“Little early to be planning her kids, isn’t it?” Mr. Gates began to push the chair to the house. “Livie’s been around those children so long that she’s becoming as fanciful as they are.”
“It’s almost as though she’s a different person.” Uncle Freddy’s voice was soft, thoughtful.
“At least she seems to like us,” Mr. Gates said. “You think she and Kit had a fight and she’s trying to make him jealous?”
“No,” Uncle Freddy said, “I don’t. But something has happened to her! I sure wish I knew what it was.”
“Whatever it was, if it gets us... What was it? Mac and cheese? I’m all for it.”
As they rolled past the garden, Uncle Freddy pointed to the yellow squash. “You better take a basket of those over to the Willis house. How’s their new baby doing?”
“Poorly. It’s mewling a lot.”
“Then go buy some chickens to take to them. My guess is it’s the mother who needs strength.”
“That’s what Dr. Everett says. Mind if I take some berries too? The kids can pick them this afternoon.”
“While Livie and Kit are in one of their secret meetings inside the old well house?”
“That would be a perfect time for picking,” Uncle Freddy said. “Besides, the kids don’t need to hear what goes on in there.”
“To get them out of earshot of that, I’d have to take them to Richmond.”
The mutual laughter of the two men could be heard all the way inside the house.
*
When Olivia saw her mother, she started crying again. As though she were a toddler, she collapsed into her mother’s arms and the tears came from deep inside her body. “I love you so much.”
Tisha hugged her daughter back, and when she held her away, she too had tears in her eyes. “Let’s help the children, shall we?”
All Olivia could do was nod.
Her mother had brought her Bernina sewing machine, and the kids helped them find a plug in the baseboard of the old house. Tisha said that the whole place needed a complete remodel.
“Tate will do that,” Olivia said before she thought.
Instead of asking questions, Tisha said, “I hope he does.” But then she was smiling in a way that Olivia thought she could tell her about 9/11 and she’d still smile. It made Olivia think with regret about how she’d so rarely told her mother that she loved her.
It didn’t take long for them to set up the process of making some stuffed animals. Tisha had sewn all of Olivia’s clothes as a child, and several things she’d taken to New York had been made by her mother. At the time, Olivia had been contemptuous of them. Homemade was a derogatory word.
The children soon learned that it was Mrs. Paget who could make whatever they wanted. She put an attachment on her machine and sewed purple eyelet circles to fulfill Letty’s fantasy of a spotted creature.
Olivia loved watching them. When she’d been married to Alan, his mother had been adamant that Kevin was her grandchild, that he was no relation to Tisha Paget. At the time, Olivia had been too busy and too young to think about how her mother had been deprived of that special bond of the only grandchild she’d ever have.
It was Ace who pulled the men into the sewing. Reading glasses were found, lights turned on, and everyone was put to work.
As Olivia sewed the easy, basic seams on the old treadle machine, she began to feel, well, youth coming into her body. As the minutes ticked by, she felt herself changing. At first it had been enough to move easily and fluidly. And her mind had been full of seeing old friends and knowing their futures. In eight years her mother would call her father to dinner and when he didn’t answer, she’d find him slumped over his workbench, dead. Tisha Paget would live another eighteen years. She’d dedicate herself to the community and the church—just as Olivia had done after Alan died. The difference was that her mother had enjoyed her role. But even after Alan’s death, Olivia had been too weighed down by guilt to enjoy much of anything.
“She’s doing it again,” Ace whispered loudly to Uncle Freddy.
They all looked at Livie as yet again there were tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
Suddenly, Olivia knew that it was time to see Kit. She stood up. “I, uh...” She couldn’t think of what to say. Turning, trying to look as dignified as possible, she left the room, walked through the kitchen, and went outside.
The sun and the air felt good on her body. She had forgotten how restless she’d been as a young woman. Over the years, she’d regretted how snappy and rude she’d been that summer she stayed at Tattwell. Why couldn’t she have been kinder to the children? To the old men? Why had she been so obsessed with Kit? At times even her career had been forgotten. Later, when she went back to New York, all she could think about was him. By then she was angry at him for having left her, but still, Kit was everything.
She walked into the garden. How beautiful it was! When she reached the big old magnolia tree, she leaned against it and closed her eyes, letting herself remember the time the children had tied her and Kit up. Remembering the first time he’d kissed her. He had been angry, but what a kiss it had been! “Not a boy,” he’d said.
No. Not a boy. She hadn’t known it then, but he’d been facing what would become a heroic act of risking his life to help his country. Certainly not the act of a boy.
With her eyes still closed, she breathed deeply of the soft, fragrant summer air. She could feel her body tingling. Lips, breasts, between her legs.
Over the years, she’d forgotten that feeling. She’d found pleasure in a good book, an afternoon movie, an hour away from running appliance stores. And recently, after she and Kit had married, there’d been sweet and tender sex. But it hadn’t been that hard, pounding, have-to-have-it-or-die sex of their youths.
Right now she felt that coursing through her body. The desire for it. Wanting it. Craving it. Needing it. As much as she had to breathe, she needed to feel skin on hers. Lips and tongues. She wanted her hands and mouth on the male hardness of Kit. She only wanted him.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t surprised to see Kit standing there. Alive, breathing, young. She’d remembered him as beautiful, but the reality was much, much more than she remembered. He had on practically nothing, exposing skin that was a luscious golden brown. He was all lean muscle.
She looked down at his bare feet and went upward, savoring every inch of him. The bulge that was barely covered by his low-slung shorts was growing. Big and pressing against the cloth. Hungry.
When she reached his face, she saw a heat that she barely remembered. This is why teenagers are all over each other, she thought. We adults forget this surging, pulsing, utterly uncontrollable desire.
She could feel her body moving toward his. It was as though a rope had been tied to the middle of her and he held the end of it.
He didn’t speak, just gave a quick movement of his head. The rope was pulled.
Part of Olivia knew she was a rational being. She’d been an adult who’d cautioned young people against following their “base instincts.”
“You just have to say no,” she’d told teenagers at church. How pompous she’d been!
As she followed Kit to wherever he was leading her—and she didn’t care where it was—had someone tried to stop her, she would have used a gun on them. What she was feeling was as primitive as a fight for survival.
When they were at the back of the property, Kit halted and put his hand out to her. Taking it, she felt his touch through her entire body. She threw back her head and laughed from pure joy. She was here and now and the man she would love forever was with her.
Kit smiled, but he asked no questions. Instead, he began to run. He left Tattwell, stepping over the old fence, then led them through the woods that used to surround the plantation. Olivia knew that in the eighties a developer would plow most of the big trees down and build some boring little houses.