How would Harris Bragg talk to her? How would Brantley Kincaid? He sighed. In the mood he was in, it would have felt good to light into someone, but what was the point of feeling good if he was ineffective?
He stepped up beside the mammoth headstone. The thing had to be five feet tall. “Miss Etheline?” He held out his hand to help her up. She giggled a little and took his hand. “I don’t believe we have been formally introduced, but I’m Luke Avery.”
“Oh, my! The senator’s son? I know your Mama and your Daddy!” She got to her feet. “Your daddy worked for mine one summer when he was in law school. My daddy was on the bench then, of course,” she said proudly. “We went to your mama and daddy’s wedding. Sent them a pair of silver candlesticks. I remember. I went to Reed’s Jewelry where your Mama had her registry and bought them, though she hadn’t registered those. ‘Get something nice, Ethie,’ Daddy told me. ‘But don’t get a plate or a fork. They won’t remember who gave that. Always choose gifts that will make you remembered,’ he said. And I’ve always tried to do that.” Miss Etheline took off one of her gloves and fanned herself with it.
“Those candlesticks have been on my mother’s dining room table all my life. They’re there now.” That might even be true. There were candlesticks on the table, at least most of the time, and they were silver. Weren’t they?
“Oh!” Miss Etheline put her hand over her heart. “I’m so glad to hear that. Will you give your mama my best?”
“I will.” Luke looked at the grave. “I see you’re planting some vegetables on the judge’s grave.”
She nodded and her face went from simpering belle to
don’t take me on.
“I do it out of respect. ‘Always plant and cultivate the earth, Ethie,’ Daddy told me many times. It’s something we did together. I want him to know I remember.”
“Here’s the thing, Miss Etheline. Tiptoe doesn’t like vegetables growing in the cemetery. Now that you have let your daddy know that you remembered — three times this year already, I believe — I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”
She gave him a hard stare. “Young man, my daddy was the circuit judge in this county for twenty-two years. I respect that authority. I will only be stopped by a circuit judge. A city judge will not do, nor some college law clerk boy or Olive Wainwright.”
Luke wasn’t sure if she was referring to Keenum or himself as the college law clerk boy. He saw no future in taking it up.
“Yes, ma’am. I can appreciate that. But I’m the circuit judge now, so I am asking you stop planting vegetables and go buy the judge some nice flowers.”
“You’re the circuit judge?” she mused. “Hmm. Seems like I heard that. You aren’t dressed like a judge.” She took in his running shorts and his four-year-old
Run Down Autism
t-shirt. She turned up her nose.
“No, ma’am. I don’t generally wear my robes outside the courtroom.” She frowned. Okay, so a joke was a bad idea. “Please forgive me for being so casually dressed but I was out playing with my little girl.”
“You have a little girl?” Her eyes brightened and her face took on a dreamy look.
“I do. Emma. And I need to get back to her. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Such a special bond — a little girl and her daddy. And her name starts with an
E
— just like mine!”
He felt sick for a moment but pushed it away. Lanie wouldn’t leave him. It wouldn’t be just him and Emma, with only his shortcomings to keep them company.
“Can I escort you to your car?” He picked up Etheline’s gardening basket and offered his arm like he was a marshal at a debutant ball.
“Why, I feel so honored.”
He stood and watched her drive away in her ancient Lincoln Town Car.
“I’m not sure she should be driving,” Luke said as Tiptoe Watkins sidled up beside him.
“I’m pretty sure she should not, but one battle at a time.”
“It seems,” Luke said, “that it takes a circuit judge to countermand her daddy’s directive to garden.”
“Yep,” Tiptoe said.
“Why didn’t someone tell me that?”
“I did.”
Luke thought back. “Yeah, I guess you did. Any chance this will hold forever?”
“No. We’ll have to go through the whole thing again next spring but if you’ll come the first time, it’ll be over for a year.”
Luke offered his hand for Tiptoe to shake. “I will do that, Tiptoe. I promise. And I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you to begin with. I guess I couldn’t find the logic in it.”
Tiptoe gave a firm handshake. “There is no logic in Etheline. Never has been. I know you’re a judge and, by all accounts, a smart one even at your age. I’m just an old gravedigger but that’s led me to listening to a lot of sad people and I’ve come to believe that the saddest are the wisest. Sometimes all it takes is the right person saying the right thing. That’s not so hard, especially if it’s true anyway.”
Luke laughed. “By all accounts, you’re an old gravedigger who attended Harvard and did a world tour before you came back here to take over burying Merritt’s dead from your daddy.” There was money to be made in grave digging, that was for sure. Because in the end, it wasn’t optional.
Tiptoe’s eyes twinkled. “And still I’ve learned more standing among mourners in this cemetery than I ever did up north or in a country where they speak another language.”
Luke had talked one woman down. One more to go. Too bad there was no Tiptoe wisdom to help him out with that.
Without warning, a bolt of lightning split the sky, followed by a tremendous
boom
.
Luke lifted his eyes upward. “I guess I’d better put the top up.”
“Well, Judge, that depends,” Tiptoe said.
“On what?”
“On whether or not you want your fancy car to get wet on the inside.”
Indeed.
By the time Luke pulled into the downtown area, the rain was one solid opaque sheet and the Bobcat Booster Fair had been abandoned.
Lanie wasn’t in the candy kitchen. That was good sign. Maybe she wasn’t mad anymore. Still, he braced himself before opening the door of the apartment.
“Daddy!” Emma threw her arms around his legs and kissed his knee. That was something to count on — at least for now. Whether he’d been gone fifteen minutes or twelve hours, Emma acted like she hadn’t seen him for weeks.
He went down on one knee to hug her. “How’s my honeybee?”
“I’m going to Beau’s.”
“That’s right. You’re going to stay there tonight while Mommy and I go to the big party.”
“No.” She shook her head until her curls bounced. “Now.”
“We’ve talked about this, Emma. It’s tonight. You’re not going now.”
“Actually, she is.” Lanie entered the room carrying Emma’s bright green frog boots and matching raincoat. “I have to go help at the country club, so I’m taking her early.” Lanie looked tired and sad. She’d changed into an old pair of baggy jeans and shirt that was too big. That didn’t stop him from wanting her.
“I thought this shindig was put on by the older set.” He rose to meet her eyes.
“It is. But since they can’t use the patio, they have to reconfigure everything. Miss Annelle asked Lucy to call around for extra help. Missy said to let Emma come and play with Beau.”
Great. Not only was he going to be robbed of the time when he might have made some headway with Lanie, he’d be completely alone. He considered trying to bribe Emma into staying home this afternoon, but that would be pointless. She would choose the company of Beau Bragg one hundred percent of the time. Already, he’d lost out to a man child who couldn’t even ride a bicycle.
“Can we talk a minute before you go?” he asked.
Lanie frowned and looked from Emma to him. “All right.” She nodded and turned the television to the Cartoon Network. “Emma, look. Cartoons.”
She led him into the kitchen, leaned on the counter, and crossed her arms across her chest. Still mad, then.
“Are you still mad at me?”
Lanie half closed her eyes. “Luke, I don’t know if mad is precisely the right word.”
“It feels like the right word to me.” He bit his lip and smiled at her.
Her hand shot up. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to melt me that sweet charming look. I’m not up for it right now. It’s not like you invented it for me, anyway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and that was almost true.
“Yes, you do.”
“When are you going to be done being mad at me?”
She sighed. “I said I wasn’t mad.”
She had not said that but he didn’t call her on it. It wasn’t the time. He took a step toward her. “Lanie, let’s work this out.”
“You’re acting like we quarreled over whether to have fish or steak for dinner. This is complicated.”
“Explain it to me. I can understand it. I’m
very
smart. I have the papers to prove it.”
She hesitated. “This isn’t really your fault.”
“That’s a relief. Tell me whose fault it is and I’ll have him thrown in jail. I can do that. I’m very powerful.”
She didn’t laugh. “Yes you are.” The words came out like a breathless sigh. “And right now, I feel very powerless.”
Tears gathered in her eyes and his heart crashed to the floor. “Here.” He made to take her in his arms but she stopped him.
“Don’t. If you touch me, I’ll say whatever it takes to make myself believe none of this matters and I can’t do that.”
“All right.” He pulled out a kitchen chair and barely placed his hand on her elbow. “At least sit down. You look exhausted.” She let him guide her into the chair and he sat down next to her.
He knew what he had to say. “Lanie, I’m sorry for what happened at the fair. I was married to Carrie for a long time. It takes time. Still, I know I embarrassed you and I would do anything to take that back. But no matter what you think, I do want this family. Let’s set a date. Right now.” He rose and took down the calendar that hung by the telephone. He could do it.
“No,” she said.
He stopped cold. “No? I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It isn’t good enough to get my way. You have to want it too. You don’t. You’re surrendering.”
He didn’t even know what that meant, so it couldn’t be true. “I am not.”
She looked at the table and traced some invisible design that she saw there. “As I said, this isn’t your fault. You’re doing what you promised. At first, I didn’t know what a quiet and settled love meant, but I do now. It means a love of surrender, which is no love at all. At least it’s not love, the way I love you.” She finally brought her wide green eyes to meet his.
He opened his mouth to speak but she waved him silent. It was just as well.
“I thought I was safe from the kind of love that I feel for you because love and sex are tied together. Since I thought I couldn’t have a normal sex life, I guess I thought I couldn’t really be in love.”
What? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do mean not have a normal sex life?”
“You see, Alexander was my first and the sex was never good for me, never right. Not like with you. I knew it wasn’t right but since he never complained, I thought it didn’t matter. Then when he broke up with me, he said he needed someone responsive, someone normal. Apparently, I was so inept that by the time he told me all this, he’d already replaced me. I guess she was more responsive. I decided I must be abnormal. Hopeless.”
“And that happened the same day you lost your baby?” A slow, angry burn started in his gut. She’d already told him most of this but it seemed so much worse now.
She nodded. “The one thing I had always known for sure was that I wanted children and the doctor said that couldn’t happen. I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. So I left school to look for something else.”
“That’s why you spent all that time taking classes and trying to learn crafts?” All this swirled around in his head like a giant disjointed jigsaw puzzle. Slowly, the pieces began to drift together to make a picture. “I’m still not clear on something. You thought you couldn’t have a normal sex life? Until us? What about — ” The words only fully registered as he spoke them and he stopped himself.
But she understood the question hanging in the air. “I never slept with anyone after Alexander. Until you. What would have been the point?”
The burn became rage. “So this bastard, this Alexander, was a selfish asshole in bed and made you think it was your fault? I will find him and kill him, if someone hasn’t already beaten me to it. What’s his last name? Where is he?”
“You will not. They don’t let judges kill people and keep being judges.”
She had a point. But more importantly, they didn’t let judges kill people and get to be with Lanie Heaven. But if he couldn’t kill for her, he wanted to say something to make her smile, to please her.
“But you’re wonderful in bed. You know that, don’t you?” Generous, eager, and fun. He should tell her that too, but the words stuck in his throat.
“So you say,” she said wearily and wiped her eyes.
He knelt before her and took her hands. “Lanie, I do love you.”
“I’m sure you do. You feel love for many people.”
“Not that many.”
And not this way.
Why couldn’t he say that? Was it because he didn’t want to hurt Carrie or because he wasn’t sure? None of that was rational. Carrie couldn’t be hurt and he’d always known his own mind.
“Even so. What you feel for me is not what you should feel for a wife.”
Then what was he supposed to feel? It might not be the same way he’d felt about Carrie, but it was special and true on its own. One thing for sure, he’d be mad as hell if another man felt this for Lanie. He opened his mouth to say that. The words would not come. Somewhere Carrie was celebrating. Or was she? Or was that an excuse? Still, he couldn’t find the words.
Lanie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I thought that if I would do what you wanted — paint my floor, wear the right clothes, drive the car you picked out — that it would all work out, that I could become who you wanted me to be.”
He was astounded. He’d just been trying to make things better. “I wasn’t trying to change you — ”
“Sure you were,” she cut him off. “And I was trying to change you too — into the man who could love me the way I want to be loved.”