“Didn’t want the hoity-toity décor giving you nightmares of debutante mommas attacking you in your sleep.” He gave her a crooked grin, and soon she was laughing so hard she had to stop the swing.
Jackson came around to sit on the ground in front of her, that crooked grin getting wider, the orneriness in his eyes lighting his entire face. “Gotta be honest here, Anna Grace. This isn’t actually me being a gentleman and thinking of your feelings. It’s that I ain’t been allowed to sleep here since I betrayed ’em all by going to Bama.”
“Oh, look, he’s smiling,” a female voice suddenly said.
Anna choked back herlaughter. Jackson stayed loose and relaxed. He climbed to his feet and helped her out of the swing. A small family approached. “Friendlies?” she said.
Jackson chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
He seemed happy enough to introduce her to his stepbrother and his family. Craig was tall and lanky, with a plain face and somber manner of speaking, not at all what she expected out of a guy who’d once helped Jackson make an airplane motored by his momma’s vacuum engine. Maura was bubbly and pleasantly round, with lips that stretched in a perpetual smile. Their girls were three and one, and they were as much fun as Anna’s nephews had been at that age. While she and Maura and the girls played, Jackson and Craig caught up with hunting and fishing and work stories.
But soon Deb called everyone to dinner, and they went inside. The smell of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and unfortunately, stewed okra, covered the stifling scent of money and prestige.
Once again, Anna felt like she was living in a completely different world.
Louisa had arrived and was waiting at the table. Anna was introduced to Russ, Jackson’s stepfather, and found him to be a somewhat more relaxed version of his son, and surprisingly pleasant given her knowledge that Jackson didn’t care much for him.
Obviously a story there.
None of her business.
Dinner was accompanied by painfully polite but nonetheless enlightening conversation. Anna hadn’t realized that Jackson’s stepfather was the second-generation president and owner of Whipple PeachNuts, the largest chain of tourist-stop peach and pecan stands in the southeast. Every new tidbit about Jackson and his family made her eyebrows inch up, and every quarter-inch of raised brows on her part seemed to result in smug satisfaction on Deb’s part.
Despite the pleasant top conversation, the underlying tensions were choking her. Even the mystery ingredient making the collard greens about the best vegetable Anna had eaten without ketchup in decades couldn’t ease her discomfort, nor did Jackson’s pointedly passing the stewed okra around her soshe didn’t feel obligated to try it, since he'd been witness to the last time she’d gotten up close and personal with okra.
But at least nothing was truly personal for Anna.
That, apparently, was reserved for the course between dinner and dessert.
One by one, everyone finished their food. Russ, Deb, Craig, and Maura lined their silverware in the middle of their plates and pushed them back discreetly. Maura settled her older girl’s plate as well, then produced a wet wipe for the baby’s face.
Jackson left his silverware skewed across his plate, but wasn’t as dismissive of table manners as his sister, who leaned her elbows on the table. At some invisible signal, Craig picked up his and Maura’s plates. Jackson took his and Anna’s.
“I can—” she started, but stopped herself.
For the first time since they’d come inside, she caught an amused gleam in Jackson’s eye. “Thank you, Anna Grace.”
He and Craig disappeared into the kitchen. Deb dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, tucked it back onto her lap, smiled pleasantly, and tilted forward. “Maura, dear, do you remember the Fillmounts?”
Anna put her hands in her lap and ignored the crick in her shoulders from sitting erect for the last forty-five minutes.
Maura’s face crinkled, then her omnipresent smile beamed larger. “Oh, yes! That lovely couple from down the street. They gave us the nicest set of matching crystal frames for our wedding.”
“Mm, that’s them,” Deb said. “They’re getting divorced.”
Anna shivered against a sudden case of prickles on the back of her neck and knees that reminded her of Riverdancing fire ants.
“Oh, no,” Maura said.
“Wasn’t he her second husband?” Louisa said.
Make that Riverdancing on speed.
“Mm-hmm. So sad, but of course, not so surprising.” Debturned that conversational smile to Anna. “She cheated on her first husband too, bless her heart.”
Anna made a noncommittal kind of noise.
“Divorce is so sad, don’t you agree, Anna dear?”
