Waking Up in Dixie (25 page)

“Okay, okay,” Howe relented, then called back to Ernest Foster as if everything were perfectly normal. “Could you take over the meeting for me, Ernie? Gotta run.”

They didn’t wait to hear his answer.

After five minutes of frozen silence from Elizabeth on their way home, Howe looked over at her and said, “I had no intention of causing so much trouble. Really.” He sighed. “A little trouble, yes. I mean, they needed shaking up a bit.”

“A
bit
?” escaped her. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “And when were you planning to tell me about
your
plans for the Organ Fund?”

“Oh. That.” He looked out the window. “Well, we had to get you elected, first.”

“We? And who is
we
?”

“Well, I came up with the idea, but I called Elaine before your Whine and Cheese, and she thought it was great. She took the ball and ran with it.”

“You called Elaine and set it up, without asking me if that was what
I
wanted?”

“Damn, Lizzie. You make it sound like some kind of evil plot. You’ve told me for decades that Mama wouldn’t let the guild
accomplish anything. I realized it was time that changed. So sue me.”

“You should have talked to me, first,” Elizabeth told him. “As it is, I feel used.”

“Used?” He bristled. “I was only trying to protect you, so Mama wouldn’t blame you.”

Howe might be a changed man, but he still didn’t get it. “Nice thought, Howe, but you know what they say about good intentions.” She turned left past the town square, toward home.

“I am your wife, not your child. You say you want things to be better between us, then you pull a stunt like this. You should have talked to me, first.”

“But I told you, Mama would—”

“Forget Augusta,” Elizabeth said. “She’s always hated me and always will. I have a right to know when you’re thinking of doing something that affects me.” She turned onto their street. “If you want to fix our marriage, you can start by confiding in me. Trusting me with your plans. Taking my opinions into consideration. If you had, that disaster back there wouldn’t have happened.” She stabbed her pointer finger at him. “And don’t try to tell me God had anything to do with what you did at that vestry meeting. It was pure chaos.”

Howe looked back out the window as they turned onto the driveway. “Maybe it needed to happen. People got plenty mad at Jesus when he tried to put the emphasis back on faith instead of religion.”

Elizabeth braked to an abrupt halt. “You are
not
Jesus!” She gathered her purse in a huff. “And Keith was right: the state of
other people’s souls is God’s business, not yours.” She threw open the door and tried to get out, only to be caught back by her seat belt. “Aaaagh!” She fumbled with the latch.

Howe reached over and laid a staying hand on her arm. “Elizabeth, I’m sorry. Please don’t give up on me.”

She shot him a skeptical glance and found the lines in his face deepened by doubt. “I did the wrong things for so long,” he told her quietly. “I don’t even remember how it started, but little by little, I put my soul to sleep. Stopped caring about anything good. Stopped feeling anything. I was dead inside. And now I’m alive. God gave me a second chance.” His hand slid down her forearm to take hers. “I know it’s been hard for you. But I’m really trying. I can’t go back to stuffing everything into a black bag in the back of my brain. I feel things. I see things for what they are, and I have to tell the truth. I have to try, at least, to do the right thing.”

Elizabeth looked at him. “What about us, Howe? Where do we fit into these grand notions of yours?” She was so tired from the past six months. So weary of trying to keep everything together. “You say you want to be a good husband to me. Well, good husbands don’t humiliate their families. They don’t go off half-cocked, alienating people. They don’t cook up schemes and manipulate situations—in church or anywhere else.”

“Ouch.” He frowned.

Elizabeth had to make him see, and deeply resented the necessity to do so. “Howe, do you ever think about me or the children when you’re planning these things? Did you think about how your mother would feel about losing the only real authority
she has left anymore?” Lord. She couldn’t believe she was taking up for her mother-in-law. “Forget your reasons. Did it ever occur to you that what you did was selfish?”

He looked stricken, staring out the windshield.

Lord. Was she being just as selfish, wanting him to understand? The question gave her a headache. “I’m just asking you to talk to me when one of these ideas comes to you. Trust me.” She unlatched her seat belt. “I know it won’t be easy for you. We haven’t talked for so long. But if you want this marriage to have a chance, you have to trust me.”

Even as she said the words, she flashed on P.J.’s face, and felt ashamed. Do as I say, not as I do.

Howe nodded. “I’ve really screwed up, haven’t I?”

That was something she never heard from the old Howe. “You meant well,” she excused out of habit.

His brows drew together as he looked across their manicured lawn to the magnolias that flanked the yard. “Damn, I got it so wrong.” His fist clenched in front of his belly. “Gives me this huge knot.” He faced her. “I want so much to be the man I should be, but obviously I don’t know who that is.” He suddenly looked old, and defeated.

Elizabeth hadn’t intended to punish the man. “Lord, Howe, it’s not the end of the world.” She was royally ticked off at him, but he looked so defeated. “I don’t expect you to be perfect. Nobody does, not even God. I just want you to talk to me about things. No more plots.” She exhaled sharply. “It feels way too much like before. I can’t go back to the way things were before.”

He winced. “Okay. No more plots.” He unhooked his seat belt, a thoughtful expression replacing his discouraged one. “Okay.”

They both got out. He turned to her and said across the hood of the car, “Sheesh. Maybe I
ought
to become a Baptist,” in an effort to lighten things up. “Or better yet, a
Pentecostal
.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “What would you say to that?”

In spite of herself, Elizabeth had to laugh. “Your mother would have a heart attack.”

He grinned, clearly glad to see her temper ease. “If I did, would you come with me?”

Lord, he could be winsome when he wanted to. “No. But feel free to try it if you want to. I just want to be there to see the look on your mother’s face when you tell her. And Patti’s.”

“I’ll talk to you about it before I do anything rash,” he quipped.

The phone was ringing as they came inside. Probably Howe’s mother calling to weigh in. Howe headed for the cordless receiver on the credenza. “I’ll get it.” He picked it up. “Hello?”

A surprised look claimed his features. “Oh, hi.”

Not his mother.

He turned his back to Elizabeth, reminding her of many a suspicious phone call from the past.

Elizabeth’s antennae went up.

“I guess that would be okay,” Howe told the caller. “What time works for you?” He straightened. “Oh, really? Well, I don’t see why not. I’m free.” Pause. “Okay, then. Thirty minutes, it is.” He hung up and replaced the receiver.

“And who was that?” she asked.

He turned, a mischievous look on his face. “The Baptist minister. He wants to have a chat.”

Baptist minister, indeed. Was he lying?

Elizabeth didn’t ask. She had no stomach for confrontation after the debacle at church.

Patricia clambered down from upstairs to halt on the landing and confront them. “Daddy! What have you
done
? I have never been so mortified in all my life! Five people have called me about it already.”

“I guess the blood’s in the water,” Howe told Elizabeth dryly.

“I guess it is,” she said. “And I’m leaving this one to you to clean up after.”

As he headed up the stairs to do just that, Elizabeth’s cell phone rang. She fished it out of her purse.
Out of area.
“Hello?”

“I just heard,” P.J. told her. “Elizabeth, I’m concerned for your safety. The man’s not right. I really think you should leave him. Or get him to leave. It can’t be safe for you, the way things are.”

Elizabeth bristled at his proprietary manner. “Who told you?” Did he have somebody from Whittington reporting to him?

“That doesn’t matter,” he dismissed.

“It matters to me,” she retorted. Howe was loopy, but he wasn’t dangerous. “I was there. You weren’t.” Why was she defending Howe?

“I heard the meeting ended up in a brawl,” P.J. countered.

“That’s nonsense,” she said, surprised by her own protectiveness. “Tempers flared, but Howe didn’t hurt anybody. All he did was challenge their hidebound attitudes and try to get them to
help the hard-hit members of the church. It wasn’t tactful, but it wasn’t aggressive. Keith McDonald was the one who was aggressive. If he’d treated me the way he treated Howe, I’d have coldcocked the old blowhard, but Howe didn’t.”

P.J. chuckled. “I’ll bet you would have.”

Where was P.J., anyway? Listening over the transom at St. Andrew’s? “How did you find out what happened so fast?” she demanded. “My car’s not even cold from bringing him home. Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter where I am,” he answered.

She’d tolerated that deflection one time too many. “When I ask you a question, it matters,” she bit out, focusing all her frustrations on that. “And I expect a real answer. If you ever patronize me again by saying it doesn’t matter, I’ll hang up and block your number from every phone I can get hold of, and it will be the last you’ll ever see or hear of me.”

“Whoa,” he soothed. “Sorry. Force of habit. I say that in business all the time, but I promise not to answer you that way ever again,” he said. “I care about you, Elizabeth. What you’re going through. How you feel. I want to see you. Help you.”

He’d said the same thing so many times before, and she’d been drawn in by it, but this time, P.J.’s declaration of concern didn’t ring true.

Elizabeth’s phone beeped in, giving her a welcome excuse to end the conversation. “I have to go. I have another call.”

P.J. didn’t respond.

To her surprise, Augusta’s name and number showed on the screen.

Elizabeth told P.J., “I’ve got my hands full, here. I’ll get back to you once things have settled down, but I can’t talk about any of this now, and I can’t come to Atlanta. Please give me some space to get things straightened out.”

His response was a cool, “If you insist. But I still don’t like it that nobody’s looking out for you in all this.”

In the past, that would have made her feel appreciated. Now, it only made her feel pressured, for some reason. And annoyed. Maybe it was his paternalistic attitude. “I’m a big girl. I can look out for myself.” She ended the call, and the phone beeped again.

Elizabeth looked at the phone’s screen and considered not switching over to Augusta’s call, but putting Augusta off only made the woman more vicious. So she braced herself and answered. “Hello.”

“Elizabeth, this is your mother-in-law.” Augusta’s tone was brisk. “After that railroad job at guild, I vowed to wash my hands of you. But subsequent events have prompted me to reconsider for the sake of the family.” That was new! Augusta never reconsidered anything. “For Patricia’s sake,” she went on, “I’m willing to put my feelings aside. The time has come for you and me to ally ourselves.”

Elizabeth couldn’t believe her ears. Augusta never forgave anyone after she’d written them off. The woman had half a dozen grudges older than Elizabeth, still as fresh as when some slight, real or imagined, had created them. “What would possibly make you want to do that, Augusta?” Elizabeth asked mildly.

“Howe is clearly ill. He must be sent where he can get help,” her mother-in-law announced. “Somewhere he cannot humiliate
the family, for as long as it takes him to come to his senses. No self-respecting man in his right mind would have done what he did at that vestry meeting. My lawyer is drawing up the commitment papers as we speak.”

She couldn’t be serious! “Augusta, while I agree Howe’s behavior was embarrassing—and ill-advised—it was hardly grounds to have him put away.”

“He insulted the vestry and every member of our church,” his mother accused. “And he was violent!”

“He was not violent,” Elizabeth defended. God only knew what people were saying. “I was there. Even when he was seriously provoked, he didn’t get physical. Granted, there were some heated arguments going on, and Keith McDonald tried to get rough, but there was no violence.”

“You’re his wife,” Augusta dismissed. “Of course you’re going to put the best possible complexion on the matter, but our family name is being dragged through the mud all over town. This cannot continue.”

Elizabeth decided she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “Augusta, Howe is your son. Why are you so quick to throw him under the bus? I should think you’d defend him, especially after what he’s been through.”

“Do not dare to lecture me about my own son, missy,” Augusta ordered. “I’m only thinking of what’s best for him. He’ll thank me in the end. How will he feel after he comes to his senses if we let him run amok now?”