than baby-sitting.
Ellen's smile was tender as she recalled how Dirk had made Glenda feel special without leading her on. He had that knack, she realized: making people feel special. That was just one of the growing list of things that Ellen liked about him.
Uncle Vester eased onto the bench beside her, his old knee joints popping as he sat down. "Yessir, hon," he said, "that boy's a treasure, as Lollie would say." He took a three-bladed knife from his pants pocket and began to shave golden kernels of corn off the cob onto his plate. "Even if he is a Yankee, I think you're marrying up."
Ellen laughed. Marrying up was the opposite of marrying beneath oneself. And marrying beneath oneself was the worst thing that could happen to a Stanford woman. Only the flighty, like Glenda, were so foolish.
Of course, several of the Stanford women had been known to marry and become martyrs, but suffering imparted a dignity that foolishness did not. Ellen's smile took on a tinge of sadness as she thought of all the codes her relatives lived by. She was no longer a part of them. Even being here at the reunion, she felt worlds away.
Uncle Vester stopped shaving the corn and gave his niece a keen look. His gnarled hand covered hers.
"What's the matter, hon? All of a sudden you look like you have a case of the lonesomes."
She squeezed his hand. Of all her father's brothers, and there were four of them, Uncle Vester understood her best. He didn't always agree with her life-style choices—Lord knows how many times he had fussed about her living on that mountain— but he was always sensitive to her moods. He could bluster and wink and brag with the best of the Stanfords, but deep down he only wanted Ellen to be happy.
"I guess I do," she admitted, "but I don't know why. I'm seeing cousins I haven't seen in years, aunts and uncles I haven't seen since last year. . ."
Uncle Vester interrupted her. "People don't have a thing to do with the lonesomes. It's a feeling that starts in the heart. It's a great old big empty place that will eat you up if you don't fill it with something."
Just at that moment Ellen heard Dirk's laughter. She lifted her head and looked at him across the pavilion. He was sitting beside her great-uncle Lloyd, the reigning patriarch of the Stanford family, and he looked so carefree, so genuine that she almost forgot he was playing out a deception. Was he the reason for her case of the lonesomes? Was there an empty place in her heart that couldn't be filled by Gigi and the compound on Beech Mountain?
She made a small sound of denial, but it died on her lips as Dirk looked up and smiled at her across the heads of her relatives. It was an electric smile that hit her with a shock and seared its way into her heart. It was a smile of kinship, of one deceiver to another. And it was a smile that made her wonder if he, too, was suffering from a case of the lonesomes.
"Eat your corn before it gets cold, Uncle Vester," she said. "I think I’ll try a piece of Aunt Fronie's chocolate cream pie."
It was Fronie's chocolate cream pie that started the whole thing. Renowned in Lawrence County for her cooking, Fronie was particularly famous for her cream pies. Her sister Lollie even admitted to a streak of jealousy over Fronie's cream pies, but she knew better than to ask for the recipe. Fronie guarded her cream pie recipes as closely as she would have guarded a mink coat if she had one— which she did not.
She'd always secretly wanted one, but she publicly said that nobody except Davy Crockett ever wore fur in Tennessee. Everybody knew, of course, that Fronie's statement was sour grapes.
The table Ellen approached was practically buckling under the weight of food. Honey-glazed hams, fried chicken, pork and dumplings, competed for space with an assortment of delicacies that would have made a French chef green with envy. There was enough food to feed all the Stanfords, and still have enough left over for half the population of Lawrence County. Except for Aunt Fronie's chocolate cream pie. She noticed that there was only one piece left, and Aunt Fronie was guarding it like Fort Knox.
She's still a handsome woman, Ellen thought as she came close enough to see the satin-smooth skin and the red hair, like her own, carefully twisted into a knot on top of Fronie's head. She knew Aunt Fronie took as much pride in preserving herself as she did in creating her famous pies.
"Aunt Fronie"—Ellen kissed the old woman's cheek—"I've come for a piece of your pie."
Fronie pinched Ellen's cheek. "Lord, honey, you're even more beautiful than your mama was. And that man of yours ..." She rolled her eyes and grinned. "Well, I said to Lollie, he ought to be in the movies. Rich, too, from what Vester tells me. When are you two tying the knot?"
"We haven't set the date yet." Ellen crossed her fingers behind her back as one more strand of untruth was added to the web of duplicity.
"A man like that, driving in the Grand Preakness and all . . . well, who knows what's on his mind," Fronie said.
Ellen smiled. Her aunt never could get horse racing and automobile racing straight.
"I wouldn't wait too long if I were you," Fronie went on. She took a funeral-parlor fan from her straw purse and swatted at the flies that were taking an interest in the picnic food. "About that pie, honey. I'm saving it for Dirk."
So he's made another conquest
. She supposed she should be happy that the deception was working so well, but suddenly it occurred to her that it wasn't supposed to work that well.