His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (2 page)

Then before Willa could ask, she said, “Don’t worry, I took her debit card and told Trevor to call me if she tries to buy anything.”

Willa frowned, “I’m not sure policing our mom is a job Trevor can handle.”

Thel nodded. “I know it ain’t. I should have gone with them. But I got a call from the SoCal Opera right as we were about to leave. So I told them to go on without me.”

“Oh,” Willa said, her voice lighting up at the news of her sister’s new job prospect. “Did they want to go over the moving details?”

“No, they called to tell me I was no longer invited to take part in their Young Artist Program. They gave my spot to somebody else.”

“Oh, Thel…” Disappointment set in like a leaden weight as she tried to think of something to say.

Most of the reason she’d gone to buy that car was because her, Thel, Marian, and Trevor were supposed to be leaving Greenlee soon. Thel had gotten the go ahead to live her life fully from her oncologist a few months ago, and she’d easily gotten into the SoCal Opera’s Young Artist Program.

Thel had already given notice at Greenlee County Care, the hospital where she worked the night shift as one of the cleaning staff. They’d been all set to move. To begin a new life together.

Willa had even lined up a few interviews for physical therapist jobs in L.A. “What happened?” she asked her sister now. “I thought that spot was supposed to be locked down.”

“It was. The program director was so excited I wanted to come back to opera and that my voice was still good. But someone got to her. Told them they couldn’t let me into the program.”

Willa shook her head, even more confused now than she’d been at the car dealership. “Who’d do that? And why?”

Granted, she didn’t know a whole lot about opera. But she’d never in her life encountered anyone with a better voice than her sister. Who else would they have found for the program with more talent than Thel?

Instead of answering, Thel turned her smoky dark eyes back to the window. “The lights are back on at Greenlee Place. You think Kate’s messing with us?”

Willa moved to go stand next to her at the window, looking across the small valley and over the James River tributary that separated their place from the large brick colonial on the hill. Sure enough, the huge house was all lit up. At least partially. Two out of ten windows now glowed with yellow light.

The story of how their family, the only black family left in all of Greenlee County, had come to own property directly across the river from the house of its founding family—the one the whole county had been named after—was long and involved.

Real long. Their little brick house had originally started off as nicer than average slave quarters back in the 1700s. Then after the war, the slaves had been upgraded to sharecropper status.

Eventually the last of the sharecroppers to work the property, their grandfather, died. And that was how their mother, Marian Thompson, a single mother with three children with three different last names, had come to make national news back in the late 90s.

Having recently divorced Trevor’s father, she’d moved into the house with Willa, Thel, and their brother, Trevor, after securing a job as a nurse at Greenlee County Care—only to get an eviction order from the property’s now sole owner, Admiral Grant, just a couple days after moving in. Seeing as how her father was no longer working the land and bringing in a profit, the newly minted state representative wanted to demolish the house and the nearby woods to build a golf course to entertain his political buddies.

Well, Marian wasn’t having any of that. She’d read herself a whole bunch of legal books and sued Admiral Grant ten ways to Sunday. You would have thought all them lawyers the congressman had working for him would have taken care of the problem, but they didn’t count on just how much crazy they’d run into.

Her mother not only met everything they threw at her with claims that “the spirits told her to say this” and “the spirits told her to answer this way,” she’d also managed to put on enough of a show that the case became national news.

And it was right after an election year, so eventually Admiral Grant settled with her out of court. He gave her all the property on their side of the river and back pay for all the money “the spirits” had told Marian his dead wife’s estate owed her father for a grossly unfair contract Kate Greenlee’s great-great grandfather had made with her father’s great-great-great grandfather shortly after the Civil War.

For a while there, Marian was telling anyone who would listen that she was the only black person in Virginia history to receive reparations for what the white folks had done to her ancestors. And a few people in state government still blamed her family for Admiral Grant’s failed bid to become his party’s candidate for President back in the early aughts. Folks also said that was why he chose to live in a house in Bon Air after he became the state senator, instead of coming back to the house in Greenlee County where all his dead wife’s people had been bred and born, including his two sons.

“That’s strange. Kate’s never acted up before,” her sister said now, looking at the two lights across the way.

“It ain’t Kate. It’s the son,” Willa answered, staring stonily at the two lights.

“Josh? I thought he lived in Richmond.”

“No, the other one.”

“Oh, Sawyer,” Thel said with a sneer of remembrance. “I heard he lost a leg in the Middle East or something, but that was years ago.”

“I heard that, too,” Willa said, thinking of the faint limp she’d seen as he walked out of the dealership. His leg must have been hurting him, she thought. “You wouldn’t think a three-story house would be his first choice as a suitable residence.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Thel responded, frowning at the lights. Obviously finding it hard to believe it was really Sawyer and not Kate who’d turned them on. “Why do you think he’d come back here?”

“I don’t know,” Willa answered. “But he did.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he bought me a car earlier.”

“Oh,” Thel said, since that explained everything. But then the penny dropped… “Wait, what?!?!”

3

Willa wasn’t surprised her sister found it hard to believe the younger Grant brother bought her a car.

Sawyer Grant was the worst thing that ever happened to Willa in high school. Her mother had seen it in a vision that Trevor’s father was running around on her with the receptionist at his job. And that had been the end of their time in Richmond in a relatively nice charter school with a seventy-percent black student ratio.

So shortly after turning sixteen, Willa found herself walking beside her older sister down the halls of Greenlee High—yes, even the school was named after Sawyer’s mother’s family. Books held tight to her chest, hoping and praying all these white kids would just ignore the two new black students—the only black kids in their midst. The daughters of the woman the town had already dubbed “The Crazy Librarian,” and who the local newspaper had just announced had filed suit against one of their most illustrious residents.

Willa did not get her wish.

Instead, she got Sawyer Grant—just about the grossest rich white kid who might have ever lived. All those entitled rich kid clichés you see in movies and read about in books? That was Sawyer. Red sports car—check. In fact, every school day you could find his Corvette parked diagonally across two teacher spaces. Big house on the hill—check. In fact, she and Thel could see the back of the antebellum plantation house from their bedroom window. Stupid girls falling all over him—check.

When Sawyer first spotted them in the hallway of his school, he was literally walking down it with a blond cheerleader under each arm.

“Hold up, hold up,” he said with a mean laugh when he walked past her and Thel. “I know I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

He’d pulled the cheerleaders to a stop right in front of them. Using their bodies like barricades, so Willa and Thel couldn’t easily move past them without splitting up. And the one thing they’d agreed not to ever do when they came to this all-white school? Split up. They might have different last names, but they were sisters through and through. No sister left behind. At least until Trevor’s accident. Then Thel up and ran away from Greenlee, Willa, and everything else that reminded her of their younger brother.

But back then, Thel had growled, “Get out our way.” Her heavily made up eyes slitting on the tiny cheerleaders like she was going to beat them down right there in the hallway if they didn’t step aside.

The unspoken threat felt like a real thing that could easily happen. Unlike Willa, Thel was built like a brick house. Curves for days everywhere but her chest, which she made up for with a collection of carefully curated push up bras. But even without the miracle bra, she probably weighed more than both the petite cheerleaders combined. And so the cheerleaders regarded Thel nervously, looking like they might give way.

But Sawyer kept them there. And like the show horses they were, they stayed put despite their obvious discomfort.

“I can’t believe you two are really here at my school,” he said with faux honor.

Thel just swatted. Like Sawyer was a bug getting in her considerably cool way. She’d ruled their last school with her combination of stunning looks, rich curves, perfectly winged eyeliner, and Teflon confidence. And for a second, Willa thought it might be the same here.

She’d stand up to Sawyer on their first day in this all-white high school, like you stand up to the biggest guy on your first day in prison. And everybody would know not to mess with them. The pretty blond fillies were already whinnying, “C’mon, Sawyer, let’s just go.” Tugging on his shirt.

“Relax girls, I want to give our two newest students a proper welcome,” he said. “How ya’ll liking my school so far?”

“I guess it’ll do,” answered Thel, bold as a fall blizzard. “Thinking I might join the cheerleading team. Show them how real cheerleaders do.”

The two fillies became even more nervous at that statement, shifting in their Keds, obviously not knowing what to do.

Sawyer kept on smiling. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were the color of swamp mud, lazy and mean.

“You got a mouth on you, girl,” he told her. “I’m trying to decide whether your new nickname should be
Mouth
…” He let his gaze fall to her overly inflated chest. “Or
Miracle Bra
.”

His cold eyes flickered over to Willa then. Like a snake. “Already know I’m going to call this one
Stork
.”

Thel, who had a comeback for everything, didn’t seem to have one for this. Instead, she stared at him for a few hot seconds, before grabbing Willa by the arm and pulling her around Sawyer’s left cheerleader.

“C’mon,” she said to Willa, shoving the little blonde so hard, she nearly fell over. “Don’t mind that asshole.”

But he’d been too hard not to mind. He was mean to her and Thel, but for everyone else, Sawyer had his charms. Most of the guys at Greenlee either liked him or wanted to be like him. Most of the girls either hooked up with him or were jockeying for a spot on his wait list, once he was done with his current girl. Willa couldn’t understand the attraction, like at all. And even though Thel and her were the ones with the crazy mother, Willa had to wonder if every white girl at the school wasn’t a bit touched in the head.

Where she saw one hundred-percent asshole, the others saw some kind of football god. But then again, he wasn’t making their lives miserable.

His friends didn’t yell out, “Caw! Caw!” every time those other girls passed them in the hallway. Even though that wasn’t remotely what storks sounded like.

The whole school, including a few of the teachers, didn’t continue to call any of those other girls “Stork,” even after he graduated, just because that’s what Sawyer Grant decided she should be called.

So yeah, Willa supposed if she were one of those other girls and if there was a case of beer involved, maybe, just maybe Sawyer would have looked like some kind of catch to her. With his tousled hair, his All-American good looks, and his green eyes (which might not have put her in mind of swamp mud if she’d been one of those other girls).

But as for Willa, she did not get the attraction.

And she thanked the spirits she only had to put up with him for one year before he went off to the U.S. Naval Academy. Just like his older brother, Josh, and their father, and his father, and pretty much every Grant before him.

She’d been allowed to finish the rest of high school mostly in her attractive sister’s shadow—just like she wanted. Then she’d gone off to college on a well-deserved scholarship and had easily gotten into an osteopathic medical school in Alabama afterwards. Two years into her medical degree, she even managed to score a prestigious fellowship to work onsite at Landstuhl, a regional medical center located in Germany that served the U.S. Armed Forces.

For a whole year she’d shadow a physiatrist who specialized in working with amputees. And the fellowship started in June, which meant she wouldn’t have to go back to Greenlee for the summer.

On that happy note, Willa left the States behind without a second thought. And on the first day of her internship, she couldn’t have been more pleased as Delores, a grizzled physiatrist, showed her around the center.

“Most of the patients you’ll be working with directly will be on their last few appointments. They’ll be able to go through their routines on their own, so you’ll be able to help oversee their sessions. But that will only be for a few cases. Mostly, you’ll be shadowing me, watching and learning. When shadowing, I want you to think of yourself as a ghost…seen and rarely heard, taking in all the information you can. This fellowship is meant to give you osteopath kids some real life experience with amputees. And I guess it’s supposed to teach us traditional med school doctors something, too, but I’m not sure what.”

Delores, who’d gone to a traditional program at the University of Pittsburgh, looked her up and down and harrumphed. “I’m here to help you decide if you want to go the extra mile to become a physiatrist, and if you’d rather deal with cranky seniors than kids in their twenties who are trying to wrap their heads around being amputees for the rest of their lives.”