Sweetgrass (29 page)

Adele’s face mottled and she said thinly, “I’ll send you the bill.” She pushed the button and the window rolled up.

Morgan yanked back his hand and was left staring helplessly at the darkened glass. He looked at the antenna in his hand with defeat. Muttering a curse, Morgan threw it on the ground and stomped back toward the house, his heels digging into the soft roadbed. As he climbed the first step, Hank came out from the house onto the porch. They both halted abruptly and stared at each other as the tension between them shot skyward. Morgan clenched his hands into fists. He felt the cursed papers crunching against his skin.

Hank paused a moment in indecision, fear pulsing in his eyes. He straightened his tie and hurried down the stairs past him, his heels pounding against the wood.

Morgan let him pass without incident. Hank was a small fish. His daddy had taught him to save his bait for the big ones.

INSIDE, THE HOUSE
was dimly lit and quiet. His father’s room was closed and a light shone beneath his door. He knew that Kristina would be settling his father for the night. He was glad of it. He didn’t want his father present for what the rest of them had to discuss.

Light poured from the back porch and he followed the scent of freshly brewed coffee. He found Mama June, Nona and Nan serving coffee without any of the earlier laughter or chatter. Elmore, Harry and Chas sat in an uncomfortable silence around the table, glumly waiting. Morgan sighed at the threshold. All eyes turned toward him. He never felt their dependence more.

Mama June stepped forward to give him a soft kiss on his cheek. “Is she coming in?” she asked, referring to Adele.

Morgan shook his head. “She left. With Hank.”

Mama June’s face fell with disappointment. “Well, that’s that.”

“I tried to talk to that woman, but she’s not budging. These are legal papers here. It’s legit. The deal with Daddy was more than a handshake. Right now, Adele has a buyer for the property and she intends to sell it, with our cooperation or without it. It appears we’ve no choice. Adele’s lawyer is coming with her buyout offer in the morning.”

This was met with the expected round of angry denials and disbelief. Morgan watched his mother. She sat with her hands clasped on the table before her and said nothing.

“I hate that this is happening,” Nan blurted out.

“Yeah, why is Dad doing this?” Harry asked. He was sulking and slouched in his chair. “What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t he care about us? I mean, isn’t he part of the family, too?”

“It’s because he’s a jerk,” Chas said, his chin jutting out.

“Children, don’t talk about your father like that,” Mama June reprimanded them. “Even though we don’t agree with them, I’m sure both he and Adele are doing what they think is best.”

“The best for whom?” Nan retorted. Her anger against her husband flared in her eyes. “Adele stands to make a fortune from this deal. She’s already bought up the Mitchell piece.”

Morgan’s eyes widened with surprise. “That
whole
Mitchell piece?”

“Kit and caboodle. The plan is for another development to go in with I don’t know how many houses.”

“Lord, there goes my sweetgrass!” Nona exclaimed, raising her hands in dismay. “They’ll be putting up their No Trespassing signs in no time!”

Elmore nodded, his eyes grave. “It’ll be gone to us, that’s for sure. Time was, sweetgrass used to be everywhere for the taking. Grew like a weed. Same with bull rush and pine
needles. Now with all this building, I can’t hardly find it nowhere. If we lose our sacred spot, I just don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan told them, head bent. “I wish I could have saved it for you.”

“Child, it’s not your fault,” said Nona, patting his hand. She’d known this boy since he was born. He was a good boy and this wasn’t his burden. “You came home to see your sick daddy. No one expected you to change the way the tide was flowing.”

Nona quickly bent to pick up her large black purse from beside her chair. “We’d best be going now,” she said, giving Elmore a pointed glance. “Thank you for inviting us for dinner.”

Elmore’s long, lean body rose with quiet dignity.

Morgan turned toward his sister. When Hank delivered the legal papers to Morgan, Nan had exploded with fury. Mama June, worried lest Preston be disturbed, had urged the two upstairs to talk privately. Obviously it hadn’t gone well. Nan’s eyes were red-rimmed, and her face pale and taut.

“Are you going home?” he asked her.

“No. Mama June said the boys and I could spend the night here.”

He glanced at Harry and Chas. The boys slumped in their chairs and stared at their hands.

“I see,” he said, thinking to himself that his sister finally hadn’t backed down to Hank. That was something, at least.

“We’d best be off to bed, too,” Nan said. “Boys…”

“I thought I could find a way out of this,” he said to their retreating backs. “Bobby and I have been working on a plan, but with this loan, well…” He swallowed hard, feeling the crushing weight of their disappointment. He lowered his head and spoke softly, more to himself. “There’s no way we can pay back that amount. There just isn’t time. I’m sorry.”

Later that same evening, Mama June came to Preston’s office and peered in. She saw Morgan sitting at the large partner’s desk that had been used by his father, his father’s father, and his father before that. A modern touch was his laptop computer. Morgan was on the Internet again, no doubt researching legal terms, his fingers tapping across the keyboard.

She didn’t want to disturb him. Adele had delivered a terrible blow to the plan he’d been working on with such hope. She could see his desperation in the tension of his face and the intensity of his tapping. But this couldn’t wait. Reaching up, she knocked gently on the door.

He looked up quickly, startled by the interruption.

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Come in. Of course not,” he said, rising to his feet.

“Sit back down, please.”

He waited until she sat before returning to his chair. She looked around, not quite believing what a shambles the room had become since Morgan took possession. She’d thought Preston was disorganized, with all his tilting piles of books and papers. But this looked like a hurricane had hit. The room was stuffy and smelled of tobacco and old socks.

“I’ve come to talk to you about something important,” she began.

Something in her tone alerted him because he promptly turned off his computer and gave her his full attention.

“First of all, I appreciate what you’ve done, son, to help me here at home. I know how hard you’ve worked. I couldn’t have expected more. But as you said, our hand is forced. I don’t want you to feel badly about how it’s all turned out. Who knows?” she added with a slight lifting of her shoulders. “It may be for the best.”

He opened his mouth to argue the point, but she pressed on.

“When you arrived, you asked me, rather persistently, what it was I wanted to do. Do you remember?”

Curious as to where this was headed, he nodded. “I remember it well.”

“I asked that you help me bring Preston home to heal. We’ve succeeded in that and I believe it’s done him a world of good. If that’s all the time there is, then that’s the Lord’s will. I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done.”

“I appreciate that, Mama.”

She took a breath. “You might also recall that I wanted your daddy to be well enough to make whatever decision had to be made concerning Sweetgrass. Morgan, your father must be told.”

“What?” he asked with astonishment. “No, not yet. If you tell him this, he might relapse from the strain.”

“No, Morgan. He’s my husband. And he’s still the head of this family.”

“Mama…”

“I won’t be dissuaded,” she replied, raising her hand to halt his argument. “From the start I said the final decision must be his. That’s what all this was for.” She rose slowly to a stand, feeling every one of her years. “I’ll tell him.”

“Wait,” Morgan said. He stood. “Please, let me tell him. This was my job. I owe him that much.”

Morgan stood outside his father’s room, looking in. The narrow beam of light from the hall formed a cone, revealing Preston lying on the bed in the center of the room, sleeping soundly. He thought back to when he first saw his father in the hospital and how he’d been so shocked to see his vibrant father trapped in his paralyzed body, unable to communicate. He’d made progress since then, but not nearly enough.

This was a sad, pitiful time, he thought. He couldn’t stand seeing his father like this. It shook him to his core. Even when Morgan was a young buck, his father could still kick him in the butt to get him out of bed and do his chores. Now the tables had turned. His father was helpless and weak. No one really knew what was going to happen to him.

He pulled the door slowly, the cone of light narrowing.

His father slipped back into darkness, and with a soft click, the door between them was again closed.

Morgan left the confines of the house and started walking.

He didn’t care where he was headed, he just had to move and put some space between himself and the people in the house.

Out on the porch, Blackjack was dreaming the dreams of wolves in the open night air. Yet at the sound of Morgan’s footfall he raised his head, then dragged himself to a stand, his rear legs shaking with the effort. His black tail wagged in welcome, and without a word needing to be spoken, the old dog followed Morgan down the stairs to pace at his side.

The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he walked, and he felt a slow unwinding of the coil of tension in his chest. Lifting his nose to the wind, he breathed deeply. The breeze often picked up late in the evening, carrying with it the sweet-scented moist air that was, to his mind, a signature of islands. He loved his ranch in Montana. He enjoyed falling asleep in the crisp chill of the mountains and closing his eyes while outside his window he heard the serenade of owls, the eerie cries of a mountain lion and the skittering of unknowns in the dark.

Yet he couldn’t deny that the balmy breezes off the ocean that tasted of salt softened his bones and brought him to his knees.

It was why he’d had to stay away. It was too hard to come home. Sweetgrass ran in his blood along with the genes of all
the generations that had gone before him. Hate it as he might, he loved this place.

And his father would shake his head and say it was typical that Morgan would only realize this when he was about to lose it.

Morgan felt dog weary and empty of spirit. He was a war-torn soldier who faced his losing battle. On this night before the surrender, he felt for the first time a connection with his long-dead ancestors who had once fought and died for a lost cause. His father had always told him that there was nobility to failure. That fighting for something one believed in, even if the battle was ultimately lost, was heroic.

Morgan wished to God he could feel one small shred of heroism. Where was the sense of self-worth and confidence of character that his father had declared shone in the brave knight’s heart? Where was the unshakable belief in one’s righteous purpose that gave the samurai the courage to plunge the knife?

His greatest agony was not that he’d been unable to hold on to this land. To have achieved that would have been pure magic and luck. The history and pageantry of the once-proud plantation known as Sweetgrass would persevere, even if in another’s care. The dead would take care of themselves.

No, he saw his failure reflected in the eyes of the living who clung to the promise that the land would always, somehow, hold them together. That this great old house and avenue of ancient oaks and cragged bluff over water and waving sweetgrass by winding creeks were, intrinsically, vitally, essentially
who they were.
When they looked at him, they believed that he could save the place, and thus, save them.

Well, he couldn’t. He was no one’s savior. He couldn’t even save himself.

He walked the avenue, thinking how he’d spent the better part of his life seeking isolation. Yet tonight, under a sliver of moon along this singular, narrow road, with an old dog at his heels, he’d never felt the oppression of his loneliness more.

“Go on back to sleep,” he told Blackjack when they returned to the house.

Blackjack looked up at him with indecision in his dark eyes, sensing that something was not right.

“Go on, old friend,” he said, patting the dog’s broad head. “I’ll be all right.”

Blackjack shuffled off, climbing the stairs in his slow, arthritic gait.

Morgan turned to walk a short distance farther, measuring each step, ending up at the small, white brick house with a Charleston green door. Raising his hand, he knocked.

After a few moments a light turned on, shining through the windows to pierce the darkness. The door swung open.

Kristina stood before him with one hand on the door frame, wearing what looked to him like boxer shorts and a camisole. He’d remember later that it was stretchy and lavender-colored, with tiny pink flowers along the neckline. At that moment, however, all he saw was her incredible hair, an aurora borealis framing a sleep-worn face, and large, expressive eyes that seemed to understand the depths of everything he felt without a word being spoken.

She opened her arms to him. And bowing his head, he entered.

The hour was late. Mama June had just finished her evening Bible reading when her bedroom door swung open and Nan rushed in, her eyes wide. She clutched her long, white cotton nightgown in fists and the fabric rustled the air as she ran to her mother’s bed.

“What! Are you all right?” Mama June asked, taking off her glasses and setting them aside with her Bible.

Nan climbed up on the bed, tucking her toes under her nightgown and leaning against her mother. Her face was pale but her blue eyes were bright.

“You’re shivering. Here, put this throw over your shoulders. What on earth happened?”

Nan blinked hard, as if she was trying to make sense of it all. “I…I just saw a ghost!”

Mama June fell back against her plump pillows. “No!”

“I did!” Nan said breathlessly. “I can’t believe it!”

“I can. Tell me what happened.”

“I…I was crying in bed, boo-hooing like a baby, when I got this weird sort of feeling, like I wasn’t alone.” She spoke quickly with excitement. “I looked over and there at the foot of my bed I saw this… I don’t know how to explain it. It was kind of like a blurry white figure.”

“Wearing an old-fashioned dress?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, surprised that her mother would know this. “And a cap. Mama, do you think it was Beatrice?”

“I do. Darlin’, you just saw your great-great-something grandmother.”

Nan stared back at her in disbelief. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“You wouldn’t be the first one.”

“I know. I’ve heard the stories all my life. But I never believed them.” She cracked a smile. “I sure do now!”

Mama June chuckled, wondering what Beatrice was up to, appearing to both her and Nan. “I’m a believer, too. I saw her myself. Not too long ago.”