Blackberry Winter

“The truth would probably work,” she said, and he laughed, hopefully an indication that she was forgiven for causing him such a major inconvenience.

“The call-waiting just beeped,” he said. “Catch you later.”

He abruptly hung up, and Loran stood holding the phone, still full of apologetic gratitude for what could only be described as a piddling display of empathy and understanding. She would have probably apologized a few more times if not for call-waiting. She tried to imagine what Maddie would have said and done in this situation. She might have said the same things Loran had—but she wouldn’t be feeling so tentative. Of that, Loran was certain.

“You are not your mother’s daughter,” she said out loud.

CHAPTER 2

T he new guest shivered suddenly and moved closer to the fireplace. Meyer Conley kept glancing at her as he stacked the heavy cedar logs carefully into a wood box hidden behind an oak paneled door next to it. She stood looking at the flames.

“It’s turning colder tonight,” he said after a moment.

“I’m sorry— What?” she said.

“It’s turning colder tonight,” he said again, as if that possibility permitted his intrusion into her thoughts.

She looked at him and smiled suddenly. “I like your haircut. Does it have a name?”

“Cheap,” he said, and she laughed softly.

“It reminds me of the boys I grew up with, their summer haircuts.”

“Get buzzed in May and it doesn’t grow out until school starts,” he said.

“That’s right. I had one like it myself not too long ago.”

“Yeah?”

“It looks better on you, though.”

She was teasing him a little bit; he understood that. But she wasn’t being suggestive or flirty like some of the Lilac Hill guests. It was done more in a kind of natural friendliness some people seemed to have.

She went back to staring at the fire.

“My grandfather used to make things out of cedar,” she said after a moment. “It’s a little hard to watch these cedar logs going up in smoke.”

Something in her voice made him look up.

“I know this old man—he’s Cherokee, I think. Anyway, he says cedar smoke will take your prayers straight up to heaven. It’s not so bad if you think of it that way, I guess.” He put another log into the wood box. “So what did your grandfather make then?” he asked. “Out of cedar.”

“Oh…trinket boxes. Pencil holders and wall plaques.”

“You mean the kind they sell to the tourists, the ones with the poems on them?”

“Hillbilly humor,” she said, and he smiled.

“Some people might call it that. Was he from up around here?”

The woman abruptly looked over her shoulder toward the front windows without answering. Apparently, she was expecting someone.

Mrs. Jenkins, the owner of the B and B, came to the doorway. “The second room is for two nights, too?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

“You might find you like our little valley enough to stay longer—isn’t that right, Meyer?” Mrs. Jenkins called to him. He hated being dragged into this kind of token social banter with the guests, but it went with the job. All in all, he preferred to start and end his own conversations.

“Just might at that,” he said anyway. “A lot of people decide to stay longer than they expected to. It’s helped me out more than once.”

“Meyer is the competition,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “When he’s not teaching at the community college.” The condescension in her voice was heavy enough to pick up and drop-kick. He’d been brought up to behave and not embarrass his kin, however, so he let it go. He also needed the employment Mrs. Jenkins so kindly provided.

“My little place can’t compete with a house like this,” he said, still stacking wood. “I get the deer hunters and the fly fishermen.”

“Your cabin is…charming. Meyer built it himself,” Mrs. Jenkins said, neatly putting him back in his place as wood-carrying employee, whether he sometimes taught at a community college or not. She turned her attention to her new guest. “Did you say your daughter would be here this afternoon?”

“She should be here any time now,” the woman said.

“Would you like some coffee while you’re waiting? Or tea?”

“I would love some tea,” the woman said. “Earl Grey, if you have it.”

“Just make yourself comfortable,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “I’ll bring it to you in here. You can enjoy Meyer’s nice fire. Meyer, are you about done there?” Mrs. Jenkins asked, more to show her diligence as an innkeeper than because she wanted to know.

“Almost,” he said.

“Well, leave some extra logs on the back porch.”

The woman sat down in a Queen Anne chair near the window. “I hope she gets here before dark,” she said, more to herself than to him.

Mrs. Jenkins brought the tea almost immediately, setting the tray on a low table, and then taking her leave. The new guest sat for a moment looking at it, then leaned forward and poured herself a cup. She looked so…sad, suddenly.

Meyer checked for any wood debris he might have dropped on the carpet, then stood to go.

“I hear a car turning in,” he said, and the woman immediately went to the window to look out. “Nice vehicle,” he said of the big luxury SUV that was coming tentatively up the drive.

“That’s her,” she said, smiling and crossing the room quickly to get to the door that opened onto the back porch and the parking lot.

“You made really good time,” he heard her say after a moment, and he stood back as she returned with an attractive younger woman he supposed was the daughter she’d been waiting for. The daughter glanced at him as she passed and he gave her a nod of acknowledgment. She looked flushed and unsettled.

“Welcome to Lilac Hill,” Mrs. Jenkins said from the doorway. “Are you hungry? Would you like some coffee or tea? Your mother was just having hers in here by the fire.”

“No, I’m fine,” the younger woman said, getting her cell phone out of her purse. “I need to make a phone call,” she said to her mother. “And then we’ll…catch up.”

“The reception is better if you’re outside,” Mrs. Jenkins said. She pointed out the nearest window. “There along the path that leads up to the gazebo is the best place.”

“I’ll be right back, Mother,” the younger woman said.

She went outside, and her mother walked back to the Queen Anne chair and sat down again. Meyer could hear a sudden burst of laughter from somewhere upstairs—the other guests or the help. The woman did, too. He could tell by the way she stopped midway in the reach for her teacup to listen, as if she found it upsetting somehow. She let the tea go and leaned back in the chair, passing her hand briefly over her eyes.

He toyed with the idea of saying something to her—just to see if she was all right—but he didn’t. If anything was the matter, it was none of his business. His business at the moment was the Lilac Hill fireplace. He went to get another armful of cedar logs.

The reception wasn’t any better outside. Loran walked farther up the steep hill, finally standing at the bottom of the gazebo steps before she tried again. This time, when she punched in the number, it went through.

She stood waiting in the cold wind for Kent to answer.

“Hello?” someone said finally. The voice wasn’t Kent’s. The voice wasn’t male.

“Don’t answer the phone!” Kent yelled in the background. “Damn it—!”

“It was ringing, silly,” the first voice said. “It might be impor—”

There was a sudden click and the line went dead. Loran stood staring at the phone in her hand. Her first impulse was to redial the number, but she stopped halfway through.

Her heart was pounding and her fingers trembled.

So.

She abruptly sat down on the steps of the gazebo, understanding now. She had been attributing Kent’s recent distraction to his trying to close a lucrative deal with the man whose first wife looked like her. Now, however, she could give it a more precise name.

Celia.

Celia was the newly divorced investments counselor at the banking firm where Kent worked, the smart, pretty, ambitious and self-assured one, who had come into Kent’s office without knocking one afternoon when Loran was there. The kind of woman Kent admired. A woman a lot like Loran herself, actually—except that she was annoyingly younger.

Damn it, Kent!

She didn’t feel like apologizing now. Already she knew how this would go. He would be oh, so offended that she would jump to such an unflattering conclusion about him and a woman he worked with, whether she’d answered the phone or not. He’d try to convince Loran that he was the wronged party, and, when that didn’t work, he’d tell her that Celia didn’t mean a thing, that it had just “happened.”

And Loran would show him that she was Maddie Kimball’s daughter after all. She would tell him to get the hell out of her house.

Her house.

She wondered suddenly if having had a father would have made a difference, whether she would have been better at maintaining meaningful relationships with men if someone like Andrew Kessler had been in her life, someone who would have carried her when she wanted to be carried and let her walk on her own when she didn’t.

Of course it would have, she thought immediately. How could it not? Even if she’d had a bad father, she would have been better able to tell the gold from the dross—and before the wrong person answered the phone.

She gave a wavering sigh and put the cell phone into her coat pocket, wiping furtively at the tears she suddenly realized were sliding down her cheek.

“Do you smoke?”

“What?” she said, startled. The man she’d seen in the house stood a short distance away from her.

“I asked you if you smoke.”

“No,” she said shortly.

“I was going to offer you a cigarette. I carry a pack around in case one of the guests needs one. You’d be surprised how often that comes up. Quitting tobacco just doesn’t take sometimes, especially if there’s a bump in the road. I’ve got this great aunt—Nelda, her name is. She thinks she’s quit dipping snuff. And she’s just fine as long as the sun shines on her back door. But you let the least little thing go wrong and she’s right back at it.” He paused long enough to make her glance at him. “So how about this instead?” he asked.

He stepped forward and held out a peppermint candy wrapped in cellophane, the kind that pizza restaurants gave out to customers, ostensibly to keep them happy and coming back to buy pizza again.

She stared at it as if she’d never seen one before.

“Go on,” he said. “You need it.”

“I don’t need it,” she said, getting to her feet. It put them at eye level, but she still felt at a disadvantage.

“You might feel better.”

“No, I won’t—and who are you?”

“The name is Meyer,” he said.

“As in Oscar?”

He smiled. He was older than she’d first thought, and he had dimples.

“Now, you know what? I may not look it, but I’ve been out of the hills enough times to actually get what you just said. That was pretty good, too—only I’m Meyer with an e, not an a. So…you don’t want the peppermint.”

“I don’t want the peppermint,” she said, feeling close to tears again.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to put it in my coat pocket. If you change your mind, I’ll give it to you. I’m just about always around here someplace—except when I’m to home.”

“And where is that?” she asked in spite of herself, even knowing that the quaint colloquialism was likely affected just for her benefit. “‘To home’?”

“It’s up there. See?” He pointed off into the distance—toward a hillside with a winding road going up it. “See where the sun is shining on that silver roof? That’s my place—except when I’m letting people rent it. I’ll show it to you sometime, if you want. Don’t worry. I don’t have any etchings,” he added in a whisper.

She smiled slightly without wanting to. “Well, that’s…good to know.”

“Got a couple of deer heads, though. They’re kind of scary if you’re not used to them. You do understand that nothing helps when you’re feeling down and misplaced like a good piece of peppermint.”

“You’ve felt down and misplaced enough to know, I take it.”

“Damn straight,” he said. “I’ve pretty much made a career of it.”

“And what career was that?”

“The United States Army. I’m telling you, if you don’t let the little things make you feel better, you’ll have a hell of a time getting through the big things.”

“If you think—”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. What I know is you look like you’re running on empty—and when that happens, a little hit of sugar can help. I used to carry these all the time when I was deployed—my aunt Nelda would send them to me, whether she could afford to or not. They’d help when you were so tired you thought you weren’t going to make it, and if your mouth was full of sand. I used to give them to the kids sometimes—they were scared of us, and maybe it helped. I don’t know. I liked to think even if they hated the taste of them, they could still appreciate the effort.”

She glanced at him, not certain if he meant some foreign child or if he meant her.

“All right,” she said impulsively. He was trying to be kind when he didn’t have to.

“All right what?”

“All right, give me the peppermint. Please,” she added, letting him make her work for it.

He smiled slightly and handed it over. She unwrapped it carefully and popped it into her mouth. It was rather good, actually. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten this kind of candy.

He stood quietly, with his hands in his pockets. She glanced at him, but she was afraid she was going to cry again.

“Okay, then. I’m just going to go do what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said. “You ought to sit out here for a while. Give that peppermint a chance to work. Admire the view. You ought to enjoy nature every chance you get—that’s what it’s there for—especially when you’re going through a rough patch. Everything’s going to be all right,” he added in a quieter voice, as if his impertinence might offend her if he said it too loudly. “You’ll see.”

She tried to take offense at his unwelcome reassurances, but he didn’t give her the chance. He turned and walked away toward the woods beyond the gazebo.

“Hey!” she called after him. “Oscar!”

He looked around.

“Thanks.”

He gave her a thumbs-up and walked on.

She sat down on the steps again. She was a grown-up, independent woman. She had a high-paying job with a lot of responsibility. She had a house and an expensive vehicle she’d bought for no reason other than the fact that she could. And—incredibly—a piece of peppermint candy was making her feel better.

She cried a little anyway. She didn’t want her mother to die. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want strange women to answer her telephone at her house.

Damn it!

It was some comfort knowing that she wasn’t really in love with Kent. But in love or not, she still wanted his head on a stick.

In love.

She would be forty years old on her next birthday, and she still wasn’t sure what the term meant. She had tried more than once to identify the elusive emotion she associated with Kent. A certain pride, she supposed. She was proud to be seen with him, to have people know that they were a couple. He mirrored her own accomplishments. Like her, he had an intense drive to get ahead and stay there, so intense that she couldn’t let herself trust the regard he said he had for her. She had never told him about her illegitimacy, for one thing. She didn’t talk about it as a matter of course, but she wasn’t ashamed of it, either. She didn’t mind people knowing that she had been brought up by an unwed mother, not when that mother had been Maddie Kimball, who was dedicated enough and strong enough for the both of them. Even so, she’d let Kent assume that her parents had divorced when she was very young—because she wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t matter to him. All she knew for certain was that he would never have tried to give her solace with a piece of peppermint candy. He would never have noticed that she was feeling “down and misplaced,” much less have any inclination whatsoever to do something about it.

No, that wasn’t quite true. To be fair, if she’d been obvious enough, she might have gotten some all-purpose flowers from him, the ordering of which he would have delegated to an underling. Loran would repay him for his thoughtfulness by willingly and enthusiastically offering him access to her body, and afterward she would lie in the dark not feeling nearly as “cheered up” as she did right at this moment.

Incredible, she thought. She was by no means happy, but she did feel a little less…forlorn. Maybe there was something to the peppermint, after all.

Or maybe it was having someone offer his own unique brand of commiseration—a simple act of kindness—even if he was paid to do it.

She gave a sharp sigh. She would have to admit he was rather good at it.

The wind grew colder suddenly. She needed to go back to the house and find out where the nearest town was so she could buy the things she needed. And she needed to see what in this world was going on with Maddie.

Maddie’s doctor had warned Loran what to expect as the illness progressed. Frailness, fatigue, a gradual fading away. Maddie would begin to lose her interests and her appetite. And there would be pain, the kind of pain the two of them couldn’t begin to imagine. Indeed, he’d said, she should be suffering already, and why she wasn’t, he really couldn’t explain. Maddie’s X-rays showed significant metastasis to the bones. She should be in pain all the time, but obviously she wasn’t—not yet.

Not yet.

Loran had never seen anyone in the process of dying before, and having to watch Maddie do it was more than she could bear to even think about. She couldn’t imagine a world without Maddie in it.

What will I do without her?

But Maddie was definitely getting around at the moment, and whatever interests she might have lost, she’d clearly replaced with new ones—like surprise jaunts down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

In spite of her worry, Loran made a mild attempt at taking Meyer’s advice. She stayed put for a few moments longer and looked at the surrounding mountains. Coming here was a crazy notion for her mother to have, but Meyer was right. The place was beautiful.

She heard a burst of laughter and a slamming door. A teenaged boy and girl came out of the house carrying a large, green plastic garbage can. They were having to fight the wind to keep it upright, but eventually, they reached the Dumpster and emptied the bagged contents into it. The girl squealed suddenly as the wind shifted and snatched the can out of their grasp. It bounced and rolled down the hill. Still laughing, they chased after it, scuffling to see who would claim it—but only for a short distance. The garbage can banged into the side of a pickup truck, and the boy and girl suddenly stopped chasing it and went into each other’s arms, the embrace they shared so joyful and so unlike anything Loran had ever experienced that it made her catch her breath. The sheer spontaneity of it spoke volumes about the love and the delight they inspired in each other—maybe because they were so young.

Loran wondered suddenly if Maddie and the unnamed male who had been Loran’s father had been like these two, if she, Loran, had been a “love” child.

Love child.

Love.

She had never felt anything even remotely like what she’d just witnessed, and it was somehow more than disconcerting to think that her mother might have enjoyed that kind of bond with another person—a man—when she herself had not.

Someone in the house suddenly began playing a piano with great flair. After a few false starts, Loran could recognize something classical—and melancholy—Mendelssohn, she thought.

The boy and girl stepped apart, but not before he kissed her lovingly on the forehead. Watching, Loran could almost feel the pressure of the lips that must be firm and warm on her own forehead.

She abruptly looked in the direction Meyer had gone, wondering if that was his first name or his last. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t be here long enough to call him anything.

The unwelcome memory of Kent’s irate voice slid into her mind.

Don’t answer the phone!

How was she supposed to get through this? Maddie was the only person she had in the world. She couldn’t rely on Kent now, couldn’t have relied on him even if Celia hadn’t answered the telephone.

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Maddie and Loran. Two orphans in the storm as much as mother and child. Loran had always felt that they were survivors somehow, but she didn’t quite know of what. Life, she supposed. And single-parent family-hood—except that that had been much less of a disadvantage than most people wanted to believe. From the time Loran was very young, she had understood that she and her mother were a formidable unit. Not much taken individually, perhaps, but together there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish.

It occurred to her suddenly that Maddie may have simply settled for their life together. She sat there, as surprised by the sudden, unbidden thought as if it had come from someone else. It was something she didn’t want to consider—that, for her sake, her mother might have let go of her own dreams. Loran had never asked her about it, and she wasn’t astute enough to guess. Or perhaps she had been too self-involved to make the attempt.

She frowned slightly. She had no idea why Maddie wanted her to come here, and the last thing she needed was to discover that Maddie considered her life wasted.

She looked toward the woods. Meyer was back. She saw him walking through the trees, but he didn’t come in her direction. Instead, he left the graveled path and went down the landscaped hill to get to the parking area without having to pass by the gazebo. She sat openly watching his progress and the strong and assured way he carried himself. She had no trouble believing that he’d been deployed somewhere. He had the military bearing and attitude. There was nothing tentative about him.

He went directly to a truck, the same one the green garbage can had tumbled into, got inside and drove away, never once looking toward her.

Her mouth still tasted of peppermint.

CHAPTER 3

M eyer waited on the church steps. It was warmer in the sun, but the wind was too cutting for him to stand out in the open for long. He stepped back into the alcove and glanced toward the sound of a backhoe digging a new grave in the cemetery across the road, all too aware that he could easily have ended up over there—and a lot sooner than later.

There had to be at least five generations of valley people buried in that patch of ground, friends and enemies, relatives claimed and unclaimed, but he had no idea who they were digging this grave for. There had been a time when everyone in the valley would have known, and friends and neighbors would have dug the grave themselves with a pick and shovel. He could remember when it had still been done, and when people had brought the best food they’d had to offer and sat up all night with the homemade wooden coffin placed on sawhorses in the living room. There was a lot to be said for the kinship of it, for neighbors coming together in times of trouble and sadness. It was the main reason he’d returned to the valley—that and the fact that he belonged here and whatever he needed to be—friendly or standoffish or something in between—he could be, and no one would hold it against him. Unfortunately, he had returned just in time to see that sense of community die away. He didn’t know half the people who lived around here anymore.

It occurred to him that the two new guests at Lilac Hill might be friends or relatives of whoever had died—which would explain the younger woman crying after her phone call. It hadn’t looked like grief to him, though. It had looked more like “significant other” or husband trouble.