“Okay,” I say once we sit down, and he’s still staring down at the creek. His gaze is trained on Gigi’s ass. “Eyes back in your head.”
Skip drags his gaze back to me. “Do you think all New York City girls look like that family?”
“I would imagine not. But who knows?”
I take a few sips of my beer. Okay, more like several really big gulps. Now the bottle’s half-empty. Skip watches me as he matches my gulps with one small one.
“Boy, that was amazing pie, Macey. You made it?”
When I nod, he sighs. “The best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Quit the flattery. You already have the interview. See, maybe you should have tried complimenting me instead of blackmailing me.”
He takes out his phone and readies his iPad. “I’m going to record your words on my phone, and I’ll be typing into the pad. But I can pause the recording anytime you say ‘off the record,’ okay? First let’s start with something easy. Your opinion on why the legend is so popular here. Is it all because of Jane Austen or something else? You start whenever you’re ready.”
He presses record as I watch Gigi laughing at something Logan said. I take several more large sips of beer.
“I can’t remember a time when my mother wasn’t consumed by her.” My gaze passes over Skip to the dark woods behind him. “By a ghost, for God sakes. Because Mama used to say Jane never asked to be Queen. ‘A true heroine never does, Macey. A true heroine just is. And Jane Austen’s ghost certainly never asked to be jailed against her will and kept apart from her soul mate.’ But whether the whole thing is true or not, one thing I know for sure—the spirit of Jane Austen is no ordinary ghost. And my position at The Cowherd is no ordinary bar job. As my daddy once said to me, ‘Darlin’, running The Cowherd Whiskey Saloon & Chapel isn’t like running your normal, run-of-the-mill bar. It’s like adding gasoline to whiskey and praying it doesn’t catch fire.’”
Skip nods solemnly as he pushes the phone closer to my mouth and types vigorously into his iPad.
And I keep talking. “But the legend of Darcy, Texas didn’t begin here. It started all the way across the Atlantic where town founder and first mayor Frederick Woodholm Haskins was still living in England with his new bride, Vivian Elmstock Haskins. That’s when Frederick strayed with another woman. And that’s when the facts get fuzzy and the legend gets deeper. It’s widely believed that an outraged and humiliated Vivian agreed to still sail with him across the Atlantic, and settle in the Texas Hill Country part of America he’d visited and fallen in love with two years prior, on one condition—that he name their landing place after the author who wrote about romance and that he kidnap that same author’s spirit from her peaceful resting place in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral and bring her to Texas. Jane Austen wasn’t even that famous yet, but literary people already respected her writings. And of course, soon she would become known the world over.”
“What aboutPride and Prejudice?” Skip asks. “How did the greatest love story ever written play a role?”
“One evening,” I say, “Vivian found an open copy of the novel alongside an unknown bottle of perfume in her husband’s private study, and she put two and two together. Rumor has it there was hell to pay when he returned home from the local bar. But Vivian didn’t just yell at her husband—she also picked up that copy ofPride and Prejudiceand read it cover to cover. And she decided Jane Austen’s romantic touch must have been the X factor in her husband choosing another woman over her.”
“The X factor.” Skip nods vigorously and continues typing. “Of course.”
“Desperate to keep her affection, her husband agreed to her terms. He hired a witch to cast a spell to draw Jane’s spirit out from the grave and trap her in ghost form. The witch gave the ghost to Frederick in a bottle, to be opened inside jail cell number one in the Darcy Jail, a cell that the founder was to instruct no one ever to use. But even if the cell were opened with a key, Jane’s ghost would still be trapped because the witch had cast a spell befitting Jane:only when she is witness to the coming together of true soul mates will the spell be broken and will Jane return to Great Britain so she can be with her true love.”
More beer. My eyes focus below the cypress tree where Dave puts his arm around Ginny’s shoulders as she leans her head against him. Maybe they will make it. Maybe Dave really will grow up.
“But what came of Vivian through all of this?” Skip asks me. “Why did she get even more embittered?”
“Vivian became obsessed with Jane Austen’s message of love, but as hard as she tried, she was never able to rekindle that former magic with her husband.” I turn to face Skip. “The way I see the legend is as a parable. Vivian was trying to hold onto something she’d lost—her husband’s love—by holding onto Jane Austen’s ghost as a symbol of true love.”
I gulp down the rest of my beer and Skip does the same with his.
“This is heavy,” he says. “So Vivian never had the happy ending she craved.”
I shake my head and glance back toward Logan.
I can’t believe he hasn’t had sex with Gigi.
I literally can’t stop thinking about it.
“Both of these couples have a shot to make history.” Skip glances at Logan and Gigi and then over at Ginny and Dave.
“That’s true.”
I look for an extra beat at Logan.
“It’s never as easy as boy meets girl, is it?” Skip says. “No matter what century.”
I guess not.
“Over to you now, Macey.” He returns to his iPad. “Why did you vow to never marry?”
