Page 6 of Mind Games

“We want you to come. We want everybody to come if they can. So we’ve rented a great big house on the beach in North Carolina. A week in August. We’re going to fly you there in that newfangled airplane.”

“Fly? But—”

“Please don’t say no. Waylon says he’ll talk Granny into it, and you know he can talk a man dying of thirst to hand over his last drop of water. We hardly ever see her since she married Stretch and moved down to Atlanta. We’d have a real Riley-Lannigan-Fox family reunion. And if Uncle Buck, Aunt Mae, and the cousins want to come, well, we’ll just get a second house to hold us all.”

Lucy had never been on a plane in her life—though she’d seen that coming in her future with a son living in New York City.

And she saw, very clearly, how much this meant to her girl. The girl who’d always looked forward and away had looked back some. And looked toward family.

“Well, I guess I’d better get these biscuits in the oven, get this meal on the table so I can think about buying myself a bathing suit.”

“Mama!” With a hoot of delight, Cora threw her arms around Lucy. “Oh, the kids are going to go crazy when we tell them. I want them to have what I had growing up, and damn it, I want John to have what he didn’t.”

“Then let’s get the table set. We’ll call them in to wash up, and lower the boom.”

They feasted on fried chicken and potato salad, snap beans and buttermilk biscuits. And Cora had it right, the kids went crazy.

It filled Lucy’s heart to have them filling her home and saturating it with the happiness they generated.

Her restless girl had found her center, and reached a point in her life where she wanted to open it to the people and places of her origin.

She’d had a part of that, Lucy thought, and now an invitation to take a bigger part.

In later years, she’d look back on this simple family meal at summer’s beginning and remember the sound of children’s voices, so high and bright. She’d remember the laughter in her daughter’s eyes, and the utter contentment in the eyes of the man who was a son to her.

She’d think of the breeze fluttering through the open windows, and the screen door where the dogs lay just outside hoping for scraps.

She’d remember how the evening sun had slanted its light over the mountains and how blue the sky held above them.

She’d remember all of it, and hold on tight.

Chapter Two

In the morning, Lucy mixed up batter for buckwheat pancakes, another favorite of her son-in-law’s. She already had bacon and sausage keeping warm in the oven, and coffee done when John came in.

“Thought I heard some stirring up there.”

He raked a hand through his curling mop of brown hair. “I haven’t managed to shave, and you’ve already fed the chickens, gathered eggs, milked the cow and the goat, fed the dogs.”

“Why’s a man need to shave on a quick little holiday?”

“I’ll bet you haven’t had a holiday, little, quick, or otherwise, since Christmas.” He shook his head as he went for coffee. “You work too hard, Lucy.”

“I love what I do.”

She’d twined her hair into a braid today, and he ran a hand down it in one of his easy gestures of affection. “It shows. You know, I look at you and I can see how Cora’s only going to get more beautiful. Reminds me how lucky I am we happened to sit next to each other in that lecture hall the first day of college.”

“And I say luck had nothing to do with it. If I’ve ever seen two people meant to be, it’s you and Cora. Now sit down there and tell me what’s on your mind. I can see it without looking.”

“I wanted to tell you how much it means you’re willing to travel, and to have us come down when I know you’re going to do just what you’re doing now, and more. Making big, amazing meals. She’s been pining the last couple of months.”

Sitting, he sighed a little. “It was that stupid birthday card, the ten and two ones inside that snapped it. It didn’t bother Thea, but she doesn’t expect anything from them. I don’t expect anything from them, but Cora? She kept hoping they’d warm up.”

“Some don’t have the warm in them.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” His words carried simple resignation. “Still, they’re warm enough to their other grandchildren, and generous, reasonably attentive. They expected me to marry…”

“As befits your station, or theirs.”

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