To Believe

by Carolyn Brown

  “Momma! Daddy is an angel.”

  “Yeah, well, you just keep believing that, Rosy. You are the baby daughter and that’s what you are supposed to think. But if he’s an angel, his halo is crooked and one wing stays in the fire like that new song on the radio.”

  “So what’s Trey done?” Tally asked.

  Roseanna looked around the room but couldn’t find Tally’s daughter. “Where’s Bodine?”

  “She’s out there with her new little friend and the men folk. Hopefully driving them as crazy as she has me all day. She wanted to go to Buckhorn and fish but I told her there was too much traffic to ride her bike down there, so she’s giving me the silent treatment. But you aren’t going to change the subject that quick. Dee’s been bringing us up to date on the situation. You rescued him from the kidnapping and he hoodwinked Granny Etta into letting him stay at the lodge. Now we want the story, detail by detail,” Tally said.

  “The day Granny Etta gets hoodwinked is the day you’d better all bend over, grab your ankles and kiss your butt good-bye because the world is about to come to an end,” Roxie said from the doorway.

  “And that’s the gospel truth,” Etta Cahill said right behind her.

  Stunned quiet filled the room, then it exploded like a cannon. Chairs scooted back on hardwood floor, giggles erupted and everyone talked at once amongst the hugging and patting.

  “You are not supposed to be home for another two weeks,” Roseanna patted Etta’s arm.

  “That’s what we told you when we left so we could surprise you. I wouldn’t miss the Fourth of July party for all the cruises in the world. Haven’t missed one in fifty years and I’m not starting now,” Roxie said. She wore bright red Spandex capris, a yellow and red floral sheer overshirt and a sequin trimmed tank top under that, along with her signature three inch spike heels which were the same bright yellow as the flowers on her shirt. Her brilliant red hair was teased up into a bouffant do.

  Etta was dressed just as flamboyantly in bright pinks and she’d had a fresh rinse put on her gray hair so it was slightly blue. “I’m glad to be home, girls. Now let’s get down to business. I trust you got the potato salad made, Rosy?”

  Rosy smiled and nodded.

  “Jodie, you need a man in your life. You’re going to let the good ones slip right out of your hands. And you, young lady. What are you doing in here with this gaggle of geese? Trey is out there. You think you can get anything settled in here?”

  Roseanna’s anger found new fodder to feed on. “Why did you let him stay at the lodge and why did you go running off leaving us together? You want things settled with him, go out there and settle them yourself.”

  “Well, I’ll be hung from a scrub oak tree if you ain’t got your spunk back girl,” Etta poked Roxie in the ribs. “I told you we was doing the right thing.”

  Roxie breezed past them all and slung a bibbed apron around her neck, opened the refrigerator and began setting things on the cabinet to make a chocolate cake. “I didn’t doubt you for a minute. Rosy, you couldn’t live with him and you were downright miserable. But you couldn’t live without him, neither, and you were miserable when you came home. You were all down in the mouth both ways. Etta’s smarter’n you give her credit for. Get out there with that man and take care of things. You got time for a trip to the lake and back before fireworks. Way you’re looking, you won’t be eating much anyway so supper isn’t a problem. So take a drive and get your appetite back, girl. This is the Fourth of July. We won’t have no moping around today.”

  “How do I take care of things in an evening when I couldn’t in all these weeks?” She asked.

  “Simple,” Lauren said. “Talk.”

  “You are sixteen. What makes you so smart?”

  “I’m not. It’s just that you can’t see the trees for the forest,” Lauren told her.

  “From the mouths of babes,” Joann said.

  “Kiss him or kill him. I don’t give a royal rat’s rear, girl. But get that look off your face before you come back home tonight. Surprises the hell out of me that you haven’t taken care of this by now. I figured you’d have it finished by the time I got home,” Etta said. “Now move over, Roxie, and I’ll make the icing while you stir up the sheet cake.”

  The rest of women settled back into their chairs and Rosanna heard the hum of talk as she walked out the door. Roxie and Etta already back on their thrones, entertaining them with stories of the cruise.

  From the kitchen to the back yard was the longest walk she ever took. She stopped on the porch, sat down in a rocker for a while and tried to collect her thoughts, make a speech, anything so that she wouldn’t stand before him dumbfounded. It was useless. The only thing that came to mind was an instant replay of the conversation she’d had with herself earlier while she was running the weed eater.

  She tugged at the hem of her jean shorts when she stood up to get them unstuck from her sweaty thighs. The thermometer on the back porch testified that the the weather man had been correct. It was one hundred and six degrees, the sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. A typical July day for Southern Oklahoma. She pulled at a red tank top with the picture of a flag across her ample breasts. The stars were more than a little distorted and her bra strap had found its way from under the thin shoulder straps. She pushed it back and inhaled deeply.

  Trey felt her presence from the time she opened the back door but he pretended to listen to a story Jack told about his young son, Jaxson. When she headed toward him, he cut his eyes around to see if he could figure out her mood. Goodness knew it had been all over the place that day, from snatching food from his plate that morning to cold looks the rest of the time. He saw her jerk her shorts down and remembered the way her long legs had always affected him. When she adjusted her bra strap, he snuck a long look at the flag on her chest. By the time she reached his side, he wasn’t any closer to figuring her out than he’d been all day.

  “Ya’ll got that charcoal ready yet?” She asked Stella’s husband, Rance, and Dee’s husband, Jack.

  “They’re slower than Christmas,” Bodine whined. “I’m starving and they’re talking about how much liquid smoke they need to put in the barbecue sauce. Roxie would just shake the bottle over it but they’ve got to talk it to death.”

  “Take a drive with me?” Rosy looked at Trey.

  Bodine perked right up. “You going to the lake? I’ll get a couple of fishing poles. Tally won’t care if we go if someone goes with us.”

  “You aren’t going to the lake today, lady,” Jack said. “Today I need help with the baby. Go swing Jaxson.”

  Trey looked back and forth between Bodine and Roseanna.

  “It’s private,” Roseanna whispered.

  Bodine huffed but she went to swing the baby.

  “Go on,” her stepfather said. “I’ll take her fishing tomorrow morning. We’re staying a couple of days.”

  Roseanna led the way to her truck. Four miles to the lake. For the first mile they didn’t say anything. Then she began to talk.

  “Back fifty years ago, Roxie bought the whole corner from Jack’s grandparents. They’d bought it to begin with but all they wanted was the little store and the house behind it. When it burned, they brought in the trailer and that’s where Jack has lived ever since he was a little boy. His Momma died when he was born and then his daddy died when he was barely walking. So his grandparents raised him. Roxie’s husband died when Mimosa, that’s her only child, was little. Roxie couldn’t stand doing nothing so she turned the big house into a bed and breakfast. Called it Roxie’s B and B. But we all called it Roxie’s blessin’s and bellyachin’. Every evening, if the weather is nice, she sits on the back porch with whoever is living with her or visiting and they all watch the sun go down. It’s a ritual. About the same time she opened her bed and breakfast, Stella’s grandmother, Molly, ran her philandering husband off and turned her big house into the same thing. And my grandfather was killed in an accident on the ranch and Grann
y Etta turned her house into one. They’re the queens of the whole place. There are motels now all over the place, and Roxie has retired. Granny Etta keeps her place open still and Stella gave Brannon Inn to her sister when she married Rance a few months ago.”

  “Interesting bit of history and you’ve told me all this before,” he said.

  “Let me finish. When we were little girls, the queens met at least once a week for a business meeting. They compared notes on whether to raise the prices, recipes, gossip, everything. Roxie brought Tally and Dee. Granny Etta brought me and Jodie, and Molly brought Maggie and Stella. Dee, Stella and I became friends. We grew apart somewhat in high school, but the bond is there.” She paused.

  “And what has that all got to do with us?”

  “My roots and my heart are here, Trey.”

  He nodded and swallowed the lump in his throat, the one trying to cut off his oxygen. She was about to tell him the gig was over. Pack it up and go home, boy.

  “To understand the future, you’ve got to understand the past. I can live somewhere else but like a plant needs water, every so often I need to come home,” she said.

  “I never had roots like that. I was raised in California basically. Boarding school. Home for holidays. Traveling the world during the summer. France. Italy. Mother thought it broadened our horizons,” he said.

  “I know. You’ve been everywhere. Done everything. It’s like you’ve got this city heart of gold and diamonds and I’ve got a country heart of hay fields and cows. Are we asking too much to expect them to …” the sentence trailed.

  He reached across the seat and took her hand in his, lacing the fingers into his own. “I’ve had doubts and fears all day. Let them consume me.”

  “So tell me, do you think it’s over? How’s all this going to end?”

  “The past is there. Plain for all to see. We’ve had a part in it. We’ve lived together, loved together, been miserable together. But I’m more miserable without you. I figured that out in that motel in Mena. I didn’t want to walk out the door and leave you there. My heart is tied in with yours so tightly, I just can’t break the ties.”

  “Can I think about that until we get to the lake?”

  “Yes, you can,” he said.

  There was one little secluded neck of the lake that ran back under a grove of willow trees. Roseanna stopped the truck and led Trey to that area and sat down without letting go of his hand. “Granny Etta is home.”

  “When did she arrive?”

  “Came in the front door just before I came out back. She said kiss you or kill you but for me not to come home until this was settled.”

  Trey scooted in closer to her and drew her to his side, letting his arm slide from her shoulder to her waist. “What’s it going to take to settle it?”

  “I’m so mad I could spit,” she pushed his hand away.

  “Why?”

  She stood up and threw a hand full of rocks into the shallow water. “Because I can’t control this. I don’t want to believe in love or you, but I do. I see the want in your eyes, Trey, and I know it’s in mine. I’m scared and that makes me mad because I’ve never been scared of anything in my whole life.”

  “You believe in me?” He asked incredulously.

  “I don’t want to but my heart doesn’t listen to a dang thing anymore.”

  He patted the grass. “Honey, I can’t tell you I’m going to be content forever on a ranch, but I am today and that’s all we get. I’ve got a plan if you’ll trust me to be honest with you tomorrow and all the days after that. Sit back down and let me talk to you.”

  She sat down but kept the distance between them. “Talk, then, but I’m still in a fighting mood. I probably won’t like what you’ve got to say.”

  “Okay, fair enough. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want the two of us to go look at one of those double wide trailers and buy an acre of ground from your dad to put it on. Way at the back of the property so we can have lots of privacy and when we fight, Jodie won’t hear it and come running. You can ranch and I’ll teach at Murray. The commute is only thirty minutes and I’m learning to like it.”

  “And what happens when you decide you don’t like it?” Rosy asked.

  “Then we’ll sit down and talk about it. You’ll know immediately when I have a change of heart if I ever do. We’ll have breakfast together every day and supper every night. We’ll talk. That’s what was lacking before. Communication. I wanted you to be a corporate wife like my mother and …”

  “And you never understood my plain old country heart,” she said in a faraway voice.

  “And you didn’t tell me how important those things were to you, did you? You just assumed I knew,” he said.

  “Are we going to fight?”

  “Probably. Lots of times before we are old and looking death in the eye. You’ve got a temper and so do I,” he said.

  “So?” She asked.

  He held his breath. “So you tell me. You’re the one who called this meeting. Am I dead or are you going to kiss me?”

  She looked up and their gaze met and held. “You’ll always talk to me about everything?”

  “That I can promise. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. Believe me, Rosy. Believe me when I tell you that I love you. Don’t take your love away from me. I know it’s there. I can see it. I can feel it. But most of all, I need it. Without it, I’m a shell, a vacuum.”

  “I believe you,” she said as she reached up to trace his jaw line with her fingertips.

  He grabbed her hand and held it tightly against his lips. “Will you marry me … again?”

  “I will. At the end of the month when your lease runs out. We’ll go to the court house and have a simple wedding there, but I want a reception that will blow the bottom out of Murray County. I want your family there.”

  “Not Greta,” he whined.

  “Yep, even Greta. I want them all to see how happy we are,” she said.

  He leaned forward and kissed her. “I love you. If that’s what you want, you’ll have it.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “I love you, too, Trey. I don’t think I ever stopped. I just got side tracked.”

  When she leaned back to look at him again, his eyes were twinkling. “Three weeks,” he whispered as he sealed their love with a long, passionate kiss.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He waited with the preacher on the platform, strung with filmy illusion and entwined with English ivy and roses, while Jodie’s band played soft country music. The original plan had been for nothing more than an enormous reception but somehow those plans got trashed and a wedding was planned. Jodie walked up the path from the corral. She wore a yellow lace dress that just reached the top of her ankles and carried a single long Calla lily with long, dark green satin streamers. She smiled sweetly at him until she reached the top step, just a few feet from him.

  “I’ll still kick you all the way back to Tulsa if you make her cry,” she whispered.

  “And I never ate calf fries until that Sunday,” he said slyly but kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “You con artist!”

  “Careful, you’ll ruin your sister’s wedding, and then I’ll have to kick you all the way across Oklahoma,” he teased.

  The band struck up the first chords of “Broken Roads” and everyone stood for the bride to walk down the aisle between the folding chairs. Trey’s father winked his approval at him. He appreciated Roseanna so much more than he had when she was married to his son the first time. Then she’d been just a pretty girl on Trey’s arm. Now she was Trey’s soul mate and a woman Vance could fully well admire.

  Trey’s mother nodded toward him. The girl wasn’t what she would have chosen but she would have chosen wrong. Roseanna had spunk and she had class, and she’d do fine in a crisis. She’d already proved her mettle when she stood up to Greta at the reception in Tulsa.

  Greta stuck her tongue out at him … more than twenty years
old and still a brat.

  Then he saw Roseanna approaching on her father’s arm and everyone else disappeared. She wore an off the shoulder ivory lace sheath dress with a wide border of lace barely reaching the tops of ivory lace-up Roper boots. An ivory felt hat with a lace hatband tied up in a big bow in the back set at an angle on her head. She wore the pearl drop his mother said all the women in the Fields family wore on their wedding day and the ring Granny Etta’s grandmother had been married with was tied into her bouquet.

  “Who gives this woman to be married to this man,” the preacher asked in a big booming voice.

  “Her family and I do,” Bob said with pride and took Roseanna’s hand and put it in Trey’s. “Now, I intend for you to take care of her, Trey.”

  “I promise I will,” Trey vowed.

  “Dearly beloved,” the preacher intoned.

  They stared at each other and promised wordlessly to never forsake the other, to honor, to love and to protect their second chance.

  “Do you, Colin Vance Fields, the third take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to cherish her forever, to protect the love you share and be totally committed to her for the rest of your life?”

  Rosy held her breath for just a moment. To be totally committed to her for the rest of their life. To promise that before family, friends and even the Almighty. It was a pretty big order, but he didn’t even hesitate.

  “I certainly do,” he said.

  “Do you, Roseanna Maria Cahill Fields take this man to be your wedded husband, to cherish forever, to protect the love you share and to be totally committed to him for the rest of your life?”

  Trey looked deeply into the green eyes that had mesmerized him from the beginning and had no doubt of the love that lingered there for only him.

  “I do,” she said.

  “Rings?” he asked.

  Jodie and the best man laid the plain gold bands in his hands.

  “These rings are endless circles to represent endless love between this man and woman …” he completed that part of the ceremony.

  “And now Rosy,” the preacher smiled. “You may claim your husband.”