Wild Orchids Read online

  Smiling, I climbed into bed and went to sleep.

  On Wednesday, I was still wandering about in a daze. I’m not sure what I did all day, but everything seemed to take twice as long as usual. Ford said, “What the hell is wrong with you?” and I had enough presence of mind to say, “PMS.” I guessed correctly that that statement would make him back off. He didn’t comment on my mood again.

  I didn’t show Ford the pictures I’d taken of Tessa. When they were dry, I slipped them inside a big portfolio because I wanted to show them to Russell first. After all, he and I shared a love of photography, didn’t we?

  In the afternoon, I used the little digital to snap some photos of Nate in the garden. He was sweaty, had flecks of grass on his face, and he was squinting at the sun, so I was sure the pictures would be awful. While I cooked dinner, Ford ran the photos off on Russell’s little printer.

  I was removing a dish of sweet potatoes from the oven (coated in brown sugar, swimming in marshmallows, the only way Ford would eat them) when he held a photo in front of my face. It was impossible to believe, but Nate was better looking on film than he was in person. He was only seventeen, but on film he looked about thirty, and he was handsome in a way that made your breath catch.

  I put the potatoes on top of the stove and looked at the photo while Ford ran off more. When he had a stack of them—and each one was gorgeous—he said he’d send them to the art director at his publishing house.

  But the next morning when Ford showed the photos to Nate and said he might have a modeling career ahead of him, Nate said he couldn’t leave Cole Creek. He said it as though it were an unchangeable fact, then he turned on the lawn mower and began to cut.

  Standing to one side, I watched Ford turn the mower off and start talking to Nate in a fatherly way. I was too far away to hear all of it, but I caught phrases like “deciding your future” and “this is your chance” and “don’t throw this away.” Nate looked at Ford with an unreadable face, listened politely, and said, “Sorry, I can’t,” then turned on the mower again.

  Ford looked at me as though to ask if I knew what was going on, but I just shrugged. I figured Nate was really saying that he couldn’t leave his grandmother. She’d raised him and she’d be alone if Nate left town. But my impression of his grandmother was that the last thing she’d want was a grandson who’d sacrificed his future for her.

  I decided to let Ford handle it. He was pretty good at talking to people, so I figured he’d eventually get Nate to come around. Besides, I didn’t have time to get involved. I needed to go to the grocery to buy food for Ford—and for the picnic with Russell. He hadn’t called yet, but when he did, I wanted to be ready. I planned to take enough food that Russell and I could stay out all day long. Just the two of us. Alone in the woods.

  So I left Ford to talk to Nate while I went to the grocery. When I returned hours later, the house was empty. There was an open FedEx envelope on the hall table and I figured it was “maintenance,” as Ford called it. His publishing house often sent him paperwork that he had to approve or disapprove about his books, which were all still selling after all these years.

  As usual, I lugged all the groceries in by myself. After a glare at my cell phone because it still hadn’t given me a call from Russell, I put away all the groceries, then went to the sink to get myself a glass of delicious well water.

  When I turned the handle, it came off in my hand, and water came shooting up, hitting me in the face. I threw open the doors below the sink and tried to turn the water off, but I couldn’t budge the rusty old knobs.

  I ran out of the house shouting for Ford, but when I reached the garden, I was drawn up short by the most extraordinary sight. Ford and Tessa were standing side by side, looking at two men I’d never seen before.

  One man was standing behind the old bench Nate had repaired. He was tall and ruggedly handsome in that country-and-western way that made some women swoon.

  Sitting on the bench in front of him was a little man who looked like Ford—if you saw him in a fun house mirror, that is. Every one of Ford’s features was exaggerated. On this little man, Ford’s thick eyelashes were like one of those sleepy-eyed dolls. And Ford’s rather nice lips were like a nursing baby’s. And his nose! Yes, Ford’s nose was a bit unusual, but it was small enough that no one noticed it. But this man’s nose looked as though a miniature hot dog had been placed crosswise on the end of it, then smoothed out.

  When I first saw the man sitting there, my face and hair wet, water dripping into my eyes, I thought he wasn’t real. I wanted to say crossly to Ford and Tessa that they had to take that huge statue back to the store and get a full refund.

  But as I wiped water out of my eyes, the stout little creature turned his head and blinked at me.

  It was then that I knew who the men were. The handsome one, the one with the face that looked as if he could write songs about his “honky-tonk life,” was called “King” in Ford’s books. As in “King Cobra.” Ford had described him well enough that I recognized him—and I remembered that he hadn’t been portrayed as a good guy.

  As for the little man, he was Ford’s father. In his books, Ford called him “81462”—which was the number on his shirt in the prison where he’d been since before the hero’s birth.

  The man in back, the country-and-western singer, said to me, “Is something wrong?” He had a voice that was filled with every cigarette he’d ever smoked and every smoky bar he’d ever been in. And he had an accent so thick I could hardly understand him.

  “Sink,” I said, suddenly remembering that the kitchen of my beautiful house was being flooded. “The sink!” Days of lethargy left me; I was myself again. I sprinted back toward the kitchen, four people close behind me.

  “You got a monkey wrench?” the younger man said to Ford as soon as all of us were in the kitchen. There was contempt in his voice: a blue-collar worker’s contempt for a white-collar worker. The water was shooting up to the ceiling and these two men were about to get into a socialist war.

  The little man, 81462, grabbed a cookie sheet off the countertop and directed the spray of water out the open window over the sink. Smart, I thought. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “Course he’s got tools. He’s a Newcombe,” Number 81462 said.

  At least I think that’s what he said. I could have understood Gullah more easily than his twang.

  Ford disappeared into the pantry for a moment and returned with a heavy, rusty wrench that was probably new when the house was built. I’d never seen it before and wondered where he’d found it.

  Two minutes later, the water was stopped and the five of us stood there on the flooded floor, staring at each other and having no idea of what to say.

  Tessa spoke first. She seemed to be fascinated with 81462, couldn’t take her eyes off him. “Praying mantis?” she asked, and I wondered what she was talking about.

  81462’s eyes started twinkling in a way that made him as cute as a…Well, as cute as a garden gnome. Or a bug’s ear. Or a—

  Turning slightly, he said, “Halfway down.”

  I was trying to understand his dialect—it was too strong to be called an accent—when I noticed his vest for the first time. It was covered with hundreds of little enameled pins of insects. They were all about the same size and as far as I could see, there were no two alike.

  “Centipede,” Tessa said, and 81462 lifted his left arm to show a centipede.

  I couldn’t believe it, but out of my mouth came “Japanese beetle”—the bane of my gardening life.

  When Number 81462 looked at me, smiling, I couldn’t help smiling back. He was just so cute!

  “Right here.” He lifted up the tip of his vest. “Where I can see that he don’t eat nothin’ good.”

  I don’t know why, but I kind of melted. Maybe it was because of all the drippy-movie hormones that Russell had released in me. “Are you two hungry?” I asked. “I just went to the grocery and—”

  “They’re not staying,”