Stephanie Bond - Manhunting in Mississippi

“Good luck, dear. But all work and no play…” Innuendo colored the older woman’s voice as it trailed off.

A sly grin broke out on Piper’s face. “Gran, I’m letting my sorority sisters weed out the eager, needy men.”

Her grandmother laughed, then wagged a finger. “Just don’t wait too long.”

Piper narrowed her eyes. “Have you been talking to Justine, because this is starting to sound like a conspiracy.”

Gran’s laugh echoed in the empty room and she raised her arms in defeat. “Okay, I’ll stop so we can get some work done.”

Piper looked around the room, struck once again by the unfamiliar emptiness. She’d spent endless summers in this house, and as many weekends and holidays as possible, since her mother hadn’t exactly been a nurturing caregiver. Panic stirred in her stomach at the sight of the furniture she’d played on as a child pushed against the walls, queued up haphazardly as if awaiting deportation. Beneath the window stood the wooden coffee table. Her initials, which she’d carved with her grandfather’s Swiss army knife when she was seven, were still on the leg. And next to it, the armless padded rocking chair Gran had sat in when she sewed while Piper sprawled on the floor, stringing buttons with a dulled needle. She swallowed. “Where do I start, Gran?”

“I’m taking the couch, love seat, end tables and lamps, plus the bedroom suite and the kitchen table and chairs.” Her grandmother shrugged and grinned. “Everything else is yours.”

Mouth open, Piper turned. “Mine? But Gran, I don’t have space for all this.” Unless I buy this house.

Undaunted, Granny Falkner continued, “You can leave it here until the house sells, then put the whole kit and caboodle in storage.”

Piper took a deep breath and nodded obediently. “Okay, I’ll think of something.”

“Those boxes are personal things I gathered for you—let’s load them into your van so we’ll have more room to move around in here.”

Staggering under the weight of the first box, Piper laughed. “What is all this stuff?”

Granny Falkner waved her hand in the air, then picked up another carton that appeared just as heavy. “Just books and such, a lot of old nonsense I saved for far too long. Go through it and keep what strikes your fancy and throw away the rest.”

Piper walked back through the kitchen and held open the screen door with her elbow. “Mom called last night. She said to say hello.”

“Why didn’t she call and tell me herself?” her grandmother asked airily.

Sighing, Piper said, “I suggested the same thing.”

“She’s mad because I said something about that lazy bum she’s shacking up with.”

“She says they’re going to get married.”

Granny Falkner’s laugh crackled dryly. “After four trips to the altar, you’d think her judgment would improve.”

Nodding in mute agreement, Piper tingled with shame. Despite her grandmother’s wish to see her settled down, she wondered what Gran would think of the manhunt on which she had decided to embark. Probably not much, she decided with a sideways glance at the woman whose wisdom and advice she treasured.

Her grandmother lowered her box onto the floor of the van. “In fifty-five years, the only thing Maggie managed to do right is have you. And how you turned out so well, I’ll never know.” She put her arm around Piper’s shoulders as they walked back to the house. “I live in eternal hope that your mother will be just like you when she grows up.”

Her grandmother’s words reverberated in Piper’s head during the next few hours of packing and dusting and cleaning. Her mother’s track record was frightening—would her own burgeoning desire for male companionship color her judgment, too? Wouldn’t she be better off without a man than launching into a series of roller-coaster relationships? She didn’t know the first thing about finding a husband—her mother certainly wasn’t much of an example, and at the time, she hadn’t cared enough to study her sorority sisters in action. Worse, by deciding to buy her grandmother’s house and stay in Mudville, she’d narrowed the field of eligible men tremendously. Piper sighed. In the unlikely event that she did find a suitable dating prospect in town, she’d just have to wing it.

But on the late drive back to her town house, peering out the window at the forlorn little town she had made home a year ago, Piper had serious doubts about finding her dream man in the immediate vicinity. A decidedly garish neon sign read Welcome to Mudville. To make matters worse, the four center letters had expired, reducing the town greeting to Welcome to Mule.

The trip down Main Street took her past three used car lots festooned in multicolored plastic flags, nine beauty shops, six video-rental stores, two tanning parlors, “And a partridge in a pear tree,” she murmured as she pulled to a stop at one of the town’s two stoplights. Mudville consisted of two square blocks of dilapidated buildings and a few side streets, plus one fast-food restaurant where the town’s teenagers and desperate adults hung out. Then she chastised herself. People in glass houses…

The blare of a horn caused her to jerk her head toward the vehicle on her right. Too late, she recognized the smoke-belching, rattletrap sports car of Lenny Kern, her neighbor’s son, who seemed determined to live at home until he could pool his social security check with his mother’s. With a thick paw, he motioned for her to roll down her window, and after a reluctant sigh, she obliged.

“Hey, Piper, what’s shakin’?” he bawled above the glass-shattering decibels of Hank Williams, Sr.

“Hey, Lenny,” she said with a tight smile.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he asked, grinning wide.

“No, thanks.”

“Aw, come on, Piper, Top Gun is playing at the dollar theater.”

She grimaced. “I rented it several years ago.”

“Oh, really?” He frowned, and bit his lower lip.

Thankfully, the light turned green. “So long, Lenny,” she said, pulling away from the intersection. Her neighbor had been trying to wear her down into going out with him since she moved in. And she wasn’t that lonely…yet.

When she arrived at her town house, Piper parked, took out one of the boxes her grandmother had given her and went inside. She sprawled on the living-room floor in front of the television. With the remote, she tuned into a rerun of a comedy that hadn’t been funny the first time, then pulled the box toward her and placed it between her spread legs, curiosity coursing through her.

The smell of mothballs, dried paper and stale flowers filled her nostrils as she lifted the lid. The box held a hodgepodge of memorabilia: dusty photo albums, yellowed songbooks, thick seventy-eight-size phonograph records and curling postcards. She thumbed through old issues of Look magazine, and smiled at hokey rhymes on ancient greeting cards. There were several paper-thin embroidered handkerchiefs, an invitation to her grandmother’s high-school graduation and a brittle newspaper article picturing a teenage Granny Falkner and her two sisters in gowns and upswept hairdos, grinning. The headline read Dance Marathons a Family Event for Sexton Sisters. Piper smiled in delight as she read about her dancing grandmother and two great-aunts, both of whom now lived in Florida. Only a year separated the three sisters and they were all still full of vinegar. Piper shook her head and bit her lower lip. The Sexton sisters had probably been the most sought-after women in the then-thriving town of Mudville, Mississippi. They had all married well and enjoyed enduring marriages.

Near the bottom of the box, beneath pressed corsages, a string of buttons and a small ring box of costume jewelry, Piper’s fingers curled around a hardback book the size of a videotape. She withdrew it slowly, thinking the faded pink journal was possibly a diary or even a recipe book. But hand-written on the front in neat slanted script were the words The Sexton Sisters’ Secret Guide to Marrying a Good Man.