Miss Julia Delivers the Goods Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Also by Ann B. Ross

  Miss Julia Paints the Town

  Miss Julia Strikes Back

  Miss Julia Stands Her Ground

  Miss Julia’s School of Beauty

  Miss Julia Meets Her Match

  Miss Julia Hits the Road

  Miss Julia Throws a Wedding

  Miss Julia Takes Over

  Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Ann B. Ross, 2009

  All rights reserved

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Ross, Ann B.

  Miss Julia delivers the goods : a novel / Ann B. Ross.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-03257-2

  1. Springer, Julia (Fictitious character)-Fiction. 2. Women-North Carolina-Fiction.

  3. Widows-Fiction. 4. North Carolina-Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.O84198M55 2009

  813’.54-dc22

  2008045609

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This one is for my John and

  his boys, Jack and Jake.

  Several people were kind enough to answer questions relating to this story, and I’d like to thank them for putting up with me.

  District Court Judge David Fox, Henderson County, North Carolina, patiently gave me valuable information even though I called him at home near dinner time; Deputy Register of Deeds Nancy Cochrane, Henderson County, North Carolina, was most generous with her time as she pointed out the details of the Records of Deeds; Obstetrician/Gynecologists David Ellis, M.D., and John M. Ross, M.D., kept me on the right medical track, and Kathryn Wells gave me a pearl even though I accosted her on the sidewalk as we walked to a football game.

  If I misunderstood anything relating to the many facts they each gave me, it is entirely my fault.

  Chapter 1

  “Miss Julia?”

  I turned from the rain-streaked window of my bedroom to see Hazel Marie’s head poking through the half-opened door. “Come in, Hazel Marie. Are you feeling better?”

  “A little, I guess,” she said, edging into the room. “Are you busy?”

  “Not at all. I could use some company.”

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You’re not bothering me.” I indicated the easy chair opposite mine by the double windows. “Come watch the rain with me. I thought we were having another dry summer, but just look at it come down.”

  Hazel Marie sat down and, like me, turned to look out at the soggy yard, dotted now with standing puddles of water. I’d not turned on any lights although the dim room could’ve used some, so we sat in companionable silence for several minutes. After a while, I frowned, recalling that she’d bypassed breakfast, saying that she wasn’t hungry. Now here she was, doing something else unusual. It wasn’t like her to sit any length of time without chattering away about something. She was normally full of wonder and awe and bubbling over about one thing or another. I liked that about her. You would think that after some years with me, she would’ve become used to a life without financial worries. You would’ve thought that she’d have begun taking her carefree days for granted. But she hadn’t. Oh, she enjoyed herself immensely, don’t get me wrong. But the most endearing thing about her was that she was so eternally grateful for her good fortune, even though it had come at the expense of my knowledge that she’d carried on with my first husband in such an inappropriate manner. But that carrying on had produced a child who covered a multitude of sins.

  Lloyd was no kin of mine—try as I might I couldn’t figure out any relation. There was no name for a husband’s child by another woman, but that didn’t stop a kinship between me and the boy that went beyond bloodlines. Lloyd was more like me than any child I could’ve had, but didn’t. And his mother was like a ray of sunshine in my life—as long as I didn’t dwell on what she’d done. And I didn’t. I didn’t because her sweet disposition and wide-eyed wonder at whatever came her way made me value her for herself alone without letting her unsavory past poison the present.

  The only thing I could never figure out was why she’d been attracted to Wesley Lloyd Springer in the first place. He was certainly no bargain, although I may be p
rejudiced. In fact, though, I don’t think she was ever specifically attracted to him. I think he found her when she was at a low point, which was where she’d been since birth, and took her up. He gave her a place to live, such as it was, and then she found herself with child and that was it for a good many years. She wasn’t the first woman to find herself trapped with a man she neither liked nor loved for the sake of a child.

  Her first taste of freedom, and mine, too, for that matter, came when Wesley Lloyd passed, and I was finally able to put aside my terrible anger and open my home and my heart to my husband’s mistress and their little son.

  All the while that these thoughts were running through my mind, she’d sat staring out the window, her elbow propped on the chair arm and her chin on her hand.

  “Hazel Marie?” I said. “Is something on your mind?”

  She sighed, looked down, and began to fold pleats in the cream-colored crepe trousers she wore. “I’m not sure,” she mumbled.

  “Well, I can see that you’re worried about something. So tell me and let’s try to fix it.” Then a jolt of anxiety shot through me. “Is it Lloyd? Is something going on with him?”

  “Oh, no. He’s fine. He’s almost finished with his summer reading list.” She glanced up at me, then down again at the pleats she’d made. “You know how organized he is. He’s really enjoying the tennis clinic, too.”

  “Then, Mr. Pickens? Is he worrying you?” I could see how he would, since he was as stubborn as a mule when it came to settling down, which, considering the favors I assumed she granted him, he should’ve done some time ago. Of course, I didn’t know for sure what went on between them, but I hadn’t just fallen off a turnip truck.

  “No.” She shook her head, her eyes still downcast. “No, J.D.’s . . . all right, too. It’s just, . . . oh, Miss Julia.” She looked up again and I saw tears welling in her eyes.

  I leaned toward her, concern in my voice. “Hazel Marie, what’s the matter?”

  “Oh, Miss Julia, I think . . . I think something bad’s wrong with me.”

  Chapter 2

  “You mean you’re sick?” Alarmed, I leaned over and clasped her hand.

  “I think I am. I’m afraid it’s something . . . terrible.” She nearly choked on the word.

  “Wait. Wait, now.” I had to take myself in hand in order to reassure her, but it was hard. I wanted to appear calm and rational in spite of the dire possibilities that were rushing into my head. “Tell me why you think that. What are your symptoms? Or is it just a general feeling?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but I’m just so tired I can hardly do anything. And I feel like crying all the time, just sudden-like. I mean, sometimes I feel real happy and then all at once, everything just falls apart.”

  “Mood swings,” I said, nodding as if I knew what that meant. “What else?”

  “Well, I don’t have much of an appetite, and, anyway, everything I put in my mouth comes right back up. And I get so hot and sweaty sometimes that I have to change my clothes.” She wiped her eyes and went on. “The worst thing, though, is that I just can’t keep anything down and I feel so weak I can hardly move.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “I’ve been feeling bad, you know, tired and sicky-feeling, for a good while, but the real throwing up just started last week. And now I think I’m running a fever.”

  “Why, Hazel Marie, I wish you’d told me. I knew you’d been looking a little peaked, but I had no idea you were having such a hard time.” To tell the truth, I was upset with myself for not looking after her better. “I want you to stop worrying now, because we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I’m so afraid,” she said as she buried her face in her hands, “so afraid that I’ve got something bad and maybe already given it to Lloyd and to you and everybody else, and I didn’t mean to. It’s just gotten worse and worse, and I’m so sick to my stomach I can hardly stand it.”

  “Hazel Marie,” I said, squatting down beside her chair to put my arm around her shoulders. I knew I might never get up again, but she needed comforting. “Hazel Marie, listen to me. I don’t think you’ve given anything to anybody. Now, one more question, if you don’t mind my asking. What about your, you know, your times of the month?”

  She looked up with a tear-streaked face. “What about them?”

  “I mean, how are they? Normal, erratic, or nonexistent?”

  “They’re, well, I never have been exactly regular, so it’s hard to tell.”

  “Well, when was your last one?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime last month, I think. Maybe the month before.”

  “Then I’ll tell you what I think,” I said, leveraging myself up on the arm of her chair. “I think you have female trouble. And I know you’ll hate to hear this, but it could just be the change of life.” At her shocked look, I quickly went on. “I know you’re a little young for it, but it hits some people early and, who knows, it could be strung out over ten years or more.” Actually, Hazel Marie wasn’t all that young, somewhere in her forties. She was always vague about exactly where, which made putting candles on her birthday cakes somewhat of a hit or miss proposition. She was like me when it came to age: It was nobody’s business what the number of our years happened to be.

  “Ten years!” she cried. “I’ll go crazy before that. I’m feeling awful, Miss Julia. I couldn’t stand it that long.”

  “Well, goodness knows, I’m no doctor, so I could be wrong. The thing to do, though, is to get you to a doctor and find out what’s going on. When did you have your last checkup?”

  “I don’t know. Not in a long time, anyway. I never get sick and this, this is just doing me in.”

  “Well, we’re going to do something about it. There’s no reason for you to suffer like this, and I expect they’ve got medications now that they didn’t have when I had the same malady. And listen, Hazel Marie, remember that every woman goes through it, and most of them survive. So you have to bear up, see a doctor, and do what he tells you. I’ll call Dr. Hargrove right now and tell him he has to see you. If he thinks you need to go to a specialist, we’ll get you one of those, too.”

  “Oh,” she said, a stricken look on her face, “you think it’s serious, don’t you? Other people don’t have to see a doctor when they go through the change. I mean, it’s supposed to be normal.”

  “Yes, they do. They just don’t tell anybody. Now you run upstairs and get ready. I’m calling Dr. Hargrove right now.”

  I helped her out of the chair and watched as she wove her way out the door. She was feeling miserable, that was plain to see, and scared half to death. And to tell the truth, I wasn’t feeling much better. It was easy enough to pass off her complaints as the change of life—like she said, that was normal. But, even with my meager medical knowledge, I knew there were other things under the heading of female trouble that could cause the same symptoms but were far from normal. When something starts messing with hormones and the organs and glands that produce hormones, why, it could be a lot more serious than a normal, but rocky, time of life. And she was at just the right age—whatever that was—for her internal works to start acting up.

  I wasn’t about to suggest anything like that to her, but my internal works were boiling over with worry. Not the least of those worries concerned her temperature—I’d heard of menopause causing almost every symptom in the book, but never a fever.

  I sat in the doctor’s waiting room, trying to calm my nerves. I’d had to insist that his receptionist put Hazel Marie on the schedule, even though the woman had kept telling me that the schedule was full. “This is an emergency,” I’d told her, “so surely allowances can be made.” And, of course, she’d had something to say about an emergency that had lasted for days hardly qualifying as urgent. I would’ve reported her to Dr. Hargrove, except he wasn’t there. Off somewhere in the middle of the ocean on a cruise, of all things, at the end of summer. So Hazel Marie was inside being seen by some new and unkno
wn fill-in doctor, and who knew what his qualifications were.

  After the receptionist gave in and allowed us to come, we’d ended up waiting a full half-hour before Hazel Marie was called into the examining room. I’d gotten up to go with her and was stopped cold by a bossy and unsympathetic nurse. So I was trying to calm myself down. First, for being overcome with worry and, second, for being shut out of whatever was going on behind those closed doors. And there wasn’t a current magazine in the place.

  “Mrs. Murdoch?”

  I looked up to see that same nurse beckoning to me. “You can come back now.”

  I hurriedly gathered my pocketbook and followed her down the hall to a small examining room. Hazel Marie was sitting on the examining table, looking so pale and weak that I feared she might fall off.

  “Hazel Marie, are you all right?”

  She shook her head. “I feel terrible. I just threw up all over their floor, and they put me in here while they clean it up. I’m so embarrassed, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I expect they’re used to it, and, if not, they should be after making people wait so long. Now, what did the doctor say?”

  The door opened behind me and in walked the poorest excuse for a medical practitioner I’d ever seen. He was tall and lanky with a long face and slumping shoulders and, Lord help us, an earring and a ponytail. And, I suppose to counteract those feminine accoutrements, he had a sprig of whiskers right below his lower lip. From the looks of him, I expect that was all he could grow. I could perhaps have overlooked all that, but the man was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt under a white coat. And on top of that, he had toe-revealing sandals on his feet, and, believe me, the revelation was not pretty. And, to cap it all off, he looked barely twenty years old. I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d ever gotten into medical school, much less through it.

  “How’re we doing in here?” he asked, walking right up to Hazel Marie and staring down at her. “Feeling better now?”