Part 10 (1/2)
”You're not the only one who has doubts, you know. You don't have a monopoly on that.”
”Are you saying you're not sure we should get married?” Lindsay asked. She was ashamed to admit that she had never seriously considered that Warren could experience the same kinds of uncertainties and insecurities that she did. He always seemed to proceed with such an abundance of caution and care that it seemed impossible he could doubt his decisions.
”No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's not like I have a crystal ball that guarantees everything's gonna be okay. I thought long and hard before I asked you to be my wife. I think we make a good team, and I've never cared about anyone's opinions as much as I care about yours. And I would do anything to keep you safe. But I can't do any of that if you keep shutting me out like this. At first I thought you just needed time away from everything. It hurt, but I could handle that because I thought I understood you. But I can't handle it if the only thing you need time away from is us. Or me. How can we build a future on that? That's not a basis for a marriage. That's me driving around town until I find you holed up in your house with some other guy.”
”We weren't holed up here, Warren,” Lindsay said desperately. Now that her initial anger had faded, the emotion that took its place was fear-fear that she might have pushed Warren further than she meant to. ”I don't know how to explain it. I was just in a weird place mentally, and the longer it went on, the harder it became to talk to you.”
”Stop,” Warren said quietly. ”You know what? I'm done.”
”Are you dumping me?” Lindsay asked.
”I love you, and as much as it kills me, there's probably nothing you could ever do to me that would change that. But it finally dawned on me that if you loved me, you'd run towards me when things get bad instead of running away.”
”I'm sorry I hurt you. Please, let's talk about this,” Lindsay pleaded. Tears were now streaming freely down her cheeks, in contrast to Warren's cheeks, which were bone dry.
The affection seemed to have drained from his brown eyes. In that moment, Lindsay realized that she'd brought about the very thing that was at the root of her fear of commitment. She had been afraid that there was something broken deep inside her, something that made her deserve all the bad things that had happened in her life-her parents' abandonment, her aunt's coldness, the unattainable standards her father had set for her, her first fiance's betrayal, her mother's deceptions, her victimization by Leander Swoopes-all of it. She'd thought she was damaged goods, so she'd nurtured a dark s.p.a.ce where her flaws had been magnified. Her inability to trust her instincts had left her feeling that committing to Warren might be the wrong choice, and now she'd lost her chance at a life with him. She'd been so terrified of trusting him with her whole heart that she'd locked him out of it permanently. The weight of her failures ached so much she thought she was going to stop breathing.
”Now you want to talk?” Warren answered with another bitter laugh. He shook his head. ”There's nothing left to say. Good luck. Hope you find somebody who can make you happy.”
Chapter 14.
”When did you get home, honey?” Simmy asked Lindsay, as she and Dunette walked into the kitchen of Lindsay's house. The two women had just returned from Simmy's weekly physical therapy appointment in Greensboro to find Lindsay sitting at the kitchen table paging listlessly through a book, with Kipper stretched out at her feet.
”Just a few minutes ago. It was really quiet at the hospital today, so I was able to leave early,” Lindsay replied, forcing a smile.
In truth, her s.h.i.+ft at the hospital had been quiet. So quiet in fact that she'd been left with too much time to wallow in her own misery. Rob had stopped into the chaplains' office during her s.h.i.+ft to find her crying uncontrollably. It had been a week to the day since Warren dumped Lindsay, and each day it seemed to become more difficult to put on a brave face at work. Rob had done what he could to improve her spirits, but decided it would be best if he called in one of the pool chaplains and sent her home early.
Lindsay, Kipper, and Simmy had moved back into Lindsay's house the day after her fight with Warren, and although in some ways the added chaos and lifestyle adjustments couldn't have been timed any worse, it was an unexpected blessing to have the perpetually forward-looking Simmy in her home. It didn't hurt that Dunette-warm, rea.s.suring Dunette-was also an almost daily presence. So far, Lindsay had been able to keep herself together in front of them in part because she didn't want her great grandmother's arduous rehabilitation and the transition to her new surroundings to be made even more difficult by her despondency. But Lindsay had to admit that it was also pretty tough to remain glum around a woman who'd spent the morning doing outlandish, self-styled yoga poses and giving a glitter manicure to Kipper while belting out Ella Fitzgerald songs at full volume.
”How was aqua therapy?” Lindsay asked.
”Wet,” Simmy said, hanging her pink metal cane over the back of a chair and using her fists to knead circles on her hips. ”And that new physical therapist is a born s.a.d.i.s.t. Like Stalin in swim shorts. But on the plus side, Dunette finally took me to the liquor store. We now have what it takes to make a house a home: a fully-stocked bar.” She gestured toward the paper bags Dunette had set on the countertop. ”It was shameful how little alcohol you had in the house before. I know you're your father's daughter, but I'd hoped that you'd at least get some of my good traits.”
”Like your iron liver?” Dunette said with a smirk.
Simmy's alcohol intake had been severely curtailed during her months in the rehab facility, and she'd made it clear that she intended to make up for lost time.
”It's my philosophy that life goes along a little easier when it's properly lubricated,” Simmy replied, removing the largest bottle of Maker's Mark Lindsay had ever seen from one the paper bags. ”You could join us, you know, instead of standing over there clucking like an angry hen,” Simmy said, lifting the bourbon bottle by the neck and giving its contents a little shake.
”You know I don't drink on the job. And even if I did, I have church in the morning, and some of us don't think we should be showing up to the Lord's House drunker than Cooter Brown,” Dunette said, folding her arms over her ample chest. She cast a sharp eye at Lindsay. ”When I took a job working for a minister to look after an old lady, I didn't know there'd be so much hard drinking.”
Lindsay threw up her hands and shrugged.
”Can I remind you,” Dunette continued, ”that Simmy's doctor said she's supposed to be eating a healthy, balanced diet to support her recovery?”
”My diet is as balanced as they come. Whatever food I eat, I balance it out with an equal amount of liquor,” Simmy quipped. ”I reckon bourbon is gonna be one of those things like cholesterol. First they say it's bad for you, but later they find out we should've all been guzzling it by the gallon this whole time. I'm just ahead of the curve.” She raised her gla.s.s. ”To Cooter Brown and good Christians!”
Dunette tried to look stern, but it was impossible not to laugh at the br.i.m.m.i.n.g joie de vivre of the tiny woman, with her perfectly bobbed wig, her neon pink lipstick, and her gypsy-style dress of diaphanous, batik-patterned silk. Lindsay smiled, too, glad to see more and more of the old Simmy beginning to s.h.i.+ne through. Although Lindsay didn't support her great grandmother's excessive drinking, her constant adoption of the latest pseudo-scientific health fads, or the way she left a trail of messiness and dis...o...b..bulation everywhere she went, she was secretly relieved to see more and more of the older woman's vim returning. Simmy still had great difficulty maneuvering, but having Dunette around had restored much of her internal spark and confidence. Lindsay couldn't help but notice with a twinge of painful nostalgia that the banter between the two women mirrored the kind of Odd Couple back-and-forth that the free-spirited Simmy and Lindsay's stern Aunt Harding used to engage in.
”What were you reading, honey?” Simmy asked, picking up a book from the table in front of Lindsay.
”A history of Lumbee Indians, written by a Lumbee woman who's a professor at UNC,” Lindsay said. ”I realized when I was talking to Angel and Geneva the other day that I don't know very much about them, so I ordered this and a couple other Lumbee history books on Amazon.”
”You want Lumbee history? You should come home with me sometime,” Dunette laughed. ”Just go into any barbecue joint where the old Lums hang out and they'll tell you about Henry Berry Lowrie like he was their daddy.”
”You know, a lot of my cla.s.ses focused on Southern history in college, and I'd never even heard of Henry Berry. I was just reading the chapter about him,” Lindsay said.
”Any s.e.x in this?” Simmy asked, looking the book over dubiously.
”Well, there's a romance that's even better than Robin Hood and Maid Marion,” Dunette said, settling into a chair to tell the story. ”Toward the end of the Civil War, the Home Guard boys got a little too big for their britches and started hara.s.sing the Indians, especially ones like the Lowries who had a bit of land and money put by. So Henry Berry and some others started fighting back. They laid out in the swamps around Scuffletown so they could raid some of the rich folks' farms and then distribute what they stole to the poor people.”
”That's robbers, not a romance,” Simmy interjected.
”Hold your horses. I'm getting to that part,” Dunette said. ”Henry fell in love with Rhoda Strong, the most beautiful girl in the whole county,” she continued. ”Even the newspapers wrote about how pretty she was, called her the Queen of Scuffletown. The two of them met in secret for months. Finally, they got married, and his family threw a big enfare, that's a big reception party for them. But somebody had tipped off the Home Guard that Henry Berry had come out of hiding in the swamp, and they rode in and arrested him at his own wedding reception.”
”So they didn't even get a wedding night?” Simmy said. ”That's why I don't read books unless they have a man without a s.h.i.+rt on the cover.”
”That's not the end of the story,” Dunette said. ”A few days afterwards, Rhoda Strong came to the prison with a cake for her husband. Later that night, the prison guard found a half-eaten cake, and an empty cell with all the iron bars filed through. Henry Berry lived as an outlaw around Scuffletown for the next ten years, but he snuck meetings with Rhoda whenever he could.”
”Well, I guess that's better than nothing,” Simmy said.
”Speaking of the Lowrie Gang, have you ever heard of a place called Burnt Island?” Lindsay asked.
Dunette furrowed her brow in concentration. ”There's a Burnt Island Road out in the county. But there's nothing out there. Maybe a house or two, but I've never been back in there. I only know about it because I grew up out there and the school bus would go past. Why do you ask?”
”Burnt Island Road just dead-ends into forest and swamp. But I'm sure that has to be the Burnt Island Boughtflower mentioned. He also mentioned a man that died. It fits too perfectly to just be a coincidence. One of the Lowrie Gang's hideouts was Burnt Island Swamp, but there's nothing really left of that place. The area's all been drained, and the rivers and creeks keep moving, so there's nothing left of what was there in Lowrie's time. And we know Boughtflower was there or at least close to there, during the Battle of Hayes Pond.”
The front doorbell rang, and Lindsay pushed her books aside and rose to answer it. In what had become an involuntary ritual each time the phone rang or the doorbell sounded, she closed her eyes and willed the person to be Warren. She'd had no communication from him at all since the previous Sat.u.r.day, despite her repeated attempts to contact him. He'd turned the tables on her, and now she saw how it felt to have the object of your affection suddenly drop out of reach.
Kipper raced ahead of Lindsay and stood in front of the door, emitting a series of ferocious barks.
”Kipper, heel,” Lindsay commanded. The dog took a step backwards but retained his laser-beam focus on the door.
The face that appeared in the gla.s.s pane of the front door was one she never could've antic.i.p.ated-the small window framed the round, ruddy visage of Otis Boughtflower's son-in-law, Yancy.
Lindsay unlocked and opened the main door, but left the screen door closed to keep Kipper from lunging at the visitor.
Before she could utter a word of greeting, Yancy's mouth fell open.
”You?!” he said.
She met his baffled expression with one of her own. ”Mr. Philpot. How can I help you?”
”What are you doing here?” he sputtered.
”I live here,” she said slowly. ”You're at my house.”