Almost Heaven

“The practice is growing so fast,” her father had explained, “I need all the help I can get. I’ve been working weekends for too long. I want to spend more time with your mother.”

Cat had winked at her daughter. “What he really means is he’s missing too many ball games on his brand-new, big-screen TV.”

But Merrilee had known better. Her parents had always enjoyed activities together: hiking, white-water rafting and picnics in the nearby Smoky Mountains, tending the vegetable garden that consumed most of the backyard and driving to Greenville or Asheville to attend concerts. For as long as Merrilee could remember, her parents had loved playing records from the fifties and sixties and dancing something they called “the Shag” with the furniture pushed aside in the family room. The snappy and sensuous movements of the dance had caused electricity to crackle between them. And when her father did watch sports on TV, her mother was right beside him, engrossed in the game and yelling caustic comments at the officials, just like one of the guys. Her dad had jokingly bought her mother a rubber-foam brick she could throw at the umpires and not damage the screen.

Another favorite sport of Jim Stratton’s was the opportunity to introduce his wife to someone new.

“Cat?” the person would usually ask. “Is that short for Catherine?”

Her mother would shake her head. “For Catawba. It’s the name of the river near Rock Hill where my father grew up. He loved the river and the name, so I was stuck with Catawba.”

Jim Stratton’s eyes would twinkle with delight. “Good thing her dad didn’t live on the river near Asheville. Instead of having a wife named Catawba, I’d have a French Broad,” he’d explain with a satisfied chuckle and suggestive leer.

“Jim, please!” Cat’s response was always indignant, but her soft blush and the gleam in her eye revealed that her mother actually loved her father’s teasing.

For most of her life, all Merrilee had ever wanted was a man who’d love her like her father loved her mother. Although she’d worried that she’d never find a love as perfect as her parents’, she’d still expected to marry, raise her children in Pleasant Valley and spend the rest of her life there.

But fate had other plans. When Merrilee chose to study fine arts at the University of California, her life changed forever. Aside from the occasional trip to Atlanta and family vacations to Florida, Merrilee had spent all her life in the town where she was born. California was culture shock.

“You wouldn’t believe this place,” she’d written Jodie. “It’s totally different from the isolation of our ultraconservative Pleasant Valley. I’ve met people on campus from all over the world, and on weekends and holidays, I’ve traveled from San Diego to Monterey. The art museums, the restaurants, the theaters are incredible! And the people talk about philosophy, politics and all kinds of things, not just which restaurant makes the best barbecue or who’s pregnant. Sometimes, Jodie, I swear, I don’t ever want to come home.”

With her college experiences, Merrilee’s expectations had shifted. A love like her parents’ would be nice, but only if her husband took her out of Pleasant Valley and gave her free rein to follow her career dreams and to travel the world. The prospect of settling down in the sleepy little town, which had once seemed idyllic, had seemed more like a death sentence.

Merrilee had been determined that the summer after her junior year would be the last she’d ever spend in Pleasant Valley.

Little had she guessed that fate was about to throw another curve in the form of her father’s guest for dinner that night.

“So who is this new partner?” Merrilee had asked.

“It’s a surprise,” her mother had said with a glimmer in her blue eyes, exactly like Merrilee’s.

And Merrilee had been surprised, all right. Not so much by the fact that her father’s partner was Grant Nathan as by Grant’s effect on her. When he’d entered the Stratton living room that night, Merrilee’s teenage crush had enveloped her in an overwhelming rush that metamorphosed into something much stronger and more breathtaking.

Merrilee had fallen in love.

And from the corresponding gleam in Grant’s eyes, she’d guessed correctly that he’d experienced the same emotion.

That was then, this is now, she reminded herself as they drove further upstate through the foothills of South Carolina toward the mountains. She shoved the memories and the emotions they evoked into that deep compartment of her heart where she’d kept them locked away these past several years. She’d severed her connection to Grant six years ago. For good. No need to revisit dead dreams.

But Grant’s presence, the steady, even sound of his breathing, his striking profile and distinctive male scent, and the easy manner with which his strong, capable fingers gripped the steering wheel, made slamming the door on those feelings again harder than when he’d been six hundred miles away.

To distract her attention from the enticing man at her side, MJ gazed out the window. Her sojourn in New York City had made her forget the beauty of South Carolina in early spring. In almost every yard, Bradford pear trees in full bloom reminded her of billowing bridal dresses. Arching branches of forsythia in vibrant yellow and stalks of brilliant purple irises provided splashes of color against the bright green of new grass, all framed against a cloudless sky of startling blue.

The highway soon left the towns and fields of the foothills and ascended into mountain forests, where an occasional clearing revealed ridge after ridge of the Smoky Mountains to the northwest, the deep emerald of their gentle folds and high peaks in stark contrast against the clear sky. MJ’s fingers itched for her camera, packed in its bag behind her seat.

With the familiar farms, small towns and forests unchanged and Grant once again beside her, MJ traveled through the countryside as if the intervening six years had never happened.

But they had.

She had left Pleasant Valley for good, with the exception of a rare holiday visit, and she had permanently cut all ties with Grant. If not for her parents and Nana, MJ would never have returned to the small town where she’d grown up. Unlike the smorgasbord of cultural and recreational delights of New York and its myriad opportunities for an aspiring artist, Pleasant Valley had nothing to offer except dead ends.

But in spite of MJ’s resolve to put the past behind her, coming home affected her. The sight of the white Colonial-style Welcome sign at the town limits brought an unexpected lump to her throat. After crossing the bridge over the river that paralleled Piedmont Avenue, the main thoroughfare, she found herself leaning forward, eager for her first glimpse of her grandmother’s impressive two-story house with its white clapboards and wide wraparound porch, only a block from downtown.

Nana must have been watching the street, because as soon as Grant pulled to the curb, the front door with its leaded-glass panes opened and Sally Mae McDonough stepped onto the porch. Dressed in a simple navy dress and matching low-heeled pumps, pearls at her throat and ears, and her white hair elegantly styled, Nana hadn’t changed since MJ’s last visit a year ago Christmas. Slender with perfect posture, her grandmother remained the quintessential Southern belle.

In other words, MJ thought with an inward grin, a steamroller disguised as a powder puff.

After seeing her Nana unchanged, MJ exhaled a sigh of relief. Nana, at least, as Grant had promised, seemed fine.

With a camel-colored cashmere cardigan draped around her shoulders, Nana waited until MJ climbed the stairs before speaking.

“Welcome home, child. It’s been too long.”

MJ hugged her grandmother, breathed in her signature scent of lilacs and reveled in the warmth of the familiar embrace. “It’s good to see you, Nana.”

“We missed you at Christmas.”

MJ fought rising guilt. “You know I had to work. I photographed seven weddings over the holidays.”

Her earnings had given her a precious few weeks off in January, time to add to her portfolio of the faces and places of the city in preparation for an exhibit of her own someday.

MJ lived for that someday.

“Wait!” Nana, who seldom raised her voice, had spoken loudly to Grant, who was still at the curb. “Is Gloria with you?”

“No, ma’am,” Grant replied. “She’s at home. And none too happy about it, either.”

Nana’s relief was evident. And MJ’s curiosity blossomed. Gloria? Jodie’s latest letters had said nothing about her brother’s girlfriend. An uncomfortable sensation settled over MJ and she shrugged it off. She was beyond jealousy. After all, she’d ended her relationship with Grant long ago when things hadn’t worked out as she’d hoped. She was actually surprised he hadn’t married and had children by now, but she didn’t stop to analyze why such a prospect annoyed her.

“You can set the bags in the front hall,” Nana said to Grant, who had followed MJ up the walk.

Nana held open the door and MJ and Grant stepped inside.

“Here she is, safe and sound, like I promised,” Grant announced, “so I’ll be on my way. Gloria’s not happy when I’m away too long.”

MJ couldn’t picture Grant with a clinging vine type. He’d evidently changed a great deal in the past six years. She gave herself an inward shake. She didn’t need the distraction of an old relationship now and was glad he was leaving. But her relief at his impending departure was short-lived.

“You’re not going now,” Nana said in her soft drawl with its underlying hint of steel that defied contradiction. “I know you had breakfast at 5:00 a.m., as usual, and it’s almost noon. I have lunch ready in the dining room. We can talk as we eat.”

“This is family business,” Grant said, apparently anxious to return to Gloria. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“Fiddlesticks,” Nana said. “You’re Jim’s partner. That makes you family. Besides, I need your help.”

MJ watched with undisguised amusement as Grant relented. Not even his strong will could refuse the command in Nana’s tone. He followed Sally Mae into the dining room and pulled out a chair for her at the head of the table. MJ sat on her grandmother’s right. Grant took a chair at Nana’s left, looking as if he were attending his own execution.

Nana reached for the silver pitcher in front of her place. “Iced tea?”

MJ’s nerves had reached their breaking point. “This isn’t a social event, Nana. I want to know what’s wrong, and I want to know now.”