Stubborn as a Mule Read online

  “But aren’t they launching all the lanterns back at the barn?” I ask curiously.

  “Yup,” he says. “But that’s not the best place to see them.”

  I accept his word as his hand drops from my elbow but only to grab my hand. He squeezes and then leads me into what I’d take for a forest, but as soon as we start walking the path, I can see a clearing coming into view not far ahead.

  The sounds of the music and people start to fade away, and I notice the crickets and bullfrogs getting louder.

  “I hope you didn’t take Lynette seriously?” Lowe says out of the blue.

  “Not any of my business what you did with her in the past,” I mutter.

  Lowe laughs and squeezes my hand again. “It was a long, long time ago. I’m not interested in her.”

  This is simply said, but it’s done with feeling, I can tell. It makes me smile, and I feel comfortable in teasing, “Then what are you interested in?”

  “Not what,” he says without pausing in his stride or looking back at me. Yet, his words are meant only for me as he adds on, “Who.”

  “Then who?”

  “Come on, Mely” he says teasingly as he pulls me along the path. “You know the answer to that already.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Lowe

  I keep my tone light and teasing as I lead Mely to Mainer Lake, but I’m beyond ticked off at Lynette for saying those things. Della said she did it full well knowing Mely was standing there listening, so it was done for spite and because she’s always been a mean girl. Pisses me off I ever went sniffing around her all those years ago, but I was young, dumb, and drunk.

  Not a good combo.

  But Lynette’s left behind, along with the rest of the town of Whynot as they get ready to launch hundreds of lanterns into the sky. They are beyond beautiful to behold as they rise into the sky, but the real magnificence is taken in from a bit of distance.

  “What is this place?” Mely asks as we step out of the small crop of trees that separate the barn from the water.

  “Mainer Lake,” I tell her as we walk toward the dock. I point across the water. “That’s my house over there.”

  “It’s so pretty,” she says, and I grunt at that proclamation.

  “It’s a cabin. A man’s cabin. Nothing pretty about it.”

  “But it is,” she coos as we continue to walk. “All the lights on, looking so warm and inviting.”

  “Are you trying to talk your way into my bed, woman?” I tease her.

  She snickers and doesn’t respond. When I look down at her, I see her lower lip tucked into her teeth as she looks at the ground, trying not to laugh.

  God, she’s freaking gorgeous and adorable and so not the woman I couldn’t stand just shy of two weeks ago. I have no clue what the hell has happened to me or between me and Mely, but I like where it’s going.

  We step onto the small dock that extends from the land about fifteen feet out into the water. My boat with a small trawling motor is docked there, as I’d driven it across earlier today from the dock at my little cabin. I have this lantern viewing thing planned well.

  When we reach the edge, I step down into the boat and then hold my hand out to Mely. She takes it and lets me help her step down. The boat rocks slightly, but I’ve been standing in boats like this since I was a kid and can hold my balance. Mely immediately plops down on the seat and grabs the edge to steady herself.

  With a flick of my wrist, the rope is pulled off from its mooring and I start the tiny motor. We’re silent as I guide us out into the middle of the lake.

  Once there, I cut the motor, drop anchor, and then stand to open the bench seat I’d been sitting on. It’s too dark out for me to see much of Mely’s expression, but I can feel the weight of her stare as I take out a wool blanket to arrange on the floor of the boat in between us. I then take out two life vests, and throw them down to act as pillows.

  Mely doesn’t say a word as I look to the tree line from where we’d come, and then use one of the oars to turn the boat with a few strokes in the water. Once that’s stowed, I adjust the anchor to hold us in place and then maneuver into the middle portion to sit down on the blanket.

  Holding my hand out to her, I say, “Come here.”

  She arches an eyebrow at me, but her hand slides into mine. I hold her steady as she carefully moves from her seat down onto the blanket with me. I lay back, taking her with me so we can prop our heads on the life vests. We lay side by side, looking at the copse of trees that separates us from the lanterns.

  I glance at my watch. Almost ten PM. Once it hits, then the prettiest lightshow you can ever imagine will start.

  Mely settles in beside me and her hand finds mine in the dark. She’s quiet a moment, then she asks, “So, not really interested in Lynette, huh?”

  “Interested in you,” I confirm as I get lulled by the slight rocking of the boat.

  “That’s nice,” she says.

  “Interested in me?” I ask.

  “Maybe.”

  I smile up at the dark, velvet sky. “Did I ever apologize for boarding up your house?”

  “Nope.”

  “For painting it pink?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “Gonna kiss you later,” I promise her.

  “Perfect,” she replies.

  My smile gets bigger, and I figure it’s high time I asked. “Why did you buy Mainer House? I thought you were going to flip it, but Larkin said you were going to stay.”

  I hope that didn’t come across as pathetically self-interested.

  “Was wondering when you were going to get around to asking that,” she murmurs into the darkness, and I can hear the smile in her voice.

  “Well, we have been busy with fighting in court, sneaking in kisses, and pulling pranks on Morri,” I explain as my head rolls to look at her. “Hasn’t been much time—”

  “Ooh, Lowe,” she says with absolute wonder in her voice as she stares off at the trees.

  Tilting my head back, I see the first lanterns start to rise above the tree line. They look like enormous fireflies from this distance. Big, bright orbs of light. Hundreds and hundreds of them rising into the air.

  “It’s amazing,” Mely whispers.

  “Doesn’t seem real, does it?” This night always seemed so magical to me as the lights ascend, representing good fortune for a prosperous harvest, but I always felt a personal connection to the hope that was manifested on this night.

  “I wonder if my grandmother, Glory, ever came to this festival,” Mely says, and I turn to look at her again.

  “She was from here?” I ask.

  “Milner,” she provides. “We were very close, but she didn’t talk much about her childhood. I mean… I knew in passing she was from North Carolina, but she’d been living in New York since she was eighteen and she was never very nostalgic about her past.”

  “But there came a time when she was?” I hazard a guess.

  “She had dementia,” she tells me, her voice tinged with sadness and perhaps regret. “She deteriorated pretty fast. But she started talking about growing up here, and I learned a lot about this area from her. She never mentioned the Lantern Festival though.”

  “What’s her connection to Mainer House?”

  “My grandmother was born Glory Wheeler, but she married into the Rothschild family when she was twenty-one. Had met my grandfather at Columbia and they married after they graduated college. The Rothschilds are rich from a lot of diversified interests so long standing, I’m not even sure where the original money was made. They had a good marriage, and he died just over seven years ago. But when she started getting dementia about a year ago, she started talking about her past. I came to find out that she’d lost her first true love in World War II.”

  “He was a Mainer?”

  “Miles Mainer,” Mely continues. “At first, I didn’t know if she was making this stuff up because of her
disease, but then she showed me some pictures in her lucid moments, and I did some of my own research.”

  I lean up onto one elbow to look down at Mely, the lanterns completely forgotten for the moment. “What did you learn?”

  “That my grandmother and Miles had been high school sweethearts. In those days, there was only one school that covered several of the small towns.”

  This was true. I also knew the name Miles Mainer.

  “Let’s just say, Grandma shared with me maybe more information than I needed to know, but they were seriously in love. Like the type you lose your virginity to kind of love in his bedroom at Mainer House. Magical love the way she told it. Her stories about her love affair were always so inspiring. They just gave me a different side to the grandmother that I loved so much, but realized I loved her even more after learning about her growing up in this area. I mean, she told me more than just about Miles. She talked about swimming in Crabtree Creek. About going to the big city of Raleigh for Sunday brunch once every few months and what a treat that was. Lazy summer days and apple pie, and Lowe… I just wanted to experience that. It was something she shared only with me in her last months, and I wanted to see it for myself.”

  “And why wouldn’t you?” I say with sincerity, my hand coming up to cover the one she has laying across her stomach.

  She’s still staring up at the lanterns when she says, “She and Miles wanted to get married, but he had joined the Navy. They had planned on getting married on his first leave back home, but he never made it. Died at Pearl Harbor.”

  “Jeez,” I hiss out under my breath. Now that’s damn tragic.

  “My grandma told me her heart was so broken that she left the south. She had thought one day she’d marry her love and they’d live in Mainer House making pretty babies, so when he died, she just couldn’t bear it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mely,” I say, squeezing her hand.

  She squeezes back. “It’s fine. She loved my grandfather. Maybe a different kind of love. Maybe it was even better, I don’t know. I just know her last months and then weeks were spent talking about Miles Mainer and her beloved North Carolina.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Five months ago,” she says and her voice is watery.

  I do a quick math compilation in my head. “She would have been what… ninety-one years old?”

  Mely nods. “Ninety-one but she was in great shape until the dementia, and then she just went downhill fast. She had six kids over an eleven-year period, the last being my dad in 1956. And then he didn’t have me until he was twenty-eight, so my grandmother was a bit older than some of my friends’ grandparents. But she was just one of those women who wanted to be a mother, then a grandmother, so that was her thing. It’s why I was closer to her than my actual parents, because she was just sort of more parental. You know what I mean?”

  “Not really, but I can imagine,” I tell her truthfully.

  “I came down on a spur-of-the-moment trip about a week after her funeral. Wanted to see the places she talked about. When I came to Whynot and saw that Mainer House was empty, I made some casual inquiries. It wasn’t for sale, but I had a realtor approach your parents about it.”

  “Miles’ sister, Angela, had inherited the house and lived there until the last of her kids left in the mid-sixties. She’d been divorced by then and went to live in Raleigh with her sister. She’d kept the house but it sat empty. When she died in, I think it was 1981, she left it to my maternal grandfather, who then left it to my mother.”

  “Yeah, the realtor said they hadn’t really considered selling it, but I made them an offer I don’t think they could refuse.”

  That’s news, I think as my eyes drift out over the water. I just thought my parents worked hard to unload our history. I hadn’t realized they’d been approached.

  “Does that bother you?” Mely asks.

  I look back to her and answer her truthfully. “No. It doesn’t. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the house is owned right now by the right person. I couldn’t really afford to live there. I wanted it but didn’t have the means, so it was never going to be anything but a piece of my history.”

  “You’re sweet to say that,” Mely says. “I know how important your family history is to you.”

  “It is,” I agree. “And I’m not going to say it still doesn’t get me a little, but it’s part of your history too.”

  Mely’s head turns and she lets the lanterns go to peer at me through the darkness. She turns to her side to face me, and I roll toward her.

  Bringing a hand up to my chest, she says, “I think you should kiss me now.”

  “You’re kind of bossy,” I tell her with a smile, but then I kiss her before she can respond.

  And it’s way better than all the prior kisses put together. Because now I understand her on a level I hadn’t even thought was possible, and the fact she bought a house to be close to her grandmother—and that it was the story of her grandmother’s first love that brought her here—well, that’s just a kind of special you can’t buy at Walmart.

  It’s something that, for some reason, I’ve been made a part of, and I won’t treat that lightly.

  Besides, the way Mely feels in my arms and against my mouth, I’d be a fool to ever take this serendipitous gift for granted.

  CHAPTER 18

  Melinda

  “Mely, darling,” Morri says as I trot down the staircase to meet him at the front door. “You have some pep in your step, girl. Did you get some last night?”

  Sadly, I didn’t. Lowe was the perfect gentleman.

  No, wait… I love that he was the perfect gentleman actually. I’ve never had that before. In this world of instant gratification and the looser morals of my generation, one-night stands are more normal than not. Hookups are done without a second thought.

  But last night, laying in that boat and getting chewed to pieces by mosquitos—which I didn’t notice as they were chewing, but sure as heck did a few hours later—Lowe and I just made out in a slow, leisurely way. Very soft kisses, soft murmurs in between, hands wandering no further than perhaps a few stray touches on my butt.

  God, it was fantastic.

  After the lanterns had drifted out of sight, we spent all night back in the barn with Lowe teaching me how to two-step and watching some of the older people square dance. Lowe’s mom and dad were awesome and sweet and welcoming, keeping up a genial conversation all night. Catherine told me more about her aunt Angela, who was Miles’ sister, but best of all, I had heard stories about my grandmother. They’d never met because she’d left the area in 1942, not long after Miles died. Catherine hadn’t been born yet. But Catherine and Angela visited each other often, and Angela had talked about Miles’ sweetheart who had been heartbroken when he’d died.

  I felt like a complete fool when the tears spilled out over hearing that, but Lowe helped me to play it off by pulling me out onto the dance floor so I didn’t start sobbing like a hysterical woman.

  It was just a perfect night, as I hope tonight will be.

  Pap made Lowe promise to bring me by for a few drinks this evening so he could officially welcome me to Chesty’s. Lowe just texted me to let me know he was there, and I’m actually giddy to see him. He’d spent all day out on the farm with his parents and some volunteers cleaning everything up from the festival last night, and then he said he had some things he had to handle, which would take the remainder of his day.

  But then, he was so mysterious when he had texted not long ago. After a few drinks at Chesty’s, you’re mine. Don’t make any other plans. The Lantern Festival is going to continue.

  I wrote back and begged for details, even threatening I wouldn’t come out at all tonight, but he just kept texting back, See you at Chesty’s.

  “You actually look like you might be ready to squeal from excitement,” Morri says in critical observation as he takes me in with his fingertip tapping against his chin. “And since you didn’t readily admit to getting it on w
ith Mr. STD, I’m going to think you didn’t get lucky.”

  I come to a sliding halt in front of Morri, my lips curling up in disgust. “Mr. STD? Really, Morri… that’s so childish.”

  He cocks at eyebrow at me. “STD. Studly, tall, and devious. That’s my new nickname for him.”

  “Oh,” I say brightly at that explanation. “I like it. Just… don’t say it in public where others can hear.”

  Morri doesn’t affirm or decline my request to do so, so I’m guessing Lowe is going to get stuck with that name tonight. I decide to let it go. Lowe can handle his own battles.

  “You are looking very fetching,” I tell Morri. He’s gone urban casual with a pair of dark jeans expertly faded slightly at the thighs, a gray V-neck t-shirt, and the coolest pair of leather Oxfords done in gray and taupe. He looks fiendishly stylish but then again, Morri’s always been so, regardless if he was in drag or not. This outfit he’s sporting, however, has got to be the most sedate thing in his wardrobe. I expect he doesn’t want to be too ostentatious going into Chesty’s tonight.

  I hate that he even has to consider that as a factor. Neither Lowe nor I would care what he wore, but the fact of the matter is, more people than not would never understand Morri or even try to understand him. Forget he’s black. He’s a gay black man in the South, and he’s exercising some restraint on his creativity and healthy ego by toning it down just a bit tonight.

  “Shall we?” Morri asks as he offers his arm to me and opens the door with this free hand.

  “I think we shall,” I say as I tuck my hand in the crook of his elbow. We step out onto the porch. Morri gives me a moment to lock the door before we make our way onto the sidewalk. We look both ways but it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. The town square was bustling today for church, and Sunday brunch at some of the local dining establishments, but it was pretty dead now.

  After we cross over Wilmington Street, I squeeze Morri’s bicep with my hand and bring my other arm to rest in the crook as well, which makes me step in closer to him. “I’m going to miss you when you go back.”