Love Finds You in Snowball, Arkansas

by Sandra D. Bricker

  Lucy looped her feet through the bars at the bottom of the stool and leaned over the island to watch as Betty Sue used a bright red spatula to mix the meat in the skillet over a low fire.

  “Do you want to tend to the pan or chop the vegetables?” Betty Sue asked her, and Lucy reached out and took the spatula. “Okay. Be sure to keep it moving so it just gets browned.”

  “It’s so strange,” Lucy commented as she pushed the ground meat around in the pan. “I can’t cook a good meal to save my life; never could. But here with you, I really do feel like it’s something I can enjoy.”

  “Finding the right combination of ingredients to make something really tasty is, for me, the ultimate triumph. I never had a daughter to share it with, so having you here in my kitchen, taking an interest in learning my secrets—well, it’s nice.” After a pause, the older woman asked, “Did you and your mom not spend any time in the kitchen together?”

  “I lost my mom to cancer at a young age,” Lucy told her. “There were too many things we didn’t get to share.”

  “Oh, sugar, I’m so sorry,” Betty Sue cooed as she rounded the island and pulled Lucy into an embrace. When she released her, she smoothed Lucy’s hair and gave her a smile. “Maybe you’ll come back and visit me every now and then, hmm?”

  “I’d really love that.”

  Lucy’s heart expanded with emotion as Betty Sue planted a kiss on the top of her head and returned to the other side of the island to chop the green peppers. For many years, not a day had gone by that Lucy didn’t lament growing up without a mother. But as time went on and she grew into a woman herself, she learned to bury that regret. It now reared its head only on occasion.

  Meeting and getting to know Betty Sue was a blessing she hadn’t expected, and as she tapped the spatula on the side of the skillet, Lucy thanked the Lord for the lovely surprise.

  “Okay. Now we’ll drain any grease off the meat,” Betty Sue told her. “There won’t be much because I like to use pretty lean cuts, but just pour it into this colander.”

  Lucy did as she was told, and she hung on to every word as Betty Sue explained which herbs best complimented the sauce, why she chose that specific mix of vegetables, and how a tablespoon of brown sugar mixed in would cut the acidity of the tomatoes.

  “My favorite adventures of this trip have been the culinary ones,” Lucy remarked, shaking her head in surprise. “Whoever would have thought that I was hiding an inner chef?”

  “Me. I recognized that in you straightaway.”

  “I think I’ve been spending so much time trying to force an interest in things that didn’t interest me in the least that I’d forgotten what it felt like to find something that actually stirs up a little excitement inside.”

  “And cooking does that for you?”

  “I’m as surprised as anyone,” Lucy told her, “but it does.”

  “Then here, take this,” Betty Sue said, holding out a shiny silver knife with a ten-inch blade. “Chop a couple of onions and have a ball.”

  Lucy put everything she had into that night’s meal, learning all she could from Betty Sue as dinnertime drew closer. The sauce was made from fresh ingredients and homegrown herbs, the mozzarella cheese was grated by hand, and the garlic bread was kneaded and baked right in the kitchen. The only thing out of a box that night was the pasta, and Lucy wasn’t sure she could make that claim about another homemade meal in all of her thirty years.

  The culmination of the two women’s efforts was an enormous pan of cheesy, layered lasagna. Lucy could hardly wait to show the others what she’d accomplished with Betty Sue’s tutelage, or to see their faces when they took their first bites.

  “I’ll slice the garlic bread and get it into the basket,” Betty Sue told her. “Do you think you can carry that lasagna? It’s very heavy.”

  “I’ve got it,” Lucy declared, slipping her hands into quilted oven mitts. “I’ll come back for the salad.”

  Lucy pushed through the swinging kitchen door and out into the main room of the lodge bearing the weight of at least ten pounds of lasagna. Games were in full swing, from ping-pong to darts to chess, and her eyes swept through the groups of players to try to locate Justin.

  “Is that our supper?” Annie asked her, and Lucy lifted the pan and sidestepped the little girl before she even laid eyes on her.

  “Oh, Annie, that was a close one.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. No harm done. Yes, it’s our supper. It’s Italian Night. Do you like lasagna?”

  “I’m not sure. What is it?”

  “It’s kind of like spaghetti, only it’s layered with flat noodles instead of mixed up with skinny ones.”

  “I like spaghetti.”

  The pan seemed to be growing heavier in her hands, so Lucy headed toward the banquet table. Just before she reached it, a burst of laughter and cheers drew her attention, and she looked over just as Wendy leaped into Matt’s arms and he twirled her around, her legs doing a pirouette in the air.

  Before Lucy even knew what was happening, the mitt began to slip from her hand, the handle of the pan she was holding going with it. A fraction of an instant later, the beautiful lasagna she’d worked all afternoon to create went crashing to the ground. Tomato sauce splattered the floor, the tablecloth, and Lucy’s pant legs up to the knees.

  “Uh-oh,” Annie said from behind her.

  “Annie!” her mother shouted from the other side of the lodge. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. It wasn’t me, Mama. I didn’t do anything, honest.”

  Lucy covered her face with the oven mitts, smearing tomato sauce across her forehead and into her hair.

  “Lucy? Sugar? What happened?” Betty Sue called as she barreled into the room.

  Along with everyone else, she fell silent, her mouth gaping open like the swinging kitchen door.

  Lucy stepped into the shower, and the embarrassment peaked again as she recalled her excitement about sharing her newfound culinary expertise and the subsequent crashing noise her enthusiasm made as it hit the floor with the lasagna.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said out loud into the stream of water. “I’m such a dork. Why am I such a dork?”

  She shook off the sudden reminder that the lasagna had plummeted to the floor after she’d seen Wendy twirling around Matt like a maniac. Their celebration over some great darts move seemed a little over the top. No wonder she’d tossed the lasagna.

  “Lucy? Can I get you anything?” Wendy asked through the closed door.

  Just some privacy.

  “No, thank you.”

  “All right. Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  A few minutes later, while she combed through her clean, wet hair, Lucy prayed for forgiveness for being irritated at a person as sweet as Wendy.

  “It’s been a long time,” she whispered upward, “since I’ve seen another woman with her arms around Mattie. I guess I just freaked out. I know, I know, it’s crazy, and I should be happy that he’s making a new friend. Wendy might even be a good match for him, Lord. I was just taken by surprise, that’s all.”

  Lucy’s hair was still in a towel when she wrapped a second one around her body and opened the bedroom door wide enough to snag her bathrobe from the hook on the back of it. She put a kettle on to boil some water and plopped a tea bag into a mug before wandering back into the bathroom to grab her comb.

  She took her cup of tea into the living room and threw open the drapes to reveal a silver slice of moon waiting just outside. She folded up into the corner of the sofa to enjoy it.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  Lucy looked up to find Wendy standing just beyond the reach of the frail glow of the lamp.

  “Not at all.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “Well, I’m cleaner.”

  Wendy sniggered. “That’s always a good start. Can I join you?”

  Lucy paused, but only for a moment. “Of course.”

&n
bsp; Wendy took the opposite end of the sofa, delicately crossing one leg over the other as she angled Lucy’s direction.

  “The lasagna was great, Lucy.”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing that enhances the flavor of meat sauce like a trip to the floor,” Lucy responded, shaking her head and taking a sip of warm tea.

  “Stop it. Only a little of it ended up on the floor. The whole tray was still pretty much intact.”

  Lucy lifted her eyes and stared at her friend. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, Wendy. I mean, I try to keep it close to the vest. But the truth is…I’m an absolute mess.”

  Wendy laughed. “Aren’t we all?”

  “N–n–no.”

  “No?”

  “Not you.”

  “Oh, Lucy, you’re so wrong. I might not be a mess in the same ways, but I assure you I’m a mess just like everybody else.”

  “Prove it. I was just about to put on a mint julep cleansing mask. Join me in getting all globbed up and ugly.”

  Wendy’s laughter was melodic. “All right. But no cameras.”

  “And after that, maybe you could straighten my hair?”

  “I’ll be glad to, Lucy, but I don’t think you’ll like it. Those curls of yours are God-given.”

  “Yeah. He gave them to me just after He graced me with two left feet.”

  “Hush. Don’t be ungrateful. You wouldn’t rather go bald, would you?”

  Lucy cackled at the thought. “Point taken. Come on into the bathroom and wash your face. I’ll get us a couple of headbands and we’ll smear our faces with green goo and have some more tea.”

  “Girls’ night in. Maybe we should wake Cyn.”

  “I say we just spackle a couple of coats of green on her face and let her sleep,” Lucy joked.

  “You’re wicked.”

  Five minutes later, the women stood side by side in front of the bathroom mirror, their hair pulled back from their faces with terrycloth bands, two big sets of eyes peering out from behind bright neon-green faces.

  “And you said you weren’t gorgeous, Lucy Binoche,” Wendy teased.

  Lucy opened her eyes as wide as they would go and contorted her face into a silly grin to reveal teeth and tongue and gums. They both burst into a fit of laughter, and Wendy tried to match the ugly face with one of her own.

  “No cameras? Really?” Lucy asked her. “You don’t want to preserve this moment with a photo?”

  “Do you?”

  “Absolutely,” Lucy joked.

  “You’re a braver woman than I am,” Wendy teased back, smearing Lucy’s green nose with the tip of her index finger.

  “It has to set for thirty minutes. Let’s go have some tea and then we’ll chisel our way out of here.”

  The two of them settled on the sofa with cups of tea that Lucy fixed for them.

  “This is wonderful,” Wendy said, after taking her first sip. “Is there milk in it?”

  “Cream,” Lucy replied. “At the Conroy, we serve high tea in the afternoons, and we have this wonderful little British lady who does everything in the traditional English way. Including adding cream and sugar to tea, the way Americans do to coffee.”

  “I’ve always wanted to try that,” Wendy said, and she raised her pinkie as she spoke in her most highbrow English accent. “Taking tea.”

  “You should come down one afternoon for lunch,” Lucy suggested. “We’ll have cucumber sandwiches and sausage rolls and scones with sweet cream and strawberries.”

  “That would be such fun. Do they serve the tea in china cups?”

  “Yes, and beautiful sterling pots, with Battenberg lace napkins and linen tablecloths,” Lucy told her. “And Leslie serves you in this cute little English apron and white gloves.”

  “Oh, Lucy. I would love to see that.”

  “We’ll plan it, then,” she promised.

  The creaking of Cyndi’s bedroom door announced her entrance, and she sounded drowsy as she asked, “What’s going on? Did I miss something?”

  Lucy and Wendy both turned around at the same time and looked at her over the back of the couch. Cyndi’s eyes grew wide before she let out a long and lingering shriek.

  Lucy popped up to her feet. “What?”

  Wendy pointed to her own green face and gave an animated grin.

  “Oh.” Lucy plopped back down to the sofa and started to laugh right along with Wendy. “Sorry, Cyn.”

  “What is that?”

  “Mint julep cleansing mask. Want to join us?”

  Cyndi shook her head and turned right back around toward her bedroom.

  “Definitely not.”

  I’ve learned a lot in the last 24 hours, Lord. I’ve learned to add a little brown sugar to tomato sauce to cut the acidity. I’ve learned that your general garden variety of oven mitts actually can be too big for certain hands. And I’ve learned that, despite my initial efforts not to, I really do like Wendy an awful lot.

  It’s nearly 1:00 in the morning as I write this, and Wendy and I have spent the last several hours chatting about high tea, stubborn hair, and old boyfriends. I didn’t think anything or anyone could make me feel better after the Lasagna Incident, as it will now be known throughout the rest of time. But Wendy really did.

  I just don’t know what to make of her relationship with Matt. I’d been so concerned about Justin’s attention being focused on her that it never occurred to me that Mattie might like her. And I’m not sure why that stunned me the way it did, because the truth is, Wendy and Matt might make a very good match, Lord. Did you already think of that?

  Since this is a prayer journal, please hear my prayer for grace. I don’t mean the kind that You’ve already given that forgives my sins. I mean the kind where I don’t trip over my own feet or throw pans of lasagna across the room.

  Grace me with grace?

  Hopefully,

  Lucy

  Chapter Fifteen

  LUCY COULDN’T HELP IT. FOR THE THREE-DOZENTH TIME SINCE SHE’D awakened, she ran her hands through her hair from roots to tips. She couldn’t get over the difference in its appearance since Wendy had used the straightening iron on it the night before. Suddenly she had the silky tresses she’d always dreamed about, at least until the next washing. She could hardly wait for Justin to get a load of her later in the day. For now, however, she would just have to look stunning for herself.

  She tightened the belt around the waist of her bathrobe and picked up her cup of tea. The clock on the microwave read 6:22 a.m., so she determined to tiptoe across the living-room floor in the “Hello Kitty” socks Matt gave her last Christmas as a joke. She was going to let herself out onto the deck while Wendy and Cyndi still slept, eager to enjoy one of her favorite things: hot tea on a cold morning.

  She drew back the curtains, unlatched the sliding door, and carefully pulled it open with hardly a sound. The curtain caught on the hand that held her mug of tea, and while she was slipping it loose, she stepped out onto the deck.

  Wham!

  The bottom of her bright pink socks hit a layer of ice covering the wooden deck, and Lucy went flying in one direction while her tea flew out of the cup and into the other direction. She let out a shriek as her tail end plopped down on the ice. Stunned, she continued to lie there with her hand clinging to an empty mug, her legs spread-eagle, and her mouth gaping open.

  So much for that grace prayer being answered speedily.

  Lucy looked around her for the first time. The autumn colors that streaked the tree branches the day before were now dusted with snow, and the rolling hills beyond the cabin were glistening white. The gray-blue early morning sky was sifting out large, perfect snowflakes like sugar overtop a tray of cookies.

  She leaned her head back and tilted her face toward the sky with closed eyes. As she grinned, flakes fell against her teeth. She stuck out her tongue to catch a few of them and broke into a stream of laughter.

  “Lucy? Are you all right?”

  She turned to find Wendy standing in
the doorway, cinching her robe shut with one hand and extending the other toward Lucy.

  “Do you need help?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Lucy told her. “I didn’t realize it had snowed overnight, and I slipped on the ice. Isn’t it beautiful, Wen?”

  “Yes,” Wendy said awkwardly. “Can I help you up or something?”

  “Oh my goodness!” Cyndi cried as she stepped up beside Wendy. “It’s snowing!”

  “I know,” Lucy cackled. “And Justin said there was no possible way it would.”

  “Lucy, get up from there,” Wendy told her, taking her cup and handing it back to Cyndi. “Come on.”

  Lucy made it to her feet again and stood with her arms outstretched, letting the snowflakes fall over her.

  “I’ve got to tell Matt!” she exclaimed as she scurried inside and padded across the living-room floor. She snatched up her BlackBerry from the nightstand and plopped down on the bed to begin a text.

  “Lucy, you’re getting your bed all wet. Change out of that robe first.”

  “I will. This will just take a second,” she replied, tap-tap-tapping her message into the device.

  Wake up. Look out the window. Meet me halfway.

  She dressed in record time and called out to Wendy and Cyndi as she thumped out the front door. “Come on, girls. Come outside!” Half an inch of wet snow was hardly right for a snowman, and there would certainly be no sledding any time soon, but Lucy thought the current conditions were easily ripe for a few snowballs. Wrapped in her new parka and vintage scarf, with only tennies and socks to keep her feet dry, she trekked down the steps of the porch and across the white path that was once a gravel trail.

  Lucy crouched near a small drift and began forming snow into a small white ball.

  “What are you doing?” Wendy called to her as she made her way down the steps, padded with two sweaters.

  “Oh. Just—” Lucy quickly finished packing the snow and turned on Wendy with a huge Cheshire grin. “—this!”

  The snowball exploded onto the heart design on the front of Wendy’s red sweater, right smack in the center.