Leaving Carolina (24 page)

“I need to think this through.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not saying we can’t work it out.”

He isn’t? Then I
should tell
him everything. “Grant—”

“I’ll call you later.” He hangs up.

Oh no. I call him back and, after three tries, leave a message. “Grant, please call me. There are… other things I need to talk to you about.”

I wait ten minutes, and when he doesn’t return my call, I console myself with a reminder of what I left behind in the kitchen. Providing Axel isn’t suddenly struck by a craving for pickled corn, I won’t want for comfort food—practically a whole jar to myself.
That
puts a spring in my step, and I enter the kitchen to find that Bridget and Axel have cleared out.

But I’m not alone. Oh no, I have company. Of the rodent, pickled-corn-thievin’ variety. I stare at the creature that is right on the island, right in front of the overturned bowl of pickled corn, right over my plate.

I open my mouth, and when a choked sound emerges, that
rodent has
the audacity to act put out. A kernel in one paw, it lifts its head, fixes beady eyes on me, and makes a sound between a hiss and a growl.

“You!” I lunge forward, but when I’m five feet and closing, Reggie keels over. Its upper body lands on the plate of ham and eggs, its lower half amid pickled corn that will never pass my lips. It looks dead—eyes closed, mouth gaping, and tongue lolling, the kernel lax in its paw.

Though it’s been a while since I’ve seen an opossum “play possum,” I recall that it will remain “dead,” unresponsive to the most determined prodding. “Nature’s mystery,” my fifth-grade teacher said after explaining that the opossum’s reaction to extreme fear is an involuntary comatose-like state and that resuscitation occurs once the body senses the danger is past. Which, in this critter’s case, could be a long time.

“You are
very
much in danger, so lay there and suffer.”

It opens an eye, and I startle back a step. It’s not supposed to do that. I look again, but the eye is closed. Did I imagine it? I lean nearer, and after a minute the eye opens and snaps shut again. “Some opossum you are!”

Its nose twitches.

“I saw that!” I grab a fork and nudge the rodent with the handle.

It doesn’t respond.
This
part it has down.

I nudge it again. “Get going.”

The screen door creaks, and Bridget pauses in the doorway with Axel looking over her shoulder. “What are you doing to Reggie?”

I pull the fork back, and the rodent immediately comes to life and makes for the opposite side of the island.

Bridget hurries forward to scoop up her “pet.”

“It got into the corn,” I say between clenched teeth.
“The
pickled
corn.”

She tucks the rodent beneath her chin. “Poor thing. She must have woken up hungry. And you had to go and frighten her into playing possum.”

“
I
frightened her? How do you think I felt when I found her in my dinner?”

Bridget bobs her head. “Wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t take calls in the middle of meals. Very rude, you know.”

“So it’s my fault?”

She makes a show of thinking. “I suppose I have to take some of the blame since I shouldn’t have left her here while Axel and I finished unloading my delivery.” She narrows her lids. “A mistake I will not repeat.” She retrieves the fanny pack, then steps to the screen door, which Axel opens for her.

That’s it? No “sorry”? “There’s something very wrong with that critter,” I call.

She sticks her head back inside. “Now you’re just being ugly.”

“It’s true. It has no idea how to play possum. It kept peeking at me.”

Bridget harrumphs. “She’s unique.”

I nearly point out that’s another word for
defective
but close my mouth at Axel’s bemused smile. Why am I behaving like a put-out teenager? At thirty years old and the voice of reason for my clients, I know better. And what happened to peacemaking?

Returning my focus to my cousin, I concede the battle. “You’re right; she’s unique. Thank you for coming all the way out here to make the delivery.” I nearly extend the thanks to her offer to share her pickled corn, but it might sound sarcastic under the circumstances. Intentional or not…

Bridget settles Reggie in the crook of her arm. “Tell Uncle Obe I’ll visit tomorrow when I bring the groceries.” She looks at Axel. “Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime.”

She turns, and though I expect Axel to follow, he walks farther into the kitchen. “I’m sorry about your dinner.”

I look around. “All that pickled corn. Wasted.”

“You really like the stuff.”

I grimace. “I do, but I guess it’s not meant to be.”

“Come up to the cottage. I’ll fry some for you.”

I step closer to him. “You have pickled corn?”

“Four or five jars left from those your uncle gave me last summer.”

Four or five? And he’s not a big fan of the stuff.

“If you’re worried I might have an ulterior motive, you can bring your pistol.”

Which I seem to have forgotten all about. Trying not to appear eager, I shrug. “When should I stop by?”

“I have some things to do before I call it a day, so give me an hour.”

A whole hour. “All right, I’ll see you at the cottage.”

A
ll is still as I traverse the path through the garden, the only movement that of clouds sliding across the sky upon which the scent of rain is carried. Rain that may or may not fall. I hope it does, since California rain is a distant cousin to Carolina rain, and it has been too long since I felt thunder radiate through me. Then there’s the lightning…

As I start up the hill, I turn my attention to what is waiting for me. I smell it long before I reach the back door, and when Axel calls for me to enter, I practically float in on the pickled scent, banging the screen door in Errol’s nose.

Axel stands at the stove with his back to me, and I falter when I see he’s changed into a casual short-sleeved top and cargo shorts. But what grinds me to a halt is his right leg—rather, its absence. In its place is a prosthetic that makes no attempt to appear anything but. I knew he was injured, but I had no idea of the extent.

“Five more minutes,” he says.

How did he lose his leg?

“Would you prefer to eat inside?”

Was it a grenade?

“Or outside?”

A mine?

“I can light candles to keep the bugs away.”

Maybe a bullet?

He turns, presenting a frontal view. The prosthetic is high tech, and suddenly I remember what Maggie said—or
almost
said—when we watched him and Devyn through the kitchen windows. She said he didn’t date seriously and thought it was because he was self-conscious about something.
This
.

“You didn’t know.” His tone shakes me free of my reverie.

I meet his gaze. “I knew you had been injured but didn’t know you had lost a leg. I’m sorry.”

His eyebrows rise.

“I mean, for staring.”

He considers me and then nods over his shoulder at the frying pan. “So?”

“Outside is good, providing the rain holds off.”

“I’ll bring it out.”

I nod. Soon, seated beneath a dogwood tree at a weathered wrought-iron table, I focus on the bowl Axel carries across the lawn for fear of staring at his prosthetic. It’s fascinating, not only the mechanics of it, but the missing details of how he lost his leg.

Axel steps around Errol, where he lies on his side, then continues to the table with a hitch that is more pronounced. Or is it my awareness of the prosthetic that makes it so?

Determinedly I give my attention to the bowl Axel sets on the table. The kernels glisten, and I close my eyes and breathe in the scent.
Thank You, Lord, for this delicious treat. And thank You for Axel losing only a leg and not his life
.

He takes the chair to my right and his Blue eyes capture mine. “All yours.” He nods at the bowl and pulls a lighter from his shirt pocket. “I only fried up half the jar, so you can take the rest with you when you leave.”

I don’t plan ahead for breakfast, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. “Thank you, and thank you for making it.”

As he lights the citron candles on the table, I lift the spoon and am tempted to look around to ensure there is no impediment to the corn making it to my mouth this time. Though I’m just shy of drooling, I pause. “You remember that I broke a jar? I didn’t know it at the time, but Uncle Obe keeps an inventory of his pickled corn.”

Axel smiles, and I know he knows what I’m about to say.

“So maybe I could buy a jar from you to bring his inventory backup.”

He shrugs. “By the time my appetite for pickled corn returns, your uncle will have canned a new batch. So they’re all yours. No charge.”

Oh, happy day! Well, Grant notwithstanding, but I’m not going to think about him. I’m going to enjoy every bite of my pickled corn. The spoon goes in, the spoon comes out, depositing sweetly sour kernels that light up my taste buds.

“Good?”

Only when I open my eyes do I realize I closed them. “Um-hmm.”

“Fried in a cast-iron pan, per your uncle’s instructions.”

Absolutely.

“Then Pickwick’s not all bad?”

I don’t mind Axel’s amusement, especially as the sparkle accentuates his Blue eyes. “Certainly not the pickled corn.” I scoop another mouthful.

“You seem to be getting along well with Maggie.”

True.

“And it looks as if you and Bridget are connecting.”

Now that’s a stretch. “In case you misinterpreted that last encounter, I was upset to find her rodent in my food, and she was upset that I had a problem with it.”

“Minor differences.” He grins, and I’m startled by the combination of mustache, teeth, and goatee—a rakish combination that makes him dangerously appealing. “I think if you give Maggie and Bridget a chance, you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Another stretch. I hold up a hand. “Give me five minutes to enjoy this, and
then
we’ll talk.”

The next half-dozen bites are wonderful, and I have to admit there must still be some of the South in me to enjoy pickled corn more than I enjoy the gourmet foods I’m acquainted with in my line of work. And that goes for two-hundred-dollar-an-ounce Russian caviar. Unfortunately, my awareness of Axel’s regard and proximity begins to interfere with my indulgence. I must look like a child hunched over a bowl of ice cream lest anyone steal a bite. I lower the spoon. I’ll heat up the rest later and finish it off to my heart’s content—in private.

I consider Axel, who looks a bit menacing as the dark clouds and approaching night overtake the light. “Why are you pushing Maggie and Bridget on me?”

He clasps his hands on the table. “A family is a terrible thing to
waste. I didn’t have much of one growing up. There was my father and mother as we moved from military base to military base. Then just my father when my mother passed away.”

“Your mother must have been young.”

“She died from complications of a miscarriage when I was thirteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

He inclines his head. “I know your relations are difficult, especially Luc and Bart, but Maggie and Bridget are decent. Though they’ve been dealt difficult cards—Maggie single-handedly raising Devyn and Bridget losing her husband—they’re holding up their heads as best they can. And with little support from their families.”

“You’re saying their parents aren’t there for them? If my memory serves me right, they were spoiled rotten.”
That sounded bitter
.

Axel stretches his legs out before him. “They hurt you.”

“There was no love lost between us.”

“Because they didn’t accept you and your mother.”

Talking about my relationship with my cousins was a bad idea. “You told me you don’t ask for names or details when my uncle confides in you.”

“I don’t, but sometimes he drops a name, and other times it’s obvious who he’s talking about.”

I lower my hands to my lap. “What else do you know about me?” Hopefully not my Fourth of July stunt.

“I know why you weren’t accepted.”

Thank you very much, Uncle Obe
.

Of course, it was hardly a secret that despite my mother being far down the social ladder, my God-fearing grandfather forced his
son to marry her after a backseat fling resulted in her pregnancy. The consensus was that Dory Fisk tricked the “catch of the county,” and her father showing up at the Pickwick mansion with a shotgun only inflamed such talk. Not that my mother wasn’t infatuated with Jeremiah Pickwick, but she didn’t plan the pregnancy to catch him. She made a mistake and I was the result.

“It doesn’t matter.” Axel’s voice is low and understanding. “It’s in the past and some people do change for the better. Just as you’re not the teenager who fled Pickwick twelve years ago, Maggie and Bridget are no longer the teenagers who were among the reasons you left.”

Until Maggie spent two nights with me, I wouldn’t have believed that, but this older “hard knocks” Maggie is more likable. Then there’s Bridget, who has been more responsive since my return to Pickwick than in all the years I lived here, as evidenced by her sharing her winnings. Of course, there’s that malfunctioning rodent of hers. But Bridget wasn’t all that bad.