“I’ll hold you to that promise.” I walked into the house. My grandfather clock ticked among fine lithographs of antique apple varieties in the living room, my cats hunkered on the polished oak floor of the kitchen to lap at the food in their apple-red ceramic dishes, and my opening-day paperwork and notes still lay stacked on a claw-footed walnut table by the back door to the porch, where I’d left them on my way out to pour wine on the unsuspecting roots of my life.
The phone sang.
“Number seven,” Smooch said, following me inside. She’d kept track of the calls in the past hour.
People on the President’s staff. People on the First Lady’s staff. They were all polite, but they all spoke to me slowly, as if I were Forrest Gump, and they called me by my first name, as if they obviously had the right. They all said the same thing. Let’s just keep this quiet until the President and First Lady can resolve it with Eddie in private.
I couldn’t agree, more. “Sweet Hush Farms,” I said grimly into the phone.
“Rush, please.”
“Hush. Hush Thackery. Speaking.”
“Hush, I’m Mrs. Habersham-Longly. I manage Mrs. Jacob’s hometown office in Chicago. I’m her younger sister.”
“Nice to meet you.” So Edwina Jacobs hired her own kin, the same as me. My hometown office, for the record, was on the other side of my goldfish pond, in the First Hush’s log cabin. A small dog and four cats were asleep in a bed of yellow autumn mums beside its porch.
“Now, Rush, let’s just chat—”
“Excuse me, it’s Hush.”
“I’m so sorry. Hush. Hush. I have a typo in my notes.”
“You have notes on me, too? Where did you get notes on me?”
Smooch pointed to one of the gold apple studs in her ears. “Ask her if she’d like some complimentary Sweet Hush Apple fourteen-karat earrings from the gift shop—”
I made a slashing gesture. Silence. Smooch sighed.
“Hush, there’s nothing sinister going on,” my caller soothed. “I just want to confirm some information about you. After all, you’re something of a local celebrity, we understand. Listed with your county chamber of commerce, and the state small business association, and the state apple growers association, and—”
“Are you people investigating me?”
“Well, no, it’s just that, of course, there are security issues when a relative of the President’s is involved.”
“Let me tell you something. All you need to know is that Eddie is upstairs in my house right now with my son waiting on her hand and foot. She’s safe as a bee in apple honey. Nobody on this farm is going to harm so much as a hair on Eddie Jacob’s head, and we’re not going to let any strangers get within ten feet of her. I’m not taking any more of these phone calls.”
“You can’t be serious. Now, Hush—”
“Don’t you people have first names, too?”
“I’m . . . Regina. Regina Habersham-Longley.”
Regina and Edwina? What was the third sister named? Vagina? “Habersham-Longley. With a hyphen?”
“Yes, why?”
“I’m keeping notes on you.”
“Are you being sarcastic, Hush?”
“Around here, we call it ‘Giving tit for tat.’”
“My point, Hush, is that we wouldn’t want to exploit the President’s daughter, now would we? We wouldn’t want word to get out to the public in the wrong way. We wouldn’t want the media to descend on your farm and start asking questions. Because frankly, we don’t know if this marriage is serious, and perhaps it can be resolved without anyone outside our small group ever knowing there is a problem.”
“Regina, I’m not sure what insults me most about what you just said, but let me make my point of view real simple for you: My son says he and Eddie Jacobs are married. I may not be happy about that, but my son’s not a liar. Now, out here in the boondocks where we ordinary people live, the parents of a girl who’s run off and gotten married will call or come by to visit the parents of the boy who’s run off with her. I’ve granted the Jacobs some leeway because they were out of the country when this started. But you give me their phone numbers, and I’ll call them for a chat.”
“You know it’s not that simple. You can’t just call—”
“Oh, yes, I can. I pay my taxes.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do, but—”
“All right, then. In the meantime, I’ve got a business to run and no more time to waste. You tell Eddie’s parents to call me. We’ll keep things quiet, in the meantime. This is a family matter, and I’m not talking to anybody else but them.”
“You’re joking.”
“Don’t bet on it, Regina. You have a nice day now, you hear? And by the way, if I find out you people are researching confidential materials such as my credit history and family medical records, I’ll hire the biggest, loudest civil liberties lawyer I can find, and your hypocritical bullshit about privacy will hit the fan. Good bye.”
I tossed the phone in the sink. When the Dalyrimple city council had leased land for a microwave tower just outside town I’d been one of the first Chocinaw Countians to buy a cell phone. Anything that put me in faster communication with the world of apple customers was progress, to me. The cell phone, the Internet, high-speed computer invoicing and overnight delivery services were all glorious.
“They put the world just outside our doorstep, and all we have to do is say ‘Hello,’” I’d told everyone who’d listen.
Now I wished I could hide myself, my son, and the Hollow in a cloak of old-fashioned backwardness. I wanted the world to go the hell away.
Smooch retrieved the phone. “I bet we get interviewed on The Today Show.”
“No.”
“Lord, Hush, look at the bright side. I’m gonna be an aunt! And you’re going to be a grandma. Granny Hush. Ol’ Gran-mammy Hush. Grand-muther Thackery. And you’ll be the mother-in-law to the President of the United State’s daughter. My God! Think of the publicity we’ll get for Sweet Hush Farms! Think of the money we’ll make! Big Davy would be so proud! He always said Davis Junior had the Thackery charm with women and the McGillen head for business. But to win the President’s daughter! Oh, Hush . . .” I looked at her so hard she flattened her mouth, adjusted her gold necklaces, and jammed a pocket computer in her jeans. “I’m going down to the public barns to check out the graphics on the new labels for the apple fruitcakes. I’m wasting my time trying to understand you. Your son married the President’s daughter. Most mothers would be happy.” She halted then stared at me with a wounded expression, chewing a thought, then spitting it out as if it hurt her tongue. “You’re acting very strange, and I know why. That damned Jakobek blew the bees off you. And you let him.”
I stopped pacing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that . . . he’s . . . Hush, you don’t keep up with politics and gossip, yes, I know, but for godssake. Don’t you ever listen to Haywood Kenney on the radio?”
Haywood Kenney’s nationally syndicated radio talk show was broadcast from coast-to-coast every day for three hours. He wrote books, made TV appearances, drew crowds when he spoke. He was a self-made so-called political commentator. Huh. He hated Al Jacobs and Edwina Jacobs and every aspect of the Jacobs administration since Day One Amen. I considered him a big mouth of mean-spirited halfwit ideas and a scrawny show-off in expensive suits, with hair like the thin brown fuzz on a monkey’s balls. “No, I don’t listen to him,” I said, “and what’s that bullshit artist know that’s not a half-lie or pure hearsay?”
“Kenney knows everything about Al Jacobs’ family! From way back! He was there twenty-something years ago in Chicago, when Al’s nephew—this Jakobek—killed a man with his bare hands. Hush, it’s a famous story.” She related the drama of Jakobek’s defense of Edwina
and baby Eddie. “Kenney says Jakobek just slaughtered the guy. Kenney calls Jakobek ‘Al’s Psycho Killer Nephew.’ He says Al Jacobs pulled strings to get the army to transfer Jakobek out of the country and keep him from being prosecuted for murder. Kenney says he’s been sent on shady missions all over the world ever since. Like he’s not much different than a hired gun. The government sends him in to assassinate people and stuff like that. That’s what Kenney says.”
The skin prickled on the back of my neck, but I flung out my hands impatiently. “What’s that got to do with him and me and the bees right now, Smooch?”
“You shouldn’t have let a stranger blow the bees off you, that’s all. He’s not the kind of man who does honor to . . . to Davy’s memory.”
I gave her a stunned, then narrowing look that said she’d crossed the line into Nobody’s Business But Mine. “If you think I’ve dishonored your brother’s memory in any way over the years since he died, spit it out now.”
She went wide-eyed and teary. “You know I think you’ve been a wonderful wife! You know I’ve said you ought to get out more and date a good man! But . . . you knew this Jakobek was coming here to cause trouble . . . to mess with Eddie and Davis and try to break them up . . . so why were you nice to him?”
“Nice? I threatened to core the man with my paring knife.”
“You let him blow the bees off you.”
“Did I have a choice?”
“All you had to do was wait for Gruncle to bring the smoke can. And you’re not afraid of the bees, anyway. There was no need for you to accept Jakobek’s help! He’s the enemy, Hush. Don’t encourage him.”
“So far, I’d say he’s been tough but fair, and we have to work together to—”
“To break up Eddie and Davis so Davis will go back to Harvard?”
My livid expression must have answered her question. She fled from the house. I sagged.
Was that what I wanted? To enlist Jakobek in scuttling the marriage?
Hands shaking, I retrieved a long-stemmed white pipe from the back pocket of my jeans, filled the pipe bowl from a stash of homegrown tobacco I carried in a small leather pouch, lit the bowl of crushed leaves with a Sweet Hush Farms butane lighter, and took a long, soothing drag. Two Secret Service agents, standing down by my shrubs, stared at me.
“Yes, the mountaineer businesswoman who’s now Eddie Jacobs’ mother-in-law smokes a pipe,” I called to them. They coughed politely and looked away.
SO, ON TOP OF everything else, my sister-in-law didn’t trust Eddie’s sinister Cousin Nick, and Gruncle came to me with a report that no one else in the family trusted him, either.
“We know he flirted with you and knocked Davis down.”
“No, he did neither.”
“That’s sure how it sounds. You taking up for the man?”
“I’m only reporting the facts.”
“He’s here to break up the marriage. What kind of man does that?”
“He claims he’s here to make sure Eddie’s all right. The same as my concern for Davis. All I ask is that that everyone stay calm and withhold judgment and let’s just see what happens.”
Gruncle looked at me shrewdly. “Better not withhold judgment for long. We’re about to get ourselves in a damned mess here. Because if your son thinks you’re working with this Jakobek to upend his marriage, he’ll never forgive you.”
I said nothing, but shivered inside.
“WILL YOU GO?” Jakobek asked again. It was the middle of the night. I stood in my fancily wallpapered downstairs hall outside the red-and-gold bedroom I’d redecorated after Davy died, holding a white chenille robe closed over my blue cotton pajamas, while the big man I barely knew stood before me in weathered khakis, worn flannel, old boots, and a hard predatory look in his eyes, asking me if I’d go with him, immediately, to a meeting the President and First Lady. He had just arrived from Washington. He stood close enough for me to inhale his warmth and feel quietly unnerved by his presence.
“How?” I asked in return. “Where?”
Before he could answer, out of the mountain night outside my house came the rumble of some aircraft. Jakobek looked skyward, as if the creamy plasterboard ceiling of my hallway held clues. “Marine helicopter,” he answered. “They’ll fly us to North Carolina. A secure estate that belongs to friends of Edwina’s. In a town there. Highlands.”
“Highlands? Rich friends.”
Davis and Eddie walked up behind me, sleepy and rumpled, wearing matching green robes over Harvard t-shirts. “I don’t expect you to answer my mother’s beck and call,” Eddie said.
Jakobek frowned and started to speak, thought about it, chewed some words, said nothing. But I knew what he was thinking.
I was the mother of the Jacobs’ son-in-law. I was Hush McGillen Thackery, with traditions to uphold and manners to tend. And unfortunately, Jakobek knew enough about me to control me. I pulled my white chenille tighter, like armor. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Jakobek almost smiled.
Chapter 11
THE AIR IN HIGHLANDS smelled cool and green, like fresh money. The ritzy little town sat atop a plateau so high in the mountains northeast of Chocinaw County it might as well be in Canada. It had golf courses and art galleries, blue-cold fishing lakes and towering firs and million-dollar cabins outfitted like Adirondack mansions. The names of some of America’s wealthiest families were listed on the local tax roles, if you knew where to look for them. In a few hours, when the shops opened, Mercedes and Jaguars would line the streets.
But the town was quiet under pretty street lamps when our motorcade swarmed through. Motorcade. Yes. Me and Jakobek in a black SUV driven by a Secret Service agent, with more black SUV’s in front and back. Jakobek looked unconcerned in khakis and a pullover sweater—whatever he carried in his duffel bag, none of it was formal. I wore, after exactly ten minutes of complicated debate (Wear your best dress suit; show them you’re sophisticated; no, show them you’re so sophisticated you don’t care what they think, so wear jeans, like somebody from New York or California) I had compromised: good jeans, four-hundred-dollar Italian pumps I found at a suburban Atlanta consignment store for fifty dollars, and a navy cashmere sweater I bought at full retail for a speech to a regional meeting of fruit vendors. I twisted my hair up in back a black clasp, and slapped on just enough expensive make-up to give me the melted look of a teenager after a long, sweaty dance party. Helicopters, by the way, are hell on personal décor.
“Lt. Colonel Jakobek,” I said as we drove through the pitch-tar darkness of mountainous North Carolina, “if Al and Edwina Jacobs look their Sunday best at four a.m. after all we’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours, I’ll kiss their ring fingers and admit I should have voted for them.”
“Trust me,” he answered. “You have the advantage. They’ve never met anyone like you.”
I shrugged off the compliment, assuming it was one. I was trying very hard to trust him, considering that he hadn’t left me a whole lot of choices.
Our motorcade purred out of Highlands into the black shadows of winding mountain lanes and paved driveways snaking off to either side, disappearing past handsome, locked gates tucked deep into hundred-year-old oaks and massive hedges of rhododendron, the larger-leafed cousin of Chocinaw County’s delicate evergreen laurel.
Secret Service agents met us at one such gate and waved us through. I wrapped my hands tighter around my purse as our cars curled up the hidden drive onto the wooded knoll of a stone-and-wood estate home easily big enough to swallow my big farmhouse twice with room left for dessert. Agents in sweaters and slacks accessorized with little machine guns stood just outside the edges of the lawn’s landscape lights. To say it all felt surreal was a given. Other agents hustled to the SUV I shared with Jakobek, opened my passenger door, and said “Ma’am,” in the toneless way of law of
ficers giving a traffic ticket.
But Jakobek waved them away, and by God, they moved. As he escorted me up a cobblestoned walkway to a long veranda I wondered if Al and Edwina Jacobs, my First In-Laws, were sneaking looks at me through one of the shuttered upstairs windows. “If this were a cartoon,” I said to Jakobek under my breath, “I’d look up and see Edwina glaring down at me, and laser beams would shoot from her eyes.”
“I’ve been hit a few times,” Jakobek replied, and stepped in front of me.
On that note, the big home’s front doors swung open. Two agents emerged, holding the doors wide. There stood a middle-aged couple dressed in casual clothes and sweaters as if planning a game of golf at the club; him, tall and lanky with dark, somber eyes and a ruffled tug of hair going silver, her, short and stocky with smart, serial-killer blue eyes and a short poof of medium blonde hair. I gazed up at two of the most famous faces in the world. The President and the First Lady of these United States.
Thank god, at first glance they looked just like ordinary people.
My ribcage relaxed. I held out a hand and climbed three stone steps carefully. “Al. Edwina. I’m Hush McGillen Thackery, and I’ve come here to tell you that I don’t like what our kids have done any better than you do, but you have my word your daughter will get nothing but fair and kind treatment in my home. And that my son is a good young man you can count on. And finally, I’ve come to say that y’all are welcome in my Hollow, anytime, as far as I’m concerned. The rest is up to you and Eddie.”
No one breathed for a second. The agents stared at me. Beside me, Jakobek stepped up and stood close, as if planning to plead my case if the king ordered me beheaded. Edwina’s eyes narrowed to slits. But Al, good old Polish-American Aleksandr Jacobs of Chicago, Illinois, Jakobek’s uncle and Eddie’s father and Leader of the Free World, nodded, accepted me in some way that went beyond words, then held out a lanky hand and said quietly, “Hush, you’re even more impressive than Nicholas described. Now, let’s go inside and talk about our idealistic children and grandchild-to-be.”