very table, had probably sat in this chair, had laughed and cried in this room, and had stormed out of this house almost forty years ago to elope with Walter Mitchell the night before he shipped off to Vietnam. If Kiki and Lindy Patterson hadn’t been trying so hard to get Zarah’s mother and Lindy’s son together, Zarah’s mother would never have made the biggest mistake of her life.
Zarah shook off the welling memory of the terrifying fights her parents used to have, unable to understand how two people who fought like that in private could put on such a show of being the perfect couple in public. Just like everything else in history, nothing she could do now would change it. She could only learn from it and move forward. She picked up the Op-Ed section of the newspaper and quickly scanned the titles of the pieces from the syndicated columnists before flipping it open to the center where the local opinion pieces were located alongside the letters to the editor.
“That one columnist really doesn’t like you.” Pops didn’t bother looking up from the comics.
Zarah didn’t have to ask what Pops meant but looked at the right-hand side of the two-page spread:
MITCHELL’S WHITE WHALE
An expensive, illogical, and self-destructive quest. You might think I’m referring to Captain Ahab and his ill-fated hunt. But this is no work of fiction. Dr. Sarah Mitchell of the Middle Tennessee Historic Preservation Commission has far surpassed Melville’s Ahab with her manic search for a Confederate battlement which no other historian or archaeologist will confirm ever existed….
“The least he could do would be to get my name right.” She closed the newspaper section, folded her arms atop the table, and rested her chin on her wrist.
“Sort of makes you wonder what else he’s getting wrong if he can’t even get your name right.” Pops reached over and patted Zarah’s back.
“I mean, there has to be other stuff going on in this city that’s more important than the fact I got a couple of injunctions to stop development down on that riverfront property.”
“Sounds to me like he has a vested interest in getting that property reopened for commercial development.” Kiki clanked a wooden spoon on the side of the slow cooker and put the lid back on. “Why else would he always be railing against you?”
The columnist had started his tirades against Zarah and the commission about four months ago. The second injunction had stopped the developer from tearing down three flood-damaged old houses, clear-cutting the land, and building another strip mall, and it had benefited the neighborhood by stopping construction of something that would have lowered the home prices in the area. “Dennis has contacted the newspaper and told them we would be happy to have someone come out to talk to us about the site and about the research. I think this columnist hasn’t bothered because it makes a convenient subject—so he can gripe about it when he can’t come up with an original idea for his column.”
The oven timer buzzed, and Kiki pulled out a small pan of yeast rolls, filling the room with a tantalizing aroma merely hinted at before. Zarah pushed back from the table and stood.
“What can I help with?”
Kiki shook her head, opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and turned to pull the pot roast out of the slow cooker. “Why don’t you grab the plates and silverware and help Pops set the table while I finish up with this?”
Zarah didn’t bother keeping her smile to herself. After all these years, she had finally trained her grandmother not to insist Zarah do nothing and act like a guest. Zarah selected three different-colored plates from Kiki’s massive stoneware set along with a three-piece flatware service for each of them and carried them into the dining room. Even though she would have been perfectly happy eating lunch at the kitchen table, Kiki would insist—no matter how many people or how few, whether
Zarah shook off the welling memory of the terrifying fights her parents used to have, unable to understand how two people who fought like that in private could put on such a show of being the perfect couple in public. Just like everything else in history, nothing she could do now would change it. She could only learn from it and move forward. She picked up the Op-Ed section of the newspaper and quickly scanned the titles of the pieces from the syndicated columnists before flipping it open to the center where the local opinion pieces were located alongside the letters to the editor.
“That one columnist really doesn’t like you.” Pops didn’t bother looking up from the comics.
Zarah didn’t have to ask what Pops meant but looked at the right-hand side of the two-page spread:
MITCHELL’S WHITE WHALE
An expensive, illogical, and self-destructive quest. You might think I’m referring to Captain Ahab and his ill-fated hunt. But this is no work of fiction. Dr. Sarah Mitchell of the Middle Tennessee Historic Preservation Commission has far surpassed Melville’s Ahab with her manic search for a Confederate battlement which no other historian or archaeologist will confirm ever existed….
“The least he could do would be to get my name right.” She closed the newspaper section, folded her arms atop the table, and rested her chin on her wrist.
“Sort of makes you wonder what else he’s getting wrong if he can’t even get your name right.” Pops reached over and patted Zarah’s back.
“I mean, there has to be other stuff going on in this city that’s more important than the fact I got a couple of injunctions to stop development down on that riverfront property.”
“Sounds to me like he has a vested interest in getting that property reopened for commercial development.” Kiki clanked a wooden spoon on the side of the slow cooker and put the lid back on. “Why else would he always be railing against you?”
The columnist had started his tirades against Zarah and the commission about four months ago. The second injunction had stopped the developer from tearing down three flood-damaged old houses, clear-cutting the land, and building another strip mall, and it had benefited the neighborhood by stopping construction of something that would have lowered the home prices in the area. “Dennis has contacted the newspaper and told them we would be happy to have someone come out to talk to us about the site and about the research. I think this columnist hasn’t bothered because it makes a convenient subject—so he can gripe about it when he can’t come up with an original idea for his column.”
The oven timer buzzed, and Kiki pulled out a small pan of yeast rolls, filling the room with a tantalizing aroma merely hinted at before. Zarah pushed back from the table and stood.
“What can I help with?”
Kiki shook her head, opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and turned to pull the pot roast out of the slow cooker. “Why don’t you grab the plates and silverware and help Pops set the table while I finish up with this?”
Zarah didn’t bother keeping her smile to herself. After all these years, she had finally trained her grandmother not to insist Zarah do nothing and act like a guest. Zarah selected three different-colored plates from Kiki’s massive stoneware set along with a three-piece flatware service for each of them and carried them into the dining room. Even though she would have been perfectly happy eating lunch at the kitchen table, Kiki would insist—no matter how many people or how few, whether
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