The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box (13 page)

I really would miss this place. Nestled between the towering Victorian and an old horse corral that stretched to the parking lot of Fairhope Fellowship Church, it seemed protected from the things that were chasing us, its routines a sort of salve on wounds that were still bleeding. I would miss the sounds of fishermen readying their gear in the dim hours of the morning and boats rumbling out of Fairhope Marina. I’d even miss the church bells marking the time of day, over and over and over.

In the driveway, a man was unloading a riding lawn mower from the back of a pickup filled with yard-care equipment, chain saws, and ladders. I stopped at the top of the porch steps, craning sideways to get a better view around the crape myrtles. He seemed young, in his twenties or maybe even a teenager. He was wearing orange tennis shoes and red-flowered swim shorts, topped off with a lime-green Windbreaker with palm trees and lizards on it. A floppy fishing hat cast a shadow over his face and hid all but the endmost curls of his hair, reddish blond. All in all, he looked like he’d raided Jimmy Buffett’s closet and then gotten dressed in the dark.

He didn’t seem to be searching for anyone in particular, and my hopes flitted from the muck, taking flight like a marsh bird. Maybe he was just here to mow. Maybe we were safe for another day.

No sense giving anyone a reason to ask questions. I’d just tiptoe back inside and stay away from the windows until he left. . . .

“Afternoon.” His greeting stopped me as I reached for the door. I paused midstride, a trespasser caught in the act.

Be calm. Be calm. Don’t look guilty. Remember the story about keeping an eye on the house and the pet cat.

Smoothing my T-shirt over the old, holey jeans that I loved but Trammel would have frowned on, I turned slowly and flashed a smile. “Hi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get in your way. You look like you’ve got a job to do.”

He shooed a carpenter bee away from his tools, his face still concealed by the shadow of the paint-spattered fishing hat. “Just finished mowing at the church.” A shrug indicated Fairhope Fellowship next door. He walked closer to me, carrying a weed whacker. “Had the mower all loaded, and then I noticed how bad this place looked. Thought I’d do the church a favor and knock down the grass a little. Looks like I’ll need a hay cutter and a baler, not a lawn mower.”

I chuckled, still playing it low-key, yet friendly. “Too much rain lately.” The yard had been a swamp most of the time we’d been here. When we moved in, there’d been some mention of a lawn service, but with all the moisture, no one had shown up. This guy didn’t look like he was from a lawn service, though. I hoped he didn’t try to give me a bill when he was done with the work.

He’d said something about doing this as a favor, hadn’t he? Why was mowing Iola’s yard a favor to the church? Just because the overgrown grass looked bad next door? Or was the church caretaking the house now?

He wandered nearer, and I felt obliged to come down the porch steps. We stopped on either side of the oyster-shell driveway. Up close, he looked older than the horrendously mismatched outfit made him seem. Somewhere in his thirties, maybe close to forty. The deep laugh lines around his caramel-brown eyes gave the impression that he smiled a lot, but something about him, maybe the reddish hair, reminded me of a smart-mouthed kid who’d put me through freshman-year agony in a high school near my third foster home in seven months.

“You staying in the bungalow?” His question seemed casual enough.

Bungalow . . .
What a funny word for it. For some reason, I thought of reruns of
Fantasy Island
. “Yes. Just renting short-term.” A blush crept up my neck. I hoped he couldn’t see it in the thick pine shadow. When he was finished mowing here, would he go check with someone to make sure I belonged in Iola’s cottage?

He nodded as if that made sense enough, and we hovered in an awkward silence for a moment before he shifted the weed whacker so he could shake my hand. He wiped his palm on his shorts before offering it. “Paul Chastain.”

“Tandi Reese.”

“Sad about Miss Poole,” he commented after the introductions.

He was the first person I’d heard mention Iola in days. I’d almost started to feel like her death wasn’t real. “Did you know her?”

Shaking his head, he squinted at the house. “My mom was from Fairhope, but I never spent time here, except visiting my grandparents on vacation. Didn’t really know the old-timers. I heard she left this place to the church, though. That’s pretty awesome.”

My jaw stiffened at the memory of what the deputy had said about the church ladies and Iola. I’d watched Fairhope Fellowship since we’d been here. The old white chapel with its lighthouse-style steeple did a brisk business with brides looking for a picturesque wedding spot and tourists seeking a quaint place to go for Sunday morning service. Judging by the collection of high-dollar cars coming and going, they weren’t hurting for money. On top of that, I hadn’t seen one person from that church darken Iola’s door. I couldn’t imagine why she would leave anything to those people.

“I’ll get out of your way.” I turned and started back into the house before what I was thinking could come spilling out. The less information I exchanged with Paul Chastain, the better.

Inside, I tried to read a copy of a Tom Clancy novel from the bookshelf, then gave up and turned on an old episode of
I Dream of Jeannie
. But nothing keeps the attention of a guilty conscience for very long. Every few minutes, I was up peeking out the windows, wondering what he was doing out there, how long he would stay, and whether he was calling anyone about me.

When the mower and the weed whacker finally went quiet, there were voices outside. Two people. Men. My nerves pulled clothesline tight, and adrenaline jangled through my body. Someone was walking up the porch steps, but it wasn’t Paul Chastain. Paul had on tennis shoes. He looked like he’d be light on his feet, sort of wiry and quick. These were boots, heavy steps. Slow and purposeful.

I opened the door and found a stocky, middle-aged man poised with his fist in the air, about to knock.

“Well, my eye! I think you jus’ took a good year off my life, young lady!” He staggered backward a few steps. The slight Cajun accent surprised me.

“I heard you coming.” Pulling the door closed, I kept a death grip on the handle as he introduced himself
 
—Brother Joe Guilbeau
 
—and explained that he was the music minister at Fairhope Fellowship Church. He smiled and said he’d enjoyed visiting with my kids at Bink’s Market a few times, which wasn’t good news at all. I’d told the kids to stay close to home and not to tell people in Fairhope anything about us. We’d rehearsed the story
 
—newly divorced mom, two kids, just looking for a job and a new place to be. Nothing interesting that anyone would want to pry into.

After this conversation, it probably wouldn’t matter what the kids had let slip about us. As soon as Brother Joe Guilbeau finished with the small talk, the ax would fall and we’d be moving on, though I had no idea how. After a week of waiting for it to happen, I wanted to break down and cry, blurt out our whole story, beg this stranger for help. But I couldn’t. There was no way to know who to trust. Aside from that, bilking a church was far too much like something my mother or my big sister would’ve done. I wasn’t going to be someone’s charity case. I’d find a way out of this mess myself.

“You know what’s the situation with the house, I guess?” The question slipped off his tongue in a roll so smooth and pleasant-sounding, I barely heard it coming. His accent reminded me of old Pat, who lived next to my Pap-pap’s little tidewater farm on the North Carolina mainland near Wenona. Pap-pap’s was the only place I remembered where things were calm day in and day out when I was little, but we only spent time there in bits and snatches
 
—usually whenever my mother left my father.

“We’ve just been renting by the month.” My voice quivered, and I swallowed what felt like a cocklebur. “I was hoping to stay . . . a little longer . . . if that’s possible. The kids and I just moved to the island, and I’ve been looking for a job. Once I get something, it’ll be easier to think about relocating.”

Brother Guilbeau studied the porch ceiling rather than me. “Alice Faye rushed outta town when her daughter birthed that grandbaby premature. Granny Jeane, she takin’ care of the real estate office, but jus’ to keep up wit’ the phone calls and the mail. They got enough to worry about, so you find any problem wit’ the cottage, you come on by my office next door. Gonna take some time to get all the paperwork sorted out, but Iola had it planned to leave this ol’ place in the hands a’ the church.”

I nodded, my mind racing ahead. The real estate lady was out of town for a family emergency? That explained why no one had come knocking when the rent was due. “Okay . . . well . . . I’ll let you know if we have any problems, thanks.”

I was hoping he’d leave, but he lingered there, surveying the rafters.

“Lil’ seekahsah, he got ’im a nest up there. Better take you some spray and knock it down.” He motioned to a lacy paper wasp nest in the corner.

“I’ll do that.”

“You be interested in doing some cleanin’ in the big house? Get the food and trash outta there, pass a broom around the floors, few things like that? Maybe we pull it off in rent here?”

I should’ve been overjoyed, but it took me a moment to answer. I had a feeling that Brother Joe Guilbeau knew a whole lot more about me than I wanted him to. I wondered what my kids might have told him in Bink’s. This felt way too much like a handout. But when it’s a choice between feeding your kids and watching them go hungry, you do what you have to do. “Sure. I might be interested in that.”

He nodded, the sun glinting off his large, round head, making it seem more disproportionate in size than it already was. “Nine tomorrow mo’nin’, you come by the church office. We’ll see, can we work up somethin’?” Then he exited the porch, studying Iola’s house as he crossed the yard.

In the driveway, Paul Chastain was loading the riding mower into his pickup truck. Brother Guilbeau stopped to help. Then the two of them shook hands, and Brother Guilbeau strode off across the field in front of the tumbledown stable, headed back to the church parking lot.

The pickup was finally leaving when the kids pulled into the driveway in the decked-out ragtop Jeep belonging to Zoey’s new crush. Paul Chastain pointed a finger at them, I guess to let them know they’d made the turn too fast. Zoey’s date waved back like he didn’t get the point.

Rowdy Raines fit his name, from what little I could tell about him so far. He was built like a tank and filled with high school swagger. Being the new girl in school, Zoey was excited that he liked her. She’d had to leave a boyfriend behind in Texas without even saying good-bye. Now that she’d made friends in Fairhope, I was hoping she’d see that leaving Dallas without a word to anyone was our only way out. If Trammel knew what I was planning, he would have found a way to stop me.

Oyster shells crunched under the Jeep’s tires as it rolled up in front of our cottage. J.T. hopped out as soon as he could, and Zoey followed, her flip-flops scuttling across the shell gravel. Rowdy waited in the vehicle, leaving it running.

J.T.’s oversize shorts flopped around his skinny legs as he hurried toward the front door, his stick-straight blond hair bobbing. “You have fun?” I asked, snaking an arm out to stop him. He dodged it and went on up the porch steps. “J.T., did you have fun?”

One hand was clasped on the screen door handle when he finally stopped. “Yeah.” The usual one-word answer, with a side of nine-year-old disinterest.

“Did you play with Rowdy’s brother?”

“Yeah.” His nose wrinkled under the freckles.

“Did you tell Rowdy and his brother thanks?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you say anything but
yeah
?” I wanted to dig down inside J.T. and find the chatterbox who used to talk about dinosaur bones and snails he discovered in the dirt outside the riding arena and zoo animals he learned about on TV and how earthworms eat. These days, he didn’t say anything unless he had to, and he didn’t do anything but sit in front of the TV with his video games. Somehow during these last few years, he’d learned to make himself invisible, and I hadn’t even noticed the change. Between trying to keep things on an even keel with Trammel and the haze of pills that had started after the accident, I’d missed a lot.

“Mom, I was supposed to be on Zago Wars twenty minutes ago. I’m missing the battle!” J.T.’s favorite thing about the cottage wasn’t the beach just blocks away or the hiking trails of Buxton Woods nearby. It was the wireless Internet installed for vacationers and the video game system he’d crammed into his backpack when we left Trammel’s house.

“Oh, well,
excuse
me. I hope the zombies didn’t attack while you were gone.”

He smirked then, his big blue eyes twinkling with a hint of the little teddy bear he used to be. “It doesn’t
have
zombies.”

“I knew that,” I joked, and he rolled a doubtful look my way.

Zoey glared at him and huffed, “He hardly even did anything with Rowdy’s brother, he was so worried about stupid Zago Wars and whoever he’s playing with online. There’s a party down at the pier, but we had to leave to run the dorkface home. Next time, I’m
not
bringing him with us. Anyway, we’re going back down to the beach.”

“Who’s having a party at the pier?”

Zoey’s eyes flashed wide. She wasn’t used to me asking questions. She pretty much ran her own life, like another adult in the house. Zoey had been taking care of herself since before she was old enough for school. There was a deep-down part of me that knew it was because there were so many times she’d had to.

“Rowdy’s friends, okay?” A nervous look flicked toward the car, and she shifted her hips to one side to let me know she didn’t have time for this. She was already mad at me for not telling her when Iola Poole died. Three days had passed before she’d heard about it at school, and then she’d come home in a panic, worried that we’d be moving in with Ross. I’d lied to her and told her I had enough money for another month’s rent.