The Mulberry Tree

  “How long did you spend with him that day?” Matt asked.

  “Hours. All afternoon and into the evening.”

  “Didn’t your mother worry about her seventeen-year-old daughter being out alone for all that time?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bailey said. “But then, she and Dolores were busy.”

  “But surely someone would have told her that her daughter and the infamous James Manville were on the rides together.”

  “We didn’t know anyone at that fair. It was in Illinois, and we lived in Kentucky.”

  “Hmmm,” Matt said. “Go on. What happened next?”

  “That’s all. Jimmie and I were going up the side of the roller coaster when he said, ‘You wouldn’t want to marry me, would you?’ and I screamed, ‘Yeeeesssss,’ all the way down.”

  Bailey got off the couch and walked to stand by the fireplace. The memories were making her sad. Where had she and Jimmie gone wrong? When had the bad started?

  “At the bottom of the roller coaster, he took my hand and started pulling me. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

  “And that’s when I panicked. I stopped in my tracks, because I knew that if we asked my mother’s permission to marry, it wouldn’t happen. He’d probably be turned off by one of them. Or maybe one of them would steal him away, since both of them were beautiful. At best, I knew they’d take months to plan a wedding, and I couldn’t see Jimmie standing still for all the buttering up that would go on. In an instant I could see everything. And, before you ask, no, I wasn’t tempted to lose my one and only chance with a man like James Manville by telling him I was just seventeen years old. And as he often did, Jimmie understood my hesitation completely.”

  Bailey took a deep breath. “ ‘Are you sure?’ Jimmie asked. ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I told him. ‘No hesitation?’ he asked me. ‘None.’ ‘I’ll take care of you,’ he said. ‘I know you will,’ I answered, then I put my hand in his and followed him to his car.

  “Three hours later, we were married. And I didn’t see my mother and sister again for three months. By then they’d had time to adjust to the idea of my being married to James Manville.”

  Matt gave her a one-sided smile. “Welcomed you home with open arms, did they?”

  “Open wallets is more like it.”

  “I’m not a lawyer, but to be legal, I think Manville would have had to get your mother’s consent before the marriage. Was there time? Could he have done so? Was there any hint from any of them that they knew that you were to marry Manville before the ceremony?”

  Bailey tried to remember every detail of that first visit. “Jimmie said I had to make it up with my family, so we went back to Kentucky to see them. Maybe some women would have been triumphant, but I was embarrassed. I felt I’d done something wrong by eloping. And I so very much wanted approval from them.”

  “Think back,” Matt said. “Try to remember everything that was said that day.”

  Bailey closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. “I remember that there were a lot of new things in the house, a few pieces of furniture, and a dishwasher had been installed. And some repairs had been made to the house. I think I remember that the roof looked new. I never spoke of it but I knew they’d accepted money from Jimmie, but then he was generous like that.”

  “And how did your mother and sister act toward you?”

  Bailey swallowed. Some hurts never healed. “They were cool and distant, like strangers. I wanted my mother and Dolores to fall on me with great hugs and tell me they were so happy for me. But instead they—”

  Bailey turned away for a moment, then looked back at him. “I don’t like all this dragging up of the past. It’s ugly, and it hurts.”

  “Remember that woman on TV crying because she had lost her job and she had three children to support?” Matt said softly. “I imagine she and a lot of other people are in pain now.”

  Bailey closed her eyes again. “It was as though they didn’t remember me, as though I’d never been part of their lives; I was a stranger to them. Instead of giving me a Coke, like she and my sister were having, my mother had bought a china tea service. She poured me a cup of tea and asked if I wanted one lump or two. I’d never drunk a cup of hot tea in my life, and I’d never even heard of lump sugar. It was all so strange.”

  “Did either of them say anything at all?”

  “Not much. I just remember chitchat. Rainy weather, that sort of thing. Jimmie just sat there, leaning back on a chair, amused some of the time, and sometimes so bored he nearly fell asleep. I so wanted it all to be fun. I wanted my mother to drag out my baby pictures and tell Jimmie all about me when I was a child. Instead, at one point, my mother called me Mrs. Manville. ‘Thanks to you,’ my sister said nastily, then my mother gave her a look to shut her up. I was so jealous of that look. It was so like family. It was—”

  “Back up,” Matt said. “What did your sister mean, ‘Thanks to you’?”

  Bailey shrugged. “I don’t know. Just some family thing, I guess. I wasn’t a part of it.”

  “Tell me again what your mother said.”

  “She said, ‘More tea, Mrs. Manville?’ Then my sister said, ‘Thanks to you.’ ”

  “Did your sister say that to you or to your mother?”

  “I thought she was talking to me, but I was looking at Jimmie, and—” Bailey opened her eyes wide. “Do you think my sister was saying that I was Mrs. Manville thanks to my mother?”

  “Maybe. Think of the timing. When could Manville have obtained your mother’s permission?”

  “He couldn’t have. We went straight from the roller coaster to a waiting preacher. There was no time to—” She looked at Matt.

  “Waiting,” he said. “A waiting preacher. He knew you were underage because you had won in the under-eighteen division. He must have made up his mind to marry you when he gave you the blue ribbons. By the time you met him at the Ferris wheel, he’d already arranged everything, or else she would have come after you. I can’t imagine that a small-town fair wasn’t abuzz with gossip about a celebrity spending the afternoon with a teenager. Some busybody would have made it her duty to find your mother and tell her.”

  “He preplanned the wedding,” Bailey whispered.

  “Was he the type of man to have made the decision, then been so sure you’d agree that he went ahead with the arrangements?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s exactly what Jimmie always did. It was a philosophy of his. He said that most people were indecisive fools, and that even if you worked for years to get them to see reason—meaning, to see his point of view—they could go backward in a second. So he’d have contracts ready before he went into meetings. The second they agreed, he’d present the documents.”

  “I think maybe he saw you, wanted you, and knew you were under eighteen, so he began doing what he had to to get you.”

  “Then you think he did get my mother’s permission?”

  “Yes. And, what’s more, I think Atlanta and Ray may have recently been told that that piece of paper exists, and they know that if it shows up, they’ll lose everything. That’s why they’re liquidating as fast as they can, to get as much money out of the country as they can.”

  “But where is the paper?” Bailey asked.

  “Where’s the permission slip? It didn’t show up when the accountants went through Jimmie’s papers.”

  “There’s someone who knows.”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister. My guess is that she either has it or knows where it is.”

  Bailey gave a little smile. “That’s a good thought. Why don’t I just call her and ask? I’m sure she’d love to tell me. I talked to her just—let’s see—it was a mere three years ago. She was screaming at me that I’d ruined her life. She said it was my fault that her first husband had divorced her. I never knew if Jimmie was the one who arranged for her husband to get a job offer in the Middle East or not, and the truth is that I didn’t want to know. But Dolores was sure that he had. The fact that
Jimmie set up annuities for her and her daughter, bought them a huge house in a gated community in Florida, and kept supporting her through husbands number two and three meant nothing to her. In her mind, I had made her life miserable.”

  Bailey took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “Okay, so maybe you can’t ask her, but there must be someone who can, someone who could get information out of her.”

  “I don’t know who,” Bailey said.

  “Okay, let’s put our minds to this.”

  But try as they might, they could come up with no solution.

  After a while, Matt stood up and looked at his watch. As though she could read his mind, Bailey knew what he was thinking. They had put it off long enough: they had to tell Carol that her husband was dead.

  Twenty-two

  Matt wouldn’t allow Bailey to go to Violet’s house by herself. Instead, he drove her there, then told her that he’d wait as long as she needed. When Violet saw the two of them standing at the door, she gathered Carol’s two daughters and ushered them out to the backyard. Matt gave Bailey’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then left her alone with Carol.

  It was two hours before Bailey walked out of the house into Violet’s backyard, where Matt was playing with the girls and Violet was sitting on a chair and watching them.

  “How is she?” Matt asked.

  “As well as can be expected. Carol said she left Phillip and didn’t even tell him where she was going. She wanted to shock him enough that he’d quit working for Atlanta and Ray. But the money they were offering was something that Phillip wouldn’t turn down.”

  Bailey looked up at Matt. “You know something, I think Phillip was lying to his wife. I think there was some other reason why he didn’t leave Atlanta and Ray. Jimmie once told me that Phillip had a lot stashed away, and he never struck me as greedy. Phillip told me that what he liked about working for Jimmie was that he was never bored.”

  “What now?” Matt asked, glancing up at the house.

  Bailey looked at Carol’s daughters on the swing set. Violet was pushing them, and they were yelling that they wanted to go higher and higher. For all that the oldest was twelve, in Calburn, she was still a little girl.

  “Carol has to tell her children that their father is dead. She has to—”

  When Bailey started to cry, Matt pulled her into his arms, then waved at Violet to let her know that they were leaving. They didn’t say anything on the ride home.

  At home, Matt treated Bailey as though she were an invalid, putting her on the couch, wrapping a quilt around her, then scrambling her some eggs that were heavy on the butter.

  “You’ve had a hard time of it,” he said softly as he sat down beside her and smoothed back her hair.

  “You know,” she said, putting her empty plate down on the coffee table, “I lost my husband, and because of the money, I wasn’t allowed to mourn him. Did you hear what they said about me on the news today? That what Atlanta and Ray are doing might be my fault. Yet after Jimmie died, they talked about how I was a ‘master controller.’ I saw shows where therapists talked about ‘women who manipulate.’ And now—”

  Matt was smiling at her.

  “What’s so damned funny?”

  “You,” he said. “When I first saw you, you looked like you were scared of everything in life. You looked like you were afraid to step foot out of the house, but look at you now. You’re ready to fight the world.”

  “Maybe—” she began, then said, “You have something on your chin.”

  Matt wiped at his chin. “Did I get it?”

  “No. Come here, let me,” she said; then, when Matt leaned toward her, she grabbed his shirt collar and pulled his lips to hers.

  There was something about being so close to death that made her want to live. Today Carol had cried and said all the things that Bailey had thought after Jimmie’s death, that she’d never hold him again, never laugh with him.

  Bailey had wanted to say, But at least you have friends who will mourn with you. Bailey hadn’t had that luxury after Jimmie’s death. Instead, she’d been labeled by the world as such a horrible person that her husband had disinherited her.

  Matt kissed Bailey back, but he pulled away quickly, then looked into her eyes. “I’m not an easy make,” he said softly. “I play for keeps.”

  She stared right back at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  With that, Matt smiled, then swooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, where he put her on the bed. When he made a motion as though he meant to leave the room, Bailey grabbed his arm. “Where—” she said.

  “To get some protection,” he said, his eyes hot.

  Bailey didn’t let go of his arm. She didn’t say anything, but she looked up at him, her eyes asking him not to leave.

  “Are you sure?” Matt said, and his voice was husky.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He smiled at her in such a way that she thought maybe there were tears in his eyes.

  Then, the next moment he was on her. Weeks of pent-up desire made them tear at each other. Clothes went flying about the room. It was a happy, joyous time, with both of them wanting to block out the last horrible hours.

  Bailey wanted to forget the many weeks of loneliness. The joy of feeling a human body against her own was what she needed.

  “Beautiful,” she said when she saw him nude, her lips on his skin.

  “Sure?” he asked. “I thought maybe the water trick had turned you off.”

  All Bailey could do was laugh, a low, throaty laugh, as her lips and hands ran over his skin, felt the muscle of him, felt his hips between her thighs, and the weight of him— Oh, heavens, but the deliciousness of a heavy man on top of her!

  “I love you, you know that, don’t you?” Matt said into her ear, just before he sucked her lobe into his mouth.

  All Bailey could do was nod, because when he entered her, all thoughts fled. She was a primal being, and she was at the very basis of what life was all about.

  Matt slammed into her until Bailey’s head hit the headboard; then, somehow, she was hanging over the bed, her head hanging down toward the floor. To brace herself, she put her hands on the wall, and Matt kept going.

  When he came, Bailey screamed, and her body went so limp that if Matt hadn’t caught her, she would have hit the hardwood floor headfirst.

  With one arm, he pulled her up onto the bed and tucked her under him, then they lay there in a pool of sweat for a moment.

  After a while Bailey felt his body stiffen, and she knew that he had something serious to say to her. “You know, don’t you, that you could be . . . ” He trailed off.

  “With child?” she said and Matt nodded, smiling at her use of the old-fashioned phrase.

  She raised herself on one arm to look down at him. Twenty-four hours after she’d met Jimmie, she’d been married to him, but she’d come to know Matt well before she went to bed with him. She knew what a kind, sweet man he was. She knew that his pride was his downfall, and there were times when she could see that little boy who’d so hungered after all the things he’d missed in life.

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t be.”

  “Oh,” he said, and his face fell. “I see. You’re using something.”

  She stroked his dark hair away from his sweaty forehead. “I happen to know that the only way to conceive is through oral sex.”

  “Yeah?” Matt said, eyes twinkling. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. My best friend in high school told me that. She said that as long as a man and woman don’t put their mouths on each other’s ‘things,’ the girl can never get pregnant.”

  “I see,” Matt said. “Then we’d better not try that.”

  “Certainly not when we’re this dirty,” Bailey said.

  “You’re right,” Matt said, then he smacked his forehead. “You know what I forgot to do? The plumber—you remember him?”

  “How could I forget? He’s the one who gave me the o
nion-flower cutter.”

  Matt laughed. “He told me that I was to check if that big bathtub in your bathroom works. And I never did.”

  “That’s horrible of you!” Bailey said. “Really dreadful. What kind of friend are you?”

  “The worst,” he said as he ran his mouth along her bare shoulder. “How can I make it up to him?”

  “Try the tub out now?” Bailey suggested.

  “Mmmm,” Matt said, as he kissed her neck. “But you better stay with me and make sure I do it right.”

  “On one condition,” she said.

  “And what is that?”

  “No oral sex. Absolutely anything on this earth except oral sex.”

  “Scout’s honor,” he said, then he picked her up and carried her into the bathroom.

  “Matt,” she said, “were you ever a Boy Scout?”

  Matt just laughed.

  Twenty-three

  When Bailey sauntered into the kitchen the next morning, Alex was there, and he had the table filled with food. She stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. There were cinnamon rolls hot out of the oven, pancakes, hard-boiled eggs, and little sausages.

  “I thought you and the old man might be needing some refreshment this morning,” Alex said in a way that made Bailey blush and turn away to look at the tea-kettle. “Have a good time last night?”

  “Watch your mouth, and what time did you get in last night?” Matt said from the doorway.

  “Ten,” Alex said.

  “It was two A.M.,” Matt said. “If you’re going to live under this roof, young man, you’re going to follow some rules.”