The pastor settled back into his chair. “I’d be heartbroken. I love her, and I can’t imagine being without her.”
“That’s it. That’s the thing. I don’t know what life is like without Esther. I can hardly remember back that far. We’re so comfortable, you know—kind of like a summer afternoon when you’re sitting on the porch swing looking at the lake, and suddenly you realize that everything is right. You wouldn’t change a thing. That’s Esther and me. We trust each other. We like each other. We even laugh at the same old jokes over and over. The bottom line is that we’re happy, Pastor. Esther and I are happy together.”
“That’s a blessing, Charlie. Not too many people can get to your place in life and say that.”
“I know it’s a blessing, but it has a downside. Chances are, one of us will die before the other. I don’t even know how to think about such a thing—and I never intended to. In my mind, I’m the one who’s supposed to go first. The statistics are stacked against me. I’m a man, I smoked cigarettes when I was younger, and my father had a stroke at sixty-three. Esther’s always been so vibrant and busy. Sometimes she acts as young and silly as she did when we first met. But when I see her like this … well, I don’t know what I’d do if she passed away before me.”
Pastor Andrew let out a breath. “I could give you pat answers, Charlie. Hold fast to the Lord. Take comfort in knowing your spouse will be joyful in heaven. Read your Bible. But the truth is, each person has to work through loss in his own way. There’s no quick and easy prescription. You will take it one minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time . . . and after a while, you will realize you can go on. You can survive after all. And eventually, you can even figure out how to be happy again.”
Charlie nodded. “You’ve never steered me wrong before, Pastor, so I’ll trust you about this. Well, I guess you’d better get home to your checkers.”
The minister stood. He walked to Esther’s bedside, laid a hand on her shoulder, and murmured a brief prayer.
As Pastor Andrew left the room, Charlie thought about calling the kids, but there really wasn’t any news to report. So he settled back into the recliner and closed his eyes. With Esther so near, breathing softly, he knew it wouldn’t be long before he was sound asleep.
“This meeting of the Tea Lovers’ Club will now come to order.” Ashley Hanes cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Hey, everyone! Be quiet so I can start the meeting.”
Cody glanced at Patsy, who was eyeing the young redhead standing at a table near the window. “Ashley’s not doing it right,” Cody whispered, leaning against Patsy’s shoulder. “Mrs. Moore always clinks her teacup with a spoon until people stop talking.”
“Shh,” Patsy said, elbowing him. “Esther asked Ashley to take over today, and she’s doing her best.”
“I miss Mrs. Moore,” Cody told her. “She keeps minutes in her purse instead of in her watch. I think that’s smart, because I’ve lost two watches already. One I accidentally dropped down the garbage disposal when I was grinding up leftovers at the Hansens’ house. The other one I ran over with the lawn mower at the Moores’ house.”
Patsy tried to keep her focus on Ashley. She was hoping for some current news about Esther, and she wasn’t really in the mood for Cody. “Scoot over, Cody. You’re dropping cookie crumbs into my teacup.”
“I think you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad. But you can’t drape all over folks like that. And for your information, Cody, there are two kinds of minutes. The minutes that a watch counts, and the minutes that are a record of a meeting.”
“You’re upset because Pete Roberts is letting his beard grow again, aren’t you, Patsy? You go to church with him, and you eat at Aunt Mamie’s, and you fish off the dock with him. But you wouldn’t go to the football game last Friday night, so he’s growing out his beard. You didn’t do what he wanted, and now he won’t do what you want. Mrs. Moore told me that’s how it is with love. It’s like a seesaw, back and forth, up and down.”
“Cody, for mercy’s sake, keep your voice down.” Patsy smiled at Opal Jones. She was grateful for once that the ninety-four-year-old widow wasn’t wearing her hearing aids. “Pete and I are not in love, Cody, and no, I didn’t want to go to the game with him.”
“Because it would be a date—and there are three kinds of dates. There’s a fruit that grows on a palm tree, and there’s a number for a day of the month, and there’s the girlfriend kind of date. That’s what Pete wanted, but you—”
The tinkling sound of Ashley tapping her teacup with a spoon finally brought silence to Cody and the others gathered in the tea nook inside Just As I Am. Patsy turned away from the young man and hoped that he would stop talking about Pete Roberts.
“Hi, everyone,” Ashley said into the silence of the room. As if the sound of her own voice startled her, she suddenly blushed bright pink beneath her freckles. “Well, I’m not used to talking in front of people, but anyhow … I went over to visit Mrs. Moore this morning—she came home from the hospital yesterday—and she asked me to read the minutes of the last meeting.”
“Is Esther on her feet yet?” one of the elderly women asked Ashley. “She’s not bedridden, is she? I heard they kept her in the hospital for two extra days because they had to run tests, and that sounds like cancer to me.”
“Or kidney failure,” someone else suggested. “She’s been having a few problems in that area lately.”
“It’s nothing,” Ashley asserted, cutting off the hum of rumors zipping around the room. “The doctor didn’t find anything seriously wrong with Esther, just the usual stuff. She has high blood pressure, like always. Her cholesterol is up. And her bones are weak.”
“Osteoporosis,” one of the neighborhood’s widows clarified. “Bone loss. You girls need to drink plenty of milk and get your exercise while you’re young, or you’ll wind up all stooped over when you get old. You’ll be a hunchback.”
“A thumbtack?” Opal Jones asked, turning to Patsy. “I’ve got a box of thumbtacks at home, and paper clips, too. I used to have a stapler, though I never was sure how to load the blame thing.”
“Ashley’s talking about Mrs. Moore,” Cody explained loudly, leaning across Patsy’s teacup to address Opal. “Mrs. Moore is sick in her bones and her blood, but that’s the usual stuff.”
Opal squinted at Cody for a moment. “Well, I’ll be.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Moore are going down to Springfield in a couple weeks,” Ashley continued, breezing on almost breathlessly. “They both plan to have their neck arteries checked out along with a few other things. Mrs. Moore told me she feels pretty good except for the bruises.”
“I heard her face is as purple as a ripe plum,” someone spoke up. “They say her eyes are almost swelled shut.”
“Like she got run over by a Mack truck,” another woman added.
“What I’d like to know is why on earth Esther drove off the end of her carport. Did she tell you what happened that day, Ashley?”
Before the young woman could answer, someone else chimed in. “She knocked down the two central posts in their carport, you know. The roof would have collapsed if some of the neighborhood men hadn’t hurried over to brace it up.”
“Brad helped,” Ashley said, mentioning her young husband. “So did Steve Hansen and Derek Finley. Mrs. Moore said to tell them thanks, and when her arms aren’t so sore, she’ll be mailing notes to everyone.”
“Mrs. Moore buys stamps to support the United States Postal Service,” Cody informed the others. “That’s because Mr. Moore used to be a mailman. It doesn’t matter if you live right across the street. Mrs. Moore will put a stamp on her letter and stick it in the mailbox, and you won’t get it for two days instead of letting me run over to your house and give it to you.”
“Thanks, Cody,” Ashley said, awarding him one of her infrequent smiles. “That brings me to what I want to say. As everyone knows, Mrs. Moore’s car ran over the backyard flower bed and one corner of Charlie’s vegetable garde
n. I think we should all go over to the Moores’ house and do some repair work. This weekend, the men are going to take down the temporary supports under the carport roof, and Brad is going to show them how to rebuild it. So I thought that would be a good time for us to help out too.”
“Ashley, you forgot ‘old business,’” Cody inserted. “That comes before ‘new business’ in the minutes.”
One corner of Ashley’s mouth turned down. “Who cares about that, Cody? Everyone remembers what happened at last week’s meeting. We’re not stupid.”
“I might be. Before I came to Deepwater Cove, some men beat me up and told me I was stupid and dumb and a moron.”
“Well, you’re not,” Ashley declared. “People are different from each other, and it doesn’t matter. Like I have red hair, and kids used to tease me. But then I wound up marrying Brad Hanes, so there.”
“So there,” Cody echoed.
“If you want to come rebuild the Moores’ garden beds,” Ashley continued, “we’ll start on Saturday morning. And I think we all should try to help, because Mrs. Moore is a good friend to all of us.”
“She brought me fresh strawberries,” Brenda Hansen said. “Last spring, I was struggling over the fact that all my children were away at college. One day Esther came over to the house with a basket of strawberries from Charlie’s garden. It made a big difference in how I felt.”
“Esther helped plant flowers in front of my house,” Patsy added. “I didn’t have time to work on the garden bed, but she took care of everything.”
“Let’s not forget it was Esther who organized the Fourth of July picnic and the Labor Day barbecue.” Kim Finley rarely spoke during the meetings. But on the matter of Esther Moore, she had a definite opinion. “Before the accident, she told me she was hoping we could do something as a community around the Thanksgiving holiday. I think that’s a great idea, and I’d like to offer to chair the committee on behalf of Esther. I want to plan something really special.”
“New business,” Cody muttered.
“I’ll help you, Kim.”
Patsy turned to find that the voice belonged to Bitty Sondheim. She had slipped into the meeting unnoticed, and Patsy was glad to see her. Bitty owned the Pop-In, a small fast-food restaurant on the other side of the salon. Coming from California, she hadn’t quite figured out how to blend in with her Missouri neighbors.
In a room full of women wearing sweaters with autumn leaves, scarecrows, and other fall motifs, Bitty had on a red tie-dyed dress with a purple fringed shawl tied around her waist. A long blonde braid ran down her back in contrast to the carefully coiffed, curled, set, gelled, and sprayed hair on the other women. More amazing yet, while everyone in the room wore sensible shoes and socks—some bearing patterns of pumpkins or orange leaves—Bitty had stuck her bare feet into a pair of sandals with such heavy soles and thick straps they looked fit to climb the Alps. Plus, she hadn’t bothered to paint her toenails.
“Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday,” Bitty said. “I have so much to be grateful for, especially this year. And besides, I need to make up for my bad attitude at the barbecue.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ashley told her. “Your frustration led you to create those Hearty Homemade Wraps that Brad and the other guys in his crew eat for lunch nearly every day. I was sick of making bologna sandwiches and hearing him gripe about them. You pretty much saved my bacon.”
Patsy took a last sip of tea as Ashley glanced through the minutes Esther had written out before the accident. Clearly the younger woman had decided most of the information wasn’t worth mentioning as she flipped through the pages. At last she raised her head. “Okay, that’s it for this meeting.”
With a faint smile, she sat down.
Patsy was about to head for the hot water urn when Brenda Hansen stood. “I don’t believe Ashley mentioned her bead business. Ladies, Christmas is just around the corner, and the necklaces are going fast. If you want to get your orders in, you’ll need to hurry. Miranda Finley has put together a lovely brochure, and the Moores have been sorting and stringing beads. Now that Esther is out of commission for a while, if anyone wants to help Charlie, that would be great.”
“I’ll help him,” Miranda said. “I have time on my hands now that my grandchildren are back in school.”
Like Bitty, the newly arrived St. Louis transplant Miranda had her own sense of style. But while Bitty was wild and wacky, Miranda appeared to have stepped out of a fashion magazine. Today she wore a pair of taupe linen slacks and a matching sweater set accented with gold jewelry. Her deeply tanned skin set off her spiky blonde hair. Patsy couldn’t help but wonder how she and her daughter-in-law, Kim, were getting along these days.
Ashley spoke from her chair. “I’m going into bracelets and headbands too. That means you can order for your kids or grandkids, if you want. And thank you, Brenda, for letting me use your basement craft room to make my beads.”
Brenda beamed. Ever since her elder daughter, Jennifer, had returned to the area to prepare for training as a missionary, Brenda had seemed more cheerful. But Patsy suspected that Brenda’s radiance had a lot to do with her joy in the rebirth of her marriage. These days, she and Steve worked almost side by side, refurbishing and decorating houses and putting them on the real estate market.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Moore we’re going to fix her flower bed on Saturday,” Ashley was saying as the women began to lay their napkins on the tea tables and pick up their purses. “I’ll let her know we like the idea of a Thanksgiving get-together too. But I’m not writing out a meeting report; that’s for sure.”
Cody elbowed Patsy. “Minutes,” he murmured. “I may not be very good at telling time, but I could do a better job than Ashley with old and new business. Once when I was supposed to be vacuuming the Moores’ house, I saw one of Mrs. Moore’s books on the shelf, and I read the whole thing. I know all about Robert’s Rules of Order, and I’m probably better at parliamentary procedure than anyone in this room. So there.”
Patsy gaped as Cody rose from his chair and headed for the pastry case. So there.
CHAPTER THREE
Esther studied the array of wilting flower arrangements on the bookshelves and end tables around her bed. What on earth was wrong with Charlie that he couldn’t remember to water them? The man had to be told what to do every minute of the day or he’d let the whole house fall to wrack and ruin.
“Charlie?” she called out. “Are you watching TV again?”
“That talk show’s on.” His voice drifted in from the living room. “The one where people get into fights and throw chairs at each other?”
Esther could picture her husband stretched out on his brown leather recliner, rumpled socks on his big old feet, wearing baggy exercise pants and jacket, a bowl of popcorn perched on his stomach. She ought to haul herself out of bed and go bop him on the head. Charlie Moore would make the worst nurse in the world.
As for cooking—well, the meals he had fixed since she came home from the hospital were so bad even the dog turned up his nose. Poor Boofer. He didn’t understand why Esther and Charlie were no longer taking him on long walks or driving him around the neighborhood in their golf cart.
As Esther edged her legs toward the side of the bed, Charlie’s head appeared in the doorway. “Whatcha need, sweet pea?”
“You are watching that awful show, aren’t you?”
“Me and plenty of other people. It wouldn’t be on TV if it didn’t bring an audience. The show isn’t so bad, Esther. In fact, it’s interesting.”
With a sigh, she leaned back on her pillow. “You miss your old mail route, don’t you? Chatting with people, finding out the latest news, checking on the condition of folks’ houses and yards, petting their dogs. That’s why you like the show, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe so. I’ve always taken an interest in people and what they’re up to.”
“Because I’m such a bore.” She focused on a bouquet of sunflowers, pretty heads bowed in r
esignation at their coming death. “If I hadn’t talked you into taking early retirement, you wouldn’t be stuck at home with an old woman who can’t even get out of bed.”
“Now that’s just plain silly, Esther, and you know it. I was happy to retire, and I enjoy our life here at the lake. You’re not an old woman who can’t get out of bed. In fact, it’s high time for you to sit up, put on your clothes, and walk around again. You haven’t been out of that bed since breakfast. The doctor told me you should be able to leave the house and walk to the mailbox by now. Let’s go outside; what do you say?”
“I don’t want to walk,” Esther said. “My bones ache, and I look like I got into a fight with Joe Louis or Muhammad what’s his name.”
“The bruises are fading faster than you think. How about if we walk to the bathroom together, and you put on some makeup? You’ll feel better once you realize you’re almost back to normal.”
Her eyes suddenly misting, Esther tried to stop her lower lip from quivering. “I’ll never be back to normal, Charlie. I’m fading away, losing my mind. I probably have Alzheimer’s.”
Charlie sat down on the bed beside his wife and kissed her tears. “Why are you talking this way, honey? What’s gotten into you?”
“Old age! I put the car in drive instead of in neutral, Charlie. I … stepped on the gas instead of the brake. And I have no idea why. I’m old and frail and falling apart—can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t. Everyone makes driving mistakes now and then. Derek Finley hit a deer one night last week. Said he tried to avoid it, ran his truck off the road, almost overcorrected, and would have landed upside down in the ditch if he hadn’t been paying attention. Just the other day, Brad Hanes rammed into a parking meter and scraped the front fender of his brand-new pickup. You couldn’t call those men old or frail.”
“Deer are unpredictable. That’s not the same as what I did. And Brad was drunk. That’s why he ran into the parking meter. Ashley told me all about it. She was devastated, poor thing. All that money down the drain to fix the truck, and a DWI on Brad’s record too.”
Falling for You Again Page 3