“When did I ever tell you anything about my day? I don’t ask about your work; you don’t ask about mine.”
“We haven’t done a good job of keeping up with each other’s lives, have we?”
Ella shrugged. “We did what we had to do. Most families like ours end up in the divorce courts, but we didn’t.”
“Any regrets?” Felix said quietly.
Ella looked him in the eye. “Not one.”
Felix seemed to think for a few minutes. “Do I need to put Eudora on my to-do list?”
An unexpected feeling grew in her throat like an iridescent bubble blown through a wand: laughter. “If anything, she’ll put you on her list. You, Felix Fitzwilliam, may have met your match in Eudora Jenkens.”
SEVENTEEN
Several hours later, Felix sat on the patio with Eudora Jenkens, retired horticulturalist of questionable morals. Spring had apparently arrived early in North Carolina. A chorus of spring peepers, jingling away like sleigh bells down in the creek, seemed to agree.
Eudora had welcomed him home with a glass of iced tea. In seventeen years of southern living, Felix had refused to drink iced tea as an abomination against the tea gods. And the stuff Eudora served him was sweetened. Felix never added sugar to anything. Except, of course, to English strawberries served with double cream. Real cream that was too thick to pour. Not the synthetic rubbish American supermarkets sold in spray cans.
Felix raised his glass, closed his eyes, and swallowed. If he could have pinched his nose without offending his elderly neighbor, he would have. And yet . . . this sweetened iced tea was surprisingly good. Quite pleasant, even refreshing. “I’m afraid I have rather a lot to take care of this afternoon.”
“Of course you do,” Eudora said. She turned her face to Duke Forest, where the sinking sun ignited the treetops with an orange glow. “And I haven’t touched today’s New York Times. Not always a pleasant experience, reading the newspaper, but I choose to not fret about things I can’t control. Don’t you agree? We can always find plenty to fret about.”
His evening’s to-do list was considerably longer than read the paper. Would he have to be blunt and ask her to leave?
“Such a delightful young man, your son.”
“Thank you.” Felix waited for the qualifiers: what the hell is wrong with him; does he ever sit still; why does he blink and grimace nonstop?
“And what a gift he has for dealing with the harsh realities of the world. I’m sure Tourette’s has given him more than one disadvantage, but he sure doesn’t act that way. I spent many years in mental wards, and—”
“My son is not mentally ill.”
“I didn’t say that he was. I believe Tourette’s is classified as a neurological disorder, but I doubt that has always been the case. My twin sister was a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, we didn’t know that for years. Sadly, neither she nor Mama handled the diagnosis with grace. She passed five years back. All in all, it was a blessing.”
“How did your father handle it?” Felix had to ask.
“Daddy left to cohabit with the maid in quite the scandal. I don’t think men of his generation knew how to handle women who were different, women who didn’t conform. And when he discovered I was a lesbian—”
Felix choked on a mouthful of tea. Ella had omitted that part of the potted bio.
“Bless your heart, did I offend? I don’t filter these days. Speaking one’s mind is the sole advantage of age. Sad that we have to wait until our later years to figure that out.”
“I was surprised, not offended.” Felix slapped his chest. “My older brother was gay. He died.”
Eudora eyeballed him. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s been twelve years.”
“But time doesn’t heal all wounds, does it?”
“No.” Felix stared into his tea.
Furious rustling came from a drift of leaves on the forest floor.
“What a rumpus.” Eudora sipped her tea. “This weather sure has every living creature fooling around.”