“Have I done wrong? So many prim persons stared as though they could not believe their eyes!”

G

EORGETTE

H

EYER

,

The Grand Sophy

CHAPTER THREE

Sugar Beth finished the potato chips that made up her breakfast and gazed across the kitchen at Gordon, who lurked in the door, looking hostile. “Get over it, will you? It’s not my fault Emmett loved me more than you.”

He experimented with his psychotic Christopher Walken expression, but bassets were at a disadvantage when it came to projecting menace. “Pathetic.”

He looked offended.

“All right, punk.” She rose from the table, crossed the living room, and opened the front door. As he trotted past, he tried to bump her, but she knew his tricks and she sidestepped, then followed him out into another chilly, drizzly February morning. Since this was Mississippi, it could be eighty by next week. She prayed she’d be long gone by then.

As Gordon began to sniff around, she gazed over at Frenchman’s Bride. She’d been trying not to think about last night’s encounter with Colin Byrne. At least she hadn’t crumbled until she’d reached the carriage house. Old guilt clung to her like cobwebs. She should have tried harder to make amends, but apparently, she hadn’t grown up as much as she wanted to think.

Why, of all people, did he have to be the one who bought Frenchman’s Bride? If he’d ever spoken to the press about moving back to Parrish, she’d missed it. But then he seemed to shun publicity, and there hadn’t been that many interviews. Even his jacket photo was distant and grainy, or she’d have been better prepared for the dangerous man she’d encountered.

She made her way toward the boxwood hedge that separated their properties and pushed aside the bottom branches. “Right through here, devil dog.”

For once, he didn’t give her trouble.

“Make Mommy proud,” she called out.

He took a few moments sniffing around, then found a satisfactory spot in the middle of the lawn to do his business.

“Nice doggie.”

Despite what she’d told Byrne, she’d read Last Whistle-stop on the Nowhere Line right along with the rest of the country. How could she have ignored the story of people she’d heard about all her life? The black and white families, rich and poor, who’d populated Parrish during the 1940s and 1950s, had included her own grandparents, Tallulah, Leeann’s great-uncle, and, of course, Lincoln Ash.

The public’s appetite for atmospheric Southern nonfiction had been whetted by John Berendt’s runaway best-seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. But while Midnight had dealt with murder and scandal among the wealthy aristocracy of old Savannah, Last Whistle-stop had mined gold from small-town life. Colin Byrne’s story of a Mississippi town recovering from a segregationist legacy had been filled with the eccentric characters and domestic dramas readers loved, along with a strong dose of Southern folklore. Other books had tried to do the same thing, but Byrne’s fondness for the town, combined with his wry observations as an outsider, had put Last Whistle-stop in a league of its own.

She realized Gordon was trotting toward the house, not one bit intimidated by its grandeur. “Come back here.”

Of course he ignored her.

“I mean it, Gordon. I have to go into town, and if you don’t come here right now, I’m leaving without you.”

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he blew her a raspberry.

“You know you’ll try to nip me if I come after you.” He never went so far as to actually hurt her, but he liked to keep her on her toes.

She watched him trot up the steps to the veranda. “Fine. Do me a favor, and don’t bother to come home.” Contrary to the habits of the rest of his breed, Gordon refused to roam. He liked torturing her too much to hit the open road. She stomped back toward the carriage house. What did it say about a person when even her dog hated her?

She grabbed her purse, stuck an old straw cowboy hat on her head, and set out to search the depot for the painting. But as she tramped down the drive to her car, she found a ticket for unlawful overnight parking tucked under her windshield wiper. Terrific. She shoved it beneath the visor and headed for town.

Purlie’s Auto Shop was still doing business, but an office supply store sat in the space once occupied by Spring Fancy Millinery. Diddie had taken her there every year to buy an Easter bonnet, right up until sixth grade, when Sugar Beth had rebelled.

Diddie’s nostrils fluttered like butterfly wings when she was displeased. “You ungrateful child. Exactly how is our Dear Lord supposed to know it’s Resurrection Day if He sees you sittin’ there in church bareheaded like some heathen? Answer me that, Miss Sugar Baby?”

Sugar Beth had fluttered her nostrils right back. “Do you really think Jesus Christ is goin’ to stay in his grave just because I’m not wearin’ a hat?”

Diddie had laughed and gone to find her cigarettes.

A longing for her loving, imperfect mother welled up inside her so strong that it hurt, but her feelings toward her father were all bitter. “He’s not my real father, is he, Diddie? Somebody else got you pregnant, and then Daddy married you.”

“Sugar Beth Carey, you hush your mouth. Just because your father is a reprobate doesn’t mean I am, too. Now I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.”

The fact that Sugar Beth’s silver-blue eyes perfectly mirrored her father’s made it impossible to hold on for long to the fantasy of Diddie having a secret lover.

She supposed her parents’ marriage had been inevitable, but they couldn’t have been more ill-suited. Diddie was the extravagantly beautiful, fun-loving daughter of a local storekeeper. Griffin was the heir to the Carey Window Factory. Short, homely, and intellectually brilliant, Griffin was smitten by Parrish’s reigning belle, while Diddie was secretly contemptuous of the boy she considered an “ugly little toad.” At the same time, she coveted everything a union with him would bring her.

Griffin must have known that Diddie was incapable of giving him the adoration he craved, but he’d married her anyway, then punished her for not loving him by openly living with another woman. Diddie retaliated by appearing not to care. Eventually, Griffin raised the stakes by turning his back on the person Diddie most loved . . . their daughter.

Despite their mutual hatred, they never considered divorce. Griffin was the town’s economic leader, Diddie its social and political one. Each refused to give up what the other offered, and the marriage ground on, dragging a confused little girl in its destructive wake.

Sugar Beth passed a McDonald’s, spruced up since her high school days, and a travel agency sporting one of the downtown area’s new maroon and green awnings. She turned on Valley. The one-block street, which was anchored at the end by the abandoned railroad depot, had escaped the town’s revitalization efforts, and she parked her car on a crumbling patch of blacktop. As she gazed at the dilapidated redbrick building, she saw the place where Colin Byrne had stood for his fuzzy author photo.

Shingles had blown off the depot’s roof, and ancient graffiti covered the splintered plywood boarding up the windows. Cans and broken bottles littered the weeds by the tracks. Why had Tallulah thought it was so important to preserve this old ruin? But her aunt had been obsessed with local history, the same as Sugar Beth’s father, and apparently she hadn’t seen the wisdom of bulldozing the place.

As Sugar Beth got out of the car, she thought of the letter lying crumpled in the bottom of her purse:

Dear Sugar Beth,

I’m leaving you the carriage house, the depot, and, of course, the painting because you’re my only living relative and, regardless of your behavior, blood is thicker than water. The depot is a disgrace, but, by the time I purchased it, I lacked the energy and the funds for repairs. The fact that it was allowed to deteriorate so badly does not speak well of this town. I’m certain you’d like to sell it, but I doubt you’ll have any luck finding a buyer. Even the Parrish Community Advancement Association lacks proper respect for history.