“Yes, ma’am. It’s very nice. Very nice.” Addressing the woman’s back, he asked, “Where’d he get the tools?”
“Oh, his daddy had accumulated them from time to time, mostly from flea markets and yard sales, you know how it is.” She dumped the pile of carrots into an enormous cast-iron kettle on the wood-burning stove, then started peeling potatoes, her gnarled hands wielding the little paring knife with such precision that each peel came off in one long, thin strip. “Then he’d clean and fix ’em up real nice so they worked like new, and all he had to do was buy new blades now and again.” She nodded toward the window in front of her, indicating something in the backyard. “There’s a separate workshop out back. With its own generator, before you ask,” she added, finishing off with another raucous laugh. “Oh, yeah, that man thought of everything.”
“I can see that,” Dean allowed as he scraped the last of the pie juice from his plate. “Dr. Stillman said there are other pieces in the living room?”
“Oh, not just in there, honey. All through the house. Just go on and have a look around,” she said, reducing the denuded spuds into manageable chunks. With a bright smile, she added, “I trust you.”
Dean chuckled as he rose from the table, wiping his mouth on a pink-and-green flowered napkin. “I’m sure glad to hear that, Miz Thomas.” A low whistle floated from Dean’s lips the minute he opened the kitchen door.
Another cackle floated from behind him. “Real nice, ain’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dean said softly. “Real nice.” He walked all the way into the room, the swinging door creaking three or four times behind him before coming to a stop. Ed really did know his stuff. And so did this kid. From tables to chairs to a desk to even a carved headboard in a back bedroom, Franklin Thomas already showed a remarkable talent. The construction was solid and precise, unusual in someone so young. The teenager had truly been given the hands and soul of a master. And of course many of the pieces were two or three years old already, Dean realized in amazement.
Just then, Franklin came in from working out in one of the fields. Shirtless and sweating, his tall, muscular build—ill-concealed underneath the obligatory farmer’s overalls—was definitely to be respected. The young man thrust out an enormous hand, accompanied by a smile that somehow managed to be confident and deferential at the same time. “Dr. Stillman told me you’d be comin’ today.” Coal-black eyes swept the room. “What do you think?”
Nothing like being forthright. “Your work shows more than just skill, Franklin. Shows intelligence, too.” When the dark, thick brows lifted, Dean added, “The way you laid out the wood grains in some of the pieces…brilliant.”
Franklin hesitated, then said, running his hand lovingly across the back of a rocker, “I don’t recall anybody ever calling me intelligent before. Least, not to my face.” He patted the chair, then said, “I didn’t even finish high school.”
Dean leaned back on the arm of a Mission-style sofa. “Neither did I.”
The kid’s eyes snapped up to Dean’s face. “You pullin’ my leg, right?”
“Nope. Just got my GED about five years ago.”
Franklin eyed him for a second longer. “How come you didn’t finish?”
“I didn’t know it then, but apparently I had some sort of processing problem. I could read the words okay, but I couldn’t interpret what I was reading well enough to make much sense of them. You?”
Recognition, and relief, flickered for a moment in the dark eyes. “Yeah. Sounds about right. So, I decided to make the best use of my hands I could.” Franklin held up a pair of mitts big enough to crush a watermelon. “Figured if my brain didn’t work, something else would have to.”
“Oh, no, Franklin. Your brain works. Just differently. Take it from me. You can’t do what you do without thinking about it, choosing the wood and the tools and planning how it all goes together. It’s just those damn words that screw us up, you know?”
A gentle laugh rolled from the guy’s throat. Crossing massive forearms across his chest, he asked, “So…you got a job for me?”
Now it was Dean’s turn to laugh. “Nothing like stating your objective up front, huh?” He took a final turn around the small but pretty living room, then looked at the boy. “As it happens, I’m fixing to expand. Got a contract with Tidewater House to manufacture a whole line of reproduction furniture, and they’re beginning to light fires under my butt to get going on it. As soon as I find a suitable place to set up a factory, I’ll start production. If you want it, yeah—you’ve got a job.”
A row of white teeth gleamed in the teak face. “What’s the pay?”
Dean chuckled, then told him a figure that elicited a low, appreciative whistle. “Man, I could certainly handle that.”
“It would mean moving to Atlanta, of course.” Dean couldn’t promise anything else, not at the moment. Yeah, he knew what he’d like to do, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen. Or even that it should.
A cloud passed over Franklin’s features. “Yeah. I know.”
It was harder than Dean thought it would be to drum up much enthusiasm, but he managed. “Oh, come on, man. Big city. Lots to do, lots of things to see…”
“I don’t need to see the big city to know I don’t belong there,” Franklin said quietly. “But I do need to work. So if that’s where the job is, that’s where I’ll go.”
Dean understood.
“Well…it’s official!”
Flat on her tummy on her turned-down bed, Sarah looked up from the book she was reading to see a beaming Jennifer in her doorway. Balthasar chirruped, yawned, then flipped onto his back beside her. “What is?”
A breeze from the open window flirted with Jennifer’s white cotton eyelet baby-doll pajamas as she held up a plastic wand with a little square at one end, bisected with what Sarah thought was a dark blue streak. “They swear these things are accurate almost all the time,” she said with a giggle, waving the wand around as if she were about to bestow a knighthood on someone.
Sarah clapped shut her book and sat up, patting the crisp white sheet beside her. “Well, come here, Miss Preggers,” she said, tucking underneath her fanny the old Auburn U. T-shirt she slept in, “and let me give you a hug.”
Jennifer did as she was told, mumbling something into Sarah’s shoulder.
“What was that?”
“I said—” she bounced onto the edge of the bed, sending the cat looking for other, calmer accommodations “—how funny it is that I’m the one having the first grandbaby. I thought for sure it would’ve been you.”
“Yeah, well,” Sarah said with an obligatory smile, slipping a tissue between the pages of her book. “Just goes to show, huh? You never can tell.” She tossed the paperback onto her nightstand, then picked up her clock to set the alarm.
Jennifer crashed back on Sarah’s bed, her hands pressed to her stomach. “Speaking of ‘never can tell,’ it’s killing me to keep this from Lance.”
Sarah glanced over her shoulder as she set the clock back on the nightstand. “So why are you?”
“Because…it’s kind of fun to have a secret.”
Sarah got up to retrieve a bottle of lotion from her dressing table. “Oh, no, Jen,” she said over the little ping in her heart. She squirted a dollop in her palm, set the bottle down, briskly massaged it into her hands. “It’s not. Having secrets is the pits.”
The bed squeaked as Jennifer pulled herself upright. “Hey…what’s been eating you, anyway? You’ve been so weird since…” Sarah heard a little gasp. “You’re not still…I mean, you don’t still have a thing for Dean, do you?”
She didn’t dare answer.
Jennifer moaned. “Oh, Lord…how dumb can a person be? I’ve been so wrapped up in my own life, with the wedding and the baby and all— I don’t know why it never occurred to me you’d still feel something for him after all this time. These past few days must’ve been horrible for you.”
With a tight little smile, Sarah returne
d to the bed where she sank onto the edge, one foot tucked up under her bottom. “They haven’t exactly been easy.”
Jennifer again collapsed back onto the mattress. “Leave it to me to marry my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s brother, huh?”
Sarah joined her, tucking her arm under her head. “Yeah,” she said on a sigh, contemplating the softly humming ceiling fan. “I’ve had similar thoughts in the past seventy-two hours.”
They lay silently side by side for several seconds before Jennifer gently asked, “Why’d you break up?”
After a moment, Sarah told her, her voice unemotional, almost monotone. Just the facts, ma’am.
“Damn.” Her sister could be very succinct when she had a mind to be.
“Yeah.”
“No wonder Dean looks like he just landed in a pile of horse pucky.”
Sarah laughed.
After a long pause, Jennifer asked, obviously picking her words with care, “How close were you two? I mean, did you…?”
“Once,” Sarah replied to the fan. “Just…once.”
The mattress shifted slightly as her sister rolled her head toward her. “And there hasn’t been anyone else?”
“As in dating?”
“As in anything.”
“Nope.”
She could practically hear Jennifer’s brain process this information. “You mean you’re twenty-seven and…”
“Only done the deed once?” Sarah finished with a rueful grin. “I don’t think that exactly qualifies me for a freak show, honey.”
Jennifer twisted around, propping herself up on her elbow. “What would you do if Dean asked you to marry him?”
“And why, may I ask, would he do that?” Sarah said on a startled laugh.
“Just humor me. What would you do?”
Sarah looked back up at the ceiling. “Well, after I picked myself up off the floor, I’d have to say…no.”
“That’s ridiculous! Hey, I remember Dean, more than you might think. Even when I was a little brat, he was always real nice to me, always treated me like a human being, y’know? He’s a good person, Sarah. And even you said he said he was sorry.”
“Yes, he did.”
“So…?”
“So…that’s not enough, honey.”
“You know what?”
Sarah smiled over at her sister. “What?”
“I think you’re completely nuts, that’s what.”
Once more, the fan got her attention. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
A foot away, Jennifer let out a groan as if she was about to give birth right there and then.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Dean growled at the insistently ringing doorbell. He tapped the instant-on lamp on one end table as he shuffled past, wincing when he stubbed his toe on a cast-iron life-size pug dog in his path. “Keep your shirt on,” he mumbled, swinging open the door. “Jennifer?”
“You’ve got to court her, you idiot. You know…flowers and candy and stuff like that.”
Dean blinked at Sarah’s sister, her arms crossed over her pajamas and robe, turquoise eyes ablaze. One hand stuffed in the pocket of his own robe, Dean jabbed behind him. “Would you like to come in?” he said over a noisy yawn. “And should I get Lance out of bed?”
“Thank you, yes I would, and no, don’t bother Lance.” She swept past him in a haze of something flowery and a bit too sweet for his taste. “Let him sleep. He won’t get much after Saturday.”
As things began to come into focus, he had the vague sensation the blue-and-mauve roses in her cotton robe very nearly matched the ones on his aunt’s sofa. “Can I get you anyth—?”
“She’s in love with you,” Jennifer said, continuing her diatribe. “I know, I think it’s strange, too, but there you are. And it looks like you’re her only chance, too. Either she marries you or she dies an old maid. And I’m here to tell you that is not a pleasant prospect.”
Jen paused to snatch a breath, and Dean jumped in. “This a habit of yours, starting conversations in the middle?”
She’d brushed all the spray out of her hair, he noticed, so it softly swished her shoulders when she shrugged. “Takes less time that way.”
Which, seeing as it was pushing midnight, was probably a good thing. Dean tightened the belt around his own robe and finger-combed his hair—
His gaze shot to Jen’s. “Hold on—she actually said she still loved me?”
“Well, maybe not in so many words. But a sister can tell these things.”
Ah. He was beginning to get the picture. Blissful bride-to-be out to fix up everybody in sight, is what was going on here. His brow puckered. “Just how much do you know, exactly?”
“Exactly?” Her shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Everything, I s’pose.”
“Everything…?”
Jennifer huffed in impatience. “That after the two of you made love the first time, you up and left with some sorry excuse about not being able to stomach Sweetbranch anymore, making her miss her prom. Which was a really jerky thing to do, by the way. Then, Friday night, how you tried to apologize, telling her you’d made a mistake and how, for the family’s sake, y’all needed to work this out. Which she either doesn’t believe, or is afraid to, I can’t rightly tell.”
He sagged into a nearby armchair, bracing his much-too-full head in his hand, then peered up at the bearer of glad tidings. “Jen, honey? Not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but your sister hates my guts.”
“Oh, she just wants you to think that so you’ll stay away from her.”
He almost laughed. Except Jen had crouched down in front of him, grasping his hands in hers. “Dean Parrish, as God is my witness, I swear my sister’s in love with you. She’s scared, and she’s hurting, and I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy winnin’ her back ’cause we both know she’s stubborn as a blind mule, but if you want her bad enough…” She let the sentence drift off.
He simply stared at her, unable to think. To breathe.
“Jen,” he finally said, “my business is in Atlanta.”
“Well, that’s not exactly the moon, now, is it?” Jennifer got to her feet, straightening out her robe. “Besides, she can be a vet there as well as here. So. You want her back or not?”
Dean collapsed back into the chair, his brows tightly drawn. “I don’t know, Jen. Honestly, I don’t. We’ve both changed—”
“So?”
He looked up, willing his heart to break free of the ambivalence choking it. “I’ll tell you one thing, though—the part where I said I was really sorry? That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Well, duh. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was. Hey, for what it’s worth? If I were her, I’d forgive you.”
“You’re very sweet. But you’re not your sister.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Jennifer headed for the door, jiggling her car keys. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t let a little ol’ bygone stand between me and my woman. So I’d be danged sure to get in her way as much as possible.”
His woman? Oh, Sarah would love that. Then his brows lifted. “Get in her way?”
“Yeah, you know…hang around, don’t let her forget you for a moment.”
Dean winced. “Was that how you landed my brother?”
“Uh-uh,” she said with a grin. “That’s how he landed me.”
After Jennifer left, Dean wandered into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of milk, sank onto one of the kitchen chairs and stared into the darkness for a long, long time. And by the time the milk was gone, he’d come to the conclusion that, even if courting Sarah wasn’t on the docket—sure, he still cared and all, but, Jennifer’s invoking the Almighty notwithstanding, even he knew a dead horse when he smelled one—there was still something highly appealing about Sarah’s sister’s advice.
Just chalk it up to pure, unadulterated cussedness.
Took Sarah almost ten seconds before she figured out the scraping sound wasn’t inside her head. Actually
, it slowly penetrated as she lay in bed, her heart thumping unpleasantly in her chest, it seemed to be coming from outside. Right by her bedroom window, in fact.
A bedroom window that was letting in far too much sunlight for seven-thirty in the morning.
She jerked her face toward her clock and discovered to her horror it was nearly ten—she’d apparently slept through her alarm. That revelation momentarily displaced her confusion and curiosity about whatever was going on outside her window, catapulting her out of bed and over to her bedroom door so fast she got dizzy. “Mama!” she shrieked down the stairs, clutching the post on the landing so she wouldn’t keel over. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Oh, you’re up,” Vivian replied mildly as she ambled over to the foot of the stairs. “You get any sleep?”
“I was supposed to be at the clinic at nine! Why are you shaking your head?”
“I called Doc already. Told him you hadn’t been sleeping well lately and would he mind if you came in late today, and he said, no, he didn’t mind at all and not to worry about it—”
“Why’d you do that?”
Vivian shrugged, unconcerned. “Because I thought it was best.”
Through her the-body’s-up-but-the-brain’s-not haze came a flash of realization. And of determination.
“Mama? I’m all grown up now. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to decide what’s best for me from now on, okay?”
For several seconds, the two women stared at each other, separated by more than just a flight of stairs. Vivian opened her mouth, shut it again, then walked away.
Sarah didn’t know what to make of what had just happened between them. Something had, but she wasn’t sure just what. Maybe after a shower and a cup of coffee, it’d make more sense.
Then maybe she’d be gracious enough, she thought as she speared tense fingers through her hair, to thank her mother for gaining her a short reprieve from a world she had to admit she hadn’t been ready to deal with at nine o’clock this morning. Not that she’d be much more ready to cope with anything at eleven. But still…
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