The Liar

4

It took most of the day, and some creative bribery, to keep Callie from interrupting her. Accounts to be closed, others to be transferred, the change of address, the forwarding. The cost of the moving company to break down Callie’s furniture, ship it and set it up again made her wince. And she considered renting a U-Haul and doing it herself.

But she’d need help getting the bed and dresser downstairs and into a trailer anyway.

So she swallowed hard and went for it.

It paid off, to her way of thinking, as the next day, for a twenty-dollar tip, the movers took the big TV off the wall in the living room, wrapped it and carted it out to the van for her.

Donna, as good as her word, had the lockbox installed.

She packed what was left, stowed whatever she might need on the road in a big tote.

Maybe it was foolish to leave so late on a Friday. Smarter, more sensible to get a fresh start in the morning.

But she wasn’t spending another night in a house that had never been hers.

She walked through, bottom to top, top back to bottom, then stood in the two-story foyer.

She could see now, with the stark art, the too sleek furnishings removed, how it might be. Warmer colors, softer tones, maybe some big old piece, something with character, a little bit of curve in the entranceway to hold flowers, candles.

A mix of old and new, she thought, aiming for casual elegance with touches of fun.

Antique mirrors—yes, she’d group old mirrors, different shapes, along that wall, jumble books with family photos and pretty little whatnots on those shelves. And . . .

Not hers now, she reminded herself. No longer her space, no longer her problem.

“I’m not going to say I hate this place. That doesn’t seem fair to whoever moves in after me. It’s like putting a hex on it. So I’m just going to say I took care of it best I could while I could.”

She left the keys on the kitchen counter with a thank-you note for Donna, then reached for Callie’s hand.

“Come on, baby girl, we’re going on our trip.”

“We’re gonna see Granny and Grandpa and Gamma and Granddaddy.”

“You bet we are, and everybody else, too.”

She walked out to the garage with Callie wheeling her little Cinderella—her once favorite princess, currently usurped by Fiona—overnight bag behind her.

“Let’s get you and Fifi strapped in.”

As she secured Callie in the car seat, Callie patted Shelby’s cheek. Her signal for: Look at me, and pay attention.

“What is it, baby?”

“We’re gonna be there soon?”

Uh-oh. Torn between amusement and resignation, Shelby patted Callie’s cheek in turn. If the versions of Are we there yet? began before they pulled out of the garage, they were in for a very long trip.

“It’s all the way to Tennessee, remember? That’s going to take some time, so it’s not going to be real soon. But . . .” She widened her eyes to demonstrate the excitement to come. “We’re going to get to stay the night in a motel. Like adventurers.”

“’Venturers.”

“That’s right. You and me, Callie Rose. Fingers on noses,” she added, and Callie giggled, put her fingers to her nose so Shelby could close the side door of the van.

She backed out of the garage, sat for a moment until the door came all the way down again.

“And that’s that,” she said.

She drove away without a backward glance.

• • •

TRAFFIC WAS A MISERY but she wasn’t going to care about that. It would take as long as it took.

To save Shrek for when real boredom hit, she kept Callie entertained with songs, ones her little girl knew, and fresh ones she’d stored up to avoid the endless repetition and save her own sanity.

It mostly worked.

Crossing the state line into Maryland felt like a victory. She wanted to keep going, just keep going, but at the three-hour mark made herself get off the highway. The Happy Meal put a grin on Callie’s face, and food in her tummy.

Another two hours, Shelby thought, then she’d be over halfway there. They’d stop for the night. She already had the motel picked out, the route in the GPS.

When she stopped in Virginia, she saw she’d made the right choice. Callie had had enough, and was getting her cranky on. The adventure of jumping on a motel room bed changed the mood.

Fresh pajamas, Fifi and a bedtime story did the trick. Though she doubted fireworks would wake her little girl now, Shelby went into the bathroom to call home.

“Mama. We’ve stopped for the night, like I said we would.”

“Where are you, exactly where now?”

“At the Best Western around Wytheville, Virginia.”

“Is it clean?”

“It is, Mama. I checked out the rating online before I headed here.”

“You got the security lock on?” Ada Mae demanded.

“It’s on, Mama.”

“You put a chair under the doorknob, just for extra.”

“Okay.”

“How’s that sweet angel?”

“She’s sound asleep. She was so good on the drive.”

“I can’t wait to get my hands on her. And on you, sweetie pie. I wish you’d told us you were starting out today before you did. Clay Junior would’ve come up there, driven you down.”

She was the only girl, Shelby reminded herself, and the baby of three. Her mother would fret.

“I’m fine, Mama, I promise. We’re fine, and already halfway there. Clay’s got work and family of his own.”

“You’re his family, too.”

“I can’t wait to see him. See all of you.”

The faces, the voices, the hills, the green. It made her want to cry a little, so she worked to bump up the cheer in her voice.

“I’m going to try to get on the road by eight, but it may be a little later. But I should be there by two o’clock at the latest. I’ll call you so you know for sure. Mama, I want to thank you again for letting us stay.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you. My own child, and her child. This is home. You come home, Shelby Anne.”

“Tomorrow. Tell Daddy we’re all safe for the night.”

“Stay that way. And you get some rest. You sound tired.”

“I am a little. ’Night, Mama.”

Though it was barely eight, she crawled into bed, and was asleep in minutes like her little girl.

• • •

SHE WOKE IN THE DARK, shocked out of a dream she remembered in bits and pieces. A storm at sea, drowning waves swamping a boat—a rolling white dot in a thrashing sea of black. And she’d been at the wheel, fighting so hard to ride it out while waves lashed, lightning flashed. And Callie, somewhere Callie cried and called for her.

Then Richard? Yes, yes, Richard in one of his fine suits pulling her away from the controls because she didn’t know how to handle a boat. She didn’t know how to do anything.

Then falling, falling, falling into that drowning sea.

Cold, shaken, she sat up in the strange dark room, trying to get her breath back.

Because it was Richard who’d fallen into the water, not her. It was Richard who’d drowned.

Callie slept, her cute little butt hiked in the air. Warm and safe.

She slid down, lay for a while stroking Callie’s back to comfort herself. But sleep was done, so she gave it up, walked quietly into the bathroom. She stood debating.

Did she leave the door open so if Callie woke in a strange place she’d know where her mama was? Or did she close the door so the light and the sound of the shower didn’t wake her baby, which they were all but guaranteed to do?

She compromised, left the door open a crack.

She didn’t think a motel shower had ever felt so good, warming away the last chills from the dream, washing away the dragging dregs of fatigue.

She’d brought her own shampoo, shower gel. She’d been spoiled on good products long before Richard. But then she’d been raised on them, as her grandmother ran Rendezvous Ridge’s best salon.

And day spa now, Callie thought. There was just no stopping Granny.

She couldn’t wait to see her, to see everyone. To just be home, breathe the mountain air, see the greens, the blues, hear the voices that didn’t make hers sound somehow wrong.

She wrapped her hair in a towel, knowing it would take forever to dry, and did what her mother had taught her when she’d been hardly older than Callie.

She slicked on lotion everywhere. It felt good, that skin to skin, even if it was just her own hands. It had been so long since anyone had touched her.

She dressed, peeked out to check on Callie, and left the door open just a little wider as she started on her makeup. She wasn’t going home pale and heavy-eyed.

She couldn’t do anything about going home bony, but her appetite would come back once she got there, settled in, pushed some of the weights off the heavy end of the scale.

And the outfit was nice—black leggings, the grass-green shirt that made her think of spring. She added earrings, a spritz of perfume, because according to Ada Mae Pomeroy, a woman wasn’t fully dressed without them.

Deciding she’d done her best, she went back into the bedroom, packed up everything but Callie’s outfit for the homecoming. A pretty blue dress with white flowers and a white sweater. Then turning on one of the bedside lights, she climbed onto the bed to nuzzle her daughter awake.

“Callie Rose. Where is my Callie Rose? Is she still in Dreamland riding pink ponies?”

“I’m here, Mama!” Warm and soft as a baby rabbit, she turned into Shelby’s arms. “We’re on a ’venture.”

“You bet we are.” She cuddled for a moment because those moments were precious.

“I didn’t wet the bed.”

“I know. You’re such a big girl. Let’s go pee now, and get dressed.”

Even with fussing Callie’s hair into a braid tied with a blue bow to match the dress, cleaning her up again after a breakfast of waffles, gassing up the van, they were on the road by seven-thirty.

An early start, Shelby thought. She’d take it as a good sign of things to come.

She stopped at ten, another pee break, fueled her system with a Coke, filled Callie’s sippy cup and texted her mother.

Got going early. Traffic’s not bad. Should be there by twelve-thirty. Love you!

When she pulled back onto the highway, the gray compact slipped out three cars behind her. And kept pace.

So the young widow was heading home in her secondhand minivan. Every action she did reasonable, normal, ordinary.

But she knew something, Privet thought. And he’d find out just what that was.

• • •

WHEN SHE CAUGHT SIGHT of the mountains, the great green rise of them, Shelby’s heart jumped to her throat until her eyes stung. She’d thought she knew how much she wanted this, needed this, but it was more.

It was everything safe and real.

“Look, Callie. Look out there. There’s home out there. There’s the Smokies.”

“Gamma’s in the ’mokies.”

“Ssssssmokies,” Shelby said with a grinning glance in the rearview.

“Sssssssmokies. Gamma and Granny and Grandpa and Granddaddy, and Unca Clay and Aunt Gilly and Unca Forrest.”

She rattled off family names, and to Shelby’s surprise got most of them, down to the dogs and cats.

Maybe, Shelby thought, she wasn’t the only one who wanted and needed this.

By noon she was winding, winding up through the green with her window half down so she could smell the mountains. The pine, the rivers and streams. Here there was no snow. Instead wildflowers sprouted—little stars, drops of color—and the houses and cabins she passed had daffodils springing yellow as fresh butter. Here clothes flapped on lines so the sheets would carry that scent into bedrooms. Hawks circled above in the blue.

“I’m hungry. Mama, Fifi’s hungry. Are we there? Are we there, Mama?”

“Almost, baby.”

“Can we be there now?”

“Almost. You and Fifi can have something to eat at Gamma’s.”

“We want cookies.”

“Maybe.”

She crossed what the locals called Billy’s Creek, named for the boy who’d drowned in it before her father was born, and the dirt road that led down to the holler and to some ramshackle houses and double-wides where hunting dogs bayed in their pens and the shotguns stayed loaded and handy.

And the sign for Mountain Spring Campground, where her brother Forrest had worked one long-ago summer, and where he’d gone skinny-dipping—and a little more—with Emma Kate Addison, a fact Shelby knew as Emma Kate had been her closest friend, diapers through high school.

Now the turn for the hotel/resort built when she was about ten. Her brother Clay worked there, taking tourists out for white-water rafting. He’d met his wife there as she worked as a dessert chef for the hotel. Now Gilly was pregnant with their second child.

But before the wives and the children, before jobs and careers, they’d run tame here.

She’d known the trails and the streams, the swimming holes and the places where the black bear lumbered along. She’d walked with her brothers, with Emma Kate, on hot summer days into town to buy Cokes at the general store, or to her grandmother’s salon to beg for spending money.

She’d known places to sit and look out at forever. How the whippoorwill sounded when dusk fell in clouds of soft, soft gray after the sun died red behind the peaks.

She’d know it again, she thought. All of it. And more important, her daughter would know it. She’d know the giddy feeling of warm grass under her feet, or cold creek water lapping her ankles.

“Please, Mama, please! Can we be there?”

“We’re really close now. See that house there? I knew a girl who lived there. Her name was Lorilee, and her mama, Miz Maybeline, worked for Granny. She still does, and I think Granny told me Lorilee works for her, too. And see, just up ahead, that fork in the road?”

“You eat with a fork.”

“That’s right.” Almost as impatient as her daughter, Shelby laughed. “But it also means a split in the road—where you can go one way or the other? If we went to the right—the hand you color with? If we went that way, we’d be in Rendezvous Ridge in a spit. But we go left . . .”

Her own excitement rising, Shelby took the left fork—a little faster than maybe she should. “And we’re heading home.”

“Gamma’s house.”

“That’s right.”

A few houses, some of them new since she’d left, scattered around—and the road still winding and rising.

Emma Kate’s house, with a big truck in the drive that had The Fix-It Guys painted on the side.

And there it was. Home.

Cars and trucks everywhere, she noted. Packed in the drive, ranged on the side of the road. Kids running around the front yard and dogs with them. And the spring flowers her parents tended like babies already a show at the hem of the pretty two-story house. The cedar shakes gleamed in the sun, and the pink dogwood her mother prized bloomed as pretty as Easter morning.

A banner hung between the front-porch posts.

WELCOME HOME, SHELBY AND CALLIE ROSE!

She might have laid her head on the steering wheel and wept in sheer gratitude, but Callie bounced in her car seat.

“Out! Out! Hurry, Mama.”

She saw another sign propped on a sawhorse right in front of the house.

RESERVED FOR SHELBY

As she let out a laugh, two of the boys spotted her van, ran over cheering.

“We’ll move it, Shelby!”

Her uncle Grady’s boys, who looked to have sprung up another six inches since she’d seen them at Christmas.

“Somebody having a party?” she called out.

“It’s for you. Hey, Callie, hey.” The older of the two—Macon—tapped on Callie’s window.

“Whozat, Mama? Who?”

“That’s your cousin Macon.”

“Cousin Macon!” Callie waved both hands. “Hi, hi!”

She eased the van off the road, and with intense relief, turned off the ignition. “We’re here, Callie. At last.”

“Out, out, out.”

“I’m working on it.”

Before she could get around the van, kids swarming her, to open the side door, her mother came running.

Nearly six feet, Ada Mae had long legs to cover the ground from house to van. Her yellow sundress billowed around those legs, set off her crown of red hair.

Before Shelby could take a breath she was caught in a bear hug and surrounded by the scent of L’Air du Temps, her mother’s signature perfume.

“Here you are! Here’s my girls! My God, Shelby Anne, you’re skinny as a snake. We’re going to fix that. For goodness’ sake, you kids give us some room here. Look at you, just look!” She cupped Shelby’s face, tilted it up. “Everything’s going to be just fine,” she said when Shelby’s eyes teared. “Don’t you go running your mascara. It’s all fine now. How do you get this door open?”

Shelby pulled the handle so the side door slid open.

“Gamma! Gamma!” Callie reached out, arms stretched. “Out, out!”

“I’m going to get you out of there. How the hell do you get her out of there? Oh, just look at you!” Ada Mae covered Callie’s face with kisses as Shelby released the harness, the seat belt. “You’re pretty as a sunbeam in May. And what a pretty dress, too. Oh, give your Gamma a big hug.”

In her yellow sling-back heels, Ada Mae turned circles in the road while Callie clung to her like a burr.

“We’re all over the place.” Tears slid down Ada Mae’s cheeks as she circled.

“Don’t cry, Gamma.”

“That’s just joy spilling out, and good thing I’ve got waterproof mascara. We’re out here, in the house, out the backyard where they’ve got the big grill going already. We’ve got food to feed the army we are, and some champagne, too, to celebrate.”

With Callie on her hip, Ada Mae pulled Shelby in for a three-generation hug. “Welcome home, baby.”

“Thank you, Mama, more than I can say.”

“Let’s get you inside, get you some sweet tea. The moving van was here not two hours ago.”

“Already?”

“Carted everything right up to Callie’s room. We’ve got it all made up so sweet and pretty. Your room’s right next to your mama’s,” she said as they walked to the house. “I put you in Clay’s old room, Shelby, as it’s bigger than the one you had. It’s been fresh painted, and we got a new mattress. The old was worn out. Callie’s in Forrest’s old room, so you know you’ll share that bath between them. We got some nice new towels in there for you. Got them from your granny’s spa, so they’re nice.”

Shelby would’ve said she shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, but if Ada Mae wasn’t fussing, she wasn’t breathing.

“Gilly baked a cake, all fancy. She’s about ready to pop, but that girl can bake like Betty Crocker.”

Her brother Clay came out. He’d gotten his parents’ height, and their father’s coloring with his dark hair and eyes. Grinning, he plucked Shelby off her feet, spun her like a top.

“About time you got here,” he murmured in her ear.

“Soon as I could.”

“Give her over,” he ordered his mother, and snatched Callie. “Hey there, sunshine. Remember me?”

“Unca Clay.”

“Girls always remember the handsome ones. Let’s go find some trouble.”

“If anybody can,” Ada Mae said, and wrapped an arm around Shelby’s waist. “You need a cold drink and a chair.”

“I feel like I’ve been sitting for days, but I’d take the cold drink.”

Family spread around the house so there were more hugs and welcomes, more yet when they reached the kitchen. Gilly—and she did look ready to pop—stood with a boy just a year younger than Callie on her hip.

“I’ve got him.” Clay transferred his son, Jackson, to his other hip. “Got me a set now.” He took off running out the back door, letting out a war hoop that had both kids squealing.

“Born to be a daddy. And a good thing,” Ada Mae added, giving Gilly’s belly a gentle pat. “You get off your feet now.”

“I’m feeling fine. Even better now.” She wrapped her arms around Shelby, swayed with the hug. “It’s so good to see you. We’ve got pitchers of tea outside, and plenty of beer. And four bottles of champagne—your mama has decreed it’s for the ladies only, as none of the men here can appreciate it.”

“Sounds about right. I’ll start with the tea.” Shelby hadn’t caught her breath, not yet, but decided she’d catch it later. “Gilly, you just look wonderful.”

Hair as sunny as Clay’s was dark, slicked back in a pretty tail to leave her face—round with pregnancy—unframed. Eyes of cornflower blue sparkled.

“Really wonderful. Are you doing good?”

“I’m doing great. Five weeks and two days to go.”

Shelby made her way outside, onto the wide back porch, looking over the big backyard with its vegetable patch already sprouting, kids clambering over a swing set, a grill smoking, picnic tables lined up like soldiers with balloons tied to chairs.

Her father stood at the grill—the general—in one of his silly aprons. This one suggested you kiss his grits.

She was in his arms in seconds. She wouldn’t break down, she told herself. She just wouldn’t spoil it. “Hey, Daddy.”

“Hey, Shelby.”

He bent from his six feet, two inches, kissed the top of her head. Handsome and fit, a marathon runner for pleasure, a country doctor by trade, he held her close.

“You’re too thin.”

“Mama said she’d fix that.”

“Then she will.” He drew her back. “The doctor says food, drink, plenty of sleep and pampering. That’ll be twenty dollars.”

“Put it on my bill.”

“That’s what they all say. Go, get that drink. I’ve got ribs to finish.”

As she stepped back, she was caught in a round-the-back bear hug. She recognized the wonderful prickle of whiskers, wriggled around and hugged. “Grandpa.”

“I was just saying to Vi the other day, ‘Vi, something’s missing around here. Can’t quite put my finger on it.’ Now I got it. It was you.”

She reached up, rubbed her palm over the stone-gray whiskers, looked up into his merry blue eyes. “I’m glad you found me.” She laid her head against his barrel of a chest. “It looks like a carnival here. Everything full of fun and color.”

“It’s time you came back to the carnival. You fixing to stay?”

“Jack,” Clayton muttered.

“I’ve been ordered not to ask questions.” Those merry eyes could turn pugnacious in a finger snap—and did. “But I’m damned if I won’t ask my own granddaughter if she’s fixing to stay home this time.”

“It’s all right, Daddy, and yeah, I’m fixing to stay.”

“Good. Now Vi’s giving me the hard eye ’cause I’m keeping you from her. At your six,” he said, and turned her around.

There she was, Viola MacNee Donahue, in a bright blue dress, her Titan hair in a sassy curling wedge, big movie star sunglasses tipped down her nose, and her eyes bold and blue over them.

She didn’t look like anyone’s granny, Shelby thought, but called out to her as she flew over the lawn.

“Granny.”

Viola dropped her hands from her hips, threw out her arms.

“About damn time, but I guess you saved the best for last.”

“Granny. You’re so beautiful.”

“Aren’t you lucky to look just like me? Or like I did some forty years back. It’s the MacNee blood, and good skin care. That little angel of yours has the same.”

Shelby turned her head, smiled as she saw Callie with cousins, rolling on the grass with a couple of young dogs. “She’s my heart and soul.”

“I know it.”

“I should’ve—”

“Should’ves are a waste. We’re going to take a little walk,” she said when Shelby’s eyes filled. “Take a look at your daddy’s vegetable patch. Best tomatoes in the Ridge. You put the worry aside now. Just put it aside.”

“There’s too much of it, Granny. More than I can say right now.”

“Worry doesn’t get things done, it just gives a woman lines in her face. So you put the worry aside. What needs doing will get done. You’re not alone now, Shelby.”

“I . . . forgot what it feels like not to be, so all this seems like a dream.”

“This is what’s real and always has been. Come here, darling, hold on awhile.” She drew Shelby close, rubbed her back. “You’re home now.”

Shelby looked out at the mountains, smoked with clouds, so strong, so enduring, so true.

She was home now.