by Lin Stepp
“Yes. If you remember, there’s a storage room and that one apartment up there. The back has a lot of windows, but there aren’t any views out onto the park like you’re used to. It’s not a fancy place, but it does have a lot of light.”
“It sounds great, really.”
Carla made a tut-tutting sound. “You know it’s not great, Jenna, and there are two flights of stairs to climb. But it’s going to be available at the right time, and it’s close to us and to Sam. You and I will still be able to walk in the park every day, and you can live in the apartment until you find something you really like. You won’t have to sign a lease, and the rent is reasonable.”
She stopped to think. “There is some decent furniture in it, Jenna, but it’s not expensive furniture. We’ll need to go shopping and get you some new things you’ll like more. But to start, there’s a bed and some bedroom furniture, a couch and chair in the living room, a table and chairs in the kitchen. Enough so you wouldn’t have to sleep or sit on the floor.” She laughed.
“I think it might do in a pinch. When is Elliott coming back, Jenna?”
Jenna stopped to think. “Elliott’s supposed to come back sometime in the first week in May. I’ll have to check my calendar for the exact date, but whatever the date, I’ll still have time to move over to the apartment before Elliott returns. And his trip may get extended. They usually do. That would give me more time.”
“So when will you come back to New York?”
“Not until the last week in April.” Jenna tapped a pencil on the work counter. “I promised Boyce I would work in the gallery until then. Charlotte isn’t planning to come back until the first of May. But, truthfully, the other reason I want to stay until then is that I just want another month here. Spring is arriving, and it is incredibly beautiful in the mountains. I want to enjoy it a little longer and get strengthened in myself to face what is ahead for me. ”
“John and I will be here to help you, Jenna. Try not to worry too much.” Carla’s voice dropped with concern. “Are you going to be all right, Jen? You know, deep in your heart.”
Jenna thought about this. “Hearts heal, Carla. You read enough romance books to know that. And I am purposed that I am going to heal and be all right. I’m hoping work and staying busy will help, too. A friend here taught me that work has a lot more benefits than I ever realized. So I’m going to try to do more with Park Press when I get back. Jason at the Press thinks I have more potential than I’ve tapped in to. I hope he’s right. I’m going to try not to disappoint him.”
Carla giggled. “Your mother will absolutely flip when you tell her that!”
A little trickle of fear caused Jenna to have goose bumps over that comment. “Well, maybe I’ll promise Mother I will still volunteer some hours at the gallery for my social image,” she replied, trying to cover her disquiet with a joke. “Maybe that will make her feel better.”
They both laughed, and Jenna hung up. Small armies of mixed emotions still chased through her mind, but she felt wonderfully better from talking with her best friend. There were so many changes ahead for her.
Jenna walked over to look out the window. Rain still poured down in sheets outside. It looked wet, grey, and dreary. Yet, somehow her heart felt a little lighter despite the day. She had made some important decisions about her life. And it was good having new plans.
Jenna walked around straightening things in the gallery, arranging the prints in the bins, making sure the paintings on the wall were straight, organizing the gift items on the shelves. She stopped and smiled over Boyce’s birdhouses.
She and Boyce had shared many good times in the last two weeks. He tagged along to many of the dinners she was invited to, claiming he needed to help her find the way to the different houses - but grinning while he said it. They both knew he just wanted to freeload on the home-cooked meals. They went to Raynelle’s, to several of Sam’s cousins’ homes, and to Charlotte’s place. At Charlotte’s, Boyce played riotously with Charlotte and Dean’s little boy Tyler Dean, both of them having a wonderful time.
Boyce kept finding small toys tucked in his shirt and jacket pockets, and would say, “Ouch, I think there’s something poking me in my pocket right here.”
Tyler Dean would start jumping all over him, saying, “Look and see, Boyce. Look and see. See if it’s something for me.”
He’d give Tyler Dean a teasing look. “Well, why would there be something for you in my pocket?”
“Just look.” Tyler Dean would insist.
Boyce peeked and felt around in his pocket to prolong the suspense as long as he could. Finally, he would draw out some small toy, which would initiate a whole new game among them all over again.
“He’s so good with kids,” Charlotte told her that night. She and Jenna sat on the couch with Jennie Rae sleeping in a wooden crib beside them.
Charlotte looked over fondly to check on her. “You know, Dean built this crib for Jennie Rae with his own hands,” she said with pride. “And he’s fixed up this house real nice for us. He added on that back screened porch just for me so I could sit out there with the children on a nice evening like this.” She and Dean exchanged a smile that simply melted Jenna’s heart.
Their house, just a simple frame one, sat back of a rural side road outside of Townsend. A lot of the furniture had seen better days, but Charlotte had arranged everything nicely, and the love in the home made up for any lack of grandeur in Jenna’s opinion. In addition, Charlotte was a good cook and a sweet hostess. Jenna hated to say goodbye at the end of the evening.
In a surprising way, Charlotte Bratcher had become Jenna’s friend. Charlotte called Jenna every day she worked at the gallery, to see how she was getting along. Sometimes she dropped by. She had been a great help to Jenna whenever she ran into trouble at the shop.
Charlotte would say, “You just call me anytime, Jenna. If the kids are hollering, I’ll get them quieted and then call you back. But don’t call Boyce at work unless you have to. He gets real grumpy when you interrupt his painting. Una and I always call each other and put our heads together until we can figure out what to do about any problem at the shop. If all else fails, we can always go get Raynelle. Running that big store she has, she can usually figure out any little ole problem we have at our gallery. We always let Boyce think we just have everything under control.”
Jenna had quickly learned how the store worked. The Hart Gallery stood on one side of the Apple Barn and a little sandwich shop, called The Lemon Tree, sat on the other side. While the tourists shopped at the Apple Barn or the Lemon Tree, they would also come into the Hart Gallery to explore.
Boyce recognized that many people didn’t understand the value of fine art and would never pay $500 or more for a painting, or even $100, so he always had lower priced items in the print bins, and on the walls and shelves, that the tourists could buy. His picturesque birdhouses, cute signs, and painted toys always sold well, as did his small framed prints.
Once Boyce told her, “I never want to get to the place that I don’t paint and make things all types of people can enjoy. I wouldn’t feel right if just well-to-do and rich folks were the only ones who could enjoy my work.”
Jenna learned Boyce had a generous heart, too. He took time to entertain a little girl in a wheel chair with a wooden puppet one day, and then he gave it to her to take home. Another time he pretended the price of a painting was wrong, so an older man could afford to buy it for his wife.
Although Jenna and Boyce spent a lot of time in each other’s company now, they shared most of that time with others. The mood stayed light and playful between them even when alone. Jenna had become accustomed to Boyce’s light-hearted teasing. She often quipped back at him now. Sometimes, she noticed Boyce acted almost careful not to touch her in any way, even to help her into his jeep or over a rock when they went out walking. She’d actually watched him instinctively reach out toward her a few times and, then, purposefully pull back with a frown. Of course, she never let him
realize she noticed these instances - because she played many of the same games herself. She carefully avoided sitting too close to Boyce when they were together, and she dropped her eyes when their gazes met unexpectedly.
Una, the art student who worked in the gallery, came by to meet Jenna one day, and whispered to her when Boyce walked out of the room, “That is one dangerously attractive man.”
When Jenna looked surprised at the comment, Una laughed. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “There’s nothing secret going on with us that you’re not supposed to know about. In fact, there is nothing going on with us. Not that I haven’t had a few fantasies and flirted. But Boyce just sees me like a little sister.” She sighed and shrugged.
Jenna gradually realized that women were very attracted to Boyce. He wasn’t sleekly handsome like a magazine ad, but he was good looking in a comfortable, natural way and had a cute boyish charm. He always acted courtly and kind to women who flirted with him, but Jenna never saw him act seriously interested in anyone. Boyce knew many single women. They sometimes dropped by the store looking for him. But Jenna became aware over the weeks that there was no one special in Boyce’s life right now.
“When are you going to find you a girl and get married?” Charlotte asked him when they were over at her house. “Every one of your brothers and sisters are married but you. Your mama is starting to wonder if she is ever going to get any grandchildren off of you.”
“I keep falling in love with women that are already taken.” He pushed out his lower lip in a pout. “Like you, Charlotte.” He leaned over to pinch her on the cheek and wink at her.
“Oh, go on with you,” she said. “You’re just avoiding the subject with your teasing. Besides Dean would punch your eyes out if you made a real pass at me.”
They all laughed, but Boyce looked intensely at Jenna when he made that comment about women already taken and it gave Jenna a catch in her throat. Sometimes she wondered if Boyce might be developing some feelings for her, but other times she decided such thoughts were foolish. Admittedly, she often thought about Boyce in ways that were not appropriate for a woman just separated from her husband. Sometimes her thoughts and dreams embarrassed her. But she couldn’t seem to stop them.
Of course, going back to New York would put a halt to all those feelings. But, a little part of Jenna didn’t want to stop her feelings for Boyce just yet.
“It’s one of the things about being in Orchard Hollow that’s making me feel more alive,” she admitted to herself one night while she was brushing her hair. “Like Una, I enjoy being in the company of that dangerous man.”
She paused, brush in hand. “I’m scared sometimes that something will happen and Boyce will realize how I feel.” She chewed on her lip. “But I’m even more worried nothing will ever happen again – that he will never know I have any feelings for him. That I’ll just go back to New York and always wonder if there was anything between us at all or if it was just my imagination.”
She thought about that as she looked out at the continuing rain. A few stray customers came into the shop, braving the wet and shaking out their umbrellas on the porch before they started to browse. But not many.
After cleaning the store, Jenna worked on her designs at the sales desk beside the register. She learned after the first week that she often had plenty of extra time at the gallery in which she could work on her greeting card designs or verses. When anyone came in, she tucked her work quickly under the big, desk calendar beside the register. And at the end of the day, she always tucked her work back down into her tote bag to take home.
She had written a “Thinking of You” verse this afternoon, about taking time to do the things you love, to smell the flowers, to enjoy the sun, to even take a snooze in the middle of the day. For the front of her card, she drew a sunny scene of Boyce’s rustic birdhouses clustered on the old stump heading up to Orchard Hollow Road. Snuggled cozily in one of the birdhouses on a nest of twigs, was a fat, snoozing bird. Jenna watched him take shape with satisfaction.
Jenna wrote the verses for her cards and roughed out her sketches by hand on blank greeting cards. “It helps me get a feel for how they will look completed,” she told Sam once. “I hand print the verse I’ve written on the inside. I sketch out the design on the outside of the card, and then I paint in the colors to create a mock up to send in to Park Press. They get it press-ready and turn it into the finished version there.”
“What’s that little design you always put on the back?” he asked.
She smiled. “It’s my martin birdhouse logo with my design name penned underneath, J. C. Martin. I used to hand-letter it on every card but now I have a stamp to use for it.”
As Jenna stamped the back of the card design she’d created today, she studied her logo and laughed. It was funny how a birdhouse link existed between her and Boyce. It almost seemed like a quirky little piece of destiny.
Of course, Boyce didn’t know about her cards. Nor did Charlotte or anyone else here in Orchard Hollow. The Apple Barn carried some of Jenna’s cards in a display rack, but Raynelle hadn’t made the connection that the cards were Jenna’s. People knew her as Jenna Howell here; they didn’t know her maiden name. Jenna sometimes lingered near the card rack so she could hear the comments her buyers made. She used to do the same thing in New York. It helped her know what people liked.
Jenna smiled at the little design she’d created today. For the first time in a long time she was beginning to feel good about her design talents. Here in the mountains, people appreciated crafts more than in the city. She’d watched Zita Walker stitch her quilt designs, Charlotte’s mother make apple butter, and Raynelle’s husband whittle wooden whistles. Everyone here felt so respectful of even small talents. When she questioned one day whether making apple butter was really an art, Charlotte turned on her in surprise.
“Why, Jenna, I’m surprised at you,” she said. “Any God-given talent a person uses with skill and love is an art. I thought you’d know that.”
The girl was a natural philosopher sometimes. And she had taught Jenna many simple basics about life.
“You know,” Charlotte told her one day, “For a city girl, you sure are dumb about a lot of stuff. Now I don’t mean you to take offense, so don’t get mad at me. Cause when you first came down her, I was just in awe of you. You had a college education, great clothes, and walked with this smooth gait like a Walking Horse in a show ring - just effortless like, and not even realizing how polished it was. Your haircut looked so nice. And everything about you was just so put together. It made me feel downright frowzy to be around you. But then when I started to get to know you, I found we were really a lot alike in many kinds of ways. I mean, you get all excited about a pretty sunset or a big dandelion in the sidewalk just like me, and you get all emotional and sniffly like me when Jenna Rae does something cute. You hate red nail polish and red lipstick just like me. But you don’t always know stuff you should. Like how to read people or to understand things about what makes people tick.”
Curiosity and offense did a quick tap dance in Jenna’s mind, but curiosity won out quickly. Charlotte’s outspokenness was so guileless.
“Give me an example,” she said.
“Okay.” Charlotte thought for a minute. “Raynelle told me you came down here from New York City to get away because you found your husband had been getting it on with about half the women in your city. But you’re not even mad. Instead, you’re all unsure about what you ought to do, whether you should go back to him or leave him.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “Girl, it was all I could do not to scream at you when I first heard you talking like that. To hear you worrying if your folks were gonna approve if you left this jerk. I mean, who cares what they would think? Parents who won’t stand beside you in what’s right aren’t much to worry over, as far as I’m concerned. Plus, any woman who wouldn’t walk out on a jackass who had been cheating on her - as much as we heard Elliott had been cheating on you - would just b
e plumb stupid. That’s what I mean about you being dumb sometimes.”
Jenna was speechless for a minute. She felt the color drain out of her face and knew her cheeks must be red with embarrassment. “Does everyone here know everything about my personal life?”
Charlotte looked surprised. “Well, sure. This is a little place, and things get around.”
Jenna winced. “That’s so embarrassing, Charlotte, thinking everyone is talking about me, that everyone knows.”
“Don’t be silly, Jenna.” Charlotte frowned at her. “And don’t let it bother you one minute that people here know about you and what happened. This isn’t New York City where everyone has some kind of social image to maintain and where everyone plays all kinds of society games. Here everybody just shares everything, and no one’s stories stay on anyone’s mind for more than a short time, anyway. Everybody just knows about everybody down here.”
She grinned then. “You’ll get used to it if you stick around long enough. Actually, it’s kind of nice in some ways that you never have to worry about secrets. Everybody always finds out about everything that happens to you, so you finally figure out it’s just easier to tell it yourself. At least that way you know the story is right.” She laughed at her own joke.
Charlotte studied Jenna carefully then, noticing that she looked a little pale and upset. “You’re not going to be mad at me now, are you, Jenna?” Charlotte asked. “I mean you did ask me, and I just told you the honest truth.”
Jenna shook her head. “No, I’m not mad, Charlotte. I’m just shocked. I didn’t know that anyone knew, except maybe Raynelle.”
“Well, you can’t fault Raynelle too much.” Charlotte shrugged her shoulders. “I guess Sam didn’t tell her not to say anything. And besides, everybody agrees that Elliott is just a no good jerk, Jenna. Nobody thinks anything bad about you, except to feel sorry for you and to wonder why you don’t see what a creep he is yourself. Sometimes you make excuses for him and for your parents I just don’t understand. I mean wrong is wrong, Jenna. It’s dumb not to see that.”