"I don"t know what happened at the home the other day. It was the strangest thing I"ve ever seen."

"Ma"am, I came to tell you that you got your leg pulled."

"What?"

"Those old coots were playin" a joke on you. Pretendin" to fall asleep."

I raised a hand to my throat. "Why?"

"I expect because Ingrid Beechum and her gal friends put "em up to it. Adele Clearwater and the like. Told the old folks to play-act falling asleep after they drank some tea."

"Thank you for letting me know," I said tonelessly.

"Ingrid isn"t herself these days. She hasn"t even started to get over losin" her boy last year. He was her only child. Her husband Charlie Beechum, Senior, he died of some sort of illness so long ago that Charlie, Junior barely recalled him. Ingrid made it up to the boy as best she could. She just lived for Charlie, Junior. I got a son of my own. I understand."

"Her son died?"

"Oh, yes, ma"am. He was only "bout thirty years old. Got killed in a car accident."

"And his wife-she and Ingrid are close?"

"Well, no. Ingrid"s been tryin" to keep up with her, though. For Charlie, Junior"s sake. Tried to get her a nice home here in town. Offered to set her up with a business. But, from what I heard, the gal"s just no-good, just a moocher, you know. It"s been hard on Ingrid, tryin" to hang on to her son"s memory the only way she can-through that no-account wife of his. So please don"t think too bad of Ingrid. Like I said, she"s not herself lately."

"I see."

He nodded to me. "I got to go, Ma"am. Got my old dog to feed. Possum. He"ll be in the garbage if I don"t get home soon."

"Thank you for coming. And for being so frank with me. Please stop by my shop. I"ll let you sample anything you care to try."

"I"ll sure do that. I been hearin" good talk about your place. Eustene Oscar says she"s never tasted shortbread so fine. And her old mama likes it, too." He put a finger to his lips and smiled. "Now, that"s a secret."

After he left, I pulled on a sweater and went downstairs, then along a wide lane that ran behind the shops. The creek flowed between shallow banks on the far side of that lane. I listened to the soft music of its water before I took a deep breath, walked next door, and knocked on the bakery"s service doors. I"d noticed lights at night. Ingrid worked late. When there was no response, I pushed lightly. The thick wooden double doors eased open.

I stepped inside and halted. The light was dim except for a single metal light fixture in one corner. Ingrid sat in the shadows, huddled on the floor of the kitchen area with her arms wrapped around her knees and her back against a metal storage bin. Her eyes were shut. The room was so cold I saw my own breath in the air. Ingrid had wrapped herself in a soft pink-and-blue crocheted afghan. A baby blanket. I ached for her loneliness.

"Mrs. Beechum," I said quietly. "It"s time we talked."

She opened her eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, and looked at me as if nothing I did surprised her. I stepped closer, into the light. "I want to apologize," I said. "Not just for today, but for every rude thing I"ve said or done since we met."

She gave me a sarcastic look. "Why?"

"Because I didn"t know that you and I have so much in common. I understand your pain, now."

Her gaze burned into me. "What are you talking about?"

"I heard you lost your son this year."

"I can"t talk about-"

"I understand. I have trouble talking about grief. It"s a sh.e.l.l. It"s a shield. Armor. Not talking. When you talk, it opens up all those places where the pain can still seep through."

She got to her feet, swaying. Tears slid down her face. "What would you know about loss? You"re too young."

My throat convulsed. "I know how it feels to lose someone you think you can"t live without. To get up every morning hating the sunlight because you just want to stay in the dark. And then there are days when the dark suffocates you, and you know you"ll scream if dawn doesn"t come soon enough. Because every day takes you further away from the time when that person you loved was with you."

Ingrid staggered toward me then stopped. "How the h.e.l.l do you know how I feel?" she yelled.

Warm tears slid down my own cheeks. "Because my husband died two months ago, and I still don"t know how I can go on without him."

She went very still, watching me. Misery burst inside my chest. I rushed to tell her more before she threw me out. "Matthew, his name was Matthew. And he was such a good man, and we fell in love during college when he walked into the coffee shop I managed and-" I told her all about him, and why I named my shop The Naked Bean. "And we visited here a few months ago, and made love in a room at the Hamilton House Inn, not long before he got sick for the last time. I"ve come back to see if life without Matthew can hold any happiness. Maybe it can"t. I"ve taken my fear of that out on you. You"re so successful. You have friends, and so many loving relatives, and a place-this town-that"s part of you, that"s part of who you are. I"m afraid I"ll never have any home like that. Nothing will ever fill up the emptiness inside me. I"m not young and carefree. I"m ancient. Some days I can barely move."

She studied me as if my whole life showed in my face. Her silent scrutiny dragged on until I couldn"t stand it. My shoulders sagged. "I won"t fight with you, anymore," I said wearily. I turned and walked toward the doors.

"My daughter-in-law is about your age, and I despise her." Ingrid"s fervent, tear-soaked voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned slowly, then halted. Ingrid went on fiercely. "She cheated on Charlie and spent all his money and lied to him, but he loved her so much he couldn"t see through her. Everyone else could see what she was. I saw it from the first day I met her. I couldn"t keep my mouth shut. I told Charlie she was no good." Ingrid paused. Her throat worked. "He never forgave me." She lifted the afghan, then let it fall. "I made gifts for children he never had. Grandchildren I would never get to know. When he died, we hadn"t spoken in three years."

I put a hand to my mouth. She stared into thin air and kept talking. "After he died in the car wreck, I swore I"d make everything up to him, even if all I could do was take care of his wife. She came to me for help. For money. She had no pride. Neither did I, by then. I told her I"d help her start her own business. A lingerie shop, that"s what she wanted. I had it all planned. I"d take care of her, if she moved to Mossy Creek. That"s why I wanted your shop s.p.a.ce. I went to Ida to set up the lease. Ida told me I was a fool. That I couldn"t bring Charlie back and I"d break my own heart all over again. She wouldn"t give me an answer about the shop. Then you came along. You were a good excuse for her to do what she felt was for my own good."

I felt washed out, defenseless. "Ingrid, I only have a six-month lease. That"s all I could guarantee Ida. My business probably won"t last beyond that-not at the rate it"s going. If you and I can just keep a truce between us until then, I expect you"ll get the lease. Maybe it won"t be too late to coax your daughter-in-law to move here."

Once again, Ingrid went silent. Either I"d stunned her or she"d decided I was still too worthless for words.

"I don"t know what else to say," I went on. "Except that I do understand how badly you hurt. And I understand how much you loved your only child. Because. . .because I"m pregnant."

There. I"d finally told someone. "Three months pregnant. You"re the first person I"ve confessed to. I want my child to grow up here. You see, I"m certain-" I cried quietly-"I"m certain my child was conceived here. In Mossy Creek."

She looked at me speechlessly. I walked out the back doors and stood in the cold evening air. A majestic purple sunset filled the deepening sky, infinite and painfully beautiful.

Matthew and our unborn child were with me.

It was mid-morning. I dutifully opened my shop, brewed my coffees, arranged my tea bags, and tidied the cafe tables as if crowds of customers would use them. Nothing looked right. I broke out in a cold sweat as I pondered Ingrid"s sorrows and mine, the humiliating scene we"d caused the day before, and life in general. Soon my heart was racing, and I felt sick at my stomach and a little dizzy. I filled a coffee mug with cold water at the sink. My thoughts circled endlessly.

You let yourself down. You let Matthew down. Quit now. Give up for the baby"s sake. This shop was never going to work, anyway.

I uttered a soft sound of despair and bent over the sink. I couldn"t give up. Couldn"t stop trying. Couldn"t. But how, how in the world. . .

"I have something to tell you. Something I couldn"t bring myself to admit last night."

Ingrid"s voice. Dazed, I straightened up. She had come into the shop without my noticing. She stood at my counter looking stern and tired. She gaged my disheveled appearance with her sharp blue eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

I nodded and quickly wiped my face with a paper towel. "It"s just morning sickness. Tell me what?"

Her face began to soften, suffused with sadness and shame, but also determination. "My daughter-in-law took the money I loaned her to buy inventory for her lingerie shop. She used it to move across the country with her new boyfriend. She won"t be back."

"Oh, Ingrid, I"m sorry."

"No, I"m sorry. Sorry I looked at you and saw her. And I"m sorry that I blamed you for Ida"s decision about this shop. Ida was right. I can"t change what happened to my son, or any mistakes I made, or any mistakes he made. I have to live with the past. Find something hopeful to hold onto. And someone to talk to. Someone who understands." She paused. "Like you."

My throat closed with emotion. I clutched the counter and gazed at her happily. She took a step forward and held out a hand.

"No more dirt," she said hoa.r.s.ely. "Please forgive me."

I grasped her hand. "We weren"t throwing dirt," I whispered. "We were digging holes to plant seeds."

"I have some afghans you might be able to use when the baby comes."

"Yes. Oh, yes."

She went to my doors, threw them open, stepped outside, and gestured for someone to come along. I stared as a stream of people came into my shop, all carrying small gifts. Looking sheepish, Adele Clearwater and her gang bore flower arrangements, potted plants, and cookies. Eustene Oscar and her mother, in a wheelchair, smiled at me over a basket filled with napkins, silverware, and teacups. Eustene took a handful of small bronze marbles from a gift box and set them in front of me. On second glance, I realized they were shaped like...beans. "Tag Garner, our local sculptor, made these for you. Now you have naked beans to set on your window sill."

Everyone smiled. I cupped the bronze beans in my palms. "Thank you," I whispered.

Adele and the others began brusquely setting the tables. "We"re giving you a tea party," Adele said with unbowed authority. "Where no one will pretend to fall asleep."

I choked out a laugh. Soon half the town merchants were crowded in my shop, eating, drinking, visiting with me-just like old friends. I looked up to find Ida Walker on the edge of the chattering crowd. She glanced from Ingrid to me and nodded with satisfaction. Ingrid clinked a silver teaspoon against her cup.

"Here"s to Jayne and her baby," she said. "Welcome to your new home."

"Welcome," Ida seconded.

I bent my head, shut my eyes, and whispered silently to Matthew. You were right about human beans.

The Mossy Creek Gazette 215 Main Street * Mossy Creek, Georgia From the desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope Cornwall, England Dear Vicki: I"ve avoided telling you the rest about Isabella and Richard because here"s where it turns sad. As I"ve said, after she spurned Lionel Bigelow he swore to chase off the Salters, the Hamiltons, and every other Mossy Creekite who sided with them.

The feud split Bigelow County down the middle, with Mossy Creekites on one side and Bigelowans on the other. Farms were burned and livestock shot. People were hurt. Some were nearly killed. The Hamiltons climbed up on their corn silo and painted "Ain"t Going Nowhere, And Don"t Want To." The final straw came when the Bigelows put a price on Isabella and Richard"s heads.

The next day, they vanished.

Oh, what a search there was! Creekites hunted the countryside for weeks. Signs were posted in every town from the North Carolina line all the way down to Atlanta. But it was no use. Isabella and Richard were gone.

Lionel Bigelow collapsed and died. Some say he was brokenhearted and filled with regret. Others say his evil heart had turned on him. Whichever it was, the feud ended with grief on both sides. Isabella Salter and Richard Stanhope were never heard from again.

Salters have the worst luck with happily-ever-afters. My editor and publisher, your cousin Sue Ora Salter, is just about the only Salter left in Mossy Creek, now. You"re not going to believe it when I drop this bomb on you, after all you"ve learned about Mossy Creek"s history between Hamiltons, Salters, and Bigelows, but here "tis: Sue Ora"s husband is a Bigelow.

Is it any wonder she doesn"t want to admit that? Salter women pick a man and stick with him, one way or another. They either do a good job of picking, or they"re just too stubborn to change. They"re like our creek: They go with the flow or pretend they don"t give a dam. I"m telling you, it"s something in the water.

You might not want to mention any of this stuff about Salter women to Lord Stanhope, since you"re a Salter woman, yourself. And I sure wouldn"t show him my next story, if I were you.

Ssssh, Katie.

Sue Ora.

The Bereavement Report.

To Mossy Creekites, I"ll always be that odd Susan Ora Salter, but at least I"m their odd Sue Ora. That"s the thing about small towns-the residents may question your choices privately, but to an outsider they"ll defend you to the death. Death is a subject Salters really love. We have a morbid fascination with it, and maybe it makes us distrustful of the living.

You see, we were a pioneer founding family in Mossy Creek, but we haven"t prospered the way the other old families have. Our men were swallowed up by wars of one kind or another, and our women tend to make bad choices-starting with their men. Isabella Salter was the first recorded woman to leave the town when she married an Englishman and ran away from Lionel Bigelow. Isabella was my idol. She found a way to escape from a Bigelow romance and by all the accounts we"re getting from Lady Stanhope, she never regretted it. I"m not sure how I went astray. I left, but I came back. "You"re a Salter. Act like one," I was told repeatedly by both my mother and my eighty-year-old Great Aunt Livvy.

"If I acted like a Salter, I"d leave or die," was my standard reply when I was a teenager. I"d never gotten over my father"s death. I was just four years old when he was killed in Vietnam, but I already loved him dearly. I grew up knowing I was the last in line to bear the Salter surname in Mossy Creek. And I knew when I married, Daddy"s name would be gone forever. I vowed to never marry. I broke that vow, and it haunted me.

Names are important in Mossy Creek. First and last, middle, maiden, even nicknames. People solemnly account for each one. I"m named Susan Ora Salter for my daddy"s aunt Susan Elizabeth (Great Aunt Livvy) and my mama"s sister Ora Juanita. Ora Juanita ran off to Hollywood before I learned to walk and was never heard from again. There was probably a Bigelow man involved, but n.o.body"s talking.

From the beginning, I was ornery and didn"t fit in. I had red hair. I got in fights. I wrote poems about dead Salters, particularly my beloved, dead father. I read indecent books. Because of me, the Mossy Creek Public Library hid its copy of Lady Chatterley"s Lover. My teachers down at Bigelow County High School (the only high school in the county, after Mossy Creek High went up in flames-a mystery Mossy Creekites have tried to solve for twenty years) told my mother I was incorrigible. Mother agreed. At fourteen, I started signing all my homework with my initials-S O S!-with the exclamation point at the end. I thought it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, the teachers didn"t.

Eventually, I found a way to escape. I played my Get Out of Jail card when I was a senior in college. John Willingham Bigelow, of the Bigelow, Bigelow, and Bigelow Attorneys at Law Bigelows, and I fell in l.u.s.t and eloped. And thus, I thought I"d escape the Salter curse by swapping the last S in my signature for a B. I already wanted to be a writer, and I figured any author who could autograph her books s...o...b.. made a statement. I considered myself an author with an att.i.tude and a good marketing tool.

When my new young husband fondly called me his unpublished smart a.s.s, I thought he was proud of his rebel. That should have been my first hint that I"d never be a dignified Bigelow wife. After my first bridal shower at the Bigelow Country Club, I took one long look at gifts that include prim little crocheted doilies, ostentatious china, and a sterling silver tea service with a big "B" carved on the monogram, and I knew the Bigelows would swallow me alive and spit me out.

With a big B carved on my a.s.s.

The truth was, I had fallen in love with the last man on earth I should have, a man buried in family tradition as deep as my own, buried so deeply I couldn"t dig him out. I thought I"d teach him there was a world away from country clubs, law firms and power-grabbing family schemes. I didn"t. He thought he"d tame me, a wild Mossy Creekite. He couldn"t.

Within two weeks after our marriage, we were fighting so much we could barely say a civil word to one another. When we weren"t fighting, we were in bed. It was crazy. I"ve never cried so many tears in my life. I cut my losses and ran. John drowned his misery in law school, and I headed for California-hey, it was good enough for Ora Juanita-where I was sure nothing less than fame and fortune awaited my writing skills. It wasn"t that I didn"t love Mossy Creek; I did. But I was a free-spirited woman eager to tackle the world"s real problems and forget that Salters were fading away. Mossy Creek had no real problems to tackle.

At least, not after I left.

Then I realized I was pregnant. There was no way I was going back to the one place I didn"t want to live-Mossy Creek, near John. He refused to give me a divorce unless I promised to let him have the baby. He knew I"d never do that. So we drew a line in the sand. I"d keep our child with me in California but remain Mrs. John Bigelow.

Salters know how to get even with Bigelows. At least, that"s what I told myself.

In a moment of post-childbirth, drug-induced sentimentality, I named our beautiful little boy John Willingham Bigelow, Junior. When John, Senior arrived to see him, I said, "I woke up in a stupor and realized I"d named him after you. Too late to change it. I plan to call him Willie. Hope you"re happy."

"I"d be happy if you"ll quit pretending you have any talent as a writer, and you and Willie come home with me."

"Where I can pretend you and I love each other?"

I hurt him as badly as he hurt me, that day. From then on, he never asked me to come home again. I never offered, either. But there"s a problem with a proud att.i.tude-you can"t eat it and you can"t spend it. And there comes a time when you put dreams away and accept the truth. I loved my child, and he needed his father. Every time John came to visit or Willie came home from visiting John in Georgia, Willie moped for weeks. I knew what I had to do. What I owed Willie.

When my mother died five years ago and left me her house next door to Great Aunt Livvy in Mossy Creek, I gave up my meager living as a reporter for the Village Crier in San Francisco and came home. It wasn"t an auspicious return. I was broke, and jobs for unsuccessful writers were in short supply in Mossy Creek. I had a son to support. John had always been generous with money for Willie, but I never used a penny of it for myself.

Miss Mitty Anglin, the elderly owner and publisher of the Mossy Creek Gazette back then, was happy to give me a job as a reporter. But Miss Mitty"s idea of a big paycheck was twenty hours a week at minimum wage, with a free Gazette subscription thrown in. So there I was, scratching out a living at the newspaper, wincing every time somebody chortled at my lowly return. When Miss Mitty retired, she offered to sell the paper to me. I couldn"t believe it. She wanted such a ridiculously low price that even I could afford to buy it, if I could get a small business loan.

I went over to Mossy Creek Savings and Loan with a knot in my stomach and true humility in my soul. I had no collateral, no cash for a down payment, and a history of late credit card payments. I knew it was hopeless, but I had to try. Not expecting anything but a polite rejection, I laid out a big presentation about how I"d manage the newspaper and make a profit if the savings and loan would just give me a break.

d.a.m.ned if they didn"t give me the loan.

I was stunned. And thrilled. I was able to buy new printing equipment and hire Katie Bell, who runs the office, sells advertising, and writes her own column. I write editorials and cover the hard news in town. I added Jess Crane, part-time, to cover sports and men"s features, and I"ve got several teenage interns who write up the garden clubs and other fluffy community stories. Plus every cranky old timer in town gets to write a column regularly, and those who don"t write columns keep the letters" page filled with rants and loony commentary. I don"t kid myself that the Gazette offers great journalism, but with Jess and the interns covering every local person in eye-popping detail and Katie dishing up funny gossip in her weekly column, The Bellringer, we"ve managed to triple our subscription numbers and line up a dependable base of advertisers. Every smart editor knows that name-dropping gossip and outrageous editorial pages guarantee a readership. And I"m nothing if not smart.