"What did Lizzy bring?"
"She had ham and cheese with mustard just like me. And potato chips and a cookie and chocolate milk," Annie said.
Julie started the truck and backed out of the school parking lot. Surprisingly enough, the sun still hung in the sky and the world had not come to an abrupt end. It had been a day of miracles. She kept her cool when Griffin Luckadeau waltzed into her classroom. Mrs. Amos didn't fire her. And she didn't try to mop up Saint Jo's main street with Chuck Chester's mother. All in all, not as bad as it could have been.
"Lizzy gave Chuck half her cookie," Annie said.
"Well, I suppose Chuck ate well today," Julie said.
"Yes, he did. I like him and Lizzy. They are my bestest friends," Annie pronounced.
Children were wonderful. They had no preconceived notions of who to like or not like. Money or the lack thereof didn't affect them at all. From the looks of Lizzy, she came from a comfortable family. Chuck, according to Mrs. Amos, when they discussed her students the day before, lived in a trailer south of Saint Jo and his father had been arrested multiple times on drug charges.
A person had to pass a test to get a driver's license. They had to prove they were credit-worthy to buy a house. But any drug dealing son-of-a-bitch could be a father.
Or any handsome soldier on his way to Iraq.
Julie's jaw clamped shut. A woman couldn't even berate an SOB without her conscience putting in her two bits.
By the time Julie stopped at the local grocery store and picked up supplies, then got to her new property a mile north of Saint Jo, she had convinced herself that Griffin Luckadeau really had been three sheets to the wind that night and didn't remember the night he'd spent with her in the hotel room.
That was her blessing for holding her temper all day. He flat out didn't remember. Thank God! She sure wouldn't ever bring it up to him. That was a solid fact.
She turned right less than a mile outside of town into a gravel driveway and parked on the north side of the house. Five acres, a two-bedroom house with an orchard and garden space. That's what the realtor had said that day when she drove Julie out to look at the property. What she hadn't said in advance was that all the paint had peeled off the house and the wood was as gray as fog, that the driveway was full of potholes big enough to bury an army tank, or that the roof needed new shingles.
Julie had driven up to interview for the job back in the summer and been hired on the spot. When she went to the only realtor in town to ask about an apartment to rent, the lady had taken her to the place on the outskirts of town to look at purchasing rather than renting. Her argument was that the payment would be far less than an apartment and she'd have lots more room.
Julie had taken a look at the place and fallen in love with it at first sight. She couldn't believe the low asking price until the realtor explained that the estate was to go as it set and cleaning it out wasn't going to be an easy job. The money from the sale was going to the Methodist Church in Saint Jo where Edna Lassiter, the former owner, had attended. Julie had written a check for the total price and gone home to Jefferson, Texas, to pack.
"Momma, are we going to sit here all day or get out?" Annie asked.
"I'm sorry. I was thinking," Julie said.
"Me, too. I was thinking about Lizzy. When do you think her birthday is?" Annie asked.
"The papers they sent to me say that it's two days before yours. So she was five in May, just like you," Julie said. "You big enough to help me unload groceries?"
"Yes, I am," Annie said seriously.
Julie picked up the bags holding milk and soda pop. Since she'd bought the house "as is" she had been surprised the day before when she and Annie had arrived to find the cabinets stocked with staples and the freezer full. She'd known the furniture would be there and all the closets would be full, but she hadn't thought about food.
Her mind went back to the fact that there were only two days between Lizzy and Annie. Griffin had to have had sex with his wife just before he left for Iraq. One thing for sure, Julie really had been his good luck charm, because he had returned home all in one big sexy package. Just exactly what kind of man was he, anyway? Having sex with his wife, going off to war, and having sex with a stranger on the way?
He's probably wondering the same thing about
you. Are you a schoolteacher by day and a sleazy
two-bit hooker on weekends who doesn't even ask a
man if he's got a wife at home before she falls into
bed with him? But he didn't have a wedding ring, sh
e argued with her conscience.
She shook off the voice inside her head and set the groceries on the porch, found a key in her purse, and opened the front door. The living room was small with a kitchen through an archway straight ahead. An orange floral sofa sat on the north wall under a window covered with lace curtains. Tables on either end were covered with crocheted doilies topped off with orange ceramic lamps. An old, black dial telephone was on the end table toward the kitchen, a covered crystal dish full of hard butterscotch candy on the other. Fairly current copies of
Ladies' Home Journal, Southern Living, and Better
Homes and Gardens
were neatly arranged on the coffee table, which did not match the end tables. The walls were painted a soft yellow and decorated with watercolor paintings, all signed E. Lassiter in the corner. A leather recliner on the west wall faced a floor model television set from the '80s—but it still worked and that's all that mattered to Julie. It had all reminded her of Mayberry when she'd looked at it the first time. Right then she felt more as though it had segued into the Twilight Zone.
Mother and daughter carried their bags to the kitchen, the only modern room in the house. It was as if Aunt Bea from Mayberry had put together the house and Martha Stewart had designed the kitchen—new wood cabinets, stainless steel stove with double door refrigerator to match, dishwasher, trash compacter, heavy duty mixer and blender.
The wood table and four chairs were as out of place as a kitten at a dog fight, though. The white paint was chipped and the chairs mismatched, so Martha Stewart must have lost the fight for something made of glass and brass.
Julie put the food away and sighed. It had looked like a blessing when she first saw the place. She wouldn't have to move furniture or think about things like towels and bed linens. She could paint the outside of the house herself, and it was so small, the roof shouldn't cost too much. She loved to garden and it was still producing. And they'd be away from everyone. People who kept looking at Annie, their eyes betraying their thoughts: What happened? Julie was such a good girl. Did every thing right and married well. When did she have the affair that made her husband divorce her? And where was Annie's father, anyway? It had to have been his genes that gave her that white streak in the front of her coal-black hair. Must be a low-down, good-for nothing, worthless bastard not to even come around to see his daughter.
Julie had wanted a baby so badly, had tried every fertility drug known to doctors, and was thinking about adoption when suddenly, after that weekend in Cancun, she was pregnant. It seemed as though God was telling her that she belonged with Derrick after all and working out their problems had been the right answer. It didn't take long for her to figure out it was Lucifer, not God, meddling in her life.
Julie put thoughts of the past away and faced the present. She had boxes to unpack. Closets to clean. Cabinets to rearrange.
"Momma, can I change clothes and go play with the kittens?" Annie asked.
"Sure, you can. But stay in the backyard and don't go near the road."
Annie giggled. "Momma, there ain't no road in the backyard. That's in the front yard. Lizzy said she's got some kittens, too. Did you know that?"
Julie hugged Annie. "Okay, I stand corrected. Go play with the kittens. Take that quilt from the back of the recliner in the living room and spread it out to sit on. And no, I did not know that Lizzy had kittens at her house."
"Not house, Momma. Ranch. Lizzy lives on a big ranch and Chuck has goats in his yard. Can we get a goat, Momma?"
Julie shivered. "No ma'am, we are not having goats. They'd eat up my garden. Your mother cat and those kittens are enough livestock for us."
Annie took off down the hall toward her bedroom like a shot. In minutes she'd changed from her white sundress into denim shorts and a faded T-shirt. She ran through the kitchen, the small utility room barely big enough for a washer and dryer, and out the back door into the yard where five kittens met her meowing and begging to be petted.
Julie headed down the hallway, which had a doorway on the left to one bedroom, one on the right to the second one, and a bathroom at the very end. Annie's bedroom had an old, iron full-sized bedstead painted pink with white daisies on the headboard, an oak six-drawer dresser, and matching chest of drawers that would prob ably bring more at an antique auction than Julie paid for the house. A pale blue chenille bedspread with a basket of pink flowers covered the bed, which had been made up with ironed sheets and pillowcases.
"Enjoy the wrinkle-free linens, my child," Julie mumbled. "Because this lady doesn't iron sheets or pillowcases, even if Miss Edna did."
Julie's bedroom had a four-poster oak bed with matching ten-drawer dresser and five-drawer chest, one nightstand, and a modern lamp that looked as out of place as a pig at a Sunday afternoon social. An off-white chenille spread covered the bed. The pillowcases were embroidered with peacocks and matched the scarves on every piece of furniture in the room.
"Straight out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog in 1958. Why did it all look so charming to me two weeks ago?" she mumbled as she changed into a pair of cut-off jeans and an orange tank top with bleach stains on the front. She pulled her thick, naturally curly red hair up into a high ponytail, and wiped sweat from her face. She'd had central air in her previous apartment, so she'd have to get used to adjusting window units in each room. She tucked the lace curtains back, looked out the window at Annie, still playing with five balls of fur, and turned on the noisy air conditioner. Her goal was to clean out the closet in her bedroom that afternoon and not to think about the striking cowboy named Griffin Luckadeau who she'd thought of for years as a soldier named G. Luckadeau.
Griffin and Lizzy ordered ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen but he could scarcely eat his. He dreaded taking Lizzy home. Marita would have a thousand questions the first time Lizzy started in about the little girl with the white streak just like hers. He didn't mind answering questions if he had answers, but there were none. One minute he was living in his own little chunk of Montague County, minding his own business, and then this morning it all fell apart. He damn sure couldn't pull answers out of his ass to satisfy Marita.
Who was that schoolteacher, anyway? And how'd she get a Luckadeau child? He knew how the child was made. But short of his mother having another son she never told anyone about, he didn't know anything else. Griffin's mother had inherited her white streak from her father and that was where Griffin's came from. His sister, Melinda, got the Luckadeau blond hair and her two sons were trademark Luckadeaus. Griffin had the poliosis streak in his hair, and Lizzy had inherited the gene from him. If it ran true, she'd give it to her sons but not her daughters.
It was a rare birthmark and when Lizzy was born with it she had been tested for every conceivable disease, from Marfan's syndrome to Waardenburg's syndrome, but it was simply a genetic trait where the front forelock had no pigment.
He might have dismissed seeing the same birthmark on the other little girl if she hadn't had the Luckadeau blue eyes to go with it, as well as the cheekbones and that little dimple in her chin. There was no doubt that child was as much Luckadeau as Lizzy. Hell, she looked like her twin: Lizzy was barely taller and the other girl a few pounds heavier, but then that's the way it was with twins most of the time.
He stared out the Dairy Queen window.
"Daddy, Annie is my friend. She and Chuck are my bestest friends. We played together all day. Annie has kittens and Chuck has some goats. Can we get a goat?" Lizzy asked.
"I don't know, honey. What are Annie and Chuck's last names?"
"You know, Daddy. Annie is Miss Julie's girl. Her name is Donavan and Chuck is Chuck Chester."
Graham swallowed hard. He hadn't wanted to let Lizzy go to school that year and he'd been right. The son of the biggest meth producer in Montague County had become her best friend the first day; and then there was the mystery behind her new teacher, who Mrs. Amos told him was a single mother and a fine teacher. Mrs. Amos must be getting old and losing her touch. Used to be she had eyes in the back of her head and was the meanest teacher in school, when Griffin was a child.
"Did you see Lizzy's hair, Daddy? She's got a lucky streak in her hair and blue eyes and nobody better call us a skunk and if they did we could both beat them up and…" she finally stopped for air.
"What you have is not common, but you aren't the only little girl in the world with it. That little girl has one, too. We'll have no more talk about beating people up. No one has called you a skunk since that party at Slade's house."
"But they will because that's what I look like. Can we make it go away, daddy? I don't want to be different. Me and Annie could put stuff on our hair and make it go away," she said.