Blessings of Mossy Creek Read online

  Josie spoke first. “Of course you can help, Clay.” She ruffled his brown hair. “But you have to leave Dog at home, I’m afraid.”

  Mac and Patty had inherited a mutt named Dog along with Clay. The boy raised disbelieving eyes to his future father. “But Dog could —”

  “Josie’s right,” Mac placed large hands on the boy’s thin shoulders. “Dog has to stay home with Maddie and Butler. They’re his canine buddies.”

  “It’s not that we don’t love Dog.” Josie sat back down on the pew so she was at Clay’s level. “But he might wander off to go exploring, and he’d probably get lost.”

  And eaten by a bear, I thought, but held my tongue. I thought children should grow up aware of the dangers of the mountains, but Josie had gently scolded me more than once for forcing reality on children. I had to admit I tended to go into far more graphic, scientific explanations of those dangers than a child could comprehend and, as Josie told me, I had to practice restraint for our own future children.

  The possibility of me fathering a little girl just like her mother made me smile. More blessings to come.

  “Awwright,” Clay agreed reluctantly, making me realize that daydreams had caused me to miss more explanations of why his dog couldn’t help clear the trees. Not that I would need to remember the exchange. It wasn’t as if Clay and his father would actually be helping me. After all, Mac was just making polite conversation.

  “Josie!” LuLynn called from the last pew in the church. “Remember I’ve got a hen in the oven.”

  “All right, Mama. We’re coming.” Josie gave Clay a brief kiss, then rose to shake Mac’s hand. “We appreciate your offer to help, Mac.” She glanced around him. “Where’s Patty?”

  He pointed down toward the church basement. “She’s at a meeting to plan this summer’s Vacation Bible School.”

  Josie nodded, looking around. “Jayne’s disappeared. She must’ve taken Matthew outside. Tell Patty hello. Y’all are coming to the wedding, aren’t you?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s the event of the year.”

  Josie waved goodbye as she headed for her mother. “Hope you’re not allergic to roses, Mac!”

  Once Josie was out of earshot, Mac glanced at me. I shrugged. “Josie’s second favorite flower, since laurel finishes blooming too soon for a June wedding. LuLynn had Mrs. Townsend order twenty dozen white roses from Atlanta.”

  Mac paused. “Eugenia Townsend? LuLynn ordered flowers from Mossy Creek Flowers and Gifts?”

  I didn’t like the amazed look on his face. “Josie insisted on buying as much as possible of all that wedding paraphernalia in Mossy Creek. Something wrong with Eugenia at Mossy Creek Flowers and Gifts?”

  “No, no,” Mac said quickly. “I’m sure Eugenia’s fine... now. Haven’t heard her mention any problems in a long time. It happened over twenty years ago, after all.”

  “What happened over —”

  “Harold!” LuLynn called. She always insisted on using my formal Christian name. “Do you like dried-out chicken?”

  Dried-out chicken was less important to me than the possibility that something might occur to make Josie’s wedding day less than perfect. “Mac, what happened over twenty years ago?”

  “Harold!!!”

  “Nothing that amounts to a hen’s feather,” Mac assured me. “Eugenia wouldn’t deliberately sabotage an order as lucrative as this one must be. Besides the money, the town would never forgive her. No. Everything’s fine. I’m sure.”

  I didn’t like the word sabotage. “Mac —”

  “Harold, we’re leaving.” LuLynn crossed her arms over her chest. Josie had already escaped outside. “Do you want to walk the five miles to Bailey Mill?”

  Despite her pretensions and predilection toward snobbery, I liked my soon-to-be mother-in-law. I didn’t want to make her mad at me six days before I was going to marry her daughter.

  I backed toward the church door, but kept my gaze locked into Mac’s. “About Eugenia Townsend. You’re sure?”

  Mac nodded and waved me on. “The worst Eugenia would do is overcharge LuLynn, but that will only make LuLynn think she’s getting the best.”

  Since that was true, I allowed myself to be mollified. I’d heard from more than one source that nobody in town, except Katie Bell, the official queen of gossip, knew more than Mac about Creekites’ business. Not that he was a busybody. He represented nearly all of them in legal matters.

  “Call me after your honeymoon about cutting up those trees,” Mac said. “I’m serious.”

  I waved an acknowledgement — it’s always better not to let people know you expect the least of them — and walked out of the church. I blinked as I hit spring sunshine and felt my hand grabbed in a firm shake.

  By now I knew the steel of that grip. “Reverend Hollingsworth. Enjoyed the sermon.”

  “Why, thank you, Dr. Rutherford.” He always seemed immensely pleased to be complimented, making you feel as if you were special because you’re the only one who’d noticed. “I enjoyed writing that one.”

  “And delivering it,” I couldn’t help adding.

  He smiled softly. “Yes. I do love a good, rousing topic.”

  “Harold!”

  “I’m coming, LuLynn!” I knew she didn’t like me calling her by her first name in public, especially at church, but since she was thirty-eight — only five years older than me — I couldn’t bring myself to call her Mother. I nodded to the Reverend. “See you at the rehearsal on Friday.”

  “Harold, where is Josie?” LuLynn called. “Isn’t she with you?”

  “I thought she was out here with you.”

  I glanced toward the emptying parking lot, but didn’t spot my beloved. Scanning the churchyard, I finally caught a glimpse of her dark red dress under the spreading branches of a white oak that had been there as long as the church. She and Eleanor Abercrombie were bent over the roses growing on the picket fence that lined the bank of the east branch of Mossy Creek.

  With a fond smile, I made my way over. Josie had grown up tending roses with her Grandma McClure. Since her grandmother was now deceased, Josie never lost an opportunity to milk advice from those with more experience. Eleanor was a charter member of the Mossy Creek Garden Club.

  “Tsk, tsk.” The older woman shook her head over a rose branch trying to reach the lowest limb of the oak. “This isn’t the way to train a climbing rose. It’ll never get sun up there.” She pulled at the thorny limb as I approached and coaxed it down along the fence. “There, there. That’s it, sweetie. Join your sisters.”

  Josie helped by pulling it between two boards of the fence. “Why aren’t there any blooms?”

  “The prom at Bigelow High last night, dearie. Teenagers cleaned out every rose on every unguarded bush in the county. I doubt there’s a single rose left in Mossy Creek or Bigelow.” Mrs. Abercrombie winked as she straightened. “’Cept in private gardens like mine, of course.”

  “Yours are too valuable to decorate a high school gymnasium.” Josie smiled at me absently and sucked on a finger she’d obviously pricked.

  Mrs. Abercrombie patted several branches on the climbing rosebush and tsked again. “Look at these yellow leaves. These bushes need some work. Delia Mitchell’s been taking care of them for the church. She covets the Bigelow County Rose Trophy, but doesn’t want to do what it takes to win it. You can’t grow roses and sit on your duff all day.”

  “No, ma’am. I know,” Josie said.

  “Roses are like young’uns.” Mrs. Abercrombie included me in her admonition as I took Josie’s hand and smoothed a drop of blood off her finger. “You might as well learn the truth now, you both about to get hitched, and all.” She nodded sagely. “They’re like children . . . you got to tend them constantly, or they’ll go wild on you.”

  “No need to worry about that, Mrs. Abercrombie,” I said. “Josie’s in her rose garden every day, rain or shine, cold snap or heat wave.”

  “I was taught by one of the best,” Josie insis
ted.

  “You were that,” Mrs. Abercrombie agreed. “Your Grandma Gladys McClure won the county fair’s rose contest eighteen years running, God rest her soul.” Mrs. Abercrombie peered toward the parking lot. “And your mama’s about to have a conniption over in her Coupe DeVille. You’d best get.”

  Josie gave Mrs. Abercrombie a hug. “I’ll try to make it over to your house sometime this week. I’d like to see your Silver Passions while they’re peaking.” Then she turned to me and slipped her arm through mine as we walked toward LuLynn’s Cadillac. “Mrs. Abercrombie always wins the rose competition in the Bigelow County Garden Contest, which is next Saturday afternoon, after the wedding. This year, she has a silver rose that’s —”

  “Josie McClure,” LuLynn yelled, “you going to starve that husband of yours before you even get your apron strings tied around him?”

  Josie winced. “She doesn’t mean that.”

  I squeezed her arm. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”

  LuLynn was a dichotomy, too. A homecoming queen whose crowning moment had been snatched away from her over twenty years ago by the bizarre incident that burned down Mossy Creek High during halftime of the big game with Bigelow High, LuLynn helped manage her husband’s cattle farm but now was a die-hard fan of Martha Stewart, never caring that the home decorating guru’s crown was a bit tarnished. LuLynn had thrown herself into Josie’s wedding plans with a vengeance, determined that this wedding would be the envy of every mother of a marriageable-aged daughter in Bigelow County.

  Josie was no pushover, though, and had definite ideas about how her wedding should be. So there’d been more than one argument between the bride and the mother-of-the-bride that would’ve brought down the rafters of any church. Since I’d never heard Josie raise her voice to another living creature, I dragged her up to my cabin on Mount Colchik every time she and her mother verged on new warfare.

  But for the moment, peace reigned. Josie and LuLynn discussed Mrs. Abercrombie’s roses as Josie’s mostly-silent father, John McClure, drove us to the McClure farm in the Bailey Mill community. There we would feast on LuLynn’s roasted chicken at Josie’s last Sunday dinner as a single woman.

  Josie sighed wistfully. “I wish I could grow roses as wonderful as Eleanor Abercrombie’s. I would build my bouquet around a single Silver Passion.”

  “Wouldn’t that be stunning.” LuLynn was practically salivating. “Oh, well.” She reached into the backseat to pat Josie’s knee. “You’ll have a Silver Passion rose one day. You’ve got your Grandma Gladys’s touch.” It was the kindest thing I’d ever heard LuLynn say to her daughter.

  I lifted Josie’s hand to my lips. “I’ll see if I can buy some of them from Mrs. Abercrombie.”

  The car suddenly went silent. Even the engine seemed to hesitate. Then the entire McClure clan erupted in laughter.

  I let it subside to an audible level before I asked, “Not a good idea?”

  With a final giggle, Josie placed a kiss on my cheek. “My dear, sweet, naive Harry. You can’t buy even one of Mrs. Abercrombie’s Silver Passions. They’re priceless.”

  The biologist in me begged to differ. “No plant is priceless. Any gardener worth her salt would’ve made grafts so she can grow more.”

  “Not by next Sunday,” LuLynn said.

  “What’s next —” Then I remembered. “Some contest, right?”

  “Not just some contest,” Josie said. “The Bigelow County Garden Contest.”

  “Only the biggest floral competition in the county,” LuLynn said. “The rivalry between the Bigelow Garden Club and the Mossy Creek Garden Club is famous. Why, it’s been featured in Southern Living.”

  The gospel according to Southern Living. LuLynn considered it a supplemental text to her real bible, Martha Stewart Living.

  “It’s especially exciting this year,” Josie said. “Geraldine Matthews is Bigelow’s biggest threat this year. She has some gorgeous bushes. Why, her Martha Washingtons are as wide as a plate! But Mrs. Abercrombie has developed her Silver Passions for years. They simply take your breath away. I’m certain she’ll keep the rose trophy in Mossy Creek. Everyone else in Mossy Creek thinks so, too.”

  “Of course they do.” Then I had to ask, knowing it was a sore subject. “What does everyone in Bigelow think?”

  “They —”

  “The rose growers down in Bigelow can kiss Eleanor Abercrombie’s manure spreader.”

  John McClure’s comments were always succinct, typically colorful, and rare enough that we all stared at him in surprise. Although Bailey Mills was an outlying community from Mossy Creek, its inhabitants considered themselves staunch Creekites and so were dyed-in-the-wool Bigelow despisers.

  Josie broke the silence with another giggle. “In other words, we don’t care what people in Bigelow think.”

  “Unless this contest is fixed, Eleanor will win,” LuLynn added with absolute certainty. “She always does.”

  Josie sighed. “So you see, Harry, no amount of money will buy one of Mrs. Abercrombie’s roses. I’ll have to make do with a white rose from the florists in Atlanta.” She smiled and slipped her hand into mine. “But that’s okay. I’m getting you — the best prize of all. The flowers in the church won’t matter.”

  * * * *

  I didn’t believe Josie’s statement for a single second, because everything else about our wedding was a matter of monumental importance — down to the shade of pink Josie should wear on her fingernails. I had to drag Josie away from her mother several times during the next few days, though she wouldn’t let me take her all the way to the cabin. Too many details left to be taken care of.

  Thursday was an especially trying day, so I drove Josie into town to visit Eleanor. Mrs. Abercrombie’s garden was filled with roses of all hues. Some of them were truly breathtaking, but their real magic was making Josie forget all about the wedding for several hours.

  Mrs. Abercrombie’s roses reminded me of Mac Campbell’s startled face when I mentioned Mossy Creek Flowers and Gifts and his comment about Eugenia Townsend having some reason to exact revenge on Josie because of some nebulous something between Eugenia and LuLynn over twenty years ago. His words nagged at me. I didn’t want to tell Josie my suspicions. She would again be disappointed in me for not trusting the people of Mossy Creek to look out for each other.

  Surely Josie or LuLynn had checked with Eugenia about their flower order. The thing was, in my field of empirical research I’d learned to leave nothing to chance. I had to check on my own.

  I knew something was wrong before the door of Mossy Creek Flowers and Gifts closed behind me early on Friday afternoon. The first clue was the stillness. A flower shop should have been singing with activity with a wedding the next day. This one was as quiet as a church on Monday morning.

  The second clue was the sudden pallor on the face of the young woman behind the counter. Josie had introduced us at some Mossy Creek function or other so I knew her reaction was more than could be attributed to the first sight of my scarred face.

  Three strides took me to the counter. “Good afternoon. Muriel, isn’t it?”

  She swallowed. Hard. “Ye… Yes, Dr. Rutherford.”

  “Call me Harry, please.” My tight smile didn’t bring color back to Muriel’s cheeks. “I came to check on the flowers my fiancée ordered for our wedding tomorrow.”

  “Flowers?”

  “This is a flower shop, isn’t it? The only one in Mossy Creek?”

  “Ummm… yes. It is.” She was stalling.

  “Three months ago, my fiancée and her mother ordered flowers for our wedding tomorrow. Twenty dozen white roses, I believe it was.”

  Muriel dragged her gaze from mine and glanced at the computer sitting to her right.

  “Right. Yes. I remember.”

  “Funny, I don’t see a single white rose around the shop. Have they already been delivered to the church?”

  I barely heard her soft, “No.”

  My voice was almost as quiet. �
��What are you saying, Muriel? The flowers aren’t ready yet?”

  She backed up a step. “They were never even ordered.”

  I closed my eyes to better control the rage flowing through me and saw the image of Josie’s tear-stained face as she walked down an aisle unadorned with flowers. No way could I let that happen.

  I opened my eyes and let my gaze bore into Muriel’s. “Eugenia Townsend did this deliberately, didn’t she? Because of something that happened between her and LuLynn McClure over twenty years ago.”

  “I don’t know! I was only two-years-old then.”

  “What was it?” I demanded. “What happened back then?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I’ve only heard things.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “I’ll lose my job if I…” She trailed off and sighed. “It was the year that Mossy Creek High School burned down. LuLynn McClure… although she wasn’t a McClure yet… was about to be crowned homecoming queen. Mrs. Townsend was first runner-up.”

  “That’s all? Are you saying my bride won’t have flowers in the church on her wedding day because LuLynn beat out Mrs. Townsend in some stupid popularity contest two decades ago?”

  “Mrs. Townsend claims Mrs. McClure only won the crown because she’d been . . . because she was pregnant by the captain of the football team. Didn’t matter that she married him a few months later.”

  That was the first time I’d heard that gossip, but since Josie had just turned twenty, the math was right. It was no excuse for Eugenia’s revenge now, however. “Where is Mrs. Townsend? I need to have a few words with her.”

  Muriel shook her head. “You can’t. She went to visit her sister up in Chattanooga for the weekend.”

  “And left you behind to deal with the mess she deliberately made.”

  Muriel’s brown eyes teared up. “Tell Josie I’m sorry. I didn’t know until this morning, just before Mrs. Townsend left.”