by Anna Jeffrey
She was sitting at a table when he entered, shuffling some papers. An aroma of cooking fruit and spices filled the large room. He stepped into her line of sight. “Baking something good, huh?”
She looked up, her head cocked, fresh lipstick glistening on her heart-shaped lips. “Apple pies.”
He walked over to her table, pulled out a chair and helped himself to a seat. Her musky perfume threaded through the food smells. “Sorry I’ll miss getting a slice. I’m leaving town. I stopped off to pay my bill.”
“You’ve only eaten here once since you got back.” She returned to reading the piece of paper in her hand.
He had no trouble detecting a bristly tone. So she had noticed he hadn’t been into the cafe to eat. “I know,” he said. Are you upset about that?”
She looked up at him, unsmiling. She probably wanted to give him a piece of her mind about something. Too bad. Despite how much he had come to want her abrupt, but commonsense opinions, the days when he listened to her were over. She would soon be a married woman, which considerably lessened her influence. “Something’s come up. You happen to know what I owe or do you need to look it up?”
“Six dollars,” she answered curtly. “Forget the cents.”
“Great.” He stood up and dug his money clip from his jeans pocket, peeled off a ten and handed it to her. “Keep the change.”
“No.” She grabbed the ten, got to her feet and quickstepped to the cash register.
He sighed mentally and waited for her to make change. This was not how he had meant this meeting to go. “You didn’t say the other day. When’s the wedding?”
She slammed the cash register drawer and handed him four dollars. “We haven’t decided.”
The answer he wished he could hear was, It isn’t happening, but that was a silly notion on his part. “Well, good luck.” He concentrated on folding the change she gave him into his money clip, then he turned and made for the front door without giving her a direct look. “See ya,” he called, refusing to look back.
Outside, he jerked his truck door open and climbed in, fired the engine, then sat there a minute staring at the junk in the display windows and thinking of how much effort it took to keep those two giant windows clean. A visual came to him of Marisa standing on a ladder washing those windows, her arms lifted, her midriff and that belly button ring visible. He thought of lifting her off the ladder and her body sliding down his, her smiling that bright white smile with those full lips as he held her and—
Fuck! “Okay, dammit,” he grumbled, “just go ahead and marry an old man for his money.”
He pulled out onto the highway and pointed his truck toward Pecos. His next thought was he hadn’t noticed any reduction in the inventory in the Pecos Belle’s flea market. Curious. And problematic. That mountain of junk would have to be liquidated and in this part of Texas that would be a monumental task, hardly one a single woman caring for a sick person could easily accomplish.
Well, surely those aunts would help when the time came.
At Pecos, he connected with I-20. As the interstate stretched out ahead of him, crowded with heavy truck traffic, his mind began to put together his plans. On this trip to Fort Worth, he would accomplish what had languished while he had floundered and worried about Agua Dulce’s odd population. He wouldn’t return to West Texas until he and Brad had settled on a final plan for Ledger Ranches retirement community, until he had designed a marketing strategy with which Kim could move forward and until he and Chick had settled on half a dozen home designs.
He would be too busy to think about Marisa. In a way, her being tied to Lanny was a good thing. It hardened his attitude toward both her and the Agua Dulcians and he no longer felt guilty or obligated.
****
When’s the wedding?
For a few seconds Marisa totally gave herself over to the fear those words set off, fear that had chomped at her like a hungry wolf ever since Lanny proposed and she had failed to tell him the idea of their getting married was too outrageous to consider.
For a few more seconds in the empty café’s silence, she let herself imagine how it might be if it had been the other millionaire she now knew who had proposed to her. Terry Ledger of the quick smile, the sun-streaked brown hair, the agile-looking hands....The soft lips and the sturdy, young body.
Well, not entirely young, but younger than fifty-five. Shit, shit, shit. Everything about him appealed to her, though her good sense told her it was too ridiculous for a grown woman to be swooning over the unattainable.
Better to focus on the doable, right? In the two weeks since Lanny proposed, he had proved to be an even gentler, nicer man than she had first thought. The perfect suitor. He had been to visit her in the café often, had been to visit Mama. He had taken her to dinner in Odessa and Midland several times, hiring a nurse out of Kermit to watch over Mama for the few hours they were gone. He hadn’t shown up yet with the promised diamond ring, but every time he came into the café, she wondered if he had it in his pocket. She had no doubt he would bring one. No man had ever spoiled her like she believed Lanny might.
She had discovered in him a sense of humor she hadn’t known he had. He could dance. He was a news junkie, so he knew every current event and was interested in politics. He could quote every daily cattle price in Texas. A life different from the one she had imagined when he first proposed began to unfold in her mind's eye and she had begun to think living with him as a companion could be interesting and even a joy.
Not once had he pressured her for sex. She hadn’t offered it, either. Even as positive as her thoughts about him had become, she still hadn’t reconciled herself to crawling into bed with him.
The whole damn thing was insane. Just insane.
The kitchen timer dinged and jolted her from her woolgathering. She stuffed the bills she had been sorting into a file folder and went to the kitchen, where the cinnamon-laced apple pies were baking. She was removing them from the oven when the front door chimed. She glanced toward it and saw two tall women. It was early for tourists unless they had spent the night at the Starlight Inn.
Chapter 18
When the pair came closer and sat down at the lunch counter Marisa recognized the older one, though she hadn’t seen her more than once or twice since high school. Lanny’s older daughter. She had been dark-haired in school; now she was blond.
Marisa gave them a quick head-to-toe, not failing to note that they weren’t wearing rags. Nor were they poorly shod or lacking in flashy jewelry. An uneasy feeling niggled at Marisa. Pecos Belle’s wasn’t a likely hangout for Lanny’s well-to-do kids.
She set the pies on trivets to cool and, wiping her hands on a towel, walked out of the kitchen and greeted the two women. The three of them went through the inane high-school-reunion-how’s-your-mother conversation. Old home reunion week. Phony. Marisa offered them coffee.
“I’d rather have iced tea,” the younger one said. She was also blond. The older one said she, too, preferred tea.
While Marisa filled plastic glasses with ice and tea, she prodded her memory. She knew from gossip that Lisa Winegardner, the daughter who was the same age as Marisa, had left home for college in Austin, but later flunked out. While there, she had met and married some kind of computer wizard and remained in Austin permanently. The younger daughter, Kristy, had soon followed her sister, but hadn’t married. She now held a part-time token job in a retail store and spent her free time playing golf and taking class after class at the University of Texas. Everyone knew neither of them had ever seriously worked for a living and never would.
Marisa had been back in Agua Dulce over a year now and couldn’t recall seeing or hearing of either daughter coming to visit Dad even once before now. Her sixth sense told her why they had come as a team today, but she refused to believe the worst unless she heard it from their mouths. “Just passing through town?” she couldn’t resist asking.
“We came to visit our father,” Lisa said, hooking wispy strands of blond h
air behind her ear with two elegantly manicured fingers.
“It’s been a while since you were up.”
“I’ll get right to the point, Miss Rutherford—”
“Miss Rutherford?” Oh, hell, Marisa thought. Her instinct was right again. “Gosh, when we were on the volleyball team in Wink, you called me Marisa.”
Lisa stiffened, a near snarl crossing her perfectly outlined lips. “Marisa, then. I’m saying it right out. I want you to leave my father alone.”
The younger sister didn’t speak, but holding her glass of tea with fingers tipped by talon-like red nails, she sipped and turned her head away.
The words, “my father” didn’t fit the Lanny Marisa had come to know. “Dad,” maybe, or “Daddy,” but not “father.” She placed a fist on her hip and gave her future stepdaughter a direct look. “Maybe he’s the one you should be talking to. I haven’t bothered him. He came to me.”
“I doubt that. I know how it goes. A younger available woman, an old man—”
“I beg your pardon. I’m not an available woman. And your dad isn’t an old man. And I didn’t—”
“He’s twenty-two years older than I am, Marisa. That means he’s twenty-two years older than you.” Her brown eyes turned almost black. “My God. My mother would turn over in her grave if she could see what’s going on.”
The memory of Lanny’s negative remarks about his marriage flew into Marisa’s mind. She couldn’t keep from narrowing her eyes. “And what do you think is going on, Lisa?”
“Oh, get real. You’re not fooling anyone. Your mother ...Everyone knows about her and Clyde Campbell.” A smile Marisa could describe only as malicious quirked the corners of Lisa’s mouth. “But in the end, putting out for an old man didn’t do her any good, did it? She didn’t wind up with a penny of Clyde’s money, did she? I’d think that would be a lesson—”
“Just stop right there.” Marisa could feel the very blood in her veins flaming. She just might punch Lisa Winegardner’s face. “Who do you think you are, coming into my business and spouting insults? My mother never wanted Clyde Campbell’s money. God knows, that lying bastard lost her more than she gained.”
Lisa’s eyes shot daggers. “I know a gold digger when I see one. Like mother, like daughter.” She set her glass on the counter with a thunk. “My brother’ll be here today and we’re going to have this out once and for all. You might as well know right now you’re not getting your hands on a penny of our family’s money. The estate’s been set up for years and no one’s touching it. I’m telling you again. You leave him alone.”
She started to rise, but Marisa rounded the end of the lunch counter, her fist clenched at her side. Lisa’s eyes bugged. She sank back to the stool and clutched an oversized handbag to her chest like a shield. Kristy stood up and backed away. Lisa scooted backward off her stool and stood up, too. In her high heels, she was at least a head taller than Marisa.
Marisa lashed out. “You know something, Lisa? If you’d show up once in a while and be a daughter to your dad, you might see how lonely he is.”
Before she punched the dumb blonde’s lights out, Marisa breezed past her and started for the back exit. Then she stopped. Why should she flee? She hadn’t done anything wrong. She turned back to her antagonist. “On the other hand, a visit from you would probably be a waste of Lanny’s time. You’re too damn selfish to care about him and too damn dense to see how bleak his life is. Come to think of it, you always were dense as a fence post. I remember what a hard time you had graduating from Wink High School.” Marisa thrust out her hand and pointed toward the front door. “Just get out of here. And take your accusations with you. If you’ve got an axe to grind, take it up with him.”
Marisa stomped out of the café into the apartment and slammed the door. She was shaking all over as she sank to the sofa in the living room. What had she done?
Told off her future husband’s oldest kid, that’s what.
And said daughter had been afraid Marisa might hit her.
“I’ve got to learn to control my temper,” Marisa muttered to the empty living room.
****
At lunchtime, Marisa returned to the singlewide to check on Mama and get her lunch together. She found artwork thumbtacked to the walls all over the mobile. Marisa couldn’t have found a thumbtack in that mobile home if the alternative meant being on the wrong end of a firing squad, but Mama had found some somewhere. Amazing. For a moment she worried about the holes the tacks made in the walls, but on second thought, Mama didn’t own the mobile and Terry was probably going to get rid of the damn thing anyway. So what difference did a few thumbtack holes make?
To her astonishment and Tanya’s, Mama was producing some interesting watercolor art. Abstract, but interesting. Jake did the framing for Tanya’s oils, so she’d had him frame a couple of Mama’s watercolors and they now hung them in Tanya’s museum. One of them had actually sold.
Where the ability came from Marisa didn’t know, but Mama appeared to have some knowledge of which colors went together and how. She and Tanya had conversations about how violet contrasted so nicely with gold and how mixing red and green made brown and Mama seemed to understand what Tanya told her.
She no longer spent her days in front of TV. Now she painted for hours. Sometimes she missed the paper and painted the tabletop, but most of the time, Marisa could wash off the damage. Though she was happy that Mama had something to do, she was annoyed that the person who had presented the watercolors had been Terry.
Terry, the will-o’-the-wisp. He was probably getting close to Fort Worth about now.
Something’s come up.
I’ll bet, Marisa thought. What had come up was probably in his shorts and he probably had a big date with some hot blonde.
“Hey, good job,” she told the artist, looking at a conglomeration of colors that could be a flower bed or a garden.
Her mother went into a long explanation, pointing out details with color-stained fingers.
The tension of the earlier confrontation with Lanny’s daughters began to melt away as an unavoidable truth came to rest within Marisa. This, here and now in this mobile home, was her real world, shared with a gentle woman incapable of the kind of selfish meanness demonstrated by Lisa Winegardner. Marrying Lanny would be thrusting Mama into an environment Lanny’s vicious daughters would be a part of. Marisa couldn’t do that to her mother.
****
Morning came with the blue skies and bright glory of a summer day in the desert. And all the heat.
As Marisa opened the cafe, Ben met her at the front door. She hadn’t seen him so early in the morning in weeks. He was shaved, his shaggy hair was combed. He had on a faded but clean tan T-shirt and clean khaki cargo shorts and she could tell he had bathed. He might be more sober than usual, but she still detected the faint odor of alcohol. “What are you doing out so early?” she asked him.
“Just checking to see how the world turns at seven o’clock.
Ben always spoke with a drawl, but this morning he didn’t have the alcohol-induced slur she had become accustomed to hearing from him. She led him through the flea market back to the café.
“How’s Raylene this mornin’?” he asked, following her like a puppy.
Marisa put coffee on to drip, drew water for fresh tea, then moved into the kitchen and turned on the flame under the griddle. “She was at the table painting when I left.”
The aroma of brewing coffee filled the air. Ben leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb and watched as she set up the kitchen for the day. Salt and pepper, a shaker of her own special blend of seasonings, olive oil--“Et cetera, et cetera,” she mumbled to herself as she worked.
“Ain’t that somethin’ she can paint pictures?”
“I’m blown away by it. So is Tanya.” The coffeemaker gurgled, signaling the brew wasready. “Get us a cup of coffee, will you?”
She flicked a few droplets of water on the griddle, testing the temperature. The drops bounced and transforme
d into steam, so she pulled two sausage patties from the freezer and placed them on the griddle. “Since you’re here, you’re having breakfast,” she declared. “Sausage and eggs.”
“Lord, girl, you’re always trying to feed me. What makes you think I want to eat?”
“Don’t argue,” she scolded. “Do it to please me. And start off with a cup of coffee.”
He backed out of the doorway and sauntered to the coffeepot. “Guess you heard about the ruckus out at Winegardner’s.”
Aha! The real reason Ben had come to the café so early. A riffle of uneasiness slid through Marisa. All night she had imagined Lanny’s kids swooping down on him like vultures. Turkey vultures. “What happened?”
“It was all about you, darlin’.”
Twenty-four hours hadn’t passed since yesterday’s appearance by Lisa and Kristy. Marisa had never figured out how Ben seemed to be the first to know every crumb of gossip. “I’m not surprised. Lisa was in here giving me hell yesterday.”
Ben returned to the doorway, handed her a cup of black coffee with a trembling hand. “Poor ol’ Lanny. Guess he had it out with his kids.” He set his mug on the counter and dug a crushed pack of Camels from his T-shirt pocket. “I hear they left the ranch late last night, worried about where their next new Jag’s comin’ from.”
Marisa gasped and frowned. “You can’t smoke in my kitchen.”
Ben growled and mumbled as he returned the cigarettes to his pocket.
Marisa continued to frown as guilt for her role in upsetting Lanny’s family pinched her. “I thought they had trust funds. I thought they could buy anything they wanted forever.”
“Well, darlin’, what Daddy giveth, Daddy can taketh away.”
“Shit,” Marisa muttered.
“There ain’t nothing Lanny ain’t done for those kids, but not a one of them gives a shit about him.” Ben sighed, picked up his mug and took a long swig of coffee. “They never were Lanny’s kids anyway. They were always just Joyce’s. That woman spent most of her time on this earth turning those kids against their daddy.”