Hildegard’s reasoning behind the scheme was this: People would think that Hildegard was wearing the smaller dress, and they would see her, then, as a less formidably sized woman.
The plan, of course, never worked, but no one dared tell Hildegard, and Lolly had to admit that the town took a very wrong pleasure in being in on the rather twisted workings of Hildegard Hopper’s mind.
“Would you like to try something on?” the clerk asked. “You know that the trend now is neckline accents.” She came from behind the counter and pulled out a green dress with white rickrack edging and an oversized flounce that surrounded the shoulders like a cape. “This, for example, is quite lovely. Look at the detail!”
Lolly glanced at the dress and ran her hand over the offerings in her size. None of them appealed to her.
“I’m not much on big bows and floppy collars,” she confessed. “When I’ve tried to wear them, I feel like some-thing isn’t zipped or buttoned or tied.”
The young woman laughed. She hung the dress up again and returned to her spot behind the counter. “I understand that. Say, can I ask you—are you Lolly Prescott?”
“I am.”
“My name is Sarah Fallon. My mother was Bud’s teacher a couple of years ago.”
“I thought I recognized you. Please extend my sympathies to your mother; I can imagine Bud wasn’t the most thoughtful student.” Lolly abandoned the dresses with a sigh.
Sarah chuckled. “I liked him. We had some classes together this year. He adds energy to the class.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
The clerk made a great show of wiping off the counter. “Is Bud seeing anyone?”
Lolly stopped. Could she be hearing this right? “Bud? My brother?”
She’d never thought of Bud in this context before, and definitely not with someone as stylish as Sarah. Lolly’s mind tried to put her wild brother with this fashionable young lady, and failed.
Sarah continued to focus on the glass surface of the counter. “Bud makes me laugh. I like that. We’re not exactly Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, but I don’t think that matters.”
Lolly laughed. “Him as Clark Gable? Never. Maybe one of the Marx brothers, though.” She sorted through the jewelry display on the counter as she considered the idea of her brother as a matinee idol.
“So nobody can really blame you for what you did.” Sarah smiled a bit awkwardly.
Lolly stopped investigating the necklaces and bracelets. “What I did? What did I do?”
Sarah shook her head. Her hands fluttered like dragonflies as she dismissed her own words. “Nothing. Just that you have that handsome man with you—what’s his name?”
“Colin, and he’s not my handsome anything. Well, he is handsome, but he’s not mine.” Lolly quit while what she said still made some sense. This was a conversation headed down a bad road. It was best to end it quickly.
The young woman smiled. “I understand. I sure don’t blame you. We do what we need to, don’t we?”
A customer entered the store, and Lolly fled, grateful for the interruption. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what the young woman thought she’d done. This had all the markings of the gossip-mouths in town, two of them in particular.
She wanted to hurry home, back to the security of the farm—back to her trying brothers, a mysterious guest, an always-hungry dog, and chickens that attacked women’s shoes. That was normal.
As she walked to the café, she focused on the idea of Bud and Sarah. Should she say anything to him? The temptation to rag him about it was nearly overwhelming, but she fought it. Maybe the best idea was to keep it to herself. Telling Bud about it would doom the relationship immediately. He’d undoubtedly do something like get gum stuck in that lovely hair. And if George got wind of it, he’d never let the subject die.
No, the best thing was to keep it to herself. Sometimes the young woman came to church. Maybe she could play matchmaker a bit.
The café was vacant, except for Ruth and George, and Ruth slid a cola down the counter to her with a practiced hand. “Here, honey,” Ruth said. “Cool yourself down.”
George shot the young woman a look that Lolly couldn’t quite read, and he pushed his chair back suddenly.
Ruth flushed an immediate brick red. “I didn’t mean—” she said, as the crimson deepened. “I meant—oh, you know I’d never—well, it’s August—but not that—”
“Let’s go,” he said abruptly to Lolly. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Can I at least have my drink?”
“No.” George slammed a nickel on the counter. “Keep the change,” he muttered.
“There’s no change,” Lolly began, but he pulled her by the elbow out of the café, without even a good-bye to Ruth.
When they were in the truck again, she turned to face her brother. “Well, that was rude,” she said. “Is something wrong between you and Ruth? Did I walk into the middle of an argument?”
He didn’t answer for a while, and then he simply said, “I’m taking you home.”
He was silent the entire ride home, and Lolly chewed on her lip nervously.
This didn’t bode well at all.
six
Ahead of us there is a bridge. Under the slatted wood, water ripples over moss-covered rocks that line the river’s edge and continue beneath the liquid surface. Trees arch overhead, shading us as we step onto the bridge. The planks creak as we pass over the bridge, but we hold onto each other’s hands and tread carefully. The bridge sways, but still we know the alternative is to wade across the river—and we have no idea how deep the water is, how slick the moss is, and how sharp the stones are. “Take my hand,” he invites. “Trust me.”
Colin sat at the table, peeling potatoes for her. She’d tried to tell him that he didn’t have to, but the repetitive motion was pleasant. After being on the road and then struggling to recover from acute memory loss, he was enjoying the experience of something as everyday as peeling potatoes.
Lolly’s brothers were out at the shed. George had asked Colin to give him some time to talk to Bud alone, and Colin was glad to oblige.
Plus, he liked being around Lolly. She didn’t have Bud’s unbridled wildness or George’s stodginess. Instead, she was calm and funny and capable. Lolly was the anchor in the family, although he was sure the brothers didn’t recognize that.
He dropped a curl of potato skin and Bruno snapped it up.
Bit by bit his memory was returning. There were only a few gaps in it, and he sometimes wondered if they were there because he didn’t want to remember it all.
He knew, for example, that he wasn’t married. He did know that he had been employed in the publishing and printing business in New York City, although he was vague on the details. He had some remembrance of setting out on the road—and a man and a Bible verse that he only partially remembered but which Lolly’d helped him put together again. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.
Did he trust in the Lord? It was a question that gnawed him, especially at bedtime, when his head was on the pillow but sleep was elusive in the August-hot night. He worried about himself and God. He longed for that same trust Lolly had, that God was in control, that He hadn’t forgotten this depression-ridden country, that prosperity would return, if not in the form of material riches, then as a wealth of the spirit.
He could remember, now with startling clarity, the church he’d attended in New York City; and although his brain tried to block the images, he also remembered his pride, his hubris, as it was called, in how devout he was.
But now he knew that this had been only a surface faith, that he’d never truly taken the Bible completely to his heart.
So he read the Bible the man had given him not so long ago, and each time he found himself edging closer to understanding it, but he couldn’t yet make the leap from knowing it to believing
it. His head ached some nights trying to determine why he couldn’t simply have a faith like Lolly’s.
Here he’d thought he was the perfect Christian, and she’d shown him there was much more to it.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Lolly’s voice interrupted his musing.
He laughed. “That’s about what they’re worth.”
“You looked so serious sitting there.”
He could hear the concern rising in her voice. “Peeling potatoes is serious business,” he answered lightly, hoping to allay her anxiety. “Are those carrots ready yet? I think it’s about time to add them to the pot. Let me finish this spud. Is this about the right size you want them cut to?”
He continued to talk as he scooped up the potatoes and carried them to the large stewpot, in which meat cubes bubbled in a savory gravy. “Sure smells good,” he said.
She moved aside to let him slide the potatoes in while she continued to stir. Today her hair was tied back with a red ribbon, limp from her work at the stove.
As they stood shoulder to shoulder at the stove, billows of pungent steam wrapped around them.
“You know, this is better than the most costly French perfume,” he declared. “Actually, if Chanel had thought of it, she’d have bottled it.”
On a whim, he seized her by the waist and whirled her around, setting her squarely in the middle of the room. “Lolly, let’s capture this in a bottle, and we’ll sell it and be millionaires! We’ll travel to the south of France, and be the toast of Paris society, and we’ll eat oysters and lobsters and steaks every day, served to us on the finest bone china. For dessert, we’ll dip strawberries in chocolate and eat truffles with our fingers. What do you say? Shall we?”
Her face was only inches from his, and for a moment neither one of them spoke.
He realized, with some surprise, that it would be so easy to bridge that gap, put his lips on hers—and that he wanted to. But those inches might as well have been miles. He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that, not until he knew her heart.
Plus, it wouldn’t be right, not with him still living here.
He pulled his hands away from her waist and laughed, a bit rockily. “Maybe not. Somehow I don’t think Eau de Beef Stew would be quite as popular as Chanel No. 5.”
She smoothed the front of her apron. “Well,” she said, “I suppose—”
Her words were cut short by a shrill “Yoo-hoo” from the open front door. The sound carried to the kitchen like a rusty saw on metal.
“Oh, no. Please, no,” she said under her breath. But he noticed that she had managed to create a smile as she walked to the door.
“We can tell that you’re getting ready to eat,” Hildegard began, and Colin forced himself not to roll his eyes. Why on earth would they come by at this time of day? Didn’t they know that most people were getting ready to eat? In order for them to skip dinner, he realized, they must be on the trail of something more delicious than Lolly’s stew.
“Yes, indeed, I’ll be serving very soon,” Lolly answered.
“What are you making for dinner?” Hildegard asked, sniffing the air and looking for all the world like Bruno, who sat at attention near Colin’s feet, his snout poked upward and quivering in delight at the aromas swirling around him.
“Nothing more exciting than stew,” Lolly said.
“You know, we heard the most interesting story today,” Hildegard burbled. “Didn’t we, Amelia?”
Her sidekick nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, we did. Very interesting, indeed.”
“That’s quite intriguing, and I’m sure we’d love to hear it, but—”
“Oh, you would enjoy this story, I’m sure of that. Wouldn’t they enjoy it, Amelia?”
“Both of them would,” Amelia agreed.
“Well, it will have to wait for another time, I’m sorry to say, unless of course—”
Colin’s hands cramped from the fists he made. Certainly Lolly would invite them, out of politeness. They couldn’t accept, could they?
They couldn’t, Hildegard explained. They were just out for a drive and thought they’d stop by and say hello. But since they’d obviously caught Lolly and Colin at a bad time, they’d visit another time.
Don’t turn around and look at me, Colin said to Lolly silently. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
Lolly kept her composure and within seconds the women were on their way to Hildegard’s DeSoto.
Colin smiled as Lolly adroitly maneuvered the two women into the car. She was quite a woman. If it had been up to him, he would have ushered them right out the back door, into the unwelcoming midst of the chickens.
“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” Lolly said as she stared after the car. “They saw us, and they’ll make the most of it.”
“They saw nothing,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “How could they have seen anything? We were in the kitchen. Plus, it’s not like we were doing anything scandalous. If they had seen anything, it would have been nothing more than two friends who care for each other very much. What’s newsworthy about that?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “In their hands, nothing becomes something very quickly.”
“Perhaps.”
“I wonder what the story was that they were talking about.” She frowned. “Today in town, people were acting really odd.”
“Here? In Valley Junction?” He laughed.
“I’m sure it’s just another of their tales, something little that they’ve made into national news. Call FDR himself, and have him put it in one of his Fireside Chats. Lolly, I suspect that almost everybody in Valley Junction knows what they’re like, that their stories can’t be trusted. I wouldn’t worry. Maybe you could enjoy the notoriety, which I suspect will be short-lived without verification from another source.”
She laughed. “I could enjoy notoriety? What a thought! Meanwhile, go get my brothers and tell them to get ready for supper. And tell them that their sister is notorious. They’ll like that.”
George and Bud were pulling down an old storage hut that had seen better days, with the plan that the wood could be used for other projects. Already a neat stack of boards was placed beside the partially razed lean-to.
Bruno accompanied Colin, staying close at his heels until he saw a butterfly that he chased and amazingly caught—and ate. That dog was an omnivore, for sure. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t eat.
As Colin got nearer, he could hear George and Bud’s words clearly.
“Bud, you shouldn’t have done that. Ruth told me. The story had already gotten over to her.”
“It was funny. You’ve got to give me that. I mean, jeweled shrubbery? When was the last time you saw a bush with diamonds hanging on it? You show it to me, because I’m tired of being poor. Let’s harvest those diamonds!”
“Funny for you. Not funny for Lolly.” George pounded a board free. “You have to think before you speak, little brother. This is really going to hurt her.”
Colin’s stomach tightened. This didn’t sound at all good. He stepped behind the barn, just out of their direct sight, but where he could see and hear them. He didn’t want to eavesdrop, but this didn’t seem to be a conversation he could rightfully interrupt.
“Nah, she’s a tough one. She’ll be mad at me but she’ll get over it, eventually. She’s no little delicate flower waiting for her prince to come riding in.” Bud snorted.
“She isn’t? You read it. You know what she wrote. Put one and one together and see if you don’t get two.” George glared at his brother.
“Why wouldn’t I get two? What do you get when you add one and one?”
George shook his head. “Honestly, some days I just don’t know about you. I think you’re putting one and one together and getting one and a half.”
Bud stood up. “You’re talking in riddles.”
“I’m talking the truth here, Bud. You have to tell her.”
“I don’t want to.” Bud kicked one of the loose boards, and the tidy pile fell apart. “She’s going to be mad.”
“You can be sure of that. Tonight, after dinner, you have to tell her what you did,” George announced. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“You mean it’s the scary thing to do. She’s going to kill me.”
“If you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, she’ll let you live and she’ll make you suffer for a long, long time. Deservedly so, I might add.” George began rebuilding the stack of boards. “You’re going to be in big trouble, brother. Big trouble.”
Colin coughed and crashed against the side of the barn, just to make noise to let them know he was near. Bruno, having finished eating the butterfly, stopped to bite off a dandelion and swallow it.
“Dinnertime,” Colin called to the brothers. “Lolly made stew.”
“I don’t want to go,” Bud began, but his brother grabbed him by the elbow and led him toward Colin, saying some-thing that Colin couldn’t make out. But by the set of George’s jaw, he could guess the gist of it.
This was going to be an interesting night.
❧
“That was excellent stew, dearest sister,” Bud said after dinner. “Now I think I will end the meal with a nice stroll outside.”
“Not so fast,” George said. “Lolly, leave the bowls. Bud has something he wants to tell you.”
“I can listen and start the dishes at the same time,” she said. “You know I don’t like to let them sit and get crusty. They’re harder to wash that way.”
“I suspect that you shouldn’t have anything in your hands when you hear what Bud has to tell you. Bud, tell her. Now.” George leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.
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