'Til Grits Do Us Part Read online

  “Shiloh?” Adam’s phone line snapped and popped. “I’m losing you. Do you know who sent them?”

  “I’ve got a good guess.” My eyes narrowed. “And I’ll tell him to bug off.”

  “Who?” Adam’s voice came loud in a sudden burst of clarity.

  “Carlos, probably. The big bouquets are his style.”

  “Have you told him we’re engaged?” Adam’s voice heated slightly, and I heard the dying groan of the UPS truck engine. “I’m pulling over. Hold on.”

  “No, I haven’t told him anything—because we haven’t talked since he showed up here last year.” Showed up is an understatement. Among other things, he’d tried to sweet-talk me into marrying him for a green card so he could jump-start his new modeling career on American runways.

  I could see the headline: HOTSHOT MODEL USES BANKRUPT EX-FIANCÉE TO CATAPULT HIMSELF TO FASHION FAME. Personally, I had a lot more respect for Carlos when he was a rich, arrogant stockbroker.

  I dug through my supple leather purse for my wallet and pulled out a glossy international calling card. “I’ll call him right now.”

  “Good, because if you don’t, I will. It’s probably close to midnight in Tokyo, though, you know.”

  “Too bad for Carlos.” I closed my purse. “So, I’ll see you after work Friday then?”

  “Looking forward to it.” Adam paused, sounding not quite ready to hang up. “Listen, I’m so sorry I can’t meet you tonight, Shiloh, on your birthday. I hate that you have to wait. But I’m a trainee, so I can’t choose my own hours like I used to.”

  “Don’t worry. Friday’s fine.” I winced, remembering when Adam had hired his own contractors and signed their paychecks. “We can meet at the park if it’s not raining.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll bring your flowers.”

  I leaned back in the chair, not quite ready to say good-bye either. “Okay. And thanks for the arrangement you bought me.”

  “Oh, I didn’t buy this one. I made it. With some of my leftover bulbs and things. I hope you like it.”

  “I’ll love it.” My throat tightened a little as I thought of him there in his hulking delivery truck, hauling boxes instead of kneeling over green saplings, his fingers dirty with fragrant Virginia soil. “Do you miss being a landscaper, Adam?”

  The line weighed silent a moment, and I heard a car whiz by Adam’s truck. “A little,” he said finally, the line crackling around the edges. “But not as much as I like being able to marry you.”

  I told Adam good-bye, put my head down on the cool desk, and scrunched my eyes closed. Because it was, after all, my fault he’d sold his business. My fault he now wore brown polyester and stacked packages instead of setting his own hours.

  But now wasn’t the time for sentiment. I had a dragon to vanquish. A dragon with a Spanish accent.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got to say, eh, Carlos?” I dialed and held the receiver a little away from my ear, as if his gorgeous Argentinian good looks and sultry voice might zap me into hypnosis even over the phone line. Not that he could pull me away from Adam. But Carlos’s brilliant, beautiful smile reeled in women the way Tim reeled in trout—by the bucket load.

  At least I’d managed to unhook myself from his line before it was too late.

  The phone clicked as someone picked up. “Hi, Carlos?” I said.

  “Hi?” demanded a female voice in a decidedly suspicious tone. “Who’s calling?”

  I ignored her challenge and raised my voice. “Could I speak to Carlos, please?”

  Silence. “Hold on.” And then again, defensive and demanding: “Who is this?”

  “Look, should I call back later?” I tapped my pen. “I’m kind of busy here, and Carlos definitely needs to hear what I have to say. So please put him on the line.”

  I heard muted words, the staticky sound of the muffled receiver, and Carlos’s angry voice came crisp and clear: “Moshi moshi? Hello? Who’s calling?”

  “This is Shiloh.” I tapped my fingers on the desk, trying to sort out my words. “Sorry to bother whatever you’re…uh…doing.” I smirked. “But we need to talk. Who’s that, by the way? Mia Robinson again? Wow, so soon after coming here and flashing your ring at me. I should be surprised, but I’m not.”

  “Why are you calling me?” he growled. Not bothering to cap his sentence with the customary amor’s and princesa’s I knew so well from our brief engagement.

  “Because I’m getting married in August. And if these flowers are from you, no thanks.”

  “Why would I send you flowers, Shiloh? You mean nothing to me.”

  The last words hit me with a punch I didn’t expect, but I righted myself like a stumbling tango dancer, a thorny rose between my teeth. “That’s not what you said a few months ago,” I muttered, jabbing him with the stem. “But the feeling is mutual, Carlos.” His words suddenly registered. “Wait—you didn’t send me a bouquet?”

  “Of course not. I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Right. After I refused to let you freeload off me. I know how you work.” I kept my tone icy and detached. “Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing you didn’t send these. Because whoever did is going to be in big trouble. And not just with me. Comprendes?”

  I paused. “And don’t you dare say a word about me and the stupid cow. Got it?”

  And I hung up on the longest, most profound silence I’d ever heard from Carlos Torres Castro.

  So Carlos hadn’t sent them after all.

  I stared at the offending roses a few minutes, thinking, the quiet office swirling around me. Then I reached for the phone book and paged through until I found Rask Florist.

  “This is Brandy,” said the woman who picked up. “Can I help ya?”

  “I need to know who sent me this rose bouquet.” I told her my name and information then turned the vase around, hunting for the card. “Did the card come typed already, or did someone at your store type it?”

  “I don’t know nothin’, hon. Sorry.”

  “Nothing? You can’t tell me anything at all?” I tapped my pen on my desk in frustration. “Don’t you have any records? Receipts?”

  “I reckon, but I don’t know where they are. I’ll leave a message for Tammy to call ya. She’s the manager.”

  “When will she be in?”

  “Uh…I dunno. This afternoon, maybe? Sorry.”

  I threw down my pen. For crying out loud. Even calling Carlos had been more profitable than Brandy at Rask. Sheesh.

  I dropped the phone in its cradle and pushed my chair back then strode through the cubicles and plopped the vase on Chastity’s desk. “There’s a mistake. These must be for you. Jeff’s always sending you flowers.”

  “What? These?” She looked up in surprise from her computer screen, which she’d plastered with photos of Jeff in heart-shaped frames. “No way. I never let Jeff get me roses this dark.”

  “But they’re not from Adam.”

  Chastity squinted up at me. “Isn’t your name on the card?”

  “Yes, but nobody else would send me a love message like that. It’s got to be a mistake.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I can’t keep them, Chastity. It’s weird.”

  Chastity reached out a perfumed arm, adorned by a gold charm bracelet, and turned the arrangement around. “I only accept roses from one shop in town.” Her nose turned up. “And it’s not Rask.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Well, don’t you think Jeff might have…I don’t know, gotten you something different?”

  She turned frosty eyes to me like I’d suggested she wear Uncle Herb’s overalls to work. “Something…different. No.”

  I dumped the roses on a side table, which was still littered with the remains of Priyasha the marketing woman’s birthday cake, and tossed the card in the trash.

  “To my angel. I can’t wait to share my life with you only, no matter what.”

  The words stuck in my head like a bad ’80s song: the singer’s long, puffy hair shivering on the last note. Not that I’
d say that to Kyoko, who glorified everything ’80s. Especially if it came clad in black or pounding an angry British guitar.

  It felt…weird. Just a little bit. I dug the note out of the trash and tossed it in my desk drawer—just to be safe.

  The mail cart squeaked by, laden with FedEx packages, and I glanced up at Clarence. His frazzled white-and-gray head looked like he’d just stood in front of a high-speed fan and hair-sprayed the result.

  “You’re sure you don’t know who sent the flowers, Clarence? You usually bring in the mail.”

  “Don’t look at me. Chastity took the delivery. I swear I had nothin’ to do with it.” He grinned and stroked his grizzled chin with a wrinkled, ink-stained finger. “But I did get a pitcher of you on my cell phone with some cow. What were you trying to do, push it over? If so, you were doin’ it all wrong.”

  I gripped my face in both hands.

  “It’s more in the arms and upper body. Less wrists.” Clarence flexed his forearms. “And you need more leverage—like maybe brace your leg against a fence or something.”

  “Go!” I pushed Clarence’s mail cart away before I did or said anything that got me fired. “Just go. I’m sorry I asked, okay?”

  Clarence Toyer. I shut down my computer for the day and pushed open the exit door, wondering who on earth would ever hire a guy as weird as Clarence. He’d been at The Leader forever, so I heard, and spouted all these ridiculous conspiracy theories about Marilyn Monroe and the JFK shooting. He and his rumor-spreading ways creeped me out. As well as his rather robust appreciation of female beauty.

  Lucky for me, Clarence had settled on my eyes. Singing songs about “Bette Davis Eyes” and quoting wacko poetry about “thine orbs of spring.”

  Perhaps that’s why Japanese employees smoked so much—so they could get away from annoying coworkers like Clarence.

  I clopped down the stairs in my trendy Manolo Blahnik heels—an old leftover from my days in high-fashion, urban Japan when I actually had money. Back before I got fired and ignominiously booted out of my cushy job at the Associated Press. I opened the door to the street, dodging splattery raindrops, and unlocked my (formerly Mom’s) white Honda and headed toward home. Out of the narrow city streets and into meandering country roads painted silver with rainy mist.

  Mom had lived outside Staunton, in the rural reaches of a little hamlet of Churchville—a.k.a “the middle of nowhere,” as Adam had labeled it once in a crude, hand-drawn map. Sapphire curves of the Blue Ridge Mountains appeared over the rain-wet pines, dusky with heavy-hanging sky.

  And then I heard it: the telltale rev of the engine under the hood as I pressed the gas and my speed refused to budge. The distinctive burning odor of transmission fluid wafting from under the hood.

  Great. Great. Great. I banged my head back against the spongy headrest, dreading another car-repair bill. Another chunk of my cash forked over forever, leaving me counting dimes and clipping more coupons. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even found a wedding dress yet! At this rate, for my wedding I’d wind up with tacky blue silk carnations from Wal-Mart and Twinkies on a paper plate.

  Hold on a second. I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, trying to remember what the last repair guy had said about Mom’s transmission. Something about it being pretty new and to hang on to the warranty.

  Right. As if I should know where a late parent I hadn’t seen in years had stored her transmission warranty.

  The engine revved again as I turned down the rural country road toward home. I slowed my speed then gently pushed the accelerator until the revving stopped—careful not to tax the transmission. If I found Mom’s warranty, maybe, just maybe, Adam wouldn’t have to spend his last pennies replacing another car part of mine. Or hot-water heater. Or whatever he chipped in last to have fixed.

  “Come on, house,” I murmured under my breath, turning down the short, winding road that led to my little redneck subdivision of Crawford Manor. “Just sell. Please. And then we’ll have all the money we need and then some.”

  I followed a dilapidated Chevy down the wet lane, turning left at an iconic green CRAWFORD DRIVE street sign. Trying hard not to gawk at the double-wide parked over in the lot to the right. A horse inside a gnarled pasture fence gnawed on something suspiciously like an old toilet plunger.

  Small, blocky country homes built just like mine lined the puddled streets—each with a different colored vinyl or wooden siding in various stages of wear and tear. Wooden shutters. Satellite dishes. Screen doors and birdbaths and narrow front porches supported by decorative pillars.

  I turned before my TITANIC FARM AND REAL ESTATE sign into Mom’s neat gravel driveway, which thankfully sported nothing more than trimmed forsythia shrubs, tastefully arranged geraniums, frosty-green juniper bushes, and bright summer marigolds (thanks to Adam). An American flag fluttered from the front porch, and roses cascaded in a colorful froth from her flower beds. Brown country shutters. Fresh creamy-tan siding and brown-shingled roof.

  And No. Country. Music.

  Or bluegrass. Whatever Tim called it.

  I parked and headed up the deck steps at the side of the house, pausing to touch a fistful of Mom’s white blooms that poked through the wooden railing. Roses that should have reminded me of yesterday. Of redemption. Of all the changes in Mom’s life, and in mine, blooming fresh and clean and astonishing.

  But now they just made me think of the weird bouquet back at work.

  “Christie?” I unlocked the door and poked my head into the laundry room, keys jingling over the sound of her happy barks.

  She barreled into me, licking my face, as I struggled to keep my grip on my purse, keys, folders, and laptop case. Becky had thrust Christie at me in a cardboard box last fall—all glistening eyes and trembling whiskers and wet puppy nose—and sucker that I am, I took her in. And, yes, even named her after a NASCAR driver, per the current trend among my Staunton-ite friends.

  Pets are a death knell for three things: (1) immaculate furniture, (2) spontaneous weekend getaways, and (3) selling real estate. But seeing as none of those ever happened to me anyway, I’d decided to take my chances with Christie.

  I squatted there in my snazzy heels and work pants, laughing as Christie covered my arms and chin with kisses, practically knocking me onto the off-white linoleum on my back.

  What could I say? After years of silent Japanese apartments, it felt nice to be missed.

  “Come on, Christie.” I nuzzled her head as I stood and brushed off my pants, stepping over my discarded running shoes. Then I slipped out of my heels and into soft Japanese house slippers. “Let’s see if we can find that warranty in Mom’s stuff and save us a couple of bucks.”

  First things first though. A hot cup of green tea. I dropped my purse and laptop on the table and reached for my black Japanese teapot, a carryover from my time as a college exchange student, homestay participant, and two glorious years as one of the top reporters at the Associated Press’s Tokyo bureau. All of it gone now, lost in the rumble of jacked-up trucks.

  I poured water and set the pot on the stove, preparing my bitter matcha green tea powder, spoon, and favorite teacup by rote. And then I shoofed my way into Mom’s bedroom in my slippers, Christie at my heels.

  “Oh, Mom,” I sighed, pushing open her bedroom door and taking it all in: the simple wooden dresser and mirror that had been hers. Butter-yellow curtains and flowered bedspread. The closet that once held her pantsuits for work as a special-ed teacher at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind, and Indian-style blouses in wild colors for off days. The antique trunk at the foot of her bed that still cradled her secrets.

  “Where would you keep your transmission warranty, Mom?” I spoke out loud, causing Christie to poke her head out from under the bed and smile at me, a stray clump of dust on her nose.

  Yep. Dust. How many months since I’d vacuumed under that bed? Too many, obviously. Not surprising since almost all my spare time went to (1) work, (2) driving the long, winding roads t
o and from town, and (3) standing in line at Food Lion hoping I had enough cash to buy boxed macaroni and cheese.

  And now here I sat, preparing to dig through journals and tax returns and students’ papers all layered in Mom’s trunk like archaeological strata. Cross sections showing the final years of her life—a life I’d brusquely ignored on my heady march up the corporate ladder. Without a backward glance or second thought.

  And perhaps, too, in part to numb the pain of my long-ago past—bitter nights of beatings, loneliness, and hunger of the stomach as well as the soul.

  I slipped to my knees and sorted through the stacks of papers and files, lifting off tax documents, income statements, and W-2 copies. Boring safety manuals from work. Social Security statements and school meeting notes. Everything crisp, professional, unemotional.

  Christie poked a curious nose over the edge of the trunk as I piled more papers on the floor, trying not to soil my white, tailored dress shirt with newsprint and the grime of years. “Recipes,” I said, dropping another handful of stuff. “And birthday cards. Lots of them.”

  None from me though. Not after Mom spoiled my growing-up years with her cult chasing, psychedelic tea drinking, and nervous breakdowns. Weeks in and out of mental asylums and leaving me—just a nervous, skinny slip of a kid—rooting through empty cabinets in search of crumbs.

  I put the cards away and tried not to think of the terse phone conversations I’d had with Mom after I moved to Japan. The nervous tremor in her voice when she said, “I’m sorry,” and the cold steel in my heart as I hung up the phone, telling her not to call.

  The memories stung now, making a painful well in the hollow of my heart.

  Especially when I reached into the trunk again and pulled out a thick stack of letters—stamped letters, postmarked and mail battered—bearing my various addresses. Cornell to Nara to Osaka to Tokyo. Tied with a blue ribbon into a tight brick.