by Webb, Peggy
"Don't you worry. If I ate any more, they'd have to declare me a state and parcel me out for homesteading." Rosalie thought of the overpriced cereal sitting in her cabinet, depriving her of at least two good chopped steaks. Why hadn't she just put it back on the shelf beside the tartar sauce and the ketchup?
Because she always tried to do the right thing. That's why.
She tied on a white ruffled apron, picked up a damp cloth, and began to scrub the pink Formica tabletops. Sometimes she wished she were the kind of woman who would pack her red high heels and her sequined jumpsuit, then get all her money out of savings and run off to San Francisco or New York or even New Jersey, for goodness' sake, instead of the kind who always stayed home to take care of everybody else.
Sometimes. But not often. She had two fine sons, good friends, enough money to keep body and soul together. What more could a woman want?
Betty took up a flat-bladed spatula and began to scrape the griddle. "What's new?" she called over the racket.
"I have a new neighbor. David Kelly."
"Irish, huh?"
"I guess." Rosalie thought of his blue eyes and thick dark hair. "Yes, I think so."
"What's he like?"
"It was hard to tell. He didn't say much."
"Not very friendly, huh?"
Rosalie remembered the quiet strength of David Kelly, the way he had seemed a part of his backyard, as if he were one of the great oaks that had grown there.
"He was just reserved," she said, defending him without understanding why. "Maybe he's the quiet type, or he could be shy."
She didn't think so, though. He had studied her with a directness that had been almost disconcerting, not in the way of a man who undresses a woman with his eyes but in the way of a man who wanted to discover who she was.
"Anyway," she added, "friendly doesn't always mean nice." Take Harry, for instance. There hadn't been a more sociable man in town than Harry Brown. And look where that had led. To a marriage made in hell.
"You're right. Why, I'd a' thought the way Harry came in here courting you, he was God's gift to widows and orphans. And look what a lowdown skunk he turned out to be."
Sometimes Rosalie thought Betty could read her mind.
The cowbell on the front door created a racket as six young people entered the cafe, and it was soon lively with the sounds of happy conversation and laughter.
Time passed quickly for Rosalie, as it always did at the cafe. She took orders with an efficiency born of long experience while laughing and chatting with customers, calling most of them by name.
Behind her, the cowbell jangled almost constantly.
"Rosalie, table one," Big Betty yelled.
"Coming."
She hurried toward the table, writing her last order as she walked. Almost there, she looked up, straight into the faces of her twin sons.
"Surprise!" they yelled at the same time. Both of them came around the table and hugged her, Jimmy on the left side and Jack on the right.
"Well have hamburgers and a hug. Mom," Jack said, laughing. "Heavy on the hugs."
"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" She squeezed and patted and hugged. "Just look at you. Are you eating enough? Are your classes hard? Do your teachers appreciate your brilliance?" She hugged and patted some more. "It's been so long."
"Yeah, Mom," Jimmy said. "Three whole weeks."
"It seems like an eternity. How did you get here?"
"Caught a ride with Shine Jenkins. He's home for the weekend." Jack took her hand and urged her into a chair. "Sit down a minute, Mom. You don't need to be on your feet so much."
"For just a minute, honey." Rosalie swallowed a big lump that came into her throat. How like his father Jack was. Always worrying about her, always petting her. He even looked like his father, big, stocky, dark-haired and dark-eyed.
Joe Mack Westmoreland rose bright in her vision, laughing, calling her his songbird. The memories of their young love had sustained her for years after his death, and now, even after the awful interlude with Harry, she was reaching back to those ancient memories, using them to remind herself that love between a man and a woman did exist, and that it was capable of thriving against all the odds.
Rosalie blinked at the sudden moisture in her eyes. Jack draped his arm across her shoulders. "Visiting with ghosts again, Mom?"
"Only one."
Big Betty brought a platter of hamburgers to the table. "You don't mind if I join you, do you?" She scooted in beside Jimmy, certain of her welcome. "There's nothing I like more than being seen with the two best-looking men in Tupelo."
In the company of her dear sons and her best friend, Rosalie reminded herself how lucky she was. What did it matter that the pillow on the other side of her bed remained undented, that the part of herself she knew existed, that hot, sweet core of passion, had been in hibernation for years?
She had her sons; she had her friends.
While they ate, Jack and Jimmy kept Rosalie and Betty laughing with their exaggerated tales of college life. Rosalie laughed loudest of all. Then those fine young men, the joy of her life, tied on aprons and helped her wait tables.
Around nine-thirty, when the noise from the cafe crowd had settled down to a contented hum, Betty urged Rosalie and her boys out the door.
"I can't leave you with this crowd," Rosalie said. "It's two hours to closing."
"Go home and enjoy your boys. If the day ever comes when Big Betty can't handle a Friday-night crowd, that's the day I take down the Christmas wreath and close the doors."
Grateful, Rosalie climbed in the front seat between her sons. Jack took the wheel and Jimmy spun yarns that had them laughing all the way home.
o0o
David was sitting on his sagging sofa reading Wordsworth when he heard Rosalie's car. There was no mistaking the labored clunking of the engine. He glanced at his watch. Almost ten o'clock. Not too late, but with an old car like that, it was damned late enough.
He laid his book on the sofa and was halfway to the window before he checked himself.
"Fool," he muttered. "She's no concern of yours."
The beautiful lyric poetry of Wordsworth captured his attention for all of five seconds, and then he heard the voices. Male voices. Not one but two.
What was this Rosalie Brown? A party girl? She hadn't looked the type.
He listened to the sounds of male laughter. What did it matter what she was? He reread the first line of The Prelude, tracing it with his finger, trying to concentrate.
"Hey, Mom?" The voice rang out on the still night air, clearly defining Rosalie's relationship with the young men. David felt a foolish sense of relief. "How long since you've been dancing?"
"Dancing?" Her laughter was clear and melodious. "I've probably forgotten how."
"What do you say, Jim? Shall we give her a refresher course?"
"Yeah. How about it, Mom?"
Doors slammed, shutting off the laughter and Rosalie's reply. David felt deprived. He sat in the stillness for a while, with nothing to cheer him except the book open on his lap and the feeble light from the overhead bulb cutting through the gloom.
Then he heard the music.
Getting up—to stretch his legs, he told himself— he wandered over to the window. Rosalie's house was alive with lights and music and movement. Two strapping young men took turns whirling her around her den.
She looked too young to be their mother. But there was no mistaking the relationship. One of them had her coloring, and both of them had her smile. It was a wide, genuine smile that lit the whole face.
David stood in the shadows of his curtains watching. The faint strains of their music echoed through his silent house, and the imagined lilt of their laughter echoed through his empty heart. He was watching love. And it was heartbreakingly beautiful. How long since he had known love, since he had felt the quiet jubilation of reciprocal affection?
The music played on. They danced, Rosalie and her sons. David clung to the shadows, unwi
lling to move away.
It was kind of nice, listening to music again.
o0o
The best of times always had a way of flying by, as if they were a holiday film on fast-forward.
Sunday afternoon Rosalie stood in her kitchen looking at three pieces of apple pie. That was all she had left of her weekend with Jack and Jimmy. They had caught a ride back to school earlier in the afternoon, taking cookies she had baked and doughnuts Betty had packed, taking their duffel bags and their liveliness and their laughter.
And now she was alone . . . with three pieces of pie.
A bird called from the nearby tree. She looked out the window and saw David Kelly in his backyard again, bent over his carpentry, his shirt damp with sweat. He was banging away with his hammer.
Not that the noise bothered her. On the contrary. She found his presence somehow comforting, though she couldn't explain why.
Leaning on her windowsill, she watched him awhile longer.
David paused in his work and turned to watch the gray squirrel gathering nuts under the oak tree. He smiled at the squirrel's antics, and so did she. From her vantage point in the kitchen, Rosalie felt almost as if she were sharing a quiet moment of pleasure with David.
Lord, she was fantasizing now, inventing secret pleasures for herself with someone who barely knew she existed. If she hadn't known she was totally in control of her faculties, totally capable of taking care of herself and two fine sons no matter what the circumstances, she might have worried about her sanity.
David's attention suddenly shifted, and he was watching her.
Caught spying. She felt foolish.
Turning quickly away, she hurried across her kitchen. As she passed the table, she spotted the pie, three uneaten pieces with nobody there to share it.
A wave of loneliness hit her so fast and so hard she had to blink back tears. Joe Mack, why couldn't you have lived to share it all? Why couldn't you be here to save me from spying out the windows at a man who makes me wish for more than I have? Why couldn't you have lived to save me from Harry and a house not my own and three lonely pieces of pie?
In that one unguarded moment the past overtook the present, and Rosalie stood in her kitchen feeling sorry for herself. She hated self-pity. If she didn't do something about it, the next thing she knew, she'd be on a crying jag.
Without thinking, she jerked up the pie and marched out her back door. David Kelly was still watching her house. Hot color flushed her cheeks as she continued her neighborly mission.
"Hello," she called, as if he didn't already see her, as if he weren't studying her with eyes so impossibly blue and clear, they made her head swim. If she had remembered how penetrating those eyes were, she might have stayed at home.
But it was too late now. She was already in his backyard, holding on to the pie.
"Hello," he said, leaving her to make all the conversation.
"I thought you might need some homemade pie."
A half-smile played around his lips, and she realized how foolish that sounded. She was so out of touch with the male-female connection that she felt as tongue-tied as a teenager.
"Not that you look undernourished or anything," she amended, looking him up and down and making things worse. He was a solid, muscular man, the kind who looked as if he'd be nice to lean on.
"My sons were home from college this weekend, you see, and you know how boys eat. . . ." She paused, wishing she didn't have her hands full so she could retie the hair ribbon she felt sagging against her neck, wishing she could disappear down an ant hole and pull the dirt in behind her, wishing to be anywhere in the world except standing in David Kelly's backyard enduring the solemn regard of his astonishing eyes.
Suddenly, he smiled. It was an unexpectedly wonderful smile, full of genuine compassion and open friendliness. Rosalie's hands relaxed on the pie plate. After all, she was glad she had come.
"I heard your music," he said. "Friday night."
"You did?"
"Yes."
For a moment his face was naked, his eyes bleak, and she felt as if her soul had touched his. But the moment passed quickly.
"I hope the noise didn't bother you," she said. "Things tend to get a little rowdy when the boys come home."
"It was a nice change."
"Yes, it was nice for a change."
"I don't take the time for music much anymore."
"Neither do I."
The unexpected confessions tumbled from them like a too-tight, too-hot blanket that had suddenly been kicked to the floor. In the quick, refreshing rush of truth, their gazes met, and their souls touched once more.
Rosalie's hand tightened on the pie plate. The hammer slid from David's hand and landed with a soft thank on the ground. She thought he leaned toward her, just a little, as if he wanted to touch, needed the contact.
The silence stretched between them, breathless and full of possibilities. Then David looked away from her—deliberately, it seemed—and lifted the hammer once more.
She was being foolish, assigning her own feelings to him. It was she who needed the contact, she who craved the touch.
"I’ll leave the pie here," she said, bending down to set the pie plate on a plank resting across the sawhorse. "I don't want to keep you from your work."
Rosalie had one last glimpse of his haunted eyes before she spun around to leave.
"Wait," David called.
Why should she wait? There was nothing there for her except one-sided conversation and a man who reminded her all too vividly that she was lonely.
"Don't go." His request sounded almost intimate, seductive.
Rosalie turned slowly, knowing her imagination was working overtime, knowing she should keep walking, but unable to do anything except stay.
"I didn't thank you for the pie," he said. "It was very kind of you to bring it over."
"It would have gone to waste."
He picked up the pie plate and sniffed. "It smells good."
"Homemade pies are my specialty. I learned the trick from Betty Malone, at the cafe where I work weekends."
"The Edge of Paradise?" She must have shown her surprise, for he added quickly, "I saw the lettering on your uniform."
That he had paid close attention to her and remembered small details made her feel cared for in subtle ways she couldn't think about right now. The mysteries of the human heart. Who was she, of all people, to understand?
"And what do you do weekdays?" David asked, as if he were genuinely interested.
"I'm legal secretary for Mackey, Mahoney, and Bradford." There was a waiting stillness in him that made her add, "It's not what I set out to do many years ago, but it's where I ended up."
"Dreams rarely come true."
The demons that seemed to haunt this quiet, watchful man peered at her once more from his eyes. And then he smiled, banishing them to some private part of himself.
"Anyhow, thank you very much for the pie."
It was a dismissal. Rosalie left without saying good-bye. She merely smiled and waved, then turned and went back to her house.
Inside, she leaned against her doorframe, feeling flushed and out of breath. Even though she was approaching the downside of the hill by some people's standards, she certainly was not so out of shape that a brisk walk across the yard put her in that condition. No, it wasn't her walk that had her breathless: It was David Kelly.
In one brief encounter she had confessed that her life was without music and without dreams. And all because she had seen the private torment in his eyes.
And what do you do, David Kelly? Pounding ceaselessly with your hammer and nails?
He hadn't told her, and she hadn't asked. She didn't know whether she had been more afraid to ask or more afraid to know.
Harry had seemed to be a nice, kind man until she got to know him. She didn't think she could survive looking beneath any more facades and discovering the devil.
It was time to go to work.
Rosalie put asid
e thoughts of her mysterious neighbor and dressed for another Sunday-night stint at the Edge of Paradise.
o0o
After she left his backyard, David stood looking at the pie. The faint scent of cinnamon tickled his nostrils. His mouth watered for a taste of home cooking, and yet he couldn't bring himself to take a bite of Rosalie's offering.
He remembered the way she had looked, standing in his yard with her honey-and-cinnamon hair coming loose from its ribbon. She had been lovely and inviting in a way that had twisted his heart . . . and loosened his tongue.
His ill-timed confession about the music taunted him. For a man determined to be alone, he had made a mistake. Confession. Whoever said it was good for the soul?
The scent of cinnamon teased him. No use letting the pie go to waste. David picked it up and carried it inside.
He got a fork from his scant supply of eating utensils, then sat at the table, eating directly from the pie plate.
His second mistake with Rosalie was even worse than his first. Asking her personal questions. He didn't want to know about her private life. He didn't want to care about her broken dreams.
But he did. Dammitall, he did.
With her lovely eyes, her soft, lilting voice, and her home-baked pie, she had opened a tiny crack in his heavily armored heart and wedged herself in.
David sighed. Maybe he should get a dog. Two years was a long time to be alone.
Chapter Three
David always woke up early. It was a lifelong habit of his that had survived a disastrous marriage to a woman who cursed the morning sun, as well as a long stint on the night shift with the Red Bay, Alabama, police department.
As he stood in his kitchen, sipping his strong coffee and eating the last of the apple pie, he looked across the way. Rosalie was dragging a chair across her kitchen floor to her cabinet shelves.
David grinned. "I knew she'd have to climb up every time she wanted a bowl of cereal."
Setting his coffee aside, he leaned on his windowsill, watching. There was nothing groggy and sluggish about Rosalie Brown at six o'clock in the morning. With energetic, precise movements she mounted the chair and reached into the cabinet for her cereal. A short pink gown and robe swirled around her legs.