Mimosa threw an arm around Dee as she reached for a bowl. “Malnourished, I’m sure. I swear I can feel your bones sticking out, but then you never did have enough meat on your body. Wait until Sunday when we all go see Tally. Now that girl has got just plumb buffed up in that jail. Lifting weights and all.”
“I can’t wait,” Dee lied sweetly. She’d expected a bigger dressing-down than what she’d gotten, so she shouldn’t bear ill will toward going to the county jail to see her older sister, Bodine’s mother. She’d only have to go four times, if Tally was indeed getting out in a month. Carrying the tea tray. Visiting her sister in jail. Small prices for the error of her ways.
“We’ll go right after church,” Roxie said. “You did bring gloves and hats in that big old horse of a truck, didn’t you?”
“Roxie, gloves and hats went out of style years ago.” Dee drained the brine from the pickles and slid them into the vinegar solution. Then she began peeling eggs.
“Honey, styles may come and styles may go, but a southern woman does not grace the inside of the Lord’s house without the proper attire. That includes gloves and a hat. Now if you didn’t bring them, I can loan you some of mine. There’s a new trend on right now having to do with some red hat club they’ve gotten up. All over that poem I’ve liked for years about wearing purple when I am old. I was down in Ardmore just last week, in that Cato’s store and lo and behold there was hats. I bought six. So you can take your pick. There’s a gorgeous red one with a big black bow at the back,” Roxie said.
“I do have a good black dress,” Dee said. “But I don’t have black gloves, so I’ll just have to wear the dress without gloves and a hat. You know what the rule is about wearing black gloves in the summertime. White after Easter. Black after Labor Day.”
“I’ve got a drawer full of white gloves. Any length you want, sugar,” Mimosa told her.
“And I’m wearing a straw hat with a green bow and a big, fluffy green dress with no sleeves and lace gloves,” Bodine said. “I’ll be Scarlett at the Twelve Oaks’ barbecue. Only if those silly Baker twins try to talk to me, I’m going to slap them so hard they’ll have a red face for a week.”
“Bodine!” Mimosa’s tone left no room for discussion.
“Okay, okay. I’ll try to be a lady. Is that better?” Bodine asked.
“Much. I do swear, Tally’s attitude rubs off on you entirely too much, young lady. It’s a good thing I arrived when I did or else you’d be nothing but a common hoyden. Now let’s get supper over with so we can take a glass of cold lemonade to the back porch and catch a breath of fresh air while the sun sets. It’s my favorite time of the day, since I’ve retired,” Mimosa said.
Dee didn’t think she could eat a single bite of the supper, but she managed to clean up two plates of pure cholesterol. Her fat cells squirmed in ecstasy. Her muscles dreaded the run the next morning to work off all those extra fat grams and calories. And then, to top it all off, she accepted a lemonade to carry to the porch to watch the sun set.
“Ah.” Roxie sipped the icy cold sweet drink. It was her favorite time of the day too. A time when she could remember Henry and the good times. Back before the whole world went to the devil in a handbasket and her family turned into a bunch of ragtags that she could barely keep together.
“Wonderful.” Dee nodded in agreement.
“Southern women never drink.” Bodine sipped her lemonade.
“No, sugar, they don’t. They sip. And sip. And sip.” Mimosa giggled.
“That’s what Roxie says too,” Bodine giggled with her grandmother. “And you know what else she says? She says that I have to listen to Tally, because she’s my mother. That I have to listen to you because you’re my grandmother. And what y’all say is important, but what she says is the law and it’s the most important thing in the world. She says that what she says goes right over the top of what anyone else says because she’s the grand matri . . . matri . . . queen of the whole family.”
“And don’t you ever forget it,” Dee told her seriously.
“Evenin’, ladies,” Jack called from halfway across the lawn. “Mind if I join you for a bit of conversation that doesn’t have to do with the price of a loaf of bread?”
“Come on around, Jack. Got a rocking chair special waiting with your name on it. How’s business this evening?” Roxie said.
His smile would bring toothpaste commercials to their knees. Dee’s breath caught in her chest.
Good Lord, Almighty, she argued with her fluttering heart. This is Jack Brewer, the computer geek from next door who had no ambition except to understand the difference in hard drives. Besides, I’m one month out of a disastrous relationship and I’ll never trust another man as long as I live. Not even Jack from next door. Not even if he does look like James Dean.
“Business has been good today,” he answered Roxie’s question.
Mimosa held up the remainder of her drink. “Can I get you a lemonade? I’m refilling mine.”
He held up a quart jar. “Brought my own iced tea. Sold three gallons of milk, a truckload of soft drinks, a dozen loaves of bread, and enough junk food to keep the weight doctors happy for years.”
“I’m surprised you keep the store open,” Mimosa said.
“Got to. It’s a front and a laundromat for all my mafia money.” Jack stole a glance at Dee. She’d changed, not so much anyone else could see, but there was sadness in her eyes.
“Oh, Jack, you’re being silly,” Bodine giggled. “You’re not in the mafia.”
“A southern man never tells all his secrets,” Jack drawled.
“That would be ‘A southern woman never tells all her secrets,’ ” Bodine told him.
“Well, where did you think southern women learned to keep a secret? We taught them, that’s how.” Jack let his peripheral vision drink in the sight of Dee’s legs. Even if she wasn’t tall, she’d always had the most gorgeous legs. It wasn’t easy sitting there with her close enough to reach out and touch, but he’d survive. After all, he’d done so forever.
“So you home for good?” he asked.
“I suppose I am.” She sipped her drink and looked at him through the pale yellow liquid.
“Want to go fishing tomorrow evening after I shut up shop?” he asked.
She ran the sweating glass across her forehead. “Haven’t been fishing in seven years. That would be the night you told me I was making a big mistake going off with Ray. Guess you and Roxie were right. I’d forgotten how hot Oklahoma is in July. I’d love to go fishing. Roxie, we still got rods out in the garage?”
“Sure we do. Just because you ran off doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t like a mess of fresh catfish ever’ so often. I got things to do tomorrow, so I can’t go,” Roxie said.
“Sorry about that,” Jack said.
“I can go,” Bodine piped up.
“No, ma’am, you cannot,” Roxie said. “Me and you are going to work out in the flower beds tomorrow. There’s more weeds than flowers. And Mimosa, you’re going to help us too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mimosa narrowed her eyes. She didn’t know why Roxie was sending Jack and Dee off together. Sure looked like a case of matchmaking at the wrong time to her, but she wasn’t saying a word. After all, Roxie knew Mimosa’s daughter far better than she did.
“Good, then come on over to the shop after supper and we’ll run down to Buckhorn and see what’s biting. You up for fryin’ the fish the next day if we catch something?” he asked Roxie.
“I’m always up for a fish fry.”
Jack stood up. “Come on and walk me back across the lawn.”
“Like when we were little kids, huh?”
“Guess so,” Jack said.
When they were on the store’s porch, she leaned against the post. “Jack, I’m sorry about that night. You were right, and I was wrong.”
“Apology accepted. Good night, Dee,” he said as he closed the door.
She heard the lock as it slid home and his footsteps as he
checked everything in the store before he left by the back door to go out to his trailer house. For a long time, she leaned against the post. Crickets and frogs combined their singing ability to put on an opera for her. Stars twinkled in the sky but not as much as the fireflies across the two connecting lawns. Bodine giggled. Mimosa said something to Roxie. Dee couldn’t understand the words, but the warmth of the tone told her all was well.
Dee was home.
Chapter Two
Jack pulled the tabs on two cans of icy-cold Coke and handed one to Dee. She rolled the cold, sweaty can over her forehead and cheeks before tilting it back and guzzling half the contents.
“Roxie says that ladies sip,” Jack reminded her with a chuckle.
“This woman is thirsty, and she’s gulping.” She came up for air with only the slightest burp.
She wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and an orange tank top, sandals, and a thick coating of spray-on mosquito repellent over the bare parts of her body. Holding the rod loosely, she watched the red-and-white bobble dance on top of the water. She had been so busy trying to make her life perfect that she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the way she’d been raised.
His jean shorts were frayed at the bottom. His tank top faded to a nondescript shade of gray. His sneakers had no laces and had been white at one time. They sat on their lucky fishing quilt, which hadn’t been out of the closet since the night she left to elope with Ray, but she wasn’t aware that Jack had put it into storage. She only knew that for the first time in years, she was just Dee Hooper, the girl from Buckhorn Corner, not Dee Suddeth, the woman trying to change her entire life to be a socialite for her husband.
“So I want to know about the last month,” he said.
“Why the last month? What about the last seven years?” she asked.
“I know about the last seven years, Dee. Your weekly letter came on Thursday. Roxie, Bodine, and I sat on the porch in good weather, in the kitchen when it wasn’t so good, and Roxie read it out loud to us,” Jack said in a deep, lazy drawl.
“She never answered a one of those letters, but I had to write. I sure didn’t mean for them to become public property,” Dee said testily.
“She didn’t put them in the newspaper. She only read them to me and Bodine,” he reminded her, a bit of edge to his voice. “She loves you. Without Roxie, I wouldn’t have stayed, you know?”
“Jack, I’m sorry about your grandparents. I sent flowers and I should have called, but . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
“I know, Dee. I’m sure your husband wouldn’t have liked that,” Jack said.
“It wasn’t Ray. He wouldn’t have even known. It was me. I didn’t know what to say to you. You were my best friend. If I’d called, I would have unloaded on you and you didn’t need that when you were busy grieving for your Poppa and Nanna,” she said.
“So the last month?” he asked again. “Remember, I was your best friend, and I want to know.” He reached over and pushed the button on the portable CD player. Floyd Cramer’s tinkling country piano filled the air.
“Okay, okay. Give me a minute to keep from crying and get my anger worked up.”
He waited.
She remembered. Not the past month, but the friendship she’d had all those years with Jack. From the time they took their first toddling steps up until the day she’d left him sitting right there in the same spot they were now, on the same quilt, listening to the same CD. Lord, how had she ever made it seven years without his friendship?
“I knew things weren’t right. He’d been working late, not coming home at all some nights. But that night, he’d called and said he’d be home right after work and he wanted me to be there so we could talk, so I spent the day in the kitchen.” She attempted a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
Jack watched the bobble out on the water; his jaw clenched.
“I met him in the living room, and he told me to sit down. He said, ‘Dee, I am divorcing you. Actually, it’s an annulment. As of this morning we are no longer married. I’m moving out right now. My dad will be by later today to discuss the settlement we are giving you. It’s generous and will compensate you for the past seven years.’ Then he got up and went up to our bedroom, packed a suitcase, and started out the front door. That’s when I threw a vase across the room. It hit the door and shattered all around him. He said, ‘I would have expected you to have at least gotten some class in the past seven years. Guess it’s true that you can take the girl out of the gutter, but you can’t take the gutter out of the girl.’ ”
Jack touched the scar on his face. “I remember your temper. Is that when you killed him and buried him down under the coal bin in the basement?”
“No, that’s when I asked him what in the hell was going on.”
“And?”
“He said Angie had come home. His precious high school sweetheart. They’d had a terrible fight and broken up when she wanted to go to France to expand her horizons seven years before. Those are his words, not mine. I’d like to expand her horizons. Straight down to have an up-close and personal visit with Lucifer himself. But anyway, when she came home, after her horizons were broadened in Europe, she went straight to Ray and he opened up his arms. I found out he’d married me on the rebound. Just three months after she’d broken up with him. Seven years later, Angie came home and . . .”
“And you’d never even heard of Angie?” Jack asked.
“Not one time. Not until Ray had his suitcase in his hands and was walking out on me. Best-kept secret in the whole world.”
“So how did he annul a seven-year marriage?”
“I have no idea. It must have taken a lot of money. Angie was pregnant, though, and they wanted an instant marriage in the church. So my marriage no longer exists. I suppose it’s because we didn’t get married in the church but by a judge in the first courthouse we came to after we left here. I got a healthy settlement, my name back, and my choice of vehicles. I opted for the truck since I could haul my things home in it. Besides, it was the only vehicle Ray had never driven.”
They watched the bobbles in comfortable silence, more peaceful than any place or any thing Dee had felt in months. She leaned back on an elbow, kept her eyes on the red-and-white ball, and didn’t even mind the heat. “So what about you? Got a marriage to report in the past seven years? Remember now, I don’t know anything. I didn’t get anything but a three-minute Monday morning call from Tally.”
“Even this past year? She called when she was in jail? How’d you know about Nanna and Poppa?”
“Yes, she’s called, but she sure didn’t tell me it was from jail. She’d tell me how Roxie was doing, what was going on with Mimosa and Bodine. She never mentioned she was in trouble. She did say that Mimosa was thinking about retiring, but I was shocked to see her sitting in the yard. And I knew about Nanna and Poppa because I had the Sulphur newspaper sent to me. I read the whole thing including the advertisements every single week.” Dee yawned.
“No marriages in my past. Almost, but not quite,” he said.
“Cold feet?”
“No, Roxie.” He laughed.
“Does this story require another Coke?”
“Probably.” He pulled the tab on two cans and handed her one.
“Right after Nanna died, the place was so quiet it felt like a tomb. I looked around the church and picked the most likely woman I could live with. I convinced myself I was in love. Looking back, I wanted to not be lonely, and she liked the looks of my checking account. She’d already started telling me about the house we were going to build, in Sulphur. We were going to sell the store and trailer and I was going to be the mayor or something big like that. I was beginning to get that itchy feeling that said, ‘Run, Jack. Run. Run. Run.’ Then one evening, Roxie came toting a big pitcher of her lemonade and poured three glasses. One for me, one for her, and one for Marla. Truth be told, I think Bodine overheard some of the conversations Marla and I were having and ratted me out.”
&nbs
p; “Oh, no!” Dee’s eyes widened.
“Oh, yes. Roxie pulled up a chair and commenced talking. By the way, Marla didn’t wear a hat or gloves to church. And she’d grown up in California,” he said.
“At least she wasn’t a Yankee,” Dee said.
“No, but barely a step down. Roxie asked her if she was partial to roses and did she realize just how much work went into keeping Nanna’s roses blooming all summer? Did she know about aphids and spider mites and all the things that could kill a rose overnight? She told Marla how glad she was to have a woman next door again, and she hoped she’d pop in often. Of course, she would be expected to be on the porch at sunset every evening. That was just the law of the Corner. By the time she started in on how Marla would be good friends with Tally when she got out of county for hot checks, Marla was getting that deer-in-the-headlights look. Then Bodine came in the front door and mentioned that Roxie could teach her to can vegetables and make jelly once she’d moved into the trailer. That set Roxie off on a tangent about Marla reinstating Nanna’s vegetable garden and cleaning fish.” Jack laughed so hard he had to stop talking.
“Jack, I am so sorry,” Dee said.
“Why? It made me see Marla through their eyes. I’d built her up to be the best thing since ice cream on a stick. Thought she’d change once we were engaged and married. I even had her donning an old straw hat and going fishing every morning like Nanna did while Poppa ran the store. All it took was Roxie to show me her true colors.” Jack wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“But weren’t you mad?” Dee asked incredulously.
“Sure I was mad. Marla pitched a fit the whole way to her little low-slung sportscar about how she’d never live next to that crazy bunch of retarded fools. I could choose them or her and I had until she started the engine to do so. Somehow, I just couldn’t see leaving Buckhorn Corner.”
“Ain’t easy letting her be right all the time, is it?”
“She’s a witch, I swear she is,” Jack said. “She’s got a sixth sense about things.” He didn’t want things to slip back into the old pattern. God knew he didn’t, but somehow it was happening: he and Dee telling stories and sharing their worlds.
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