To Believe

by Carolyn Brown

  Roseanna appeared out of the ever moving, constantly changing crowd. “Want to dance again?”

  He stood up and drew her back into his arms. “Sure.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and swayed to the beat of the slow Conway Twitty song. “You can dance with other people, Trey.”

  “I don’t want to,” he said honestly.

  “Kyle asked me out next Saturday night. You have a problem with that?” She asked.

  “We’re divorced. You are a free woman,” he said tersely.

  “I didn’t ask you what block I’d mark on the income tax forms. I asked if you have a problem with me dating Kyle.” She leaned back and stared into his eyes. She had her answer but she wanted to hear it from his lips.

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Several moments passed.

  “Are you going to answer me?” She asked. They’d stopped dancing and were standing still in the middle of the crowd.

  “No, I’m not. I plead the fifth,” he attempted a joke.

  “Jealous?”

  “The fifth again,” he said.

  “Then I guess you can just deal with your fifth and I’ll be a free, divorced woman,” she turned her back and went back to the flatbed to join Jodie. They sang old, classic country tunes: Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynnette.

  They were the very twangy songs she knew he hated, but he sat against the outside wall of LaVilla Inn, a downtown hotel and coffee shop combination, and listened to every word. It was midnight when the girls finished up with a hymn and everyone went home. By the time the equipment was broken down and the flat bed hooked up to Bob’s truck the clock on the bank across the street said it was one thirty. When Trey and Roseanna opened the front door of the lodge they were tired, grumpy and sleepy.

  She started toward her room. “You can sleep in tomorrow morning. I’m not getting up for breakfast. We’ve got six arriving by supper time tomorrow and they’ll be here a week.”

  “A whole week. Does that mean you’ll be expecting me to fix supper for them their last night while you go on your date with Kyle?” His voice was as cold as the wind on the mountain they’d climbed a few weeks before.

  “I don’t shirk my duties.”

  He was left at the foot of the stairs, his heart in pieces, his plans blown apart like a shanty in a tornado. He might as well find a place in Tishomingo and move before the end of the summer. Things couldn’t be worse. He showered and threw himself in the bed but he didn’t sleep. Sometime around dawn he fell into a restless semi-sleep where he dreamed about being chained to a tree in the middle of a dense mountain forest. He awoke drenched in a cold sweat that sent him back to the shower. Very quietly he tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen where he made a pot of coffee and poured a cup. At ten o’clock, when she stumbled into the kitchen, he was still in turmoil.

  Roseanna had spent an equally exhausting, soul searching night. She’d pressured him to admit that he was at the lodge because he wanted a second chance and the answer he’d given about pleading the fifth had terrified her. She’d loved him passionately and watched that love wither and die in four years. With the death went a good sized chunk of her heart. She could not take the chance of believing in love again. It was too painful. She poured a cup of coffee and sat down across the table from Trey.

  “Want to talk?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay then, I’m going to church this morning with my folks. You comin’?”

  “No. I’ve got a load of papers to grade before tomorrow’s classes. You said we’ve got six ladies coming in this afternoon so I need to get the work done so I can help with supper duties. What have you got planned?” They were back on a comfortable business level that didn’t threaten either of them.

  “For supper? Hot chicken casserole, green salad, hot rolls and a chilled pineapple fruit dessert. Breakfast is waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Then I’m packing them a picnic lunch to take out to Stella and Rance’s pond where they plan to fish all day.”

  “Six ladies who are near eighty are going to fish?” He asked.

  “They’ve been coming here every year since I was about fifteen. They graduated from Sulphur High School sixty years ago. Never come to the class reunion but get together once a year for a week right here instead. They are old sweethearts. Not too much age difference between them and Granny Etta. First day they fish. Second, they go to the park in Sulphur. Third, they shop in Ardmore. Fourth, they do the antique shops in both Sulphur and Davis. Fifth, they are open for impromptu what evers, and then that night they have a slumber party in the living room with wine. Sixth, they sleep in late, that’s eight o’clock for them. Then they go to a movie in Pauls Valley and then on Sunday morning after breakfast they disappear.”

  “So the night they have the slumber party you’ll be gone on your date with Kyle? And they’ll be having wine so that means I’d better lock my door?”

  “It’s time for us to talk. We’re not teenagers. We’ve been married. We’ve lived together and we are divorced. Just a minute.” She crossed the room and picked up the phone sitting on the cabinet. She punched in some numbers and told whoever answered the phone that she wouldn’t be going to church that morning.

  “Now, let’s get the dirty laundry out and see what it looks like, Trey.” She topped off her lukewarm coffee, pulled a package of chocolate chip cookies from the cabinet and sat down.

  He waited.

  “I’m missing church for this. We’re adults so let’s talk.”

  “I’m not sure I know how,” he said.

  “That’s right—you don’t and that was what put our marriage on the rocks. We never talked. We just went our separate pathways and met in the middle for social events. Well, honey, today we’re going to talk.”

  “Argue or talk?” He asked.

  “Both, most likely. For starters, what are you doing here?”

  “I convinced Granny Etta to let me stay here for the summer so I could be close to you. That trek through the mountains made me realize I never really knew the woman I’d lived with all those years and I wanted to get to know you. There was something there that pulled at my heart strings and I realized I was falling in love with you all over again.”

  “Trey, we come from two different worlds. Tonight should have taught you that. Even though you are a professor at a junior college and that’s a respectable job, your ways are different than mine. I loved being there in the middle of all those people last night. You sat in the corner and were miserable. You aren’t falling in love with me. It was the after effects of a hellish kidnapping and finding out your friends were your enemies.”

  “It wasn’t the people making me miserable. It was you dancing with Kyle and watching him put his arms around you and whisper in your ear. I don’t have a single right to you anymore so it’s none of my business if you want to go out with him next weekend, but I hate the idea. I’m terrified you’ll fall back into love with him and I’ll lose you again.”

  She smiled. “You can’t lose what you don’t have, Trey. So it’s jealousy?”

  He nodded. “I’m jealous as hell. I’ll admit it. When we were out there on the mountain, just me and you, trying to survive, I figured out that there’s something other than four years of marriage between us. I told Granny Etta that and she agreed that we needed some time to either ‘kiss and make up or kill each other graveyard dead.’ Those are her words, not mine.”

  Roseanna inhaled deeply. She’d wanted to talk but she hadn’t prepared for what he might really say. Now it was out in the open and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  “Trey, we had a physical attraction that was like two magnets but we had very little past that. What are you saying here? You want to date?”

  “That would be a good place to start. I think we have learned to be friends and work together. Yes, I would like a date. Mother and Father
are going to a social affair in Tulsa next week. Grandmother and Grandfather are coming home from Boston and we’re having a fifty-fifth wedding anniversary for them at a hotel there. They’ve reserved a room for me. If you aren’t comfortable staying with me, I can get you a separate one. We’ll go for the weekend after your date with Kyle.”

  “I said he asked me out. I didn’t say I’d accepted. Fact is, I told him no. It didn’t work four years ago. It won’t work now. He hasn’t changed his ideas and I haven’t changed mine. He wants a woman he can control. I won’t be that woman. Now, as for a date in two weeks? I don’t think we’ve got guests that weekend but I’m not sure I want to go with you. It would be awkward for your family.”

  “Not as awkward as the fact Laura and her father will be there,” he said.

  “Holy Smoke, Trey. Are you nuts? That woman will tar and feather you, tie you to a bed rail and throw you off the top of the hotel. You jilted her twice.”

  “No, she jilted me the second time.”

  “She couldn’t have. There wasn’t time.”

  “It didn’t take long. My father talked to my mother, then he made several phone calls as we drove back to Tulsa. A conference with the people who were eager to buy his company was already in motion by the time we arrived. While he discussed business downtown, Laura and her father came rushing to the house. I told her in his presence that I would not be a part of the company anymore. That I was going to apply for a teaching position at a junior college in the southern part of the state. Laura whined. According to her, I’d been traumatized and needed a few weeks to get past it. We’d go away to Paris or to the villa in Italy for a few weeks so I could get things back in their right order. Her father just glared and the look on his face told me that he had indeed been the one behind the kidnapping. When I stood my ground, she threw the engagement ring at me and stormed out of the house. Her father smiled. I mean he really smiled and then he just nodded. Finally, he had his way. Laura didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “And yet, they’ll be invited to the affair. Momma wouldn’t invite someone like that to Granny Etta’s birthday party,” Roseanna said.

  “It’s business. You know how it is. You lived with it. Just because we divorced, I’m not rich and the company downsized considerably doesn’t completely change the lifestyle,” he said.

  “And that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she agreed with a nod of her head. Several strands escaped the pony tail and she pushed them back with a flick of her hand. “Tell you what. Next Saturday night after we’ve gotten supper finished, we’ll go on that date. Let’s go to the movies in Ardmore and out for ice cream at Braum’s afterward. We’ll see how it works out before I make a decision about going to your grandparent’s anniversary. I still think that would be more of a big shock for them. And don’t be thinking you’ll sweep me off my feet like last time.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “And honey, I don’t have a company jet at my disposal anymore. Not to mention the money to take you on a date like that again. I’m just a poor old country professor who’s hoping to still have a job come fall.”

  “That approach won’t work any better than the limo and jet did years ago, Trey. We were mismatched from the beginning and grew apart rather than together. It’s impossible to redo the past and sometimes it’s too late to do what you should have done from the beginning.”

  He sipped lukewarm coffee. “You want to expound on that?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then I will. Yes, it’s impossible to redo the past but the future is a blank page and it’s never too late to start all …”

  Jodie called from the front door. “Hey, is breakfast ready?”

  Trey sighed in exasperation. “She’s the devil reincarnated.”

  “We’re having coffee in the kitchen,” Roseanna yelled toward the approaching footsteps.

  Jodie opened the refrigerator and took out bacon and eggs. “I’m hungry. Let’s cook. Who wants gravy?”

  “Me,” Roseanna said.

  She added sausage to the items in her hands.

  “I think I’ll take an apple and some yogurt up to my room and read awhile,” Trey excused himself.

  Jodie put bacon in a one cast iron skillet and started sausage browning in another one. “Well, thank the Lord above for small favors. Now my appetite won’t be ruined by his presence.”

  “Jodie!”

  “It’s the truth. I wish he’d give up and go away.”

  Roseanna cocked her head off to one side. “Give up?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. He can’t stand it that he can’t have you. He doesn’t want you or he wouldn’t have divorced you for the money but he dang sure doesn’t want Kyle to have you either.”

  “Kyle and I would never …”

  Jodie was walking back and forth from the stove where she kept a close eye on the bacon to the counter where she made biscuits. “Stir the sausage. And even if it wouldn’t work with Kyle there’s lots of men out there who’d treat you right.”

  “Trey never treated me wrong.”

  “Yes, he did. He divorced you for Laura.”

  “But I was fixing to divorce him for a lot less.”

  “Why are you standing up for him?”

  Roseanna stopped stirring the sausage and stared at her sister. “Evidently because I’m big enough to admit that it took both of us to tear up the marriage. It wasn’t all Trey’s fault. I didn’t give an inch either.”

  “You lived up there in that city. In the penthouse in the sky for him. Isn’t that giving an inch? Besides, those Fields are the kind who’ll take a mile if you give an inch.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you this morning. I’m hungry. Let’s talk about your love life. Why don’t you date Kyle if he’s such a good catch?”

  “I hope someday to have a husband and a houseful of kids but it won’t be Kyle. The chemistry isn’t there and he’d never tame me. He wants a little mealy mouthed thing to walk three steps behind him and keep his britches ironed. No sir, my husband’s going to be someone who’s not afraid to get dirt on his boots and he’s dang sure not going to be a city slicker like Colin Vance Fields, the almighty third.”

  Roseanna opened the oven door for Jodie to slide the biscuits inside. “Well, honey, I’m not going to walk three steps behind any man, either. You just keep hoping, but don’t be surprised that a higher power throws a monkey wrench in your plans. I’ve got a movie date with Trey on Saturday night and he’s invited me to go to his grandparent’s anniversary in Tulsa the next weekend.”

  “You can’t …” Jodie’s deep green eyes widened out in horror.

  “I am going to the movie. We’ll see past that.”

  “You can’t be thinking …”

  “I’m thinking I’m hungry. Don’t let the bacon burn. And I’m thinking that it’s really none of your business.”

  Jodie shoved her whole body forward until she was nose to nose with Roseanna. “None of my business! I’m your sister and it is my business.”

  “I’m going with him to prove to my heart that there is no future, so let it alone,” Roseanna said through gritted teeth.

  “Your heart thinks there might be no future?” Jodie relaxed.

  “It does.”

  “Then by all means go to both things. Go ahead to that big shindig. Believe me, that should prove it if nothing else could. One night in his sister’s presence would make your heart light a shuck for home. That girl is meaner than a constipated cougar.”

  “On that we do agree,” Rosy said. “Now let’s eat and talk about something else.”

  Trey exhaled very slowly and made his way up the stairs just as quietly so he wouldn’t be heard. For the first time in his life he’d eavesdropped and it had netted him exactly what he wanted to hear. Roseanna stood up for him and admitted she might still have feelings for him. His heart pounded so hard he was afraid it would be heard in the kitchen like a sonic boom.

  Chapter Twelve


  Trey hated mowing the lawn but that was part of the duties Granny Etta had put upon him when he called that evening and asked for a place to live. So he mowed, and he sweated, which he hated, and the gnats flew up his nose, and he hated that too. His one pair of jeans were so faded and worn by the end of June that they felt much better than when they were new and stiff. He still would rather wear pleated slacks, though. He wasn’t a rancher or even a common gardener and nothing was going to make him one anymore than a silk purse could be produced from a pig’s ear.

  Then what are you doing here? Trying to seduce Roseanna so you can move her right back to the big city? Is this job at Murray in Tishomingo nothing more than a stopover until you get what you want again? Are you still going to want her once you get her or is it going to be an instant replay of the last time around?

  The questions rattled around in his brain and he argued with himself until he finished the job. He returned the mower to the gardening shed behind the house and was wiping sweat off his face when six elderly ladies piled out of a van. He held the door for them

  “Thank you, Trey,” Wanda said in a soft southern voice.

  “Whew, boy, you should go in there and hug up on Rosy right now. I always say a man is his sexiest right after a hard bout of work,” Tinsy teased.

  Trey smiled and shook his head.

  “Well, if I was fifty years younger, Rosy wouldn’t have a chance with this one. I’d sneak him out of here in my suitcase and keep him for myself,” Betsy declared. “But we can’t turn back the clock, so let’s go up to our rooms and get ready for supper. After that we meet in my room, ladies. Can you believe the time can get away from us so quick? Two more days and it’s time to go home.”

  Dotty stopped at the end of the line and looked him right in the eye. “It’s because we haven’t got as much of it left as we did back when we were Trey and Rosy’s age. You going to marry that girl or just flirt around for the rest of your life?”

  Betsy turned back and grabbed Dotty’s arm. “Oh, stop it, and come on. These kids have enough problems decidin’ what they want without six old women interfering in their lives. How much input from your granny did you want when you were their age?”