Chapter 16

Chapter 16 of 56 · 8-minute read

I scan the restaurant, beyond the lines of people at the salad bar and the dessert bar, past the pigtailed servers dipping in and out with their food trays. Finally, I spot him in the edge of a different doorway. Carol Ann is gone, replaced by a set of dark-haired women that can’t be over thirty. Definitely young enough to be my daughters. They might be twins. Definitely sisters. Although I cannot hear either of them over the dining room voices, both of the young women have their index fingers in his face. Dix stares at the braided rug on the floor and kicks at it absentmindedly with the toe of his shoe.

I shake my head and finish as much of my dinner as I can while I wait for him. This is the Dixon Caine I remember. Popular with the women but always in trouble. The only difference now is that he’s considerably older than the last time I witnessed a scene like this and the women are decades younger.

By the time he remembers I’m alive and waves across the room at me, I am halfway through a refill of sweet tea, I’m overly full of chicken, dressing, and cranberry sauce, and the battery-powered candle flickering inside a mason jar for decoration has gone dim. I have no idea why he asked me on this date, only to abandon me halfway through. It’s clear that he has no interest in me. No matter how much he may wonder what life might have been like with me instead of the women he chose and no matter how important his conversations with three other women may be in the middle of our date, I no longer put up with this kind of shit. I’m perfectly happy to dine alone, even here among hometown strangers who eye me as if I might steal either their dessert or their aging husbands. However, eating alone wasn’t how I planned to spend my evening.

Our server, Kate, according to the shellacked wooden pin she wears on her denim vest, offers me a fresh-from-the-oven plate of cathead biscuits, named for their size and shape rather than ingredients. I shake my head.

“Is he coming back?” She jerks her head in Dixon’s direction. “His supper has done gotten cold. Should I box it up to go?”

It’s good to see her again, not because I know her but because I welcome every friendly face I can find. This is two nights in a row that Kate has waited my table—tonight with and mostly without Dix and last night with Mama. My mom is certain she remembers Kate as a new baby in her church and reminded me in Kate’s absence of what a pudgy child she’d been and still is. Mama had trouble remembering Sonnet’s name, but her long-term memory of useless facts and judgments seems fine. She even remembered to sneak a fifty-dollar bill under the edge of my plate to pay for dinner.

“Sure,” I tell Kate. “A box for me, too, if you don’t mind, but just the Hummingbird Cake. I’ll take it home to my mom.”

“Absolutely.” She begins clearing the dirty dishes. “I know Ms. Emma will enjoy that. And I know she enjoys having you home.”

Shoot. I’ve lost track of Dix again. I’d prefer to tell him I’m leaving, whether or not he deserves the courtesy.

Within minutes, Kate returns with several small paper boxes. After she packages Dixon’s almost untouched meal, she hands me a small box for the cake. Hesitating, she bites her lip. “So, um, you and Mr. Dixxie?” She nods in a different direction from where Dix was when last I saw him. At least she knows where he is.

I gesture toward Dix across the room, now engaged in an argument with all three women. “Apparently not.”

She sighs loudly. “That’s our Dixxie. Always in demand. Another day, another woman chasing after him. And yet he can’t seem to make it work with any of them. Poor guy. I just don’t understand it. It’s like he only wants the ones who aren’t emotionally available or treat him like dirt.”

Kate pulls a small, plastic folder from her apron pocket and sets it gently on the table in the exact spot where Dix’s plate had been. “I’ll just leave this here.”

I hand her a credit card instead. “I’ll get it. I think I’m done here, anyway. By the way, cute pigtails.”

Her eyes wide. “We wear them all the time to work now,” she whispers conspiratorially. “All of us. I swear, we make twice as much in tips when we do.”

I lean back and take a long look at her. I thought with her pigtails, loafers, and knee socks that she was maybe Rhiannon’s age, but the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes tell me she’s closer to my age than my daughter’s. Her glowing smile and lithe movements tell me that she isn’t as old as I am, though she may have kids close in age to my own.

“By the way,” she asks as she takes my card, “could I ask you something? Your mom was here last week with some of the church ladies, and she was having a hard time remembering something she said was really important. Did she ever figure it out? I’ve been worried about her.”

“Well, she’s, um, eighty years old, so her memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“I know. And I know she’s had a couple of strokes. But I just felt so bad for her. She was so upset that she couldn’t remember.”

I almost drop my purse. “She was upset? About what?”

“She said it had something to do with something that was buried in the swamp, and she was worried that it wouldn’t stay buried. It was really strange. I wouldn’t have thought another thing about it, knowing she hasn’t been well, but she was sitting there with her church friends and absolutely bawling her eyes out over not being able to remember. I mean, like it was a family pet or something. So, I gotta ask: what’s buried in the swamp that’s bothering her so much?”

I stare at Kate for a moment, then let my face go soft. “The old water heater.”

It’s not a lie. My mom would be embarrassed for everyone to know, but she is something of a hoarder. Her house is fine, except for the closets and under the beds. It’s not a ceiling-high maze like the storage sheds always have been.

“You know how her generation is about keeping everything in case they may need it one day. Every appliance she’s ever had is in one of the storage buildings or somewhere inside the old barn. I guess she ran out of room, because the old water heater that went belly up about a decade ago is now part of her makeshift landfill. Most of her old appliances are things that she kept because she swore she might need them for parts later on or maybe somebody else would want them, so they’ve just been sitting in the outbuildings at her house, collecting dust and rust. I guess she was sure she’d never use that water heater again and decided to give it a proper burial so she could have more room for new broken appliances.”

I try to make a joke out of it. Kate seems satisfied with my answer because she launches into a tale about her great-grandfather’s house being so full of National Geographics that she couldn’t navigate the stacks between the front door and the kitchen. She disappears with my credit card and the last of the dirty dishes, returning a few minutes later with a pen and wishing me a good evening.

That’s when Dixon notices: at the exact moment I’m signing my name to the check.

As I stand, he forgets the other women and races toward me. “Wait! Laurie! Where are you going?”

A few people notice, but most are immersed in their own dramas at their own tables.

“Your attention is elsewhere, Dix.”

“That?” He glances over his shoulder at three scowling women. “That’s just business. I have a real estate deal in the works and they’re competing for it. It’s—” he leans in to whisper— “it’s a two million dollar deal on the table. I’ll still get it finished before tomorrow’s deadline, but I promised all of them that I’d be working on it all day today, and obviously I’m not because I’m here with you. They’re not happy.”

I study his face. I’m not one to believe bullshit. Not anymore. My magickal abilities cut through nonsense like that, yet I don’t sense a lie in his tone.

I lower my voice so that only he can hear me over the background chatter. “Then you shouldn’t have asked me to dinner tonight knowing you had work commitments.”

The creases in his forehead deepen, and his mouth presses into a thin line. “I didn’t.”

We lock eyes, neither of us moving or saying a word.

“I don’t understand, Dix.”

“I didn’t ask you out tonight, Laurie. You asked me out.”

Slightly taken aback by his response, I let out a short laugh. “No, I didn’t.”

I don’t need a man to complete me, and I have more than enough to keep me busy with Mama.

“Yeah, you did. Your mom said to pick you up at six o’clock tonight because you wanted to have a romantic date with me. That’s what she said. I told her today wasn’t good for me because I’m under an intense deadline but she pleaded. A ‘romantic date.’ When I called you earlier today to confirm the time, you agreed.”

“Of course, I agreed. My mom said you left a message that you wanted to take me to dinner. A ‘romantic date,’ she called it. When you called today to confirm what time to pick me up—” I break off.

Damn it. Mama can’t remember what piece of junk she dumped in the swamp, but she’s still together enough to plot and match-make.

“I’m sorry, Dix. I think my mother is playing games with us. I never asked you to dinner. Honestly, I don’t think we have much in common.”

Dix stares at me, his eyes wide and mouth ajar as if either I’ve slapped him or he’s a schoolboy having his first crush. “You’re not interested in me? I know it’s been a long time, but I’m definitely interested in you. If you’d just give me another chance. Please?” he pleads. “I look at you, and all I want to do is kiss you.”

I shake off the memory of his kisses when I’d been fourteen and he’d been eighteen. I’m not going to chase down a man and beg him for attention. I’m not a high school freshman anymore.

Right on cue, his phone blasts in his pocket, and he reaches for it. All I can do is shake my head. Always something to pull his attention from me, and I’m afraid tonight will be a good representation of what a relationship with him would look like.

His phone silences the instant he squints at the screen, and mine starts to ring. Dix jerks his head up. “It was Virgil. He didn’t leave a message.”

I pull my phone from my purse. Virgil.

“Hello?”

“Laurie, I need you to meet me at the ER. It’s your mom.”

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