Queen Bee Goes Home Again Read online

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  This book is dedicated to my precious friend and confidante, Willow Heart Catron, who has been a model of grace, patience, and faith both in living and in dying.

  And to all my precious friends who have gone to heaven before me:

  Kappy and Roslyn and Bess and Cindy and Gracie and Vera, to name a few. We will meet again in the presence of Christ, but I sure do miss them now.

  Acknowledgments

  First, thanks goes to Dr. Donald Dennis of Atlanta, allergist, surgeon, and ENT, whose research and regimen have helped me live without pain or inflammation for more than seven years. God bless you!

  I also give thanks daily for my precious sister Elise for being Christ’s hands and heart in my life, showing me what true perseverance, agape love, and acceptance look like, even in the face of her own physical and emotional challenges. What a joy and privilege it is to have you as my sister by blood and in Christ. And thanks to my sisters Susan and Betsy, who have done the same. I love you so much.

  I also love my brother James Hill Pritchett, on his terms, but no less deeply.

  And thanks to my son and daughter-in-law, for making sure I don’t go without health insurance. God bless you for your help and generosity. And to Blackshear Place Baptist Church for being such a wonderful community of God and generous helper.

  Thanks also to my wonderful editor, Jennifer Enderlin, for her guidance and help in making this book a reality. What would I do without you? And to my agent, Mel Berger, for helping put food on my table and much-needed prescriptions in my medicine chest. And to my wonderful copy editor, Ragnhild Hagen, who catches my mistakes and errors in continuity.

  And thanks, too, to my wonderful friends and the Red Hat Club. What love and acceptance I always find from you.

  Thanks, also, more than I can say, to all the readers and friends who have prayed for my granddaughter, who has a rare form of epilepsy, and supported legislation in the Georgia State House to allow cannabadiol (a nonintoxicating natural marijuana extract for treating seizures) to be used in our state. At this writing, the bill passed the Georgia House, but was made unpassable in the Georgia Senate Health committee, so we are packing to go to Colorado to see if the Charlotte’s Web extract helps.

  And to all my readers who let me know they enjoy my books: Your wonderful e-mails never fail to lift my spirits, no matter what challenges I face. That is why I write what I do, to encourage and bring laughter to you all.

  To those of you who don’t like something, please be merciful and keep it to yourselves. Neither I nor my books are perfect, no matter how hard we try. Fortunately, books are like food: Everybody likes something different.

  I also owe thanks to Hayes Chrysler Plymouth for putting Queenie back together after a deer hit us. And to Maaco in Lawrenceville, Georgia, for always doing such a great job with Queenie’s dents and scrapes. The older I get, the more there are.

  My life has never been a dull one, so I am thankful to God for all the material He gives me. And for the 12-step enabler’s program that got me outside of myself and showed me a better way to live, a way devoid of judgment that starts every day with gratitude instead of worry, helping me live with joy, no matter what. Between that and my Bible, I’m doing great. And there are more books in me yet.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Also by Haywood Smith

  About the Author

  Copyright

  One

  Don’t you just hate it when God hits the replay button on the tough stuff in your life? I sure do, and when He hit it in my life a year ago, it was a biggie.

  A lot has happened in the year since that day: wars were fought, disasters raged, great things began, and great things were lost, but I was too caught up in the minor miracles and tragedies of my own little life to notice. (I did vote, though; happily on the local level, but when it came to Washington, I had to choose the lesser of the evils, which I am seriously sick of, but I voted anyway. Use it or lose it.)

  On that blazing July seventh a year ago, I took the long way back to my mother’s (Miss Mamie to everyone, including my brother Tommy and me) at 1431 Green Street in Mimosa Branch, Georgia.

  Despite all my efforts, there I was, moving back to my mother’s domain. Again.

  The phantom umbilicus that connected me to my mother had turned into the string on a yo-yo.

  Ten years older than I was the first time I’d had to move back home. Ten years tireder. Branded as the local scarlet woman for something I didn’t do. And really, really ticked off.

  Anger was the only energy I had left.

  Through all the tribulations I’ve endured—and there have been a few—my prayer has always been Please, God, let me pass this test the first time, because I sure don’t want to have to take it again.

  Apparently, I must have flunked the first test ten years ago when I’d had to move in with my “eccentric” (read: crazy) Southern family in the town I’d married to escape.

  I hadn’t had any other options then, either. My straight-arrow CPA husband of thirty years had gotten engaged to a stripper and supposedly spent all our money (including what we owed the IRS), so I’d lost everything but what I could carry and the furniture I’d squirreled away with friends in Buckhead who’d promptly dropped me after the divorce.

  This time around, I had the economy to blame. After years of working twenty-four/seven selling houses during the building boom, I’d finally managed to buy my own little brick ranch ten miles from town, then disappeared into the blessed anonymity of exurbia. My own little Fortress of Solitude.<
br />
  Boy, was that a relief after being under constant scrutiny in Mimosa Branch.

  But when the real estate bubble blew, plunging the economy into a depression, I was once again reduced to penury, upside down in my mortgage.

  So on that hot, fateful July seventh a year ago, I’d signed over my house in a short sale for a fraction of its true worth and finally given in to Miss Mamie’s pleas to come home and help her with the house, now that the General and Uncle B were roommates in the Alzheimer’s wing of the Home, as the local nursing facility was known by one and all in Mimosa Branch.

  Everybody but Tommy and I called my daddy the General—not because he’d been one in the military, but because of his dictatorial personality and the fact that he’d been the premier general contractor in Mimosa Branch for fifty years, till age and Alzheimer’s caught up with him.

  Heading for my mother’s from the lawyer’s office, I tried my best to be grateful that I could move into the garage apartment again. I couldn’t even scrape up a deposit for lodgings elsewhere, much less commit to paying rent. At least I wasn’t in a shelter, which definitely wouldn’t have fit my small-town aristocratic sensibilities, or my mother’s.

  Which left me right back where I’d started a decade before: not-so-instant replay, on a cosmic level.

  Give thanks in all things, the Bible says, but I wasn’t doing very well with that one under the circumstances.

  As I had in my divorce, I climbed up in the Almighty Creator of the Universe’s lap, beat on His chest, and asked Him why this was happening. Again.

  And cussed about it, but only in my mind. Not as bad as I had cussed ten years ago, mind you. Back then, I’d been so hurt that vulgarities I’d never even thought, much less said, became my mantra for almost a year. My very prim Christian marriage counselor/psychiatrist at the time had told me that if cussing was all I did, I was doing great, all things considered.

  Ever since, I’d done my best to clean up my act, but my thoughts were still rebellious. I’d replaced the cussing with shoot and rats—and in extreme cases, antidisestablishmentarianism, backward—but God knew what I really wanted to say. Yet He is still steeped in grace, putting His arms around me in comfort, not in condemnation.

  So there I was, towing a crammed U-Haul trailer behind my crammed 2009 Chrysler Town and Country minivan (paid for when I was selling houses hand over fist, thank the good Lord). I turned onto Main Street from South Roberts, only to find myself the last in a long line of stationary traffic.

  Traffic, in olde towne Mimosa Branch! (The merchant’s association had tacked on the extra es at the height of the building boome.)

  About ten cars ahead of me, a restaurant delivery truck was blocking all of my lane and half the other at our local upscale bistro, Terra Sol, which was probably a major traffic violation, since there was a perfectly good alley in the back. Definitely wretched timing, unloading during the lunch rush.

  Not that I was in any hurry to finish moving into the garage apartment I’d renovated on the first go-round, but I’ve always been a face-the-music-and-get-it-over-with kind of person.

  Taking advantage of the traffic backup, I punched in the previous calls screen on my Walmart prepaid cell phone, then scrolled down to my best friend Tricia’s number and pressed the green receiver button to call her. I heard a nanosecond of dial tone, then the phone beeped out her number in Alexandria, Virginia. After four rings I was about to hang up when she picked up the phone, breathless.

  “Sorry,” she panted out, “I was out deadheading my roses.”

  Thank goodness she was there. I really needed to vent. “Well, I’m headed back to Miss Mamie’s from the lawyer’s office with the last of my earthly goods, and I feel like throwing up.”

  “Poor baby, poor baby, poor baby,” she commiserated, one short of the four poor babys I felt the situation merited. “I don’t blame you for feeling sick,” she soothed. “So the house closed?”

  “Finally.” An ache the size of Stone Mountain squashed my heart. “So this is it. Back to Miss Mamie’s turf. Back to having my every move evaluated and criticized by the whole town.”

  Thanks to Miss Mamie’s prayer chains, both Baptist and Methodist, who saw me as the sum total of every mistake I’d ever made and every sin—real or imagined—I’d ever committed.

  I went on, “I hate losing my privacy. And the awful thing is, I don’t think I have the energy left to escape again.” I inched forward as the line of SUVs and pickups condensed. “I am too old to start over.”

  “Speak for yourself,” she said.

  Oh, sure. Easy to say when all you have to worry about is deadheading your rose garden. Tricia had scored big in her divorce.

  I’d gotten zip.

  Oh, Phil had signed the divorce decree granting me decent alimony. Then he’d promptly quit his job and disappeared. I’d gotten several contempt-of-court convictions on him before I realized I was just wasting time and money.

  It was up to our son David—furious at his father—to inform me that friends had bumped into his dad living high on the hog on St. Bart’s with his “fiancée” Bambi Bottoms (she’d legally changed it to that) on the money he’d squirreled away offshore. And bragging about it.

  Humiliated and furious, David had promptly called and told me.

  Thank you so much. Like I needed more reason to resent his father. I mean, really.

  At least David had his great job and his great wife Barb in Charlotte to distract him, plus my precious grandbabies—Callista (what were they thinking?), four, and sunny-bunny Barrett, two. But after my only child had told me about his dad, David had become oddly distant, so I hadn’t nagged him about not calling me. Yet I sure missed hearing about his job and his family. I’d tried calling them, but they politely blew me off. So I left them alone, hoping things would work out some time before I died.

  All I had to distract me were bills and useless contempt citations.

  Considering my destitution, I wondered if I’d get a percentage if I ratted Phil out to the IRS. The trouble was, I had no idea exactly where he was.

  “Are you still there?” Tricia asked.

  “Sorry.” I rescued myself from useless resentments and vowed to stay in the present. “My mind wandered. It does that a lot lately.”

  “Stress,” she diagnosed.

  Then she promptly ignored the rules of our Poor Baby Club and lapsed into it could be worse, with, “At least the apartment is air-conditioned this time around.”

  I wasn’t in the mood. “Why did God let this happen to me? Again,” I demanded for the jillionth time.

  Tricia let out a brisk sigh. “God didn’t do this. Your crooked ex and the crooked banks and subprime lenders and the politicians did. Everybody’s taken a hit.”

  Except Tricia’s ex, who did high-security alternative-power backup systems for the Fed.

  When I didn’t reply, she said, “Anyway, you’ve been praying that God would bring America back to its knees, whatever it took.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think that would mean I’d be driven to poverty. And have to move back home. Again.”

  Gratitude, my inner Puritan scolded. At least you have a place to go, with people who love you.

  Love me too much, I mentally retorted. At sixty years of age, I did not need to be mothered. Or constantly evaluated, no matter how subtly.

  I looked up at the traffic. Rats. The blasted delivery truck was still there. “I’ve repented and cleaned up my act since Grant Owens.” My one disastrous fling. “God knows, I have. So why am I having to repeat this purgatory?”

  “Honey, you’re the best person I know,” Tricia told me, and I knew she believed it, but compared to the politicians and government contractors she still hung out with, anybody half decent looked like a saint. “Bad things do happen to good people.”

  Surely Jehovah God, Author of All Things (including me), wouldn’t punish me with destitution just for mentally cussing Him out when nobody else was around. Well, maybe n
ot mentally all the time, but it was my sole remaining vice.

  “Are you still there?” Tricia asked.

  “Yes. I’m thinking.”

  God bless her, she let me.

  Other than cussing in my brain, I did my best to live a good Christian life. I went to see God at His house most Sundays and tithed, and I tried to be compassionate with everybody—well, except my ex. (Not that I’d had the chance. He’d been out of the country for ten years.)

  I’d forgiven Phil long ago as an act of obedience and spiritual self-preservation, but my emotions hadn’t quite gotten the memo. Especially since I’d found out he was still screwing me over, and in the Caribbean.

  Not that I hated Phil—I didn’t have that in me—but I’d love a chance to give him a good sheet-beating till he coughed up some cash. Wishful thinking, but I didn’t encourage it. Life goes on.

  As my Granny Beth always said, “Being bitter is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill the other person. It only hurts you.”

  I wasn’t bitter. At least, not till the bottom of my life had dropped out. Again.

  “I just don’t understand why a criminal like Phil can break all the rules,” I complained to Tricia, “and end up in the catbird seat, but I’m the one who’s homeless and destitute.”

  Tricia sighed and quoted scripture. “‘Why do the evil prosper?’”

  “So the question isn’t a new one,” I griped. “I still want to know why.”

  “Remember what your Granny Beth always used to say,” Tricia reminded me. “‘Why doesn’t matter. It’s the devil’s most destructive distraction. What matters is how you deal with it.’”

  “I did not call for logic or solutions, missy,” I scolded. Our Poor Baby Club expressly prohibited logic or solutions. Only sympathy allowed. “Or it could be worse. And this is definitely a four, not a three.”

  “Poor baby, poor baby, poor baby, poor baby,” she corrected. “Now, whine away.”

  So I did, till both of us had had a crawful.

  Disgusted with myself for going on so long, I ended with, “Sorry I dumped my pity party on you. Next time I call, I promise to be more positive.”

  Tricia chuckled. “You can dump on me all you want. Anytime. Lord knows, I dumped on you a lot more when I got divorced. So you still have a serious whine credit with me.”