“Gracie . . . “
Uh-oh, was a thought that entered my mind, followed by, He’s cancelling. It was the kind of bad-news inflection in his hesitation that might’ve stopped my heart had he not immediately continued and the awkwardness returned as quickly as it had departed.
“Yes! Yes, a wonderful one! Could not have been a better time with family. Just almost everyone was there for the reunion. Don’t even think I can count that high, there were so many. But listen, I want to hear all about yours when I come for you on Saturday. Turns out there aren’t a lot of places in Elkton where I can teach you the Charleston, though. And nothing like there is in Albuquerque, unfortunately. So, would it be alright if—”
“Of course,” I found myself saying. “Come here and I’ll try fixing—”
“No, I won’t have you going to any trouble, if you were going to invite me to dinner. This was going to be such a good plan: first a dance lesson, then I thought of a movie, but there’s not one anywhere within miles of here. But, Gracie, this just has to work. Hannah, my stepmother—and you’re going to love her—Hannah’s going to fix one of her great meals for us. There’s room in the parlor to dance and a Victrola. You can stay overnight in my sister’s room. Then, there you are: Sunday morning and Providence Methodist Church, very close, just on the south end of my dad’s property.”
I guessed he’d paused to take a breath. All I could hear was snickering. Either from the party line or in the background at Jim’s store, but Simon has his agenda and he was sticking to it.
Millicent and Louise had come into the hallway, and I was making go-away faces, batting the air to emphasize the imperative.
“What do you think?” It was almost a whimper. He’d definitely simmered down, sounding more like an insecure twelve-year-old than the tall, confident man of two nights ago.
“Well . . . I think let’s plan on it,” I said. “What time will you be coming by for me?’
“I’ll be there at five thirty with bells on.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “Actually, I’ll be in Jim’s truck, so more of a rattle. But I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the receiver and pursed my lips—lost in speculation over my impulsive agreement. “That should not have happened,” I said, my finger still tightly hanging onto the hook.
Chapter 9
If my coughing fits during most of Friday hadn’t been warning enough, the next day confirmed the inevitable fever. Saturday morning I was tucked beneath the bedcovers with a cool compress on my forehead. Millicent’s telephone call to the Hagan household had served to pass along my disappointment and sincere regret for having to cancel my visits, both for dinner and the promised visit to Providence Methodist Church.
She plumped my pillow and handed me a cup, and I sipped a warm concoction of honey and lemon juice. “Simon sounded positively crushed, Gracie. But there will be other times.” Her sympathy showed.
“Well,” I said, coughing, “we’ve carried on a lot for having only been face to face one time . . . and two brief other times. Simon had a little cough too. Must have caught a bug on our Christmas Eve walk. Guess a cold wind got us.”
“A cold wind got us, I guess,” Simon was saying on the other end of the telephone line. “But I feel one hundred percent. I hope you do, Gracie. Hate to think I brought this on by taking us on a walk.”
I couldn’t keep myself from smiling as I pictured him hiding behind a large barrel of some sort at Jim’s store, a graceful hand bridging the gap between the receiver and his mouth. “Oh, don’t go thinking such a thing. And I’m fine. My fever’s been gone for two, three days. I’m very sorry about dinner and all. Please, I hope Hannah understood. And I’m glad you’re feeling well.”
“Would you believe I have a new plan?”
Millicent was right about his sense of humor. It perfectly complemented his charm, but the thought of a new plan put me on guard. I bit my lip.
“We still have New Year’s Eve tomorrow. Now, I know, I know. There’s not a great selection of places to celebrate, and Hannah has whatever epizootic whatever we had, so I won’t suggest coming all the way out here again—not yet, anyway. But it’s gonna be a nice sunny day. I’ve asked Jim to let me take the afternoon, and if you’ll let me, I’d like for us to go on a ride.”
With no chair nearby, I yanked the carpet runner over to my feet and used it to pad the spot where I was about to sit on the floor. I tilted my head against the wall, the telephone base in one hand, the receiver in the other.
“A ride on a sunny day,” I said. “The last one of the year. Any place in particular in mind? Gasoline’s high, though. You know, driving is such a frill these days. But it’s a lovely thought, Simon. You could come over for hot chocolate instead, and—”
“Ah! Not to interrupt, and I do apologize, but what about taking a ride out to the country, maybe past your homeplace? Or there’s also Pilot Rock. That’s a bit farther to get to, but the view of scenery there is truly spectacular. Might be too cold for that one, and we don’t need another cold wind, do we, now that I’m thinking . . . Umm—”
“Your homeplace” had come through the telephone wires, resounding in my head like drum beats from a distant parade. Inwardly, I recoiled like a child needing to cover her ears.
“You’ve probably already figured out that I really just want to be with you, Gracie,” he said. “Hot chocolate would be nice, but let me get to know you. Why don’t you show me where you grew up? It’s only two or three miles out there, isn’t it? Maybe we could stop in and say hello to your dad.”
I could hear in Simon’s pause a deep breath of satisfaction.
He chuckled. “Ah, yes, and this does go back a way, but I do still recall the day I saw him ride onto the grounds outside the church where we went at the time. Mr. Robert Maxwell had the only automobile in the county—close to it, anyway. Running for Senator, he was, and had everyone’s attention. I knew right then and there I’d own a Model T one day. Fact is, Senator Maxwell might have been the biggest reason I went off to Detroit.”
“To Hillbound? Um. Out to my old homeplace? Tomor—Tomorrow afternoon?” I felt goofy for saying what I’d said and for stammering the way I had.
“What do ya think?”
He sounded cautious now, so I stood up and tamped down the oversized wrinkles in the rug that my wiggling on it had caused. I glided my fingertips slowly down the length of the telephone’s cradle, then up and back down, trying to fashion in my mind an excuse for not wanting to allow Mr. Simon Hagan to take me from this secure present moment, to prevent him from touching anything in my past—the places I’d left behind. Simon had no way of knowing I’d put Hillbound’s shaky foundation behind me and exchanged it for higher ground, or that the dark thread in my life might unwittingly be revealed in riding past the two-story clapboard house with its white picket fence, seeing the old barn, seeing the tobacco fields lying frozen in wait for spring, or seeing from Allensville Road the horse stables in the background. In my mind, I grasped for words, for some purposely offhand joke over the accolades Father had earned in Simon’s eyes.
Still . . . The chance of old wounds reopening loomed as a very real possibility, but I asked myself what threat of harm, what unreasonable power, should be able to keep me from returning, ever, to Hillbound? I felt fragile, with more than enough reasons to cower at the thought.
Even so, I let them go. New resolve had me agreeing once more to Simon Hagan’s wild plans before I hung up the telephone and sat down