Page 17

Chapter 14

D ixie Minette’s house—an Italianate Victorian painted a shocking Pepto pink—was located halfway down (no surprise) Minette Street. The place was blazing with lights when we drew up. An enormous University of Georgia flag whipped from a pole beside the front steps. The wraparound porch was packed with people, and I could hear a bluegrass group’s music floating from the backyard. We parked behind a row of golf carts.

As we mounted the front steps, I recognized a few of the new families. The Brennans, who owned the bakery that supplied Billie’s pastries. The Undergroves—the vet and wedding planner—and a collection of faces I recognized from the restaurant. The old-timers—the Dalzells, Cleburnes, and Minettes—must have been inside.

Tilda Brennan grabbed my arm. “Billie. You’ve got to tell us how you managed to talk Mayor Dixie into selling you the Dalzell-Davenport house. Before you moved here, Ned and I made an offer on it. A real offer with six figures, okay?” She made eyes at the group. “And all we got was a flat no.”

I blinked at her, then at Peter. “I don’t know. I just asked.”

“Please tell me you didn’t get it for a hundred dollars. I swear I will die,” Tilda said.

Everyone laughed. Ned, her husband, shushed her, but all eyes were on me.

“Sorry,” I said.

Tilda clutched her chest in mock pain.

“No offense, but what makes you guys so special?” Dr. Undergrove said. “Why sell to you and not anyone else?”

“She’s a celebrity,” someone retorted. “A famous restauranteur.”

“Oh God, no, I’m not,” I protested.

“Did you have celebrities at your place in New York?” someone else asked. “Like celebrities we’d know?”

“Oh. Well, yeah. Occasionally.”

Breathless silence.

“Pacino came in pretty regularly for a while. Taylor Swift, once, I’m told. I missed that auspicious occasion, just my luck.” They all nodded appreciatively.

Tilda Brennan was assessing me closely now, with narrowed eyes. “They wouldn’t even give us a tour of the house.” She was really stuck on the subject.

“You might’ve dodged a bullet,” Peter said wryly. “I can’t sleep a wink in the place. We’re starting to think it might be haunted.”

This started a whole new conversation, this one about what establishments in town might be haunted. I made our excuses that we wanted to grab drinks and pulled Peter into the house.

The inside of Dixie Minette’s home was rich, opulent, and thoroughly Southern—a manor fit for a gentry of long ago. Each room was done in brilliant jewel tones of blue and peach or gold and green. Every floor was either marble or inlaid wood. The rugs, though threadbare, appeared to be priceless, and there had to be a mint worth of heavy antique sterling silver crowding every surface. The heavily scrolled letter M was embroidered in gold thread on pillows, throws, and even a few curtains.

The kitchen was completely renovated with walnut cabinetry and the biggest black enameled and brass range I’d ever seen in my life. Outside, a bluegrass quartet had set up in one corner of the vast expanse of flagstone. I could see guests milling about, drinking, dancing, and laughing. At the rear of the yard, beside what appeared to be an outside kitchen house, people gathered around a stone firepit. A constellation of glowing cigarettes lit the darkness. I saw Jamie Cleburne standing next to Alice. He wore a rumpled button-down shirt, untucked, and shorts with leather slides. She wore a pale blue slip dress and had one languid hand draped on his bare arm.

I glanced over at Peter. “Want to go outside?”

“Sure.”

After we made our way across the yard accompanied by a bluegrass rendition of Journey’s “Faithfully,” Peter surprised me by grabbing my hand and swinging me into his arms. We settled into each other with ease, feeling the music. He pressed a hand against my back, surrounding me with his embrace. I let a long breath out and rested my head against his. He smelled good, spicy and warm and like the man whose every shade and tone and mood I had always known intimately. The man I still wanted.

“I never thought I’d hear this particular version of this song,” I said.

He laughed. As we danced, my heart settled into his heart’s rhythm. After the third song, he released me, grabbed two bottles of beer from a washtub heaped with ice, and handed me one. He kissed me on the cheek just as Toby Minette, Dixie’s son, hooted at me.

“Billie!” he called out. “My favorite restauranteur! I see you brought your better half.”

Toby, in his early forties, was resplendent in a madras plaid pair of trousers and a pink polo shirt. He ambled up, his arm around a young Filipino woman wearing a simple black dress. He offered a hand to Peter. “Nice to finally make your acquaintance, and a formal welcome to Gentle Juliana. We do so love your wife around here. And her hotcakes.” They shook and Toby squeezed the woman’s shoulders. “This is Ronnie. She owns—”

“—the home goods store,” I finished with him. “I’ve heard. Nice to meet you, Ronnie.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Ronnie said.

Toby looked at her, eyes shining. “Can you believe my luck? The Initiative goes live in March, this girl moves down, and boom, four months later, she makes me the happiest man in the world. And just in time. For a while there, I was worried I was going to have to marry one of these Juliana girls. But you know what they say . . .”

Peter and I looked at him expectantly.

“ ‘Kissing cousins make damn scary babies.’ ” He burst into laughter, and Ronnie rolled her eyes.

“You two are getting married?” I asked.

Ronnie held up her hand. A huge diamond twinkled on her ring finger. It looked old and really expensive. Above it, on her wrist, dangled a delicate gold bracelet with two charms. The band lit into a bluegrass rendition of “Magic Carpet Ride.” Peter and I exchanged glances.

Ronnie let out a little nervous giggle. “It happened really fast—” she began.

“Fast girls win trophies,” Toby broke in. “That’s all I’m saying.” He snickered at his own joke.

“The ring is gorgeous,” I said to Ronnie. “And so is that bracelet.”

“Thank you. That was a gift from my future mother-in-law.” She showed me the small charms hanging from a single link on the bracelet. “See, there’s an R for Ronnie and a J for Juliana.”

So this was one of the charms Jamie had mentioned. The ones they all pressed kisses to after saying the town grace. I didn’t know why exactly, but at the sight of it, a ripple of foreboding shot through me. I wondered what qualified someone to receive one of those charms. Maybe marrying into one of the original families.

“Lovely,” I said.

I glanced back up at the house. Dixie Minette, wearing a blood-red jumpsuit and gold heels and standing with Ox Dalzell and Jamie Cleburne, looked down at our little group with a calculating expression.

Toby followed my gaze. “Ah. The old guard, plotting their next move.”

I raised my eyebrows in question.

“The three families who really run this place.” Toby raised his bottle in a toast. “The old guard. So now you know who to go to if you need anything done quick.”

Dixie had turned back to Ox and Jamie, who were now listening intently to the mayor. They all seemed very grave. I wondered what they were talking about.

Toby eyed Peter. “I haven’t seen you around much. We were wondering if you were some kind of hermit or something. Mr. Billie Hope.”

Peter smiled tightly. “I’ve been really busy with work. I’m a therapist.”

“Well, we hope we see more of you at our get-togethers. You two are something on the dance floor. You know, there’s dancing at the country club out Highway 86 every Thursday night. Live music, too. Sometimes bands from down in Atlanta or Savannah or even Nashville if we’re lucky. There’s a great golf course, too. If you’re a golfing man, Peter, it might be worth applying for membership.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “I’m not sure we can afford a country club membership.”

Toby flicked his fingers, sweeping away Peter’s argument. “Sure you can. The membership committee’s always open to a deal.”

“I can’t give away any more free meals,” I said, not entirely joking.

Toby laughed. “How about some free sessions for me and Ronnie from the good doctor here, then? Premarital counseling?” Toby leaned closer to us. He smelled like whiskey and ocean-scented cologne. “Y’all know we dodged a bullet here in Juliana. Close call, before the town council came up with the Initiative.”

“No kidding?” Peter asked. “What kind of bullet?”

Toby lifted his eyebrows. “They were gonna bring a car plant here.” He looked at both of us with meaning. “And you know what that means. God-knows-who coming up from Atlanta to work at the factory. Moving in, eventually. Illegals. Folks who don’t value education and work or bettering themselves.”

Interesting logic, I thought. Thinking people who signed on to work a grueling full-time shift at a car plant didn’t value hard work.

“I hate to say it,” Toby went on, “but some people are trash, and that’s what they’ll always be no matter how many opportunities you give them. Those people don’t want to work. They just want handouts.”

I looked at Peter. He just lifted his eyebrows, his smile steady and closed-lipped.

The guy just wouldn’t stop talking. “Anyway, when they rolled out the Initiative, everybody in town thought it was just a genius idea. It was the answer, you know? The way we were going to keep Juliana separate from that enormous, expanding monster-squid called Atlanta. The Initiative’s going to keep us out of the path of urban sprawl. Keep us our own self-sufficient town. Because that’s what it’s all about, right? Making sure Juliana stays the way she always has. And that can’t happen if we don’t get the right kind of people here. Like you folks.”

I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. I could feel the waves of tension rolling off Peter. The banjo music was really starting to grate on my nerves.

“That would’ve been a lot of money for the town,” he said. “An automobile plant. Is there another company the town’s pursuing instead?”

Toby fake punched my arm. “Well, we got Billie’s raking in the dough over there on the corner of the square. That’ll do us for a good little while, I guess, don’t you?” Toby glanced up, suddenly noticing his mother glaring down at him from the back balcony. I saw him twitch uncomfortably under her gaze and hitch up his pants. “All right then, we’ll skedaddle. Y’all enjoy the party.” Toby clutched Ronnie’s hand and whisked her away, into the darkness beyond the bonfire.

“Okay, you literally just met the worst guy in town,” I said. “Everybody’s better than him, I swear.”

“Guy talked like the Initiative’s some white supremacy, mail-order-bride operation.” Peter curled his lip in distaste.

“He’s just one guy,” I said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. “I think we should give the club a try.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sure they’re some nice people there. And Mere could stand to improve her swimming skills, maybe learn tennis.” What I didn’t say was how inviting the idea of a weekly dance sounded—the only occasion I might be able to regularly feel my husband’s warm, strong arms around me.