The hellion Read online

  coffin of her husband.

  Owen Hollis. What had her life been like with him? Had she been happy? Had he been good to her? What had she suffered during Hollis's bout with cancer? Why had they never had children? And, above all, had she ever told her husband about Tommy Lee Gentry?

  He swung toward the only other stone in the Talmadge plot: Eulice, Rachel's mother, dead four years now. He hooked a shoe on the polished curve of marble, braced an elbow on his knee and squinted as the smoke drifted up, unheeded. Why did you do it, Eulice? You and that husband of yours… and my own mother and father?

  He took one last deep drag, but the taste of the cigarette had grown acrid, so he withdrew it from his lips and with a fillip sent it spiraling through the air.

  I never should have come here today. What the hell good did it do? He dragged his foot from the tombstone, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned sadly toward the car.

  Nothing is changed. Nothing.

  Rachel had been running on sheer willpower for

  days now, months-for two years, 19 actually, ever since Owen had learned he had cancer. Though she'd kept herself from breaking down during the graveside ceremony, she was perilously near it as the black limousine pulled up before the house on Cotako Street where she'd grown up.

  Stepping from the car, she raised her eyes to the familiar beige limestone on the double-gabled structure. The entry and portico were fronted by a deep overhang behind wide limestone arches that supported the arm of the house holding her upstairs bedroom. The diamond-shaped framework of the small casement windows matched the diamond pattern of the dark shingles. Her mother's narcissus still bloomed gaily out front, and the azalea and holly bushes were carefully tended, though by a gardener these days. The same English ivy climbed the side chimney. The same cedars flanked the north side of the house. And the same sweetgum tree dropped its spiked artillery on the high-pitched roof and sent it rolling earthward. How many times had she and Tommy Lee, barefoot, stepped on those sweetgum balls and gone howling to one of their mothers in pain?

  Either mother. Whichever one happened to be nearby. In those days it hadn't mattered-the families were so close.

  Unable to resist, Rachel glanced next door, but the view of the Gentry house was almost completely obscured by the high boxwood hedge that had been allowed to grow along the property line, untrimmed, for twenty-four years now.

  Tommy Lee. But he wasn't there. He hadn't set foot on the place for years. As if he'd been watching, Everett took her elbow to guide her up the sidewalk, discouraging her from dwelling on the past.

  Inside, the funeral party was gathered. Voices hummed and the scent of expensive cigars drifted above that of fresh-brewed coffee. The faces were those of people Rachel had known all her life: the town's elite. Half were close to her age, the other half closer to her father's.

  When she'd weathered what seemed like hours of well-meant condolences until she felt she could stand no more, she slipped upstairs to her old bedroom. It was tucked beneath the gables, its ceiling following the roof peaks, creating a pair of cozy niches. The walls were papered with the same pink

  daisies she'd chosen at age thirteen. 21 Her hand trailed over the flowers as she recalled that she had brought Tommy Lee up here to show him, the minute the paper was hung. That was in the days when they'd felt free to spend brief, innocent minutes in each other's bedrooms, where they'd often played as toddlers.

  The bed was a girl's, a four-poster with a canopy of airy white eyelet to match the tiered spread and the tiebacks at the recessed windows. Though the room was cleared of mementos, the fixtures remained as they'd been years ago, dredging up memories of the days when her mother was alive and everybody on both sides of the boxwood hedge was happy.

  At the south window Rachel held back the folds of white eyelet, studying the house where Gaines and Lily Gentry still lived. It was brought clearly to view from this high vantage point several feet above the hedge.

  The shared history of the Talmadges and the Gentrys went back even further than Rachel's memory allowed. But what she couldn't remember was kept alive in old photo albums her father could never quite bring himself to throw

  away.

  The two couples had settled into these houses as young up-and-coming pillars of the community. The men had played golf, the women tennis, and together they'd made up a foursome at bridge. Then, in the same year, both Lily and Eulice had become pregnant. They'd compared their discomforts and hopes and, together with their husbands, the names they'd chosen even before their babies were born.

  Rachel and Tommy Lee came into the world only two months apart. Side by side they'd had their diapers changed, been plunked into the same playpen while their mothers drank coffee, and into the same backyard splash pool-naked- while their mothers sipped iced tea and talked about their children's future. When one of the youngsters inadvertently hurt the other with a careless toss of a toy, the mothers taught them to kiss and make it better, and sat back to watch their offsprings' rotund bodies grow healthy and vigorous.

  At six, Rachel and Tommy Lee had toddled bravely, hand in hand, up Cotako Street Hill to begin first grade at College Avenue Elementary. In second grade they'd lost their front teeth simultaneously, and in

  third Tommy Lee, while trying to string 23 a tin-can telephone between his bedroom window and Rachel's, had broken his arm falling out of the pecan tree that intervened between the two houses.

  Both dark, brown-eyed beauties, blessed with good health and sunny dispositions, Tommy Lee and Rachel had grown up knowing the pride of their parents' eyes each time they achieved the next plateau of maturity, and sensing their parents' approval as they ran off together to whatever pursuit called them at any given age.

  The memories struck Rachel like an assault-so many of them.

  Her eyes dropped to the hedge. From above, it was clearly visible where the single boxwood had been left unplanted to create a walk-through between the two yards. Not even twenty-four years had disguised its original intent; it seemed to be waiting for one of them to breach it and cross again into the neighboring yard.

  She'd been reminiscing for long minutes, her head leaning against the window frame when Callie Mae found her there.

  "Miss Rachel?"

  At the sound of the familiar voice, Rachel

  turned to find wide arms waiting to gather her in and tears glittering in the kind eyes.

  "Callie Mae." The black woman was shaped like a wrecking ball, her skin the color of sorghum syrup, and she smelled of the kitchen, as she always had. "Oh, Callie Mae." For a moment the two women comforted each other; then Callie Mae drew back, holding Rachel's arms tightly in her broad hands.

  "What you doin' up here, hidin' away?"

  Rachel sniffed and ran a hand beneath her eyes. "Exactly that, hiding away."

  "Your daddy lookin' for you."

  "I just needed to come up here for a while. To think."

  Callie Mae's eyes roved to the window briefly. "'Bout Mr. Owen?"

  Rachel turned aside guiltily. "Yes. Among other things."

  "I seen you standin' there lookin' across the yards. Can about imagine what other things." But there was no note of scolding in the older woman's voice. Instead it was reflective and sad. "Don't seem right they don't come and pay their respects on a day like this. But then it's the

  second time somebody died in this family 25 and they was too stubborn to do what they knew was right."

  "It's not only them. It's Daddy, too."

  "Yes. Stubborn fools."

  For a moment Rachel tried to repress the words, but in the end could not hold them back.

  "Tommy Lee came to the cemetery today."

  Callie Mae silently rolled her eyes, folded her hands, and said, "Halleluja." Then she caught Rachel's chin with one imperious finger, forcing it up while she noted, "So that's why you're cryin'.was

  Callie Mae had been the Talmadges's maid when Rachel and Tommy Lee were growing up, and in the years
since Eulice's death had divided that duty between Rachel's house and Everett's. There were no secrets kept from Callie Mae.

  "Partly."

  Again Rachel was wrapped in a motherly hug. "Well, you go ahead, get it all out o' your system. You just cry it out, then you'll feel better. And when you're done, you come down to the kitchen." She backed away and smiled down at

  the woman she would always look upon as a girl no matter how adult and refined she'd become. "Got your favorite down there, cream cheese pound cake."

  That at last brought a wan smile to Rachel's face. Food was Callie Mae's panacea for all the troubles in this world.

  "Not today, Callie Mae. I just don't think I could hold anything down."

  "Hmph! You nothin' but skin and bones, Miss Rachel. It's time you started eatin' right again." She turned toward the door with a sigh. "Well, time I got back down there."

  When she was gone, Rachel listened to the sound of voices from below. Lord, she was so tired. If she waited a few more minutes, maybe the last of them would leave.

  She crossed to the bed, tested the mattress with five fingertips, and fell across the white eyelet spread with an arm thrown above her head. She closed her eyes and for a moment was fourteen again, a blushing fourteen, lying in bed quaking with disbelief because Tommy Lee Gentry had just kissed her in the break of the boxwood hedge. For the first time- really kissed her. Then his eyes had widened with

  wonder and he'd walked backwards to his 27 side of the yard while she'd stood staring, amazed, for several heart-thumping seconds before spinning to her own yard and racing, as if a ghost were chasing her, up the stairs to this room, to this bed, to flop on her back and stare at the white canopy in the moonlight and feel herself begin to change from girl to woman.

  Rachel rolled to her back, eyes closed, soul shot with guilt for dredging up dreams of Tommy Lee within hours after burying her husband. Where were the memories of Owen? Did nineteen years of happy marriage count for nothing? She thought of their childless house, and emptiness clawed upward through her body. If only there were children- someone to comfort her now, to help her through the days ahead. Instead, Rachel faced the dismal prospect of returning to the empty house alone.

  "Oh, here you are, Rachel."

  At the sound of Everett's voice, Rachel coiled off the bed as if caught perpetrating an indecent act upon it.

  "Daddy… I'm sorry. I must have drifted off."

  "Marshall was looking for you."

  "Oh. I'll go down in a minute. I just needed to get away."

  Everett's eyes slowly circled the room. "Finding you here in your room this way… it brings back memories of when you were a girl and your mother was alive." Absently he wandered to the south window, drew back the curtain and gazed at the view beyond. "Times were so happy then." As if suddenly realizing what he'd been staring at, he dropped the curtain. "I wonder if I'll ever stop missing her."

  You could have friends, she thought. Two more than you've got. Two who meant so much to both of you at one time. She glanced at the top of the Gentry house beyond her father's shoulder, then at his back. It was slightly stooped now-funny, she'd never noticed it before. But then, the weight of guilt rested heavily; it was bound to weigh him down in time.

  But he was still her father, and in spite of everything she loved him. At times when she remembered, when she thought of all she'd missed, she found it possible to hate him. But he was human, had needs, perhaps even regrets, though these he never revealed.

  Very quietly she asked, "Do you ever 29 see them?"

  His shoulders stiffened. "Drop it, Rachel." But his stern tone only forced her on.

  "I've heard that Tommy Lee doesn't talk to them anymore."

  "I wouldn't know. And it's none of my business."

  You made it your business twenty-four years ago, Daddy, she thought. But aloud she only observed in the quietest of voices, "I was looking at the hedge you and Gaines Gentry planted all those years ago. You can still see the break where-was

  "Rachel!" he barked, swinging around. "I fail to understand how you can be preoccupied with thoughts like that on a day when you've just buried Owen."

  She flushed, standing before him with fingers clasping and unclasping against her stomach. Guilt came creeping over her, and she upbraided herself for speaking of the Gentrys today of all days. She studied Everett's face, noting how gray and shaken he was. "I'm sorry, Daddy. Owen's death has been terrible for you, hasn't it?" It was an odd question from a widow, but they both knew her

  relationship with Owen had been staid, comfortable at best, and the past six months had been hell for her. His death had come as somewhat of a relief, so Rachel had her guilt, too.

  "I had such plans for him," Everett sighed, prowling the room, avoiding his daughter's eyes.

  "I know you did." Owen had been his hope, the son he'd never had, his right hand in business. But Everett's shoulders lifted in a fortifying sigh, and he turned again to his daughter.

  "I guess we'd better go back down. I left the Hollises there, visiting with Marshall."

  "Yes, I guess we'd better." But she wondered how she'd tolerate any more of Pearl Hollis's noisy weeping, or Frank Hollis's dolorous looks, which seemed to say, if only Owen had had children.

  But children, like boxwood hedges, were never mentioned; both were taboo subjects in this house.

  Downstairs Marshall True was waiting, gallant and accommodating as always. "Rachel dear, I was worried about you." He came forward quickly, reaching for her hands. She gripped his fingers, relying upon him once again for emotional

  support, while Marshall's kind gray 31 eyes rested upon hers reassuringly. "Whenever you're ready I'll take you home."

  An hour later, as the two of them rode toward Rachel's house in Marshall's car, she slumped back against the seat with a sigh. His understanding eyes moved to her, then back to the street. "I know the feeling well. I remember when Joan died, how difficult it was to dream up responses to all the well-meaning phrases friends came up with."

  Rachel closed her eyes. "Am I ungrateful, Marshall? I don't mean to be."

  "No, dear, I don't think so. Just tired. Tired of it all, and glad it's over."

  She rolled her head to look at him and asked quietly, "Am I really allowed to be glad it's over?"

  "You shouldn't have to ask that question of me, of all people."

  She smiled wanly, remembering how Marshall had seen them through the worst of it, cheering Owen through the depressions, bolstering Rachel's courage when bleakness threatened to beat her down, remaining steadfast until the end, just as they had done for him

  when his wife had died four years ago.

  "But I feel so guilty because I… I'm relieved he's gone."

  "That's natural, when the death has been lingering."

  Was there another person in the world who always knew the precise thing to say, at the precise time it was needed, the way he did?

  "Thank you, Marshall. I simply don't know what I'd have done without you."

  He pulled up in Rachel's driveway and reached for her hand. "Well, perhaps we're even, then. You and Owen were the only ones who saved me from breaking down after Joan died. And I intend to hang around and do the same for you." As if to illustrate, he turned off the engine and solicitously came around to open her door. "Now, what's this I hear about you taking a trip?"

  "Oh, so Daddy told you."

  "Yes. St. Thomas, he said. I think it's a wise idea." They went in the front door of a house that could only have been described as gracious. Rachel led the way through a slate-floored entry, which came alight beneath a

  brass and crystal chandelier. Then she 33 switched on a lamp in a living room decorated in ice blue and touches of apricot. A quilted floral sofa was fronted by a pair of bun-footed Victorian chairs, the grouping centered around a marble-topped table holding five blue candles on five gold candlesticks of staggered heights, a pair of brass giraffes, and a brandy snifter filled with potpourri. Every piece of fu
rniture in the room looked as if it had just been purchased that day. The regal tiebacks on the windows were hung so perfectly they might have been advertisements for an interior decorator. The carpeting was so lush their footsteps left imprints in its ice-blue nap.

  And the house smelled delicious. Rachel not only scented it with crystal snifters of potpourri, but left tiny open cedar boxes of crushed rose petals on end tables, hung pomander balls in her closets, tucked stems of herbs into gold cricket boxes in the bathrooms, and hid delicate organdy sachet pillows of Flora Danica fragrance amid her personal garments in the bureau drawers.

  That lavish touch was repeated in the careful selection of each item in each room. It was the home of a woman accustomed to luxury.

  Marshall studied Rachel as she stood in the middle of the painfully neat living room, rubbing her arms.

  "You know, Rachel, you don't have to worry about money. The check from Owen's life insurance policy should be here by the time you get back."

  Marshall was an insurance broker, and he had seen to protecting both Rachel and Owen with adequate coverage years ago. Also, he was that kind of man-careful, a long-range planner, one who did things at their appointed time and kept life's business affairs in impeccable order. He would, he had assured both her and Owen before Owen died, keep an eye on Rachel's affairs and be there to advise whenever she felt she needed him. Having made the promise, he was certain to keep it.

  "I'll drop by now and then to make sure things are working okay-the pool cleaner and the air conditioner. You know how things have a way of breaking down when you're gone," he offered. That was Marshall, all right. He kept everything of his own

  in sterling condition, from his clothing to his 35 grass, and it was often joked about in their social circle that when and if he sold his property, he'd come back to reprimand anyone who dared let it fall into disrepair.

  Rachel fondly placed her hands on his forearms. "You don't have to worry about me, Marshall. I can take care of myself."