I realized I was done with sleep. Might as well wait outside the café for Lorena, then get my check and go on.
Even if the road ahead seemed really empty.
I dressed quickly and left the RV, but my mind drifted back to Big Lil’s imagined get-up. Suddenly, I recalled the bracelet that was Mama’s. It wasn’t much, a band of tarnished silver with machine-stamped hieroglyphics, its dots of cheap turquoise long ago gone dark green, but I could picture it on my arm, the ornament of a warrior, a swordswoman. Someone with veins of strength amid all my fool’s gold.
I was gripped by the need for my own totem, something to remind me that the O’Brien women had heft of their own. Mama might have shown poor judgment in men, but she had the guts to tackle life with two girls and no money. Sister was too young to be a mother, but she stuck by me when others would have flown. I might have been no Athena, sprung from the forehead of Zeus, but I did not come from a line of sissies.
It was in the trunk of my car, that bracelet. I hadn’t unloaded much beyond the basics as an act of faith that my car would recover, that I’d soon be on my way. Now I would be.
I decided I’d pay my faithful steed a visit before getting my check from Lorena. It wasn’t quite five a.m., but the garage was never locked, anyhow. I’d asked about that once, but Lorena had just stared at me like I was an alien. Folks in Jewel were not thieves, I was informed. Houses didn’t have to be locked. Cars, either.
In case I needed a refresher: I was not in the city.
The sky was lightening from night’s monochrome to pale rose rimmed in gold. As I passed the house where the not-speaking couple lived, my throat got a little tight at the thought of leaving what had become so familiar.
I’d be fine. I would. No reason to quail just because The Nerves made me think I could feel strands of my hair coming loose at the root, all set to fall in drifts as I walked. The Nerves—I snickered as I remembered Laura Lee, a high-strung lady in a pompadour wig who worked with Sister years ago. The Nerves they done got me, child. Made all my hair fall out. It’s that daughter of mine, bound to send me to an early grave, I swan to goodness.
I wondered whatever happened to Laura Lee. To her wild child. I was still grinning when I pushed open the office door of the garage—
And spotted Ray, slumped at the ancient gray metal desk, head in hands.
I froze, started to back out.
“What are you doing here?” he barked.
“I—I was just going to look in my car for—” Then I registered that his face had aged just since the day before, and he was wearing a threadbare, wrinkled shirt. He hadn’t shaved. “Never mind me. Are you okay?”
Palms flat on the desk, he shoved to his feet. Gave me his back as he busied himself pulling a parts catalog off the shelf behind him. With a jerk of his head, he indicated the door that led to the bays. “Go on. Grab whatever it is and get out.”
His manner was so forbidding that I hurried to do as ordered, but then a chill ran through me. “Is Lorena all right?”
“How would I know? Think the dadblasted woman ever gives me the time of day?” But his usual gruffness wavered.
If he was here at this hour, was she at the café early? “Is she cooking already?”
“No.” His head whipped in my direction, his expression fierce now. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Drove off in the middle of the night.”
“Why? Where’s she going?” And how had I slept through it?
He slammed the parts catalog shut. “She just packed up and left.”
“Left?” I blinked. “You mean like . . . left?” I stalked over to him. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“She wouldn’t just go without a word to me.”
“You think she owes you an explanation when she didn’t even give one to me?”
“But last night we agreed—” Take it back, I wanted to demand. I was the one who was supposed to go. I grabbed his arm. “You played some part in this.”
He might be an old man, but he was strong. He flicked me off like a gnat. “I didn’t do a damn thing. Matter of fact, she was upset when she got home. You know anything about that?”
“How do you know she was upset, if you two don’t talk?”
“Man don’t live with a woman this long and not hear what she don’t say.” There was a quiver in his voice that yanked me out of my panic enough to focus on him again. To remember how often he stole glances at her in the café, how his eyes followed her as she moved around.
“You still love her.” I shook my head. “I do not get you people. You have everything, a family, a home—” I swept my arm in a wide arc. “And you’re wasting it on some stupid feud over a driver’s license and—” Recalling the and part, the cheating part, made my mad sputter out, replaced by contempt. “Of course she left you. You hurt her. Had an affair with the woman everyone hates. How could you?”
“Lorena don’t hate her own sister. The two can’t get along, but she don’t hate her.”
“What?” Surely I had lost my hearing. “Her sister? Who’s—” Oh. My. God. I swallowed hard. “Glory? Glory is—” My eyeballs were about to pop out of my head. “Lorena and Glory are . . . sisters?” If ever two women were polar opposites, it was those two. Aunt Bea and the Valkyrie. Earth Mother meets Sword Woman.
My head was reeling, but eventually one important fact leaked through. “You . . . had an affair with your wife’s . . . sister.” I stared at him like he had two heads. As though he were the devil himself. “No wonder she left you. The only question is why she waited so long.”
“Left you, too.”
No. She knew I needed to go. “She wouldn’t.” Would she? “I can’t stay here. She understands that. She’ll be back. She has to.”
Easy for you to just load up and be gone now, isn’t it? Leave all of us behind.
Had she escaped first, to keep me there?
Oh, no. No, no, no, no.
My legs didn’t want to hold me. “She’s forcing my hand.” I had to tip my hat, though—it was a gambit worthy of Big Lil. “Well, it won’t work, I’m telling you.” I stabbed my finger at him.
Then I remembered that without my paycheck, I was going nowhere. “You write me a check for my wages, so I can pay Tommy.”
“You didn’t work for me. I don’t owe you anything.”
“She’s your wife. It’s your income, too.”
“Unh-uh. Garage is mine, café’s hers.”
I threw up my hands. “Texas is a community property state. Even I know that. She can repay you when she gets back.”
“Why would I want to? Woman deserted me.”
I whirled and started to pace. The unfairness of it made me itch to throw a hissy, but I couldn’t force him to pay me, and Tommy had a houseful of kids to support, so I couldn’t expect him to let me have my car for free.
How could she do this? I thought she cared about me. I looked at Ray’s slumped shoulders, and mine wanted to follow suit.
So you just fold, do you? Some warrior you are. I could practically see Dark Agnes’s lip curl with contempt.
“No. I do not fold.”
Ray frowned. “What?”
See what Lorena had driven me to? I was answering Dark Agnes out loud. “All right, all right. Look, I’ll handle things for a few days—” Somehow. Even though my chest was tight and my heart was racing. “But I can’t just hang around forever, so you’d better start figuring out where she is. When you find her, you tell her that I will do my dead-level best, but people are not going to like this one bit, and she may not have a business to come back to if she stays away long.”
I was nearly breathless by the end, and it was all I could do not to take off running. I made it to the door before I remembered the bracelet I came for. I reversed my path and bumped into Ray, who was following me.
We jumped apart, but he grasped my shoulders. “Calm down,” he ordered.
“You’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
I bristled. First, because I had never liked that saying, however often I’d heard it. It was just not an image a person wanted to focus on.
And second, because it was insulting. I was not panicking. I just needed to get away for a few minutes to clear my brain and—
“Breathe,” he said. His voice was surprisingly gentle, and in that instant, he was once again the Texaco Man, sure and steady. “Lorena has faith in you for a reason, Eudora.” The use of my strong name helped.
Even if it did remind me of both Glory and Lorena. How odd that both of them would call me Eudora.
Or not, now that I knew they were related. I shivered just a little as I gathered myself.
Ray patted me awkwardly. “You want some coffee or something?”
“You have some?” I sniffed the air and didn’t find it amid the scents of grease and gasoline.
“Nope. I was thinking we could head on over to the café and you could make it.”
She had been cooking for him at home, I was now certain. He was of that generation of men who were helpless in the kitchen, and he wanted me to take care of him, too.
Well, he had another think coming. “No, but I’ll show you how to make your own.” I cocked my head and awaited his reaction.
“Younger generation going to hell in a handbasket,” he muttered.
But I would have sworn he winked.
Ray being playful. The world had definitely tilted off its axis. Something in me eased a little, but I still felt the need for a little bolstering. “One second,” I told Ray and went to retrieve my bracelet.
“Here we are.” Inside the café, I nodded at the coffee maker with its two pots, one for decaf and one for regular. “You grab one carafe, and we’ll do this together.”
“Don’t see the use in decaf,” he grumbled. “Pot sits full half the day.”
He was right about that. I wondered if Lorena understood just how much attention he paid to her and her surroundings. “It’s Lorena’s place,” I said primly. “We do things her way.”
“Like I don’t know that. Woman’s been calling the shots for fifty-three years.”
“Somehow I doubt it was in her plan for you to have an affair.”
“You’re not going to stay. What’s it to you?”
“I care about Lorena.”
“You think I don’t?” That look was back again, that shadow of misery.
“Then why on earth would you hurt her that way? With her own sister, of all people?” I was still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that they were related. “What could be more painful?”
He didn’t answer; instead, he reached for the carafe dangling from my fingers and proceeded to fill both, then measure out grounds and insert filters as though he’d been doing it all his life.
I was goggling at what I was witnessing, but I didn’t want to get off track. “What if she never comes back? What if you lose her?” My chest was tight and my head was about to explode. Didn’t he get the risk he was taking?
Still no response.
I couldn’t breathe. I really couldn’t breathe. My knees gave way, and I started to slump—
Only to be caught in strong arms and lowered to a nearby chair. “Put your head down,” Ray said. When I didn’t respond, he did it for me, shoving my head between my knees.
Like a jack in the box, I popped right back up. “You have to find her.”
Just then, the front door opened, and the first customers walked in. Delbert and Bo, always the early birds.
I cast a panicked look at Ray.
“In or out, girl?” he challenged.
I took a deep breath. Grabbed hold of the band on my wrist. “In.” I headed for the refrigerator.
“I’ll start the bacon,” he said. “You make the pancake batter.”
“You don’t know how to cook.”
One eyebrow lifted, and I recalled how smoothly he made the coffee. “You do know.” So why—”Well, I’ll be.” I shook my head in admiration. “Does she realize?”
Only a grunt in answer.
“You two are unbelievable.”
A shrug, and he reached past me for the bacon. Handed me eggs and milk.
The Texaco Man on the Food Channel. Wouldn’t that be a kick?
I got busy mixing, already planning who to grill first regarding Lorena’s whereabouts. I would be asking the woman some hard questions when I tracked her down.
Which you could bet the farm I would be doing.
Meanwhile, the rat bastard and I had some cooking to do.
I was crazy busy after that, running the store and cooking at the café, but Alex pitched in to help. We found we worked well together—as long as I kept my mouth shut about leaving Jewel.
After the first morning, Ray didn’t show up to eat for two days, and he worried me. On the third, he returned to the café, but he was wound so tight he barely ate half of what was on his plate. Jeremy told Alex that Ray had explained Lorena’s absence as a little vacation, but the kids knew something was off. She’d never gone on one without Ray, plus Ray’s behavior had them all concerned. Charlie took to dropping in for lunch to sit with his dad and Tommy, and Millie came over each morning to ask me if she could help. My sense was that she just wanted to be in the place her mother had always been, her presence taken for granted by all of them.
I always thanked her and gave her some task she could do while sitting, but having her there made me nervous. Her belly was so huge that I was scared to pieces that she would split wide open like an overripe melon. Birth her child right there in the café where I was barely holding my own.
At night, I began to mop twice, just to be sure the floor would be clean enough if we had to deliver that baby on the spot.
We? Who was I kidding? I knew less than nothing about babies. Not even my convenience store first aid training had taught me diddly about that. Her ever-closer due date cheered me, though. I couldn’t picture Lorena missing out on the birth of her daughter’s child.
Meanwhile, Ray avoided talking to me, I guess because he thought I’d badger him about his progress in searching for her. I wouldn’t have, though. I’d already been asking around, for all the good it had done me.
So, time to take the next step. I would go out to see Glory. I hadn’t wanted to talk to her ever again once I knew that she was a woman who would cheat with her own sister’s husband. I would never understand how she could do that. Whatever fondness I’d had for her had vanished.
But I realized that there might be something crucial I might get from her: insights into her sister’s mind. She and Lorena might have nothing to do with each other, but they were still sisters. Love or hate, sisters know each other like nobody else.
So imagine my surprise when I got back to the RV that night after closing and found a package on the steps. A sword, a real one. Even had a dandy scabbard I could wear strapped on my back. A message from Glory, I guess, that it was time to get back to work on my lessons.
I drew the sword from the leather scabbard and held it in my hand, weighing the feel of it, as perfect as if it had been made just for me. I slashed it through the air. Admired the balance, the gleam of its sharp edge.
Mine. My very own warrior woman sword. Anticipation shivered over me.
Hurriedly, I changed my clothes and hopped on the bike. Discovered that wearing a thirty-inch sword across your back while cycling was a wee bit awkward, and I was already tired from working all day. For a second, I considered how wise it was to be doing this tonight.
But truth was, nothing could have stopped me.
Geri and Freki were my escorts as I negotiated the road up to the dome. I reminded myself to stay calm and cool and unemotional.
Glory was already outside, warming up. Once I would have been admiring her grace, the economy of her motions. Not today. My good intentions evaporated at the sight of her. I stalked toward her, my mad flaring high that she had lied to me ab
out something so important. “Why didn’t you tell me Lorena’s your sister?”
Slowly she revolved, not speaking until she finished her move with a flourish. “Why would I?”
“Because—”
Glory attacked, and whatever I was going to say was lost as I scrambled to draw my new sword from the scabbard.
Then I was busy fighting for my life. I managed one block and a feint before my weapon went flying through the air. Glory’s sword whistled as the point came way too close to my breastbone.
My heart was about to pound right out of my chest, but I would be dadgummed if I’d let her know it. “You might not want to mess with me. Lorena’s gone, just vanished. Poof, like I don’t have anything else to do with my life but cook.”
“Pick it up,” Glory ordered.
“Did you hear me? Lorena’s left. She’s your sister. Aren’t you worried?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t talk.”
“But why not?” An incredulous stare from her. “Well, of course, that. But did you before?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Never got along.”
“Is that your fault or hers?”
“Just how it is. Always has been. No skin off my nose.”
“Are you kidding me?” I advanced on her. “I would sell my soul to spend five more seconds with my sister, and you don’t speak to yours. You—you cheat on her. With her own husband!” I threw up my hands. “I swear do not get you people. Your televisions don’t carry soap operas so you just create your own, is that it?”
She stood straight and still and utterly untouchable. “Are you ready for your lesson or not?”
“First you’re going to help me figure out where she is.”
“How on earth would I know?”
“You should. Think back. You grew up together. You have to know how her mind works.”
“Nope.” She crossed her arms. “She and I have nothing in common. Now, are you here to train or chitchat?”
I resisted the urge to scream. “No. I’m done.”
“Good thing I didn’t waste any more time on you. You could never have cut it anyway. Too soft.”
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 21