What To Keep - Mary Schramski Mills & Boon Silhouette

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I was five my parents moved back to Greensville for two weeks, and we stayed at Magnolia Hall until our apartment was ready. I remember the house was white with bricks, really big and filled with antiques. At night my mother, father and I, along with my uncle, would sit on the porch that wrapped around the front. I played on the steps with my doll or ran out into the grass, trying to catch fireflies while the grown-ups’ whispers floated through the air.

      After we moved into an apartment, and as my mother was unpacking the last box, she started crying and couldn’t seem to stop. Two days later my father announced we were going back to California, where it was cool in the summer, warm in winter, and maybe it would be a place where my mother might get her sanity back.

      I never understood this two-week, six-thousand-mile trek; it is one of those mythical family stories that children aren’t allowed to enter, just watch from the outside and wonder about.

      Most of all I remember the cool morning air feathering my face, touching the trees as the three of us walked to our car, me in between my mother, who was crying softly, and Dad, his hand wrapped around mine. I felt wounded for them that day, like now, aching and not knowing why, afraid of the unknown.

      I let the drape fall, take another sip of beer and, for the first time in many months, I admit my life has turned to pure crap.

      CHAPTER 2

      Magnolia Hally

       Greensville, NC

       June 2000

      Ron Tanner and I are in his black BMW headed down a magnolia-lined, gravel driveway. It’s been three days since I got fired from the Golden Nugget. That night I ended up drinking the last four beers in the fridge, sitting on the couch, in a beer-hazed stupor for, I guess, about an hour thinking about how my life had not just turned to crap, but how it had always been crap and I needed to do something about it. Leanne’s words kept thumping through my mind. How I’d get ripped off if I didn’t go back to sell the house. And I’m tired of people pissing on me.

      I nodded off on the couch, then stumbled to bed, didn’t bother to take off my black pants and white dealer’s shirt until twelve the next day. When I got up, I walked down to the 7-Eleven and called the Golden Nugget, asked to speak to the blackjack pit boss and when Joe answered, I whispered, “You asshole,” then hung up, my hand shaking a little. I knew it was stupid and immature, but I did feel better.

      I went home, brushed my teeth then sat on the couch wondering how I was going to pay the rent and feed myself. I dug in my purse and found my checkbook, thumbed through the register. Ten minutes later, and a hundred-and-eighteen dollars overdrawn from a subtraction error I’d made standing in line at Walgreen’s, I put my checkbook back in my purse.

      I had one credit card that wasn’t maxed out and the thirty-two dollars I’d left on the coffee table. Without changing clothes, I slung my purse over my shoulder, walked back to the pay phone, called the Delta eight-hundred number, got a flight for $694.50, leaving at six-thirty the next morning, with a two-hour layover in Des Moines. Then I called Ron, the lawyer. I told him I’d be in Greensville tomorrow and could he pick me up from the airport? He put me on hold, came back and said he would, and that it was a good idea I was coming.

      Now Magnolia Hall, a two-story brick house with white-trimmed porch and dull green shutters, sits at the end of the lane, looking much smaller than I remember.

      I glance over at Ron. He doesn’t look like I thought he would, either. His black hair is cut short—I expected longer blond, for some reason. I guess because the last man I saw in Greensville had blond hair. It’s funny what our memories become and what they do to our perceptions.

      Ron stops in the circle driveway, in front of the house. Closer, I can see someone has painted the bricks to make it look like the house still has green shutters. He shuts down the engine. The digital clock stays on—it’s three-thirty.

      I stare through the tinted window, try to remember more about this house, but can’t. Ron gets out, comes around and opens my door.

      “Thanks.” He’s parked in the shade of a huge magnolia and it’s relatively cool. There’s no breeze, no noise.

      “This is it,” I say, glancing around. The yard is overgrown.

      “Yes.”

      “It’s pretty run-down.”

      “I talked to the housekeeper. She said Mr. Alexander fell on hard times before he died. You never heard from him?”

      “No.” I leave out that I might not have recognized the man if he had a sign around his neck on a deserted street. I’m sure Ron has heard too many stories, him being an attorney and all. I cross the yard to the porch, climb the stairs, turn around. Huge trees surround the house, cut the ground from the cloudless sky. The air smells green—unfamiliar, and I wish I could dig up more memories to take me back to the last time I was here, but it’s impossible. I was too little and it’s been so long. Besides, thirty-five years in a desert town has imprinted dust and cement on my soul.

      Ron pulls my black carry-on out of the trunk.

      “I’ll get that,” I say, feeling embarrassed I forgot my suitcase. He shakes his head, carries it up to the front door.

      “Want me to put it inside?” He nods toward the door.

      “No, thanks. It’s not heavy.”

      Ron’s face is tan. I’d guess he’s about forty-five. Really mainstream America, clean-cut. Father and mother probably still play golf at some expensive country club, his two brothers, maybe a sister, all have families, dogs, the works.

      He’s loosened his tie enough so he could undo the top button on his white-and-blue oxford shirt, but he hasn’t. I bet his wife picks up his shirts from the cleaners every Wednesday. She’s probably someone he met in college, who put him through law school by teaching third grade and is now in good standing with the Greensville Junior League. But there’s no ring on his left hand, not even a tan line.

      “I have the key to the house,” he says, and digs in his pocket.

      “Thanks for picking me up at the airport.”

      Ron takes his hand out of his pocket. He walks to the edge of the steps, stands across from me. A tiny breeze brings his aftershave to me. It’s one of those citrusy, clean kinds. I imagine him splashing it on this morning, standing in front of his bathroom mirror, naked from the waist up, a towel wrapped around his somewhat slim, forty-five-year-old waist.

      “This happens every once in a while,” he says.

      “What?” I look at him. He’s staring at me, then he smiles.

      “Houses dumped on unsuspecting, long-lost relatives.”

      I shake my head. “No way.”

      “I specialize in wills, probate, estate tax. Believe me, this happens. Sometimes there’s no immediate family. If the deceased hasn’t left a will, then it all goes to the closest relative or the state. Your uncle was lucky he had you.”

      “I’m not sure how lucky, since he’s dead.”

      We laugh at the same time, and then all of a sudden for some odd reason I think about my mother and when she died two years ago. How I had to sort through her underwear, wonder if I should put her Hanes size-seven briefs in the Goodwill bag. I decided that her underwear being worn by a homeless woman who lived one block off Main Street in a cardboard box was too sad. So through guilty feelings, I threw the crotch-stained nylon panties in the kitchen trash.

      “One relative is better than none. But too many can make for big problems,” Ron says.

      I smile. “Never had that problem. As you know my family’s pretty small—really nonexistent.” I look up and notice the white trim under the porch roof is flaking badly. On the airplane I let myself daydream of what I’d find, all the while telling myself that doing it was dangerous. Yet I let my imagination dredge up an out-of-focus, black-and-white

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