“Audrey . . .” He didn’t kneel but cleared his throat. “I’m moving.”
All the blood rushed to my face and my head started to buzz.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.
“Moving?”
“Yes. It’s what I’ve been hoping for. A job with the production crew for a new TV show. A real break into the business.” He stared out the window. “No more videotaping weddings and transferring dreadful home movies that no one ever wanted to watch in the first place to DVDs that will just gather dust on a shelf.”
It might not be that bad to move, I thought. A local TV show filmed in Richmond or even Virginia Beach wouldn’t be too terrible. If we moved to Virginia Beach, I still had friends there. I know I said I never wanted to leave Ramble, but maybe we could find a place on the outskirts of town . . . I stopped myself short. Caught up in what he’d said, I’d missed what he hadn’t. He hadn’t asked me to marry him.
“Where is the job?” I took a sip of my water with shaky hands, then put my nervous energy to work shredding my napkin in my lap. And no, the Ashbury doesn’t use paper napkins.
“Manhattan.”
“As in New York City? That Manhattan?”
“None other.” He gave me one of those quirky grins of his, his head held high and the pride ringing in his voice. He considered this move making the big time.
“That’s crazy,” I said, popping his balloon. He seemed to shrink into his chair. “There’s all kinds of wackos in New York. Pedophiles and mass murderers and rapists and riffraff urinating on subways and mugging joggers in the park.”
He rolled the salt shaker between his hands and wagged his head. “I’ve made up my mind, Audrey. I’ve given notice and sent in my intention letter. One of the guys in the crew had a room to rent, so that’s all settled. I start in two weeks.”
So everybody and his brother knew about this before me. Without even telling me he’d applied, his plans were all made. It seemed like he had all the details settled but one.
“What about us?” Yes, I’ll admit, it was a direct question.
He reached over and laid his hand on mine. “Audrey, you know how I feel about you.”
“Enlighten me.”
He let out a lungful of air from pursed lips. “I think this is a new beginning for both of us.”
“A beginning of what?”
“Audrey, I can’t take you to New York, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to wait for me. Maybe this is a test. Maybe in a few years I can come back to Ramble and be content. But I think it’s time to explore what’s out there, expand our horizons.”
“You mean date other people.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Don’t you think that’s best?”
I studied his face. His expression was somber, but something around the corners of his eyes gave him away. “You want to break up.”
He held up a hand. “I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. It’s written all over your face.”
“Audrey, it’s about the job.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s about all the glamorous women you think you’ll find in New York City. A bigger pond and more fish to choose from. Well, let me tell you, it’s not all Sex in the City. Not everyone is a size-two fashion model and they’re not going to line up to date some small-town videographer. A big city can also be a lonely place.”
“Audrey, keep it down, will you?”
And then it dawned on me why he was dropping this bit of news on me at the Ashbury. So I wouldn’t make a scene. Little did he know.
I stood up and pointed my finger in his face. “Well, you listen, Mr. Big-City Show-Biz Tycoon. Go to New York. Expand those horizons of yours. And when you get your fill of the skyscrapers and subways and hookers on every street corner and all that other Yankee foolishness and come back here with your tail between your legs, do me a favor.”
Brad winced. “What’s that?”
I leaned over the table, until nose to nose with him.
But I had nothing more to say. I yanked my purse over my shoulder and walked out to the applause of our fellow diners.
Kathleen Randolph left the check-in desk, ran out after me, and drove me home.
“You know what I think?” she’d said as she turned onto Ramble’s Main Street. “I swear the reason men stink at relationships is because of battle genes. When men go to war, the ones who survive are either very good at fighting or very good at running.”
“Brad’s never been in the service.”
“No, but I bet his father or grandfather has. Think about it. Johnny comes marching home again, gets married, and has little Johnnies. Sometimes I think the ability to sit down and work things out has been totally bred out of the male sex. Especially in Ramble, Audrey. After all, this town was settled by Josiah Carroll.”
“The Revolutionary War hero, I know. He was a spy. Brad’s a descendant on his father’s side.”
“Hero and spy, my foot. The only reason Carroll was able to warn the troops about the British presence was because he was running away from them at the time. Take it from me, Audrey. I’ve been married three times. And all men seem to want to do is fight or run.”
I’d thanked her, and as I leaned against my apartment door, I thought for a moment about her theory. Perhaps Brad was bred to fight or run. Or maybe he was just being a jerk. Like my dad.
Either way, I hadn’t talked to Brad since.
How I could have been so foolish as to misinterpret a breakup date for a proposal, I’m not sure. Liv suggested that maybe we believed what we wanted to. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I’d wanted to marry Brad after all. Was he the love of my life? Or were we two people thrown together into a comfortable relationship because we were both single in a small town?
Chapter 13
I woke up Saturday morning, the day of Carolyn’s wedding, scrunched down under the covers while Chester lounged on my pillows, licking my hair. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his efforts, but I had other plans for grooming that morning.
I opened him a can of something that claimed to be pot roast in gravy. I had to admit, the gravy smelled a little like real pot roast, even if the little square nuggets floating in it resembled . . . I don’t know. I tried to remember the last time I had the leisure to put a roast in the Crock-Pot before heading in to work. Maybe with some potatoes and baby carrots . . .
And then I cursed the floral business. Not really cursed. Grandma Mae would have had a fit. But I used more than a few of our approved “green” words as I pulled out the sole pair of clean underwear left in my drawer—complete with the smiling face of one Pippa the Penguin (a gag gift from Jenny a few Christmases ago). Not that anyone would see them.
Grandma Mae’s admonition to always wear clean underwear in case you’re ever in an accident rolled through my mind. I’d have to make sure I drove especially carefully today. While these were clean, I’d rather keep Pippa under wraps. Still, I had just enough nursing experience to know that in a serious accident, they’d cut them off without a glance. And even if they did get a chuckle out of them, I’d be too ill to care much anyway.
I woke myself up in the shower, belting out the corny theme song from the cartoon supposedly designed to get kids more interested in physical fitness.
Pippa the Penguin
Gliding through the sea,
Cruising on an iceberg,
Learning how to ski
With Whoopie the Walrus,
Having flippertastic fun.
Don’t glum there
In your comfy chair—
Come on, kids! Let’s run!
Somewhere along the line, my neighbor Tom added percussion to my vocals by pounding on the bathroom wall. As if I complain—or even tell anybody—when he belts out the latest Justin Bieber tune.
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But even that gleeful melody couldn’t shake off the melancholy. I grumbled more as I yanked on my scrubby work clothes on a day when most of the rest of the world slept in, lolled over their Saturday papers, or consumed humongous bowls of sugar-coated cereal while watching the fitness escapades of Pippa and Whoopie.
One look in the mirror and I knew no amount of concealer would cover the dark circles forming under my eyes. Flippertastic. Of course, when you set your alarm clock for two hours after you went to bed, and start doing that on a regular basis, those circles are bound to happen. So I packed my makeup in a bag with my dress shoes, grabbed one of my Liv-approved wedding-attendance dresses out of the closet, and booked it to the shop.
I hoped that the flower fairies—maybe the ones from all those Victorian children’s books—had come in during the night and finished our work. But no, they’re a fickle bunch, those flower fairies, and just as lazy as the laundry fairies and the housework fairies.
The empty shop was as we left it the night before—cut stems rising to flood level on the floor, our arrangements stacked in the coolers. The completed arrangements looked good, though. Our interns had gotten the hang of it quickly. The unfinished arrangements made me worry.
I microwaved some instant coffee. Someone besides the wedding coordinator would have to put a full pot on. It would be safer for them anyway. Sniffing the instant brought back a modicum of consciousness along with a long-buried memory.
As a child, Liv was a late sleeper, but Grandma Mae and I were early risers. I remembered sitting in her darkened kitchen, waiting for the teakettle to boil.
Grandma Mae never drank hot tea. In accordance with her Southern roots, tea was iced tea. But she would put the old copper teakettle on the electric stove, then rescue it just as it was beginning to whistle. She’d make us both a cup of instant coffee and we’d sit in the dark, half-awake, waiting for the brew to bring on whispered conversation. To accommodate my child’s palate, mine was weak, half milk, and with enough sugar to make a dentist go into cardiac shock. I prefer it the same way to this day. I’m still not sure I even like the taste of coffee.
But I found a moment of peace in the recollections of that hushed kitchen, a feeling of being loved and cared for. Of being encouraged. “You can do anything you’ve a mind to,” she told me on more than one occasion. “And don’t slouch,” on even more. So I forced a smile to my face, threw my shoulders back, and held my head high, just as Amber Lee stumbled in the door.
“My, don’t you look chipper,” she said. “It’s not natural.”
I chuckled and took my first trip to the cooler for peach roses.
Liv arrived a half hour later, again uncharacteristically late. Her dark circles drooped lower than mine, if that were possible, and seemed twice as deep. Which was probably why Eric had accompanied her to the shop. If she looked any worse, he’d be pushing her in a wheelchair or rolling her on a gurney. But I knew Liv would be there regardless.
“This is ridiculous, you know that,” he said. “Y’all have to sleep at some point, or you’re going to collapse.”
“Can’t collapse.” Liv kissed Eric on his scruffy cheek. “It’s too much work to get up. Besides, you know what it’s like to run your own business, the hours you put in to make it thrive.”
Eric couldn’t say much to that. While he’d been building his construction business, Liv poured her life into the shop. I wondered how they had found enough time to meet, court, and marry between all the business obligations. I barely had time to get a haircut, which was why my hair spent so much time in a ponytail.
Liv assigned Eric to floor duty, while the rest of us got to work. Dressed in his typical plaid shirt, jeans, and work boots, he looked more ready to toenail in a stud somewhere, whatever that means.
Eric isn’t a tall man—only five seven. Five eight if you count the heels on his work boots. But he was the perfect complement to Liv. He sported a perpetual stubble, which he’d shaved off just once since I’d known him, for his wedding day. Unfortunately, he resembled an overgrown ring bearer in his pictures. So the stubble remains, by their mutual consent, to hide his boyish looks. And their wedding pictures are kept under lock and key.
On the job site, I’ve seen him wearing a constant frown while barking orders. But when Liv appears, that melts away, his green eyes twinkle, and a smile appears under that jungle of stubble. Perfect teddy bear.
At nine o’clock, our team of interns arrived, looking refreshed and rejuvenated in the way only youth can. Melanie and Opie chatted like old friends as Opie showed off a new tattoo. It was nice to see her smile more. I wondered how much of the goth exterior was a lifestyle choice and how much of it was to protect herself against a society that she thought didn’t care. A little caring and those walls came tumbling down.
Once we’d finished the large altar arrangement, the boys loaded everything into the van and Eric’s truck. Leaving the shop in the capable hands of Amber Lee, the rest of us drove to the church. Liv and Eric helped unload the extensive church flowers—well, Eric unloaded under Liv’s supervision. Every time she tried to move a muscle, he jumped in and took over. When he wasn’t looking, Liv rearranged everything.
After all the church flowers were packed inside, Liv and I split up the interns in a method similar to choosing dodgeball teams back in elementary school. She and her team scurried off to the Ashbury to decorate for the reception, while my team and I started work on the church.
The First Baptist Church of Ramble was the only church in Ramble proper. Not counting the nondenominational New Hope Zion Prophetic Episcopal Missionary Pentecostal Alliance of Prayer, which met in a storefront next to the dry cleaner’s. I suspect the real name was longer, but they ran out of room when they hand-painted the sign on the windows.
But inside the historic First Baptist, a high, arched ceiling was reinforced by long wood beams jutting from side to side, beams that Carolyn wanted strung with swags of ivy and roses. Candle arrangements were to adorn the sills of the stained glass windows. And, of course, there were copious flowers for the altar and pews.
The mayor had blanched as he’d written a substantial check for the flowers. Then the family had learned that our service included only dropping off the flowers. Suddenly the mayor’s wife declared there just wouldn’t be time to put them into place and asked if we could decorate for them. Which we agreed to do . . . for a price. But that was before we knew the wedding would be the day after a major funeral.
I was grateful to have the football players to climb the ladders and hang the swags. I only hoped Carolyn and her mother had made arrangements with someone else to take them down, since that was not included in our commission. And although the overhead floral swags might survive one Sunday, after that they’d begin to wither and rot. And I doubted Pastor Seymour would appreciate that.
I had just started placing the windowsill arrangements in the stained glass windows when Carolyn’s mother, Rita, stormed in.
Rita Watkins has a habit of storming in, whether it be a light drizzle just to dampen everybody else’s enthusiasm or a full gale with flashes of anger and rolling rumbles of sarcasm. But the worst storm, the one the social meteorologists feared the most, was the sudden calm of an icy gaze. No one knew for sure what lay behind that front, but all agreed it couldn’t be good.
And as she rounded the corner and took in our work, still in its early stages, it was the icy gaze that fell on her face. I think the temperature in the old church sank by at least ten degrees.
She approached me, a pained smile forcing its way to the corners of her thin lips. “Audrey”—she tilted her head to look up at the empty beams—“I’d think the church would be done by now.”
So would I. “We’re making good progress. We were a bit delayed with all the funeral arrangements, but we—”
“So I gathered.” She swept her finger along the outline of a perfect peach ro
se, yet scrunched up her nose. “Audrey, my dear, part of running a business is keeping those contracts and establishing a realistic schedule for getting things done.”
I forced a similar smile to my face. I suspect with the lack of sleep it must have been pretty scary, because she stopped talking.
“Mrs. Watkins,” I began, my words coming out flavored like a nauseating treacle, perhaps an impersonation of hers, “I assure you that your flowers will be done in plenty of time before the wedding. Yes, I admit, we’re a tad behind schedule.” The understatement of the year. I’d planned to finish the church the day before. “But we’ve brought on extra help to compensate, and they’re doing a marvelous job. You have nothing to worry about.”
Rita stood frozen to the ground, either trying to evaluate the sincerity of my assurances or trying to come up with another complaint. “I suppose you have been busy with the funeral. I can’t fault you that. Just an unfortunate coincidence that the poor boy died so close to the wedding. And this is a large job.”
For a moment I wondered how they would have managed if Rita had gone ahead with her initial plan to order online flowers and arrange them herself. I doubted the FedEx man would have stayed around to help her decorate.
But then my mind went back to Amber Lee’s statement about Derek’s long string of girlfriends, including the mayor’s daughter.
“Did you know Derek well?” I ventured.
“Oh, you know how it is with small towns,” she said. “You get to know everybody.”
“I’d heard that he and Carolyn were once close.”
“Oh, that.” She waved the question off as one would wave off a fly at the church supper. “She might have gone out with him a few times, but I told her I didn’t see that turning into something.”
“Just didn’t get along, did they?”
“Well, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Derek . . .”
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