Hope's Corner

by Chris Keniston

  “That’s absurd.” Pam jumped to her feet. “This isn’t the eighteenth century, and neither you nor I have done anything wrong.”

  “That’s not the point, Pam.” He slipped the photo of his brother’s children into his briefcase. “This is a small town. Gossip has a way of making people forget the truth.”

  “Then we’ll stop the gossip.” Her eyes followed his movements as he emptied a drawer onto his desk.

  “And how do you propose we stop a boulder from rolling downhill?”

  “By telling people the truth. Let them know why you were at my house.”

  “That would mean telling everyone how Travis really died.” He noticed the pink in her cheeks fade away. He’d have pointed out the obvious, that telling folks of her troubles would bring about new ones. Those few people ready to brand her with a scarlet letter would instead just as happily brand her crazy. On the other hand, he already knew she would be less willing to sacrifice her husband’s memory.

  “Maybe we wouldn’t have to tell the whole truth. After all, lots of people seek grief counseling with their pastors.”

  “But not all night.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid our best hope is that someone else does something more outlandish to keep tongues wagging.”

  “We can’t leave everyone thinking that you, I mean, you and me are involved.”

  “I made it clear we’re not involved in that way. But it won’t matter. John Haskell and the board have made up their minds.”

  “I’d bet a month of Sundays it’s more like John Haskell made the board’s mind up for them.”

  “Probably, but John Haskell isn’t my problem anymore.” Jeff needed to tie up a few loose ends, reschedule some meetings, make clear notes for his temporary replacement. And then he’d need to face his mother and father. At least he was sure his mother believed him. He just hoped this latest twist didn’t put his father back in the hospital.

  “How can I ever face them again?” Pam paced the small room bathed in an earlier century. “They’ve been so good to me. And now, because of me, their son’s been fired. Fired.”

  Abigail Clarke sat silently in the velvet Victorian chair, her eyes following Pam cut a path across the fanciful bedroom with the intensity of a spectator anticipating the winning point in a tied tennis match.

  Pam hadn’t meant to come to the charming senior citizens home or to burden Miss Abigail with her troubles. She’d locked up the church at the end of day and gotten into her car with every intention of heading home, curling into bed, and having a good cry. When the car came to a stop, instead of sitting in her driveway on Live Oak Lane, she found herself parked in front of the old Keller place.

  Inside the well-preserved nineteenth-century mansion, she’d managed to remain composed for all of five minutes. As soon as Miss Abigail asked how young Jeff was, words tumbled out of Pam’s mouth like water off a cliff.

  “I don’t know what to do. How to handle this.” Pam spun around, facing Miss Abigail. “I really, really hate this.”

  “Do you like pizza, dear?”

  “Excuse me?” Of all the things she’d thought her older friend might say, this wasn’t one of them.

  “Pizza. I don’t mind admitting I’m rather fond of pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.”

  “Oh. Uh, yes, I like pizza.”

  “We have to order it from town. It’s a rare treat for me. Most folks shy away from too much spice or too much cheese. Our digestive systems aren’t what they used to be, you know.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “That’s what I like about young friends. Not afraid of a little indigestion.” Abigail Clarke opened her nightstand drawer, pulled out the menu for Joe’s Italian restaurant, and thirty minutes later, Pam found herself sitting on the bed with Ms. Abigail, an open box of pizza between them.

  “You know, dear.” The woman pulled another slice from the box and slid it onto her plate. “I’m not sure we ever get used to what life throws our way while we’re busy making other plans.”

  Pam chewed on her pizza and nodded. Even though working for the church hadn’t been part of her plans, never in a million years would she have expected to find herself in the middle of a church scandal.

  “When my Edgar died, I thought never in my life would I ever love another man. Now what a sorry way to spend your days is that?”

  Pam choked on a small bite, and briefly wondered if her sister Valerie had been talking to Miss Abigail.

  “I lingered in the memory of our love for years. At night I’d read over the notes and letters he’d sent me.” She paused and chuckled. “Some of them were mighty sparse. But they were all I had left. I felt safe, alone with my memories, comfortable. Yep, comfortable.” She took another bite and grinned, pulling a string of cheese from the corner of her mouth. “Love’s a lot like pizza.”

  Pam glanced up from her plate. She was still dealing with how they’d gone from her getting Jeff fired to Miss Abigail’s love life; she wasn’t ready to get philosophical about pizza.

  “The taste is so pleasing and satisfying, but every once in a while you make a fool of yourself with cheese dripping from your face or sometimes wind up with heartburn. But in the end, you still want your pizza. Some days not so much, other days there’s just nothing that will satisfy that yen for a slice of pizza.”

  “I guess I’ve never given it much thought.” And Pam wasn’t sure she wanted to, either. She needed to find a way to get Jeff out of the mess she’d gotten him into. “About Jeff and the gossip…”

  “Gossip’s always there. Nothing much you can do about it. Back in my day, gossip could bring a man or woman to ruin. Today, bad press makes you rich.”

  “I don’t think that applies to small-town pastors.” Pam closed the pizza box.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the small town, and depends on the gossip. If it weren’t for the wagging tongues, I might never have married my Percival.”

  “Married?” Of course. Mrs. Abigail Clarke. Pam had been so taken by Abigail’s story of her lost love, she'd never given any thought that the old woman must have married later in life.

  “I remember the day Percival Clarke moved to Hope’s Corner. September 21, 1948. He drove into town in a shiny new dark red Cadillac convertible. Folks came running out onto Main Street as he drove by. Such a fancy car.”

  She set her pizza on her plate and glanced far off out the window. “I was at Phoebe’s Beauty Parlor having my hair done for my birthday. I knew folks would be stopping by the house that evening—that’s the way things were done back then. Folks paid you a call on your birthday. I wanted to look my best. Like everyone else, I ran out into the street to see for myself.”

  “You mean people stopped what they were doing to see a car?”

  “Not just a car. The new Cadillac. It was all the rage. First year Cadillacs had fins. Automobile supply houses were selling fins that folks could put on their Fords and Chevys. But Percival had the real thing. I didn’t care much about the car, but I’ll never forget his face when he drove by. Just as I stepped up to the curb he turned toward me and smiled. My heart fluttered to my throat, and my stomach sank to my shoes. I knew it wasn’t me he was smiling at. He was just smiling at folks in general. But I stood there grinning back like a nervous schoolgirl all the same.”

  Pam’s mind wandered back to her interview with Jeff at the church, the way her knees had gone weak at his smile. Not since she’d been six years old and fallen in love with Travis had a man’s smile had such an impact on her. She’d quickly shoved any thoughts of Jeff as anything more than a boss far away. Striking smile or not, she’d already had the one love of her life. That was all she’d ever need.

  “Percival owned a car lot in Dallas,” Abigail continued. “His wife had passed on the year before, and he thought it best to raise his young son outside the big city.” Abigail laughed. “Seeing how everything’s grown now, it’s hard to think of Dallas as having been a big city back then, but compared to Hope’s Cor
ner, it might as well have been New York. A month later he opened the town’s first car dealership. Right on the north edge of town.

  “Percival had bought the Brady house just next door to Papa’s. Young David was a sweet little boy. Seven years old and missed his mama so. The Clarke housekeeper was a nice lady, but her German accent was so thick, most of us had a hard time understanding her, and David seemed to have an even harder time warming up to her. Instead of going home after school, he spent most of his afternoons either following my father and watching him work with the horses, or in our kitchen gobbling up whatever baking got done that day. He had a special spot for my shortbread cookies.

  “Percival would come by and pick up David every night after work, take him home for supper. We’d visit some, not much. I wasn’t interested in anything more than being neighborly. Oh, he still had that handsome smile, but I’d had my Edgar. I’d turned thirty-eight. I was past the homemaking age. Settled into caring for Pa and the ranch. I wasn’t interested in him as a man.

  “Then a couple of months after they’d moved to town, the housekeeper’s mother got real sick, and her sister in Fredericksburg sent for her to come help. Percival was beside himself looking for help with the house and David and all. We offered to take care of the boy while Percival worked. David already spent so much time at our house, it hardly changed anything. I’d cook enough supper for both families, take David home, and then warm dinner on the stove for him and Percival. I remember that night so clearly. It might as well have been yesterday. I’d forgotten the bread rolls at the house and sent David back to fetch them. Such a silly thing it was.”

  Pam shifted her legs underneath her. “What was?”

  “The eyelash.”

  “Eyelash?”

  “Supper was warming on the stove, and I brushed a strand of hair away from my face. That stupid piece of hair kept falling in my eyes. I set the table and brushed it back again, wishing I’d had another hairpin. Percival walked into the kitchen just as I’d started blinking and tearing. An eyelash.”

  “Oh, you had an eyelash in your eye?”

  “That’s right. Percival got all concerned that I was upset over something David or he had done. He was such a thoughtful, nice man, it never occurred to me his concern stemmed from his having feelings for me. In those days, men didn’t express themselves like they do now. And they certainly didn’t take liberties, at least not the way I see it on television.”

  “No.” Pam smiled at the old woman’s bluster. “I would think not.”

  “Anyway, when I told him an eyelash had fallen in my eye, he stepped up close and blew in my eye to make it tear just as Judith Abernathy, the schoolteacher, came knocking on the door. Well actually the old spinster came waltzing right in. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ she called. ‘Mr. Clarke, David?’ Percival had his hand on my cheek and was looking for that eyelash. The way Judith’s jaw dropped when she’d walked into the kitchen, you’d have thought she caught us stark naked and coupling on the kitchen table.”

  Pam swallowed a chuckle.

  “She’d brought a peach pie warm from the oven and dropped it splat on the floor. Made one heck of a racket. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Percival took a quick step back too, and I guess that just made us look more guilty in Judith’s opinion, ’cause the following day the entire town thought the worst.

  “Pa was so angry. I don’t know who he was more furious with, Percival for soiling my reputation or the town for believing it. The next day Percival stood on my doorstep, flowers in one hand. No one was more surprised than me when he asked me to marry him. He’d said he would have liked to have had more time to win me over, but he couldn’t stand the thought of the whole town looking down on me, thinking the worst.

  “He pulled out the prettiest little diamond ring. Told me he’d bought it nearly a month before and would stare at it to give him courage to court me.” A pretty pink flush rose in her cheeks. “Took an eyelash and a town of gossips to bring us together.”

  “So you said yes.”

  “Not right away. I didn’t think I wanted a man in my life. Didn’t want to belittle what I had with Edgar. But Percival courted me good and proper, and it wasn’t long before I realized old letters and memories weren’t the way God meant for a young woman to live her life, so I finally said yes.”

  “Did you love him?”

  Abigail rolled across the bed, lifted a silver framed photo from her nightstand and handed it to Pam. “With all my heart.”

  Pam stared at the photo. Abigail stood next to a tall burly man with a young boy on her other side. They looked the perfect family.

  “David and his wife live in Houston now. I lost my Percival twelve years ago.”

  Pam watched the peaceful smile spread across Abigail’s face. The day Abigail had told her about Edgar, there had been sadness and pain in her eyes. Now, even though she’d lost the man she’d been married to for almost fifty years, there was no sorrow to be found.

  Abigail placed the frame back in place and grinned wryly at Pam. “God bless Judith Abernathy.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “So you’re just going to give up and move on?”

  “Pop.” Jeff glanced at the clock on the far wall. He and his father had been going around and around for over thirty minutes. On the bright side, despite the heated debate, his father wasn’t showing any signs of a man on the verge of another heart attack. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to be running short on energy either. “I told you, I’d already planned to leave once you were back on the job. The board just upped my timetable.”

  “And what about Pamela Sue? Not defending yourself makes you, and her, look guilty. When you’re gone, she’s still going to have to hold her head up in this community.”

  “As Pam herself pointed out, we’re in the twenty-first century. I’m the only one this town holds to a higher standard. If anything, I suspect the few old coots who thrive on this sort of gossip will blame me for taking advantage of the young widow.”

  Jeff didn’t think it was possible for his father’s jaw to clench any tighter.

  “And you’re going to just walk away and let the town think the worst of you.”

  “No, Pop. I have to make sure Pam is taken care of. She’s got bigger problems than what a few high-strung neighbors think of her. When I’m sure she’s set up with Caleb, I’ll move on.” He wouldn’t mention he planned to stick around in case his replacement needed a little help. The last thing he wanted to give his father was any reason to cling to the hope that this wouldn’t be a permanent change.

  “Darn it, boy!”

  “Harlon Parker.” Etta Mae stomped into the room. “You promised me, if I let you and Jeff talk, you’d stay calm.”

  Jeff resisted the urge to mutter aloud in what lifetime?

  “He’s going to let them push him out.”

  His mom shot him a didn’t-I-teach-you-better glare. At thirty-four the look had the same stomach-churning affect as it had when he was six years old, and she’d caught him cutting his sister’s hair while she slept.

  “Of course he’s not.” Etta patted her husband’s hand and flashed him her everything-will-be-fine smile. “He’s just letting the dust settle. Aren’t you, dear?”

  A smart man knew when to stand his ground and when to agree with his mother. Lately he seemed to be doing an awful lot of agreeing with his mother, yet he didn’t feel all that smart. “I already told Pop I won’t be going anywhere until I make sure things are right for Pam.”

  “See.” Etta Mae crossed her arms and grinned so wide he could almost count all her teeth.

  “Hmph. We’ll see,” his father grumbled, shook his head at Jeff, then nodded at his mom before walking out of the room. For some reason Jeff had the oddest feeling his mother and father were no longer talking about his job.

  With daylight lasting well into the late evening, Pam wasn’t surprised to see Mrs. McCarthy bending over on all fours working the flower beds. Considering how much time the old woman spent
crawling about in the flowers, Pam wondered when weeds had a chance to take root.

  This whole mess had started with Jeff waving at Mrs. McCarthy as he'd left Pam’s house, which made Mrs. McCarthy as good a place as any for Pam to start her efforts to bring this whole mess to an end.

  Hitting the button twice on her key fob to lock the car doors, Pam squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and hoped her smile didn’t look as phony as it felt. “Evenin’, Mrs. McCarthy.”

  Weed-pulling fork in hand, her neighbor glanced up from her task and smiled at Pam as though this were any other boring day of the week.

  “I wanted to apologize for upsetting you this morning.”

  Mrs. McCarthy pushed back and sat on her heels. “Upsetting me?”

  The woman must have knees of stone.

  “Pam, dear?”

  “Oh, sorry.” Now what? She’d had the bright idea to come over and smooth things out, only she didn’t have a clue what to say. “It must have been surprising seeing Pastor Jeff at my house so early this morning.”

  “I must admit it was a bit of a start.” A corner of the older woman’s mouth twitched upward hinting at a suppressed smile.

  “I imagine it was.” Pam squatted and reached for a nearby hand spade. “Mind if I help?”

  “Not at all. Sometimes there’s nothing quite like getting your hands dirty.”

  Blades of Bermuda grass had made their way across the lawn edging, and Mrs. McCarthy was carefully digging up the roots. “You know in most places this is considered a weed.”

  “Really?” Pam picked up a clump of grass, examining it more closely.

  “Takes a tough breed to withstand the hard Texas climate.”

  Something in the old lady’s tone made Pam think she wasn’t talking about just the lawn. What was it with old people? Did they all talk in riddles and analogies? “I suppose it does.”