Hissy Fit (31 page)

A.J. thumped the mattress. “There’s a metaphor in all this, but I’m damned if I want to bring that up just now.”

I walked out into the living area, and A.J. followed. He was really fascinated with the pump house. I think men love the solidity of brick and mortar and heavy beams. He walked back and forth, admiring the rock fireplace, and examining all the old framed art; the advertisements, drawings, and black and white photographs.

He tapped the glass on the photograph of the beauty queens. “That’s your Aunt Gloria, right? My daddy always says she’s one of the best-looking women he’s ever met.” A.J. laughed ruefully. “And considering the source, that’s a high compliment.”

“I’m sure.”

He was still staring at the photograph. Now he looked from it to me, and then back at the photo again. “Is this…?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s my mother.”

“I think this is the first picture of her I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Your daddy never had any around the house.”

“No,” I said. “It was pretty painful for him.”

“She was a beauty,” A.J. said. “Like her daughter.”

“Thank you.” I hesitated. “I met Mama’s cousin Sonya a couple of days ago. She moved from Madison to North Carolina the first time the bra plant closed down. She says I’m Mama made over.”

A.J. stood very close to me. His finger traced the outline of my eyes, then my nose, then my lips.

“No,” he said. “There’s a lot of your daddy in you. And probably some of her. But mostly you’re just you. You’re not a carbon copy of anybody else. You are uniquely one of a kind, Keeley Rae Murdock.”

He bent down and touched his lips to my forehead with the gentlest, the lightest of kisses.

Outside I could hear the hum of voices, kids laughing and screaming. The bluegrass band segued out of “Rocky Top” to a dramatic fanfare, and then Will’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Welcome everybody, to our Loving Cup company picnic,” he boomed. “Now, if everybody will just take a seat, I have some news I want to share with all of you.”

The band played another fanfare.

“Let’s go,” I told A.J. “I’ve got a headache.”

“Let me get you
some aspirin,” A.J. said, looking concerned. “You’ve been running around in the heat all day; you probably have sunstroke or something.”

I gave him a grateful smile. “Maybe some aspirin and a Diet Coke. Gloria says the caffeine helps a headache because it dilates the blood vessels in the head.”

We were out on the highway, headed away from Mulberry Hill. My head really was throbbing. I felt sick and, worse, betrayed. I couldn’t understand how Will Mahoney could be so cavalier about going back on all his promises to keep Loving Cup going.

“Since we’re out this way,” A.J. said cautiously, “we could just run over to Cuscawilla. Mama’s got a whole pharmacy in the bathroom there. And she’s still got cases of Diet Coke. She always kept it around because of you.”

I smiled wanly and kneaded my forehead. “I guess that would be all right. Just for a little while. I’ve got to work tomorrow, you know.”

“Just for a little while,” A.J. promised. “I’ll doctor you up and then take you right home.”

But he didn’t of course. We found the aspirin and the Diet Coke, and A.J. got me a damp washcloth and put it on my forehead. I only intended to lie on the sofa in the darkened den for a little while, until the headache went away, but when I woke up, it was after seven o’clock.

I was just sitting up when A.J. came in to check on me. “Feeling better?” he asked, sitting down beside me.

“Yeah,” I said. “The headache’s gone. Guess you better take me home. I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you like that.”

“It’s okay,” A.J. assured me. “I watched the Braves game on the
television in Mama and Daddy’s room. Braves are beating the tar out of the Mets, 6–0, bottom of the seventh.”

“Hey,” I said. “Where are your parents? Don’t they usually spend Labor Day weekend out here with all your dad’s golf cronies?”

“Nah,” he said. “They’re up in Highlands, with all my dad’s golf cronies up there.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to rush off in the heat of the day, do you?” A.J. asked. “Let’s get some wine and sit outside on the patio. It’s finally started to cool off, and there’s a breeze coming in off the lake.”

“That sounds nice,” I agreed. I secretly dreaded going back to the apartment right now. I loved my little nest, but sometimes, on nights like this, the walls seemed to crowd in on me, and I started to wonder why I was still living in a cramped efficiency just upstairs from the store. I was thirty-two years old. By now, I always thought I’d have a home of my own. And a husband and a garden, and a porch swing…I got up and hurried out of the den.

The patio at the Jernigans’ Cuscawilla house was something out of
House Beautiful
. I knew, because GiGi had found a picture in an old issue of the magazine, and insisted that I order that exact same set of Palacek wicker furniture, all sixteen pieces in that particular line, for the new patio. We’d even ordered the same fabric shown in the magazine. GiGi had balked, but I had managed to talk her into some pillows made of a coordinating fabric, and even some antique cast-iron urns that hadn’t been pictured in the
HB
spread.

I slipped off my shoes and sat back on an oversized chaise longue and looked out on the lake. It wasn’t quite dusk yet, and fireflies danced in the shrubbery at the water’s edge. A party barge chugged by, strung with twinkling white lights, and a woman’s silvery laugh floated across the water.

A.J. came out of the house with two goblets and a bottle of white wine stuck in a silver ice bucket. He poured me a glass and perched himself companionably on the edge of the chaise.

We sipped our wine and watched the sun dip across the horizon. Lights came on in the other houses across the lake, and we could hear faint strains of music.

“Been a funny summer, hasn’t it?” A.J. mused, his arm slipping around my shoulder just as naturally as if it had never left.

“Very,” I agreed.

“I’ll be glad when it’s over,” he said. “Weather will start cooling off. And I’ll be taking off.”

“Really? You going on a trip?”

“Sort of.” He grinned like a kid who’d found the toy in the Cracker Jack box. “I’m going up to Chicago for a few months. A college buddy of mine thinks I’d do great at mortgage brokering. He’s going to train me, show me the ropes, then get me set up.”

“For real? You’re leaving Madison?”

“For a while. I think it’s high time I got out from under my daddy’s shadow. I’ve been kind of bored for a while now, and this seems like a good opportunity. If it goes well, I’ll be back by spring, and set up my own office, right downtown.”

“Wow,” I said, squeezing his hand. “That’s terrific, A.J. I’m so proud of you. And I think it’ll do you good to get out of here for a while, kind of stretch your wings.”

“Just for a while,” A.J. said, stroking my hand with his thumb. “I’ve got a lot going on back here, you know.”

“I’ve got a busy fall too,” I said, trying to change the subject. I finished my glass of wine, and before I could resist, A.J. poured me another. “Will wants Mulberry Hill totally completed—and I mean right down to the last fish fork and salt cellar—by Thanksgiving.”

“Can you do that?” A.J. asked. “I mean, usually a big job like that takes you guys months and months. Hell, it took six months for us to get new furniture and drapes for the conference room at the bank when GiGi decided we needed a redo.”

“We’ll be pushing it,” I admitted, taking a sip of wine. “The thing is, I think Will wants everything ready because he’s about to pop the
question to Stephanie. And I know for sure that she’s expecting a ring any day now.”

“The boy works fast, I’ll give him that,” A.J. said admiringly. He nuzzled my neck. “It took me a whole year to get up the nerve to ask you. And it wasn’t like we hadn’t known each other our whole lives, practically.”

I sat up, spilling a little wine. “We didn’t know each other all that long, A.J. You were ahead of me in grade school, and then you went off to boarding school, and then Washington and Lee. I really didn’t get to know you until after GiGi hired me to redecorate The Oaks.”

“And it didn’t take a month after that until you’d tricked me into going to bed with you, you sly little vixen,” A.J. said, laughing.

I took another sip of wine and punched his arm, feeling warm and giddy and carefree for the first time in weeks. “Who tricked who? Anyway, you promised you’d take that secret to the grave. I am still mortified that I allowed you to seduce me like that.”

“Aw, don’t be mortified, Keeley,” A.J. said, landing a kiss on my shoulder. “That’s a memory I will always cherish, darlin’. You, up on that ladder in my bedroom…”

“And you looking right up my skirt,” I giggled, brushing away the hand that had managed to find a resting place on top of my left breast.

“Hey,” I said, standing up. “You know what I just realized? I bet the reason I had that headache is that I haven’t eaten all day.”

“No shit?” A.J. said. “That barbecue was amazing.”

“I didn’t eat a thing,” I said.

“Come on,” he said, standing up and tugging me by the hand. “Let’s go see what GiGi’s got out in the kitchen. We can raid the fridge. Just like that first time you stayed over.”

“You promised not to mention that again,” I reminded him.

“Not the sex, just the raiding,” A.J. said.

I sat at the kitchen table while he unloaded the weirdest combination I’d ever seen: jalapeño stuffed olives, a slab of cold lasagna, and
some green plums. But washed down with another bottle of Chardonnay, it tasted just fine.

When it was all gone, we went back outside and watched the show the stars were putting on. By now A.J. had squeezed himself in beside me on the chaise longue. “I’m still hungry,” he said, after a while. “Let’s go back inside and see if we can find some dessert.”

He came out of the pantry with a huge smile on his face, and a cardboard box in his hand. “Brownie mix,” he crowed. “Remember?”

“Oh no,” I said, backing away from him. “Not again.”

“Come on,” A.J. said. “It’ll be good.” We got as far as putting the mix in a bowl and adding a couple of eggs and some vegetable oil, before the situation totally deteriorated. Fifteen minutes later we were back out on the patio, eating raw batter with a wooden spoon.

“Mmm,” A.J. said, licking the last of the chocolate from my fingertips. “Remember the brownies we had that night?”

“No,” I said.

“Liar.” He kissed my neck, deliberately smearing chocolate on my blouse.

“Oh, here,” he said, “Let me get rid of that.”

I pushed him away, but he was as persistent as ever. I made a weak attempt to keep things under control, but I wasn’t having much luck, and to tell the truth, maybe my heart wasn’t in it.

“Come on, baby,” he whispered, reaching around me to try to un-hook my bra. “It’s the last night of summer. The worst summer of my life. And it should have been the best. I think about being in Provence, with that ape Nick. God. I stayed drunk most of the time.”

“At least you got to leave town,” I told him. “I was stuck right here in Madison. Your daddy was so mad he tried to force us out of business. Paige’s mom was threatening to sue me for slander, and my daddy got kicked out of the country club. Plus I was the laughingstock of the whole town.”

“Shhh,” he said, shutting me up with a long kiss. “That’s all behind us now, don’t you see?” He twisted his wrist so he could see his
watch in the moonlight. “Look. It’s almost midnight. I think we ought to celebrate. Right at midnight. Get a clean start.”

“And how are we going to do that?” I asked warily.

He chuckled and fumbled for the buttons on my blouse. “Just like the good old days,” he promised. “Before everything went to shit. Just you and me, and the moonlight. Remember when we used to sneak off to the shack?” He groaned. “I get wood just thinking about it.”

“So I noticed,” I told him, laughing and pushing him away.

“You know, Kyle finally talked Daddy and Vince Bascomb into putting his shack and ours on the market. Of course, Mama could not be happier, considering.”

Memories of Vince Bascomb’s forlorn cabin came flooding back to me now, and I shuddered involuntarily.

A.J. felt the shudder and pulled me closer.

“I was out at the Bascomb place last month,” I said. “It’s a complete wreck. Why has he waited so long to sell it?”

A.J. had worked his knee between mine, and his voice was muffled. “Damned if I know. Kyle has been after the two of them to sell for ages, but Vince wouldn’t budge, and Daddy thought it would bring more money if they sold off all the lots as one parcel. So he just waited Vince out. To tell you the truth, I think the old guy is in pretty bad shape. He’s broke, and he needs the money.”

“Yeah, I heard he’s pretty crippled up with arthritis,” I said.

A.J. looked up and kissed me hungrily. Nothing ever satisfied his appetites.

“Not just the arthritis,” he said after a while. He had my bra off, and his hands were tugging at the waistband of my shorts. “Now he’s got a brain tumor. Inoperable, poor bastard.”

Suddenly I had a mental image of Vince Bascomb, not as he must be now, ridden with arthritis and cancer, but as he was twenty-five years ago. The image was of him and Sonya Wyrick slipping off to that hunting camp in the woods. And of Drew Jernigan and Lorna Plummer. And yes, of my own mother and Darvis Kane.

I had deliberately pushed all these thoughts out of my mind minutes after we’d left that Waffle House in Kannapolis. But now the images came flooding back, unbidden. I felt my scalp prickle and goose bumps raise up on my arms.

“Come on, baby,” A.J. was whispering. “I can’t get this damn zipper of yours. Help a guy out, can you?”

I struggled upright so suddenly that I knocked A.J. off the chaise longue.

“What the hell?” he yelped. “What’s wrong with you, Keeley?”

I buttoned my blouse hurriedly. “Oh God, A.J. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a tease.”

He groaned and ran his hand through his hair. “Where are you going? You’re not going to just leave me like this, are you? I thought we were going to start over. I thought we had an understanding.”

I stepped into my shoes and smoothed my clothes, and looked around for my purse. “More like a misunderstanding,” I told him. “My fault this time, not yours.” I dropped a kiss on his cheek and ran like hell out of there.