by Kay Shostak
Jordan flops back in her seat. “And you just let her get away with lying? This place is lousy with people not saying what they really mean.”
“She said nothing about fainting? Or going to the hospital?”
Susan shakes her head. Then she points at the stop sign ahead of us. “At the corner, turn left. Let’s go downtown and check it out. I think there’s a soda fountain in an old drugstore where we can get a sandwich.”
We find the drugstore. It smells like medicine underneath, but over that is the smell of cooking. Frying butter, mostly. There are stools along the soda fountain, and a few tables sit up right next to the drugstore aisles. It’s early for lunch so we have our choice of seats.
We sit at one of the tables, and the girl behind the counter is there before we get settled.
“Here’s today’s lunch menu. Can I get you something to drink?” She hands us handwritten sheets of paper. Jordan tells her water, I agree with that, and Susan orders a Coke.
Jordan never looked up at the girl, and so she’s read the entire menu by time the girl heads off to get our drinks. “Grilled Cheese, Grilled Cheese with Ham, Ham and Cheese Sandwich, or,” she flips the paper over, “nope, that’s it.”
We laugh as we look at the back and see that that truly is the entire menu. “This is worse than Ruby’s,” I say.
When the girl brings our drinks, she explains. “Our cook retired last week, and so the owner is just trying to muddle through until we find someone. Luckily everyone likes her grilled cheese pretty good. And there’s nowhere else to eat until you get near the interstate.”
Jordan says she’ll take a grilled cheese and ham, Susan asks for the same, and I just take the plain grilled cheese.
“So, what do you think is going on with Laney?” I ask.
Susan flings her hands off the table a bit. “Who knows? Probably dieting again and hasn’t eaten anything in a couple days. That’s how she always lost weight for pageants. She sounded just fine. Hope she’s not sick.”
Jordan takes a sip of her water after examining the glass for smudges and dirt. “Not sure how her B&B is going to go. This place seems deader than Chancey and not nearly as cute.”
“I agree. Too many convenience stores and no real downtown area. And comparing our B&B to that one…” I grimace. “No way. It’s too cluttered and dark. Smelled dingy, too.”
“Knowing my sister, she’s bitten off more than she can chew, and she doesn’t want anyone to know,” Susan says. “That’s partly why I didn’t call her out. No reason to rub her nose in it.”
Jordan grins. “Plus, she’d just lie some more.”
I raise my water glass to clink it with Jordan’s. “Ma’am, you are figuring out the South just fine.”
Our waitress drops off three bags of potato chips and then lifts plates from the bar behind her, and we see why the menu can be so limited. The bread is thick, and the cheese is, too, gooey and glistening. The ham on Susan and Jordan’s sandwiches is not from a package. I bite into my sandwich, and the crispness of the outside gives way to soft, homemade taste. This may be the best grilled cheese I’ve ever eaten.
We don’t talk as we all three eat. We ummm, ahhhh, and shake our heads in wonder. By the time, we finish there isn’t an empty seat, and the room is buzzing.
“Everything good here?” the girl asks as she walks past the end of our table. We nod as she says over her shoulder, “When you’re ready to pay, just tell the man at the register up front what you had.”
“This lady could make a fortune in Manhattan.” Jordan wipes her hands and drops her wadded napkin onto her plate. “Guess we should make some room for those folks.” A line had formed through the drug store.
“Looks like she’s making her fortune here, and she doesn’t have to live in New York,” Susan says.
Jordan blinks at Susan in disbelief. “Do you people not know that most of the world would give anything to live in New York City? Get out of these little towns like this?”
Susan steps to the counter and pulls out her change purse. “I love little towns like this and like Chancey.”
“You get it, don’t you, Carolina?” Jordan asks as she turns around to me, where I’m trying to stay out of the conversation. “Don’t small towns make you feel suffocated? Like trying to live in a box? Or instead of a box, more like a cage?”
I shrug and step back to pick up a package of gum as the cashier shows up. We pay, and as I’m the last one to leave the store, I think about it. How do I feel about small towns? Funny, I used to know for sure that I hated them. I’m not so sure anymore.
Huh. Funny.
Chapter 29
A warm car, full stomach, and more silence meant a little dozing for me in the back seat on the way back to Chancey. As we are looping around the final curves into town, I fully wake up and sit up straight. The way Jordan’s head is leaning, I think she’s napping, too. Susan smiles at me in the rearview mirror. Pulling my phone out of my purse, I see that Patty has called me a couple times, so I call her back.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Can you come to the bookstore?” she asks.
“Sure. We’ll be there in a bit.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me, Susan, and Jordan.”
“Jordan’s with you? We thought she’d run off.”
“Run off? Where would she run off to? Why were you looking for Jordan?”
Patty doesn’t say anything for a bit, then with a sigh, says, “Bring her, too. Jordan, not Susan. I mean, Susan can come if she wants, but you don’t have to bring her. But bring Jordan. Okay, bye.” And she hangs up.
Jordan is awake. “Who’s looking for me?”
“Patty, I guess. Probably folks wondering why MoonShots was closed.”
She pulls at a crick in her neck. “Yeah, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to just close it like that, but I had to get away.”
Susan pulls the car up to the square and pulls into an angled spot on the side. We gather our purses and climb out of the little car. MoonShots being dark looks strange. Funny how quickly I’ve become used to it being there, clean and well-lit. As we near the bookshop, we can see people inside, but the afternoon sun makes it hard to see more than just shapes. Susan pulls open the door and steps back for me and Jordan to enter.
“Maaaaamaaaa!” squeals burst out, and Jordan is hit with a little body. Looking up there is the cutest toddler headed our way also. She’s also squealing, but not in real words. Susan and I edge in behind Jordan, who’s now bent down and wrapped around the first child. The toddler reaches them and is enfolded in her embrace.
Patty meets me and Susan as we move around the huddle and into the store. Stepping away from Jordan and her girls squeals, we hear crying. Patty grimaces at me, then moves to the side so I can see the couch in the bookstore. Anna sits there, huddled over and sobbing. Patty just shrugs and grimaces again, so I go over to sit beside the young woman. It’s rather noisy and confusing, but as the little girls calm down, Jordan brings them over to the sitting area. She hesitates when she realizes Anna is crying.
“Oh, what’s wrong?” Jordan asks as she sinks into the chair across from us and the girls arrange themselves in her lap.
Anna shakes her head, but doesn’t look up. Patty and Susan move to stand behind the couch. Patty is wringing her hands, and Susan is looking at her phone.
“Patty,” I ask, “What’s going on?”
“Anna and Missus got in a big fight about the wedding. Big fight. Momma just went to talk to Missus.”
Oh, no. Gertie doesn’t exactly talk, she more demands, belittles, then dismisses. Not sure that’s going to go over well with Mrs. Shermania Bedwell. But it’s hard to worry about that while looking at Jordan. It’s as if her daughters have pumped her up, like air does an inflatable bouncy house. Everything about her looks full and alive. I grin inwardly. Diego will know she needs to be with her girls when he sees her like this.
Susan is still scowling and typing on h
er phone. Patty sits on the arm of the couch and pats Anna’s back. My arm is still around her, and her crying has quieted. In the excitement of seeing their mother, the little girls hadn’t noticed Anna at first, but now they are staring at her with sober faces. So, I interject, “Girls, have you seen your mommy’s apartment?”
The oldest one shakes her head for both of them. I lift my arm from around Anna and stand up. “Hi, I’m Miss Carolina,” I say as I bend and offer a hand to the little girl with long, blonde curls.
She lifts her chin and extends her hand. Jordan prompts her. “Say ‘hi’ and tell Carolina your name.”
“I’m Francie. This is Carly. She’s still a baby.”
Carly tucks her little round face into her sister’s back. All that’s left poking out is her brown hair, held back from her face with a blue ribbon. Francie leans back against her mother, making Carly pull her head out.
“Hi, Carly. You both sure are pretty. Want to go see your mommy’s apartment?”
“Yeah, girls. Let’s get up,” Jordan says as she pushes out of the chair, and the girls stand on the floor at her feet. “Where’s your daddy?” she asks. The girls just shrug, and Jordan looks up at Patty, who, being about as helpful as a couple toddlers, shrugs also.
Francie looks at the floor, but Carly grins up at her mother and yells, “Cici!”
Jordan returns her grin for a moment, then her grin slides away. “Cici?” She bends to look at Francie and works on refixing her grin. “Francie, honey, Cici is here with you?”
Francie tucks her lips together and nods. Carly bobs up and down and yells “Cici, Cici,” over and over. Jordan stands back up, looks down at herself, then back up at Patty. “My mother-in-law brought the girls?”
Patty nods, and Jordan steps away from her daughters. “Look at me. I’m wearing yoga pants, yoga pants for God’s sake! I should’ve known she’d wait until I was at my breaking point and then swoop in. Oh, no. What was I thinking?”
Carly’s bops have stopped, and both girls are still, staring at their mother as she melts down and keeps backing away from them. She’s halfway to the back door, when she seems to have remembered them. “Patty, watch the girls. I have to go change.” She turns and dashes toward the back.
She’s almost to the door when I catch up with her. I grab her upper arm and pull close to her. “What is going on? You haven’t seen your daughters in weeks, and you’re going to change clothes and leave them down here? Don’t look back at them right now, because you are kind of crazy. You need to calm down, go back in there, and take care of your children. To hell with this Cici person.”
She shakes off my hand, takes a deep breath, and then looks around. I also turn and see that Susan has pulled Francie and Carly back into the chair and onto her lap. The brown and blonde heads are bent together watching something Susan is showing them on her phone.
Jordan’s smirk, the one she graced us with plenty when she first arrived here, is back. She pulls herself up and looks much more than just several inches taller than me. “My children are fine. Now, I need to get dressed and go meet my mother-in-law.” She jerks away from me. “I may be crazy, but if she finds me in yoga pants with a ponytail out in public, my life is over. I will never get out of this hell hole.” She pulls open the back door and says before it closes, “Tell Susan thanks. I’ll get the kids later.”
When I turn around, Patty is motioning me over to the counter on the florist side of the shop, where Shannon is standing, watching the show.
“Patty, what is going on here?” I demand.
“Well, that Cici lady showed up with Francie and Carly about half an hour ago. She came in here because she wanted to know why MoonShots was closed. That’s when we thought Jordan had run off. Then she left the girls here with me and Shannon and Mama, like Jordan just did, and about that time Anna came running in crying about not doing the wedding at all. That she was sorry she ever came here in the first place. That’s when my mama stormed out of here headed to Missus’s. And all I could think to do was to call you. I sure am glad you were close.”
Her relief is evident. And scary. What does she think I’m going to do? Shannon is busy arranging ferns in a piece of green oasis and listening. Anna is still on the couch, but she’s mesmerized by whatever the girls are doing on Susan’s phone and she’s no longer crying. Susan sneaks a peek at me and widens her eyes for that moment our eyes meet.
Before I can think of anything to do, Anna gets up and comes over to where we are standing. She leans back against the counter, watching the girls and Susan. “How old do you think the littlest one is?”
Patty answers, “Think Jordan said she’s two.”
Anna rubs her belly, only a little mound. “So before I turn twenty I’ll have one like that?”
Her fear comes through her words, and I slip my arm around her waist. “Not like that, but yours. Yours and Will’s baby. But that’s a ways off, it’ll be tiny first, and you’ll be so in love with him or her, you won’t have any room to be scared.” Of course, I don’t tell her that size has nothing to do with how hard a baby is. Okay, another lie. Sue me.
“Maybe this is why the wedding is so hard to get together. Maybe we’re not supposed to be married, or have a baby. I can adopt it out and everything goes back to normal, right?” She first looks at Patty, who, remind me to kill her later, simply nods.
I don’t give her a chance to look at me. I flip around in front of her. “No, you need to just, um, you need to go home. No, you need to…” Looking around, my glance falls on the steps to Patty’s apartment. “You need to go upstairs. Lie down and rest.” I push her toward the stairs. “Patty, go get her settled, and then you come right back down. Wait, Andy’s not up there, is he?”
“No, he’s off at an estate sale on the other side of Dalton.”
“Good,” I nod. “You two go on up. Anna, we’ll talk about all this later, but now you need to rest.”
As they walk up the old staircase, I text Will to call me, and then put the phone in my pocket. I smile at Shannon, and she laughs. “Things sure weren’t this interesting before the bookstore moved in.”
“Glad we can provide free entertainment for you,” I say.
Susan lifts the girls off her lap and stands up as I approach her. She turns off her phone before sliding it into her jeans pocket. “Sorry, but I have to go. Staff meeting at church. I’m already running late. Bye girls, I’ll see you later.” I watch her dart out the front door and look back down to big eyes and solemn faces.
“Are you girls hungry? Let’s go get a muffin.” Usually I wouldn’t take off to another location with children I’ve just met, but I honestly don’t think anyone will care.
Besides, I need coffee, and I need chocolate.
Chapter 30
The spinning stools at Ruby’s are a hit. Francie twirls hers from one side to the other, in between drinking her milk and eating the muffins Ruby supplies her with. Carly is too small to hold on by herself, so she rides on whoever’s lap she can beg herself. Of course, with that big grin and dark brown eyes, it’s not too hard to find an available lap.
Savannah stuck her head in long enough to see that me and the girls were there and to say she’d been sent to find us by Jordan when she arrived to work at MoonShots after school. Ruby’s isn’t usually open this late in the day, but everyone’s talking about the showdown between Missus and Gertie that took place on Missus’ front porch earlier. As with all other area happenings, Ruby says if people are going to be hanging around talking, they might as well be buying her muffins and coffee.
So far, the most seemingly accurate portrayal of Missus vs. Gertie is from the leaders of the Brownie troop which was meeting in the gazebo at the time. For their last meeting before summer, they gathered for a picnic in the park. As soon as their little charges got picked up, the two leaders headed straight to Ruby’s with the full story.
The two women are young and cute, and accented by their shining eyes, glossed lips, and loud whisp
ers, we get the story. Apparently, Missus wouldn’t invite Gertie inside her house. They couldn’t rightly hear what all Missus was saying, but Gertie, who is loud anyway, was yelling most of the time. What it boiled down to is that Gertie and Missus must’ve not liked each other back when they were in school. Their argument left the topic of the wedding real quick and moved to their daddies and, believe it or not, whether Missus stole the Miss Whitten County beauty pageant. (At this point of the story, my stomach got a bit upset because FM flat out told me he threw the pageant for Missus. He was one of the judges, and he fell for his future wife there. Even told me that Missus’ daddy gave him money to throw it.) Those of us too new to Chancey, or too young to remember, can’t imagine Gertie being in a beauty pageant, but Ruby assures the whole restaurant that Gertie Samson was a stunner. “Long red hair, full-figured like a World War Two pin-up, and that husky voice that says she just got out of bed,” she says with a nod.
At this point someone brought up the picture (a life-size picture I should add) of Missus in her crown and sash, which is front and center of FM and Missus’ front hall. It’s hideous. Nightmare hideous. Even worse than looking at it is how proud the two of them are of it. They point it out and make you comment on it. So, since we can all see how Missus looked, and now hear how Gertie looked, it’s not hard to imagine that someone cheated on Missus’ behalf.
After almost an hour at Ruby’s, the little Moon girls are ready to move on from muffins and spinning stools and so am I. “C’mon, girls. Tell Ruby ‘bye’ so we can go find your mama and grandma.”
Francie lets herself off the stool and reaches for my hand. “No, we can’t call Cici ‘grandma’ or abuela. It’s not allowed.”
Carly grins and shakes her head like her big sister is doing. “No no no.”
Ruby has brought me wet paper towels to wipe off the girls’ hands and mouth, so I’m bent down doing that as the door opens again. I hear Carly shout, “Cici!”