They stopped just before they reached the driveway, under a huge old oak dripping with gray festoons of Spanish moss. Ronnie looked at the big white mansion before her, at the trees and shrubs and flower beds that surrounded it in cared-for profusion, at the partly visible
tents, at the darkened Japanese lanterns and smoky-topped, burned-out torches and other reminders of the party so recently over. Everything she saw spoke silently of wealth, and gentility, and a life of luxurious ease.
Then she turned to look at Tom.
“I’ve got to go in,” she said.
“I know.”
“Will you come by later?”
His hand tightened on hers. “I have to catch a plane at two.”
“Oh, no!” Ronnie felt as if the air had suddenly been sucked from her lungs. “Where are you going?”
“To Nevada, and then California, and then Tennessee. I only flew home for the party.”
The idea of parting from him was suddenly almost unbearable. “How long are you going to be gone?”
“A week probably.”
“A week!” The way she said it, it might as well have been a year.
“Think you’re going to miss me?”
“Oh, Tom!” The way she said it could have left him in no doubt. Turning toward him, she went up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck.
He kissed her, briefly but thoroughly, and lifted his head. Then, as their gazes met, he kissed her again.
Finally he put her away from him. “Go on in,” he said. “I’ll call you. I’m going to be traveling around too much for you to call me.”
“Tom …”
“Go on. It’s getting light.”
It was. The sun was coming up now, painting the eastern sky in ever-brightening layers of pink and lavender.
There was nothing else to do. She had to go in. But leaving him there in the shadow of the big oak was one of the hardest things Ronnie had ever done in her life.
Chapter
33
R
ONNIE WAS BUSY OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS
. She had campaign appearances and board meetings and luncheons and dinners to attend. They would be moving back to Washington on the Friday after Labor Day, so she had to prepare for that as well. For the first time ever, the thought of leaving Sedgely for the more cosmopolitan pleasures of the Capitol brought with it a twinge of regret. Always before, she had eagerly counted the days.
The twinge, she supposed, had something to do with Tom. No, it had everything to do with Tom. She felt as if she would be leaving him behind, which of course was ridiculous. There were airplanes. She would probably see just as much of him in Washington as she did in Jackson.
Which, come to think of it, wasn’t nearly enough.
He called once, using her cell-phone number. As Ronnie was surrounded by people at the time—two state troopers, Thea, and a pair of reporters were accompanying her as she toured the schools on their opening day in the steamy Mississippi Delta—she had
no choice but to keep the conversation brief and businesslike. The schools were in bad physical shape, the students for the most part poor. Kenny had arranged the tour as a way of continuing to emphasize for the media her concern with education, and Ronnie was genuinely touched by the poverty she saw.
But when Tom called, she fervently wished children, teachers, Thea, and everyone else nearby would vanish so that she could have just a few minutes of privacy to talk to him. What she wanted to say was for no one else’s ears but his.
“Was that Tom?” Thea inquired, frowning, when Ronnie hung up.
Ronnie nodded, giving all her attention to the clay masks the children had made in art class, which decorated the walls.
“Did he want something? Should I call him back? I’m surprised he didn’t call the office.” Thea was still frowning. Tom did not, in her experience, call Ronnie directly for anything.
Ronnie shook her head. It was difficult to be casual, but she tried her best. “He wanted to know how I felt about doing an interview with another women’s magazine.”
With the near debacle over
Ladies’ Home Journal
fresh in both their minds, it was a good answer. Ronnie was pardonably proud of it. Thea’s curiosity evaporated.
Ronnie’s longing for Tom increased.
She missed him with an intensity that grew worse instead of better with every hour that passed without him.
He was due back on Saturday. As it happened, he
got home on Friday afternoon. Having just finished saying a few words about the historic nature of the event, she was at that moment engaged in cutting the ribbon for the opening ceremonies for the Sky Parade, a Labor Day weekend extravaganza featuring hot-air balloons, stunt flying, and military air shows, when she looked up to see Tom standing at the front of the crowd.
He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, and he was watching her from beneath the cap’s brim as the large silver scissors she held snipped through the length of red satin. At first she didn’t recognize him. He was just a tall, athletically built man in a baseball cap, bolder than most because he was openly eyeing her. Then their gazes met, and he grinned.
As Ronnie recognized him, her face lit up, and she completely lost track of what she was saying. The smile she gave him was both spontaneous and megawatt in its power.
“You see a friend, Mrs. Honneker?” Chip Vines, the chairman of the event who was standing beside her as she performed the ceremonial function, asked jovially.
“Yes, I do,” Ronnie answered, recalled to a sense of time and place by the man’s question. A quick sideways glance revealed that Kenny and Thea, who stood with Ronnie’s security detail a few feet away, were both waving at Tom, but he was blind to their overtures, his gaze still on her.
“If we’re all done here, I’ll just go over and say hi,” she said, handing over the scissors.
“Yes, ma’am, we are. And we sure thank you for coming.”
The ceremony was over. The small group of people
on the platform clambered down, and the platform itself was wheeled out of the way. Kenny, Thea, and the troopers gathered around Ronnie as she moved toward the crowd massed to watch the air show.
Behind her the first of the military planes rolled out of the hangars onto the runway. The crowd cheered.
Tom’s grin widened in welcome as she drew near. The desire to walk straight into his arms was almost overpowering, and she could read in his face the desire to have her do so. Instead Ronnie stopped in front of him, holding out her hand.
“Hello, Tom,” she said while her eyes said much more. He took her hand, shaking it gravely before releasing it.
“Hello, Ronnie.” His gaze flickered past her to Kenny and Thea. “Nice work on your speech. Hey, Kenny, Thea. Have you all met my son?”
For the first time Ronnie realized Tom was not alone. A teenage boy stood beside him.
“This is Mrs. Honneker, Mark. And Miss Cambridge.”
“Hi,” Mark said, nodding first at Ronnie, then Thea.
“Nice to meet you, Mark.” Ronnie smiled at him, shaking hands, and Thea followed suit. Kenny obviously already knew Mark, and greeted him in friendly fashion. Though they had not been introduced then, Ronnie remembered the teenager from that day at Tom’s mother’s farm. He was nearly as tall as Tom, and there was a definite resemblance between them, mostly in the shape of the mouth and jaw, and the color of the eyes. The boy’s hair was light brown, several shades darker than Tom’s, and in his baggy shorts
and white T-shirt with the legend
Big Johnson Rules
, he looked thin rather than lean like his father.
Ronnie was slightly taken aback to find herself the object of Mark’s admiring stare. She was wearing a turquoise silk shirtdress that buttoned up the front. It had a long, full skirt and open collar, and was sleeveless but otherwise completely covered up. It could have been made with Tom’s directives on appropriate campaign gear in mind. There was nothing sexy about it, but still Tom’s son was eyeing her appreciatively.
She glanced at Tom to see how he would take this evidence of his son’s admiration. He was saying something to Thea, though, and appeared not to have noticed.
“What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow.” Kenny put into words the question Ronnie wanted to ask.
“Mark’s up for the weekend. So I worked a little faster and finished up early.”
The crowd cheered as more airplanes rolled down the runway. Their small group shifted so as not to impede the view of those standing behind them.
“His plane landed an hour ago, but he wanted to hang around and see the air show,” Mark put in caustically. “If I’d known that, I would have had Grandma pick him up.”
Tom met Ronnie’s gaze with a lurking smile in his eyes. “So I’ve got a thing for military aircraft,” he said, shrugging. Then, to Mark, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home in time for your date.”
“I’m supposed to pick Loren up at six-thirty.”
“You’ll get there.”
“I hate to be a spoilsport, but I really need to get going,” Thea said. “I have a date tonight too.”
“Todd Farber?” Ronnie asked, mentioning the name of the man Thea had brought to Lewis’s party with an interested lift of her eyebrows. Thea nodded.
“Then I guess we’d better go,” Ronnie said, trying hard not to sound as reluctant as she felt. Her gaze met Tom’s again. To see him so briefly, and in such a public place, was almost worse than not seeing him at all.
“We’ll walk you to your car,” Tom said.
“I thought you wanted to see the air show!” Mark’s protest was indignant.
“We can see the air show from the parking lot just as well as we can see it from here.” Tom’s tone was quelling. Ronnie had to suppress a smile as they all turned and headed toward the parking lot.
The state troopers were in front, clearing a path through the crowd. Mark, Thea, and Kenny were right behind them. Tom caught Ronnie’s hand, pulling her back.
“Miss me?” he asked softly.
Ronnie looked at him. Her hand tightened around his. She did not dare to touch him any other way. Many in the crowd knew her identity, and there were reporters present, although they were focused on the air show rather than on her.
“You know I did.”
He slid something into her hand. Glancing down, Ronnie saw that it was an envelope folded into a business-card-sized rectangle, with something hard inside. She looked a question at him.
“The key to my apartment. Mark will be gone by six-thirty at the latest.”
Ronnie’s hand closed around the paper rectangle. Her heartbeat speeded up. She gave him a quick, glimmering smile.
“Are you by any chance inviting me to dinner?”
“Something like that.”
“Hey, Dad, would you hurry up?” Mark’s impatient summons made them both start, and look around. Their privacy at an end, Ronnie and Tom moved forward to join the others as they pushed through the crowd.
Lewis was supposed to speak before a gathering of tobacco farmers at seven-thirty, and Ronnie was supposed to go with him. But she pleaded a debilitating headache instead and retired to her room. Dorothy was hostessing a bridge party, and twenty or so elderly women were gabbing away in the living room, Ronnie saw when she came downstairs again after Lewis had left. That made it easy to leave; Dorothy wouldn’t miss her either. Instead of sneaking out, though, which carried with it the danger of being missed or caught coming back in, she told Selma that she thought she would go for a drive to see if fresh air would blow her headache away.
Then she simply climbed into her small white BMW and drove away.
Tom’s apartment was north of Fortification Street, in Belhaven. The address, as well as directions, were written on the envelope that held the key. It was a venerable part of town, with towering trees, large older homes, and eclectic architecture. The apartment was one of three in an old brick Victorian mansion
that had been converted into condominiums. Tom had the entire third floor.
There was an alley around back where Ronnie parked just in case anyone (she couldn’t imagine who) should see and recognize her car. It was still light outside, a beautiful Indian-summer evening. Quite a few people were out, tending their gardens or sitting on their porches or chatting with their neighbors. Ronnie wasn’t much afraid of being recognized herself. Taking a page out of Tom’s book earlier, she wore jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair tucked up under a baseball cap.
Still, she didn’t linger, but walked quickly into the building and up the stairs. The door fronting the third-floor landing was solid oak.
Tom and Mark Quinlan
, read the hand-scrawled label tucked into a small brass frame beneath the bell button at the side of the door.
She pushed the button and waited.
Tom opened the door.
Ronnie walked in. He shut the door, and pulled her into his arms.
Her baseball cap hit the floor.
Later, when their primary hunger was slaked, Tom rummaged around in the refrigerator for the makings of a light supper. After expending a serious amount of energy in the bedroom, he had professed himself starved, and dragged her up with him in search of food. Ronnie sat at the small, glass-topped table tucked into a corner of the kitchen, sipping Coke from a can and watching him. Shirtless, barefoot, clad only in a pair of faded jeans, he was looking seriously hunky as he rooted through the shelves, Ronnie thought, smiling to herself.
“How about a ham sandwich?” Tom asked, removing
a platter containing a large, foil-wrapped object from the bottom shelf, and shut the refrigerator door. “Sandra’s convinced I don’t feed Mark properly, so she sent this ham and a container of green beans with him.” He laughed. “Well, she’s probably right. When he’s with me, we usually end up ordering pizza.”
“A ham sandwich is fine,” Ronnie said. Then, elaborately casual, she asked, “Are you and Sandra on good terms?”
Setting the platter on the counter, he removed the aluminum foil.
“Reasonably good, because of Mark. We both love him a lot. Of course when the divorce was going down, it was a different story.”
Tom found a knife, plates, and bread, and began hacking off slices of ham.