Charming Grace

  “Aerobic boxing classes. I used them to build up my pecs for swimsuit competitions.”

  His slanted, somber smile almost broke my heart. I didn’t deserve his admiration.

  “I’ll be all right, Grace,” Mika called. Behind her, Kanda Senterra met my eyes. Her daughters gaped at me, dry-eyed. There was a just a hint of a smile on Kanda’s face, to my surprise. She’d probably wanted to punch her sister-in-law herself, a few times. “Mika will be fine as my guest,” she said. “I apologize for my sister-in-law’s behavior. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Vance.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I finally managed. She apparently didn’t despise me for causing her husband so much trouble. Stone Senterra had married a classy woman. Go figure.

  Stone straightened from clumsily dabbing Leo’s swollen face with the tail of his shirt. “Somebody get me a towel for my loafers! And get my sister up off the ground!” His staff scattered in ten directions, most of them looking like weasels trying to force the others to go help Diamond. She was still blinking and sitting and wobbling. Stone faced me. “Grace, please, have mercy and leave a poor, puked-on movie star and his beat-up family in peace for right now. Capice?”

  I nodded wearily and got into the car. Boone bent down to my open window. His eyes were dark and gleaming and sad. Pride and sorrow radiated from us both. Less than twelve hours ago, all we’d needed was each other. “It was worth it, chere,” he said.

  Noleene, you’re up shit creek without a paddle, this time, I thought.

  The next morning I stood in the outdoor gym around the pool at Casa Senterra Dahlonega, waiting for the verdict on my future. Leo was upstairs in a bedroom of the big Victorian, his face covered in high-tech ice packs, while Stone’s personal orthopedic specialist examined his broken cheekbone. Diamond was out in Los Angeles, getting two front teeth re-capped by some dentist to the stars. I’d returned Mika to the Downs the night before. Grace thanked me politely and invited me inside for a drink chaperoned by G. Helen, but I said no. We both saw the wall between us. The wall had names—one side said Stone, the other said Harp.

  Now, downstairs in the shady al fresco sweatshop of Casa Senterra, Stone dropped two hundred pounds of clanking barbells, spritzed himself with a bottle of Perrier, hitched up his black latex bike shorts, and yelled, “I’m still waiting for an explanation about yesterday, Noleene!”

  “I don’t have one. I just did what I thought was right.”

  “This wild-eyed behavior of yours has something to do with Grace, doesn’t it? Admit it. You feel guilty and you’re not thinking straight. Because even though I told you to make nice with her you know I didn’t mean you should treat her to a romantic dinner while my kid got the shit beat out of him. And why did he get the shit beat out of him? Because she goes around giving speeches dissin’ me and everything I stand for, and down there in Savannah, from what I hear, you helped her.”

  “No. I told a bunch of high school kids how I grew up and what I learned from my mistakes. I didn’t tell ‘em to use Leo as a punching bag as a way to send you a message about your movie. And neither did Grace. Look, what happened to Leo wasn’t Grace’s fault. She didn’t ask for you to make a movie about her husband. You never got her permission, or her blessing. She’s just doin’ what she feels is right, speakin’ out, tryin’ to make her case.”

  “Are you saying what happened to Leo is my fault?”

  “No. I’m saying can we just leave Grace out of this discussion?”

  Stone slung a barbell. It bounced off the pool’s granite apron and ended up in the water, sinking like my gut-level defense. “She is this discussion! Yesterday, after Diamond’s eyes stopped rolling and her pain meds kicked in, she had her security goons do some checking into the circumstances around your little stay in Savannah. You know I don’t always like my sister’s methods, but I don’t ever doubt she’s got my best interests at heart. Hell, we grew taking care of each other because her old man—my stepfather—was a mean piece of cannoli who picked on us both. So I know where you’re coming from on the loyalty issues, Noleene. I know why you stick up for your brother, and I know why you won’t defend yourself right now—and I think I know why you’ve clammed up about Grace.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  He jabbed a finger at me. “Diamond’s goons found out Grace made a call from your room at the inn right after the police called you about Leo.”

  I just looked at him. Took the fifth. “I’m not discussin’ her with you.”

  Stone threw out both hands and yelled, “Why was she in your room at one a.m. in the middle of the night, Noleene? I didn’t tell you to screw Harp Vance’s widow!”

  As soon as the words left his mouth he took one look at my face and knew he’d crossed a line. He squinted in regret. “Okay, Noleene, let’s back up. Let me put that more delicately—”

  “No point trying to dust sugar on a rotten beignet.”

  “For godssake, don’t dodge the issue with your Cajun homeboy sayings. I’m sorry, all right? Bad choice of words. Just tell me the truth. Did you nail Grace Vance?”

  Subtlety, they name ain’t Stone Senterra.

  I slid a fist into my pant’s pocket then counted to five and said very quietly, “What happened between me and Grace is nobody’s business but ours. She’s a lady—and don’t you forget it.”

  “I want an answer, Noleene. Look, try to understand: What you do in bed with Grace Vance could jeopardize my film—God knows we’re already behind schedule and dealing with bad publicity, thanks to her. But what you do with Grace in bed could also help my film, if it softens her up—but not if you’re laying on the charm just to get her between the sheets then dump her. She’ll blame you and me, capice? The last thing I want is Grace acting crazier and madder at me than she already is. There’s a twenty-million dollar film budget at stake here, Noleene—along with my Oscar nomination for directing a hit. Not to mention the joy of rubbing Mel Gibson’s jowly pie hole in my new rep as a director. So you have to tell me if you’re bangin’ Grace and tell me right now, mister. If you’re slipping the ol’ Cajun sausage to her it’s big business and it’s my business.”

  End game. Nothing else left to do. I said quietly, “You don’t have to fire me this time. I quit.”

  His mouth popped open and stayed there. “You can’t quit! Nobody quits on the Stone Man! It’s un-American!”

  “Well, I win the award for bein’ the first, then.”

  I walked out on him and his soggy barbells, too.

  Harp’s grave marker was six feet long and roughly three feet wide, made of a single thin slab of gray, moss-flecked stone left to its natural borders, like him, a tough rock no one could carve into an unnatural rectangle of respectability. The stone covered him as if he were part of the mountain, a quiet guardian overlooking our beloved glen at Ladyslipper Lost. He’d always believed the forest made him invisible and safe, so when I buried him I decided to let only the woods and the ladyslippers know he was there. He could let his guard down, finally.

  “Remember the first time we went to bed together?” I asked him. I sat beside the grave stone among hundreds of small candles I’d placed there over the past two years. Most were little more than puddles of wax, now. “At that old motel cabin off the interstate just over the Tennessee line? We were on our way to be married by the justice of the peace in Sevierville. About the only place we could go without my family finding us. We just wanted privacy. You were convinced everyone except G. Helen was out for your scalp.”

  I watched a dragonfly hover over the green, lamb’s-ear leaves of the ladyslipper grove in the hollow below me. It seemed to stall in mid-air. I knew how it felt. “So we decided to celebrate our honeymoon before the ceremony, just in case we got caught and my father dragged me back home. You pulled my bra over my head and it got tangled in my hair. Then I tried to unzip your jeans and pinched you. You turned as white as a sheet but you were still hard. And I had my bra twisted in my hair but I was still wet. We couldn’t
even laugh about our lack of expertise. We were so desperate to be together we just climbed onto the bed and pretended we knew what we were doing. I didn’t enjoy the specifics very much that first time, and I don’t think you did, either, but I loved being with you, and I know you loved being with me.”

  A mourning dove cooed softly, nearby. My throat ached. “I’ve always been honest with you, so here goes. The other night, when I was with Boone for the first time, nothing was that awkward, and I did enjoy the specifics. We were smooth, together. He’s had his share of women, and then some. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he does everything very, very well. I was so ready to be with a man again. I made it easy for him. Easy for myself. No hard questions, no hard answers. And it was very good. Not better than you and me. But just as good in a different way. I know you understand what I’m saying. I let go of you a little bit the other night. Please, let me know you understand.”

  Silence. Either Harp couldn’t speak to me in spirit right now or he was saying the answer was obvious. The mourning dove stopped crying; the dragonfly moved on. The clustered leaves of the ladyslippers bowed just a little in a hot, earth-scented breeze, as if embarrassed for me. I felt like a smeared watercolor from one of my mother’s sketch books, dressed in wrinkled white cotton and an old peasant skirt of hers. I clutched a tiny gold heart necklace my father had given me right after she died, back when we were a family. The rich aroma of burial earth brought a soft moan of sorrow.

  I could no longer quite remember the sound of Harp’s voice.

  His answer was in the fading.

  “And then Mr. Senterra said—” Brian gasped for breath—“he said ‘were you sleeping with Grace Vance when my son got beat up—’” Brian turned beet red—“and Boone Noleene said “that’s none of your business, and she’s a lady, and so I quit.’ And then Mr. Noleene just turned around and walked off! And from my spot up in the oaks I saw Mr. Senterra go like this—” Brian imitated a red-faced, breathy fish gulping for air. Like a trout flopping around on the bank of the river! And then he threw some more barbells in the pool!”

  I groaned silently. Boone lost his job because of me. My legs wobbled and I sat down at a wrought-iron table among the manicured azaleas and gazebo-shaded grandeur of the backyard at the Downs. Brian looked up at me like a worried puppy. I stroked his hair. “You have to stay out of those trees. If Mr. Senterra’s sister catches you up there. . .if she ever does, you yell to Tex and Mojo for help, and they’ll call me. Whatever you do, don’t come down from the tree while she’s there.”

  “I know! I heard Tex tell somebody all the squirrels hide their nuts when they see her coming! But I’m not scared! Harp would want me to spy on her. Even if she cracks my nuts!”

  I sighed. He had followed Harp like a needy puppy and yet Harp had ignored him—not of cruelty, but because Harp had no idea how to talk to a little boy who loved and needed love so openly. “Stay out off those trees,” I repeated to Brian. “Now go inside and tell your grandmother I said you earned a Coke and a whole plate of homemade cookies. Thank you.”

  “I like Boone Noleene. Sometimes he knows I’m up in the trees, but he doesn’t tell anybody. He didn’t see me today, but I saw him. He looked mad but sad.”

  Oh, Boone.

  Brian darted toward the mansion. His grandmother balled her apron over her stomach as she appeared in the service door of the mansion’s huge kitchen. “I told him he shouldn’t be spyin’ on no famous actors,” she called.

  “It’s all right,” I called back. “Stone Senterra isn’t an actor.”

  G. Helen spotted me from a window and strode from a pastel-draped sunroom, a silk siren in flowing coral pants and a white silk top. “So there you are. Looking like something the cat dragged in and the dog forgot to bury. Glad to see you’ve finally come back from hiding by Harp’s grave.”

  “Granny, back off.”

  “Call me ‘Granny’ again and I’ll give your inheritance to cousins you don’t like.”

  “Boone has resigned from his job. Because of me.”

  “I know.” She arched a slender, honey-gray brow. “You took the man to bed and ruined him. Don’t you feel evil and decadent and secretly amazed at your womanly powers?”

  My silent misery erased the sly humor from her face. She motioned to Brian’s grandmother, who retrieved something inside the arched and ivy-draped service door to the kitchen. During her reign G. Helen had transformed the kitchen’s electric pragmatism into a propane-powered chef’s heaven of gas stoves and professional baking ovens set in a French farmhouse with a wine fridge and computer-controlled veggie storage. The governor had come to her kitchen last year to be photographed for a piece in Southern Living Magazine promoting Georgia cuisine. G. Helen knew how to make a statement.

  She made one now, bringing me a thick, travel-scarred leather portfolio bulging with unseen papers. She held it out. “Boone’s left for Louisiana. He sent this as his going-away gift to you.” She dropped the thick slab of leather and documents on a wrought iron patio table then held out a small envelope. “From Boone. To You.”

  Gracie, the envelope read in tall, scrawling script. My heart twisted. I opened the note and read:

  You’re right. I’m scared to build these houses. Maybe they’d just fall down around me. You take care of them for me. Boone.

  I opened the broad brown portfolio. Beautiful architectural drawings of homes filled the pages. Boone’s vision of the good life. Entrusted to me because he believed in me. I bowed my head.

  “If you don’t fight for him, just as you fought for Harp,” G. Helen said softly, “You don’t deserve him.”

  Chapter 13

  I stood at the picket gate of the Senterra house, dressed in stern white linen pants and a dark navy jacket, looking like a studio tour guide. Maybe Stone would let his guard down, or at least allow me to lead visitors through his gym equipment. I gave a pair of beefy uniformed security guards my firmest I Was Never Voted Miss Congeniality look. “Tell Mr. Senterra that Grace Vance is here to see him. I’m not armed or dangerous. He has nothing to fear this time. I promise.”

  “Mr. Senterra is busy, ma’am,” one snapped. “Call Mr. Senterra’s secretary if you want an appointment. And bring proof of your rabies vaccination.. Sorry. That’s what his sister told us to say.”

  “If you’re taking your orders from Diamond, you’d better think twice. She’s known to be wrong about her brother’s wishes.”

  “You’ll have to speak with her about that, ma’am. Mr. Senterra has put her in charge of his personal security now that Boone Noleene is gone.”

  “Then let me talk to her.”

  “She’s down in Atlanta, supervising background shots for Hero’s city scenes, ma’am.” The guard paused. “And her mouth is still too swollen to talk much.”

  “Where’s Leo?”

  “His mother flew in from New York. She’s taken him to lunch at the Oar House over on the Chestatee River. Said the cool air and scenery would help his recovery. He can drink without a straw now, ma’am.”

  I made a mental note to tell Mika. She was frantic. Leo was still so drugged on painkillers even his Internet e-mails to her sounded woozy. Luv u. My teeth hurt.

  The other guard interjected somberly, “Mr. Senterra promised his sister he’d keep you away from their nephew. Come back tomorrow, ma’am.”

  “Tell Mr. Senterra I’m here to negotiate. He’ll be too curious to turn me down. It’s to his benefit to listen. I promise you.”

  “You’re a security risk, ma’am. Mr. Senterra says he can’t afford the dental bills.”

  “I’ll be a security risk if I don’t get into this house to see Stone right now!”

  Stalemate. Things were about to get ugly. Then a hearty drawl rang out.

  “Mrs. Vance! Thank Gawd!”

  Tex loped from the house, covering the acre of shady front lawn like an arthritic mustang, followed closely by Mojo. Tex windmilled his arms and Mojo put his fingers to his lips in
a New York cab-calling whistle two octaves higher than testicles ordinarily allow. The guards grimaced but turned toward the boss’s favored bodyguards dutifully.

  “Let her in!” Tex yelled. “The boss has cleared her! She’s the cavalry, boys! Come to save Boone!”

  That didn’t make the guards look happier, but they stepped aside. Mojo leapt ahead of Tex, then smiled at me as he swung the gate back. “Stone saw you out the window and he’s already put on his mouth guard.”

  “I promise I won’t lay a finger on him. Thanks, guys.” I headed up a long flagstone walkway at a quick pace. Behind me I heard Tex say to Mojo, “Wonder what Stone’ll look like with his ass chewed off?”

  Inside, the house was as familiar to me as all the other historic Dahlonega homes on the beautiful old streets just off the town square. I’d attended parties there as Little Miss Mountain Princess and receptions there as Miss Lumpkin County, Miss Northwest Georgia, and finally, Miss Georgia. The stately Victorian with its huge lot and giant oaks and marble-surround swimming pool had only become a rental property in the past few years, after the last owners retired to a Florida condo and turned the home’s management over to their lawyer. Before Stone rented it, the house had been a gracious old lady sitting on a woody green couch sipping liquored tea.

  Now she looked like a cross between Rambo’s gym, John Wayne’s gun parlor, and the set of an old Tarzan movie. Animal heads cluttered the walls alongside movie posters from Stone’s films, and gun racks bulged with everything with antique Colts to modern Uzi’s. Every room was filled with desks, phones, computers, huge television sets, and DVD players. A rotund little assistant with tiny reading glasses and a diva attitude led me through pristine old rose-papered halls now decorated with leopard skin chairs and buffalo heads.