The Mulberry Tree

  The walls of the half of the room at the head of the stairs had been plastered and painted white, but the other half was paneled in the same dark brown used downstairs.

  “Yet another bedroom?” she said aloud, looking at the big, empty room. She started to step through the opening in the railing, but drew back and looked down at the floor. For some reason, she didn’t trust that floor. The half behind her had wide, thick-looking planks for flooring, but on the other side sheets of plywood were nailed down. It looked safe, but something made her not want to walk on it.

  Bailey didn’t have a chance to figure out if the floor was safe or not; suddenly, someone blew a truck horn in three short blasts, and she knew she was being summoned. “Six weeks ago it was, ‘May I get you anything, Mrs. Manville,’ and now it’s a truck horn,” she muttered as she grabbed the recipe box off the floor and ran down the stairs. “I should be glad it’s not, ‘Sooey, sooey,’ ” she said out loud as she leaped over three heavy-duty electrical cords, an electrician’s toolbox, and a telephone man, who was on his stomach, looking into an outlet. As she ran out the front door, she told the man from Viking Cleaners not to let anyone go into the attic, as she thought it was dangerous.

  Two women were standing in front of one of the trucks. They were both about five foot three, both in their early thirties, both pretty but not overly so. Physically, they were so much alike that she was sure they were sisters, but they were dressed very differently. One woman had dark hair and wore a cotton shirt, jeans, and sneakers. The other was blonde—artificially so—and wore a knit suit, hose, pumps with heels, and enough gold bracelets that Bailey wondered how she could lift her arms.

  “Hello,” Bailey said, walking toward them and extending her hand in welcome. “I’m Bailey James.” She was pleased with herself for saying the name without faltering.

  “I’m Janice Nesbitt,” said the woman in the suit as she shook Bailey’s hand.

  “Ah, yes, from the Chamber of Commerce,” Bailey said as she turned to the other woman.

  “Yes,” Janice said, obviously pleased that Bailey had seen and remembered her brochure. “It’s a shame that no one else has come in person to welcome you,” she said loudly.

  “Just the two of you.” Bailey smiled at the second woman.

  “I’m Patsy Longacre,” the second woman said, shaking Bailey’s hand. “I would have thought that at least one person from this town would have shown up, maybe even someone from the Chamber of Commerce.”

  Bailey looked at Janice. “I thought you were from the Chamber of Commerce,” she said, puzzled.

  “I am. I’m the president of it,” Janice said brightly, then looked at the house. “I see you’re having it cleaned. I didn’t know that anyone had bought it. When did you?”

  “I—” Bailey began, trying to think up a quick lie. She certainly couldn’t tell the truth.

  “When did you come to see the house to buy it?” Patsy asked.

  At a loss to make up a lie quickly, Bailey looked from one woman to the other. For all that they were standing quite close together, they were looking in opposite directions.

  “The house was given to me,” Bailey said slowly. “An inheritance. Do you know who owned it?”

  “Don’t you?” Janice asked, looking at Bailey with narrowed eyes.

  “Who’d you inherit it from?” Patsy asked.

  Bailey took a deep breath. She should have thought of this beforehand and planned a lie. “My husband. I’m a widow. I didn’t even know he owned the place until the will was read.” There, that was true.

  “My goodness,” Janice said. “Imagine not knowing all there is to know about your husband’s finances.”

  Instinctively, Bailey opened her mouth to defend herself, but closed it. Jimmie kept three large law firms busy overseeing his “finances.” Instead, she smiled. “I’d offer you something to drink, but—” She waved her hand toward the house helplessly. “As you can see, it’s pretty busy here today. Right now, all my furniture is stored in the barn.”

  “That’ll be just fine,” Janice said, then walked briskly past Bailey and headed toward the barn. Obviously, she knew where it was located. That she had on a suit and hose, and that the weeds hadn’t yet been cut, didn’t seem to bother her.

  “I, uh—” Bailey began, then walked after her. But she halted and looked back because the other woman, Patsy, was still standing in front of the truck. “Please come with us,” Bailey said. “We’re going to the barn, I guess. Not that I have so much as seating there, but—”

  “Us?” Patsy asked. “I thought you said you were a widow. Who else lives with you? Children?”

  Bailey looked at the woman in consternation. Was her hearing off? “No,” she said. “By ‘we,’ I meant Janice. I do have the name right, don’t I? Janice Nesbitt.”

  “Don’t know her,” Patsy said as she walked past Bailey toward the path to the barn, then she turned back. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Sure,” Bailey said, feeling as though she’d come in on the third act of a play. What was going on with these two women?

  When Bailey got to the barn, both women were already there, and Janice had opened a box marked “Kitchen.”

  “Excuse me,” Bailey said firmly as she closed the box lid practically on Janice’s nose. “As you can see, I’m not moved in yet. Perhaps it would be better if the two of you—”

  “No one’s lived here since 1968,” Patsy said loudly, not allowing Bailey to finish her sentence.

  Jimmie would have been nine then, Bailey thought, and nine was a long way from sixteen, when his biographers had first been able to track him. “Who lived here?”

  Both women turned to stare at her, their silent question being, Don’t you know?

  This isn’t going to be easy, Bailey thought. “My husband was . . . was a good deal older than I was, and he liked to keep his past private. I really know very little about his childhood. I’d like to know what either of you can tell me about this place.”

  “Either of who of us?” Patsy asked. “You’re confusing me.” She narrowed her eyes at Bailey. “If you’re going to live in Calburn, then you must understand that no one else is in this room except you and me.”

  Bailey blinked. “I see.” She turned to Janice. “And are you and I alone?”

  “Oh, yes,” Janice said. “Except for the mice and whatever else lives in a barn. I can assure you that I wouldn’t know. I am as far from being a farmer as anyone on this planet is.”

  At that Patsy snorted in derision, and Bailey saw the red of rage spread on Janice’s neck and upward, as her hands beneath all the bracelets clenched into fists. It seemed that whether or not Janice knew anything about farming was a touchy subject.

  “I don’t know anything about farming either,” Bailey said softly.

  “Then why would you move to Calburn?” Patsy asked.

  The way Patsy had hurt Janice’s feelings didn’t sit well with Bailey. “You mean, as opposed to selling this place for millions and moving to the south of France?”

  It was Janice’s turn to laugh.

  Patsy looked at Bailey in speculation. “You have a tongue on you, don’t you?”

  “You’re not bad yourself,” she said. “But I can warn you that I don’t like petty snipping.”

  “Got ya,” Patsy said, then smiled at Bailey.

  “So what do you plan to do with your life, if I might ask?” Janice asked politely. “Or did your husband leave you well off?”

  Bailey was thinking that she couldn’t believe she’d just met these two women. Did all of Virginia ask personal questions ten minutes after meeting someone? “To tell the truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do. My husband left me this farm and a bit of money, but not enough to live on for the rest of my life. I guess I’ll have to get a job. Do you know of any openings?”

  Janice looked Bailey up and down. “You don’t look like the Wal-Mart type. What were you before you married?”

  “A teenager,”
Bailey said.

  “I’ve got two of those,” Patsy said, “but they’re boys, and they work for their uncle. You don’t know anything about carpentry, do you?”

  “I wish I did,” Bailey said wistfully. “The house is falling apart. There are holes in the roof, and I don’t think the floor in the attic is safe. And I’d like to knock out some walls to make a few of the bedrooms into something else. The way it is now, I could run a boardinghouse.”

  Janice had been standing to one side and looking at Bailey, but suddenly her eyes lit up. “What you need to do is get married again,” she said.

  At that Bailey laughed. “I don’t think so. I was mad about my husband, and I don’t think I’ll be able to—”

  “Of course there aren’t too many eligible bachelors in Calburn,” Janice continued, more loudly, as though Bailey hadn’t spoken.

  “I do not want to get married again,” Bailey said with emphasis. Truthfully, the idea of marriage hadn’t crossed her mind, and right now she didn’t like the way the conversation with these two odd women was going. “Maybe we should go back to the house. I’ll show you the bathrooms.” The sight of those rooms should get their minds off matchmaking!

  Bailey walked toward the barn door, but when neither of the women moved, she looked back at them. Janice was looking at her hard, but Patsy was staring at the loft, as though she were trying to remember something.

  “You need a younger man this time, someone who would be useful to you on this place,” Janice said, emphasizing the word. “Could help you.”

  “I don’t—” Bailey began.

  “That’s it!” Patsy said. “I just had a brilliant idea: you should get married again.”

  “That’s what Janice just said!” Bailey said in frustration. “Didn’t you hear her? She’s standing three feet away from you.”

  Patsy didn’t so much as blink. “You need to get married again, and more than that, you need to marry my brother-in-law, Matthew.”

  Bailey gave the women a tight little smile. Nosing into her personal life was one thing, but this matchmaking had to stop before it went any further. “That’s kind of you to offer,” she said firmly, “and I’m sure your brother-in-law is a wonderful man, but I don’t think that—”

  Patsy acted as though Bailey hadn’t spoken. “He’s a great guy, but he was married to a real bimbo. As soon as Matt got some money, she ran off with someone else. Why she’d leave a wonderful man like my husband’s brother, I don’t know, but it’s her loss. So now he’s been at my house taking up room for six long months. Why don’t I give him a call and ask him to take you out to dinner tonight?” she said as she lifted up her shirttail and unsnapped a case that held a cell phone.

  “No!” Bailey said so loudly that both women stared at her. “I mean,” she said more quietly, “I was recently widowed, and I need some time. I don’t want to get involved with anyone right now. Not that I’ve thought about it, but I can’t imagine . . . well, being with another man. Surely you must know what I mean.”

  For a moment, both women blinked at her in silence.

  “All right, then,” Patsy said, “how about dinner next Thursday?”

  Bailey took a breath, let it out slowly, and counted to ten. She was not going to be bullied by these two women, each of whom refused to acknowledge that the other existed. “When I said that I needed time, I meant—”

  “What this place needs is a building contractor,” Janice said loudly, yet again cutting Bailey off.

  Good, Bailey thought. She’d made her point, and they were going to change the subject. She smiled. “I have a card from a handyman.”

  “Walter Quincey?” Janice said with a sneer. “He’ll take your money, and you’ll never see any work. He’s the laziest man in two counties. No, you need a real builder, someone who knows what he’s doing.”

  Patsy wasn’t saying a word, just looking around the barn. Bailey hoped she hadn’t hurt the woman’s feelings by turning down her brother-in-law so harshly, but Bailey wanted to make herself clear from the beginning.

  Patsy looked at Bailey. “Did I tell you that my brother-in-law is a building contractor?”

  Instantly, Bailey was at war with herself. She didn’t want to encourage this woman or her bimbo-marrying brother-in-law, but the image of those kitchen cabinets that were barely hanging onto the walls danced before her eyes. “Your brother-in-law is a building contractor?” she heard herself ask.

  “More or less. He’s an architect, but he can build things too.”

  “Is he any good?” She had a vision of green tiles being thrown out the bathroom window, dark paneling torn from the walls.

  “He used to build skyscrapers in Dallas.”

  “Is he expensive? I don’t have much money.”

  “Well, honey, that’s obvious,” Patsy said in a way that made Bailey blink. “Everyone in town is talking about how some man named Phillip is paying for all of this for you.”

  When Patsy didn’t say anything else, Bailey realized that both women were expecting her to tell them who “Phillip” was. She didn’t want to; it wasn’t any of their business. “My husband’s attorney,” she said at last, then gave a sigh.

  “But if you’re broke, you came to a good place,” Patsy continued. “Nothing in Calburn can be expensive, because no one could afford it. Except some people, that is,” she said, then she glanced in the general direction of Janice.

  “Some people—” Janice began, not looking at Patsy but finally acknowledging her presence.

  Now what? Bailey thought. A catfight? She rolled her eyes skyward. What have you dropped me into, James Manville? she asked silently.

  “All right,” Bailey said loudly. “I’ll marry him if he’ll repair this house. Or does he want only sex? Or both?”

  The two women turned to look at her, their mouths hanging open so identically that Bailey was sure they were related.

  Patsy was the first to recover herself. “Sex might cheer him up,” she said without a trace of a smile, “but if you start having sex with a man here in Calburn, it might ruin it for the rest of us. My advice is that you offer to pay him half what he asks and hold off on the sex.” She punched in some numbers on her cell phone. “And it’s my experience that hints are better than the real thing. When you ask him to clean out the septic system, wear short shorts.”

  Bailey smiled at the two women. We might get along after all, she thought. When Patsy said into the phone, “Matt, I’ve got a job for you,” Bailey’s smile grew even more wide.

  Five

  When Bailey awoke the next morning, her first feeling was of fear, old-fashioned terror, because this time she did remember where she was. Her bed had been moved from the barn to the bedroom, and she was surrounded by dark paneling that seemed to make the room close in on her. Light was coming in through the bare windows, but it only showed the ugliness of the room to better advantage.

  Last night she’d been so tired that she’d fallen into bed, barely remembering to pull her nightgown over her head. But she hadn’t slept well; her dreams had been haunted by memories of Jimmie. In all their sixteen years together, they had never been apart for this long. If Jimmie went somewhere interesting, he took her with him. “Hey, Frecks,” he’d said once. “How’d you like to see those turtles on that island?” It took her a moment to understand where he meant. “Galapagos,” she said, and Jimmie had smiled at her. She had just finished high school when she’d met him, but she’d read a lot since then, and her knowledge pleased him. “Sure,” she said. “When do we leave?” “Half an hour.” “That long?” she said, then they’d laughed together.

  Now Bailey wiped at her eyes, which had begun to mist over. Jimmie wasn’t here, and he was never going to return.

  Slowly, she got out of bed and went into the bathroom, with its various-colored toilet fixtures. When she looked into the mirror at her “new” face, it startled her. She’d lived thirty-two years with her large, bent nose, and she’d been plump all her life. To
see something different was disconcerting.

  “Now what do I do?” she asked herself aloud as she stepped into the shower. Yesterday she’d asked those two women if they’d known of any job openings, but Bailey knew she was lying to herself as well as them. What skills did she have that would get her a job? She’d never learned to type, and she was probably the only person in the United States under the age of eighty who didn’t know how to use a computer. “Why waste your time?” Jimmie had said. “I can hire people to work computers.”

  She had no experience at anything in the world, really, except at being a wife.

  She turned off the shower, then slowly dried off on the stiff, new towels that hadn’t yet been washed and pulled on a pair of chinos from the clothes that she and Carol had ordered. Maybe I could call Phillip, she thought, then pushed that thought from her mind. She had a fear that if she called Phillip, the next step would be going to Atlanta and Ray and begging for money.

  Taking a deep breath, Bailey opened the bedroom door and walked down the few feet of hallway and into the living room. Late yesterday, Phillip had sent a truck-load of heavyset men to open all the boxes and crates in the barn and set the contents inside the house wherever Bailey wanted them. Now, she tried to look not at the dark, windowless walls but at the furniture. She’d chosen it under circumstances of great duress, and a week later she couldn’t remember any of it, but now she was pleased with it.

  There were two couches printed with big red peonies, golden vines, and green leaves, and two comfortable-looking chairs in the dark gold color of the print. A big coffee table stood in the middle. At the far end of the room was a large dining table set on a red Oriental carpet, surrounded by eight Windsor chairs painted a dark blue. Against the wall was a box full of curtains of red-and-black plaid. The movers hadn’t known how to hang the curtains, and, besides, there weren’t enough windows for all of them.

  But in spite of the nice furniture, the room was not inviting. How could any room as dark as this one make people want to stay in it?