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“Why do you think the mattress is missing?” she whispered, clutching his shirt.
Angus was silent for a moment. “I believe this be wer your grandparents passed.”
“I thought they died in an accident?”
“Aye, as did I, lassie. Ah ‘spose a mishanter can turn aboot any noomber of places in any noomber of ways.”
“Does Mom know?” she asked, walking over to the dresser and pulling at the second drawer and finding folded clothing inside. She touched the one-time white undershirts that had yellowed over the years. Next to the shirts were folded socks.
“Ah no ken, lassie,” Angus said.
She turned just as he opened the closet door as her heart began to race. But instead of an unholy ghoul bent on mass murder, there was a benign row of thin cotton dresses lined up on hangers and looking more like something you would wear in the eighteen hundreds than the eighties.
“This place is giving me the creeps for real,” she said, moving each dress to the side only to find an uglier one behind it. “Grandma was a total fashion don’t.”
“Aye.”
Mia turned toward her near life-long caretaker, who had an opinion about most things, but suddenly lost all means of communication. He stood in the middle of the room with his large hands on his hips, taking in the contents.
She cautiously sauntered over to the bedside table. There was a leather-boundKing James Biblebeside a glass. She flipped through the pages, many of which were full of rows of highlighted scripture, lined with some sort of chalk pencil.
Mia twisted her head toward Angus with narrowed eyes. “I think you know more about my grandparents than what you’re telling me.”
“Yer doin’ ma heid in,” he responded while avoiding all eye contact.
“No, tell me the truth. They weren’t good to my mom and her sister, were they, Angus?”
The huge Scot dropped his head. “Is no my story to tell, lassie.”
Mia took a deep breath, realizing her idyllic assumptions about her grandparents were nothing at all close to reality. Although she didn’t know exactly what happened in this house, she knew it wasn’t good. Could feel it.
“No wonder Mom and Aunt Maisie left town,” Mia said, rubbing her forearms. “Can we go now?”
“Aye,” he said, opening the door and waving her to hurry. “Gladly.”
* * *
Mia and Angussat at a booth near the front window and opened the laminated menus with Wayward Diner written in large font on the front.
The waitress stopped by their table to get their drink order, after which Mia asked for more time to choose her meal. It wasn’t an easy feat to find a vegan option in this part of the country. It seemed everything on the menu at one time had a face.
As she read through the menu, Angus patiently laid his to the side, having chosen his meal, so she decided to pick the lesser of all evils. Tomato soup and a salad.
The waitress returned, taking Angus’s order for shrimp and grits and a side of fried green tomatoes and Mia’s order of soup and a salad. Instead of walking away to place the order on the metal holder, the waitress stood there, tapping her pen on the side of her booklet, eyeing Angus.
“Are you that Scottish visitor all the women in Wayward are going on and on about?”
Mia let her head drop back on her seat as Angus puffed out his chest. She was well aware of Angus’s allure with the older female demographic. Just like back home. There, it also made her a little nauseous when the women in Boston fawned all over him.
Apparently, the older women in South Georgia were equally affected by her Scottish caretaker.
“Yon lassies are as cute as a dumpling in a hankie,” Angus said with a twinkle in his eye.
The waitresses squinted as if pondering his words.
Mia interjected. “That means he thinks the elderly ladies of Wayward are something special. It’s a compliment.”
The waitress smiled at the clarification. “My aunt is Erma Jeffries. She told me all about you. She owns the inn on Woeful.”
