“Imagine that,” Evie muttered.
I wouldn’t have minded if their tête-à-tête kept going without me. After all, it was a personal question, one I wasn’t too sure I could answer.
Lisa Leann had recently admitted to having had an affair, and we all knew she and Henry were struggling to keep their marriage afloat as it healed. On the other hand, my husband Jack had been unfaithful more times and with more women than I cared to count. Then, a year ago, when I’d had enough and moved out, he sought counseling. Since then we’d worked hard to put the broken pieces of our lives back together. Jack was loving and attentive, but more than that, I’d seen him seeking the Lord’s face daily to be the man of God he had always claimed to be.
“It takes a long time,” I said, my voice quiet, “to rebuild trust. Forgiveness is another matter, I think. I can say I forgive, I can forgive, but forgetting and trust are related, and it’s an awfully difficult thing to forget.”
Lisa Leann’s shoulders slumped. “So, you still don’t trust Jack? After all this time?” Lisa Leann is typically a little spitfire, but right about then she looked distressed and sad.
“Well, Lisa Leann, it hasn’t really been that long, you know. It hasn’t even been a year. But . . .” I looked down at my hands clasped together, then back up. “I have to admit, since Jack’s heart attack, I’ve hardly had anything to worry about. Jack doesn’t have enough energy to even think about having an affair these days.”
Evie turned her head ever so slightly toward the back. “How is Jack, Goldie? Really.”
“We take it one day at a time,” I answered.
Team Potluck had been nearing the finals of the competition in New York when I’d gotten the call that Jack had suffered a heart attack during a flight from New York to Chicago, on the way back to Summit View. Instead of finishing out the show, I flew to the Windy City, where Jack underwent several tests and procedures. After being given a “pass” to fly to Denver, he eventually had bypass surgery. Since then his progress had been slow but steady—difficult for a man who was used to being physically active.
Jack had been Summit View’s high school coach since we’d married more than twenty-five years ago. Though it was now still summertime, the long break was coming to an end; Jack had been forced to stay home while the school’s football team held preseason practices. I filled Evangeline and Lisa Leann in further by saying, “He’s gone out to the football field a couple of times since practices have been underway, but for the most part he leaves everything up to the assistant coaches.”
“Is he exercising like he should?”
“Not really,” I said. “He says he’s just so tired, which I think is because of the beta-blockers.” I sighed. “But he’s faithful with his meds, so I guess that’s something to be grateful for.”
Lisa Leann gave me a wink as she said, “Of course it is.” She swung around to face the front again. Thinking our conversation had come to an end, I closed my eyes. Evie and Lisa Leann were quiet as the car rocked gently, lulling me to sleep. But before I could slip away I heard Lisa Leann’s familiar voice again. “Goldie?”
Once again I opened my eyes. “Yes, Lisa Leann.”
She faced me. “Do you remember that guy you were sort of dating last year?”
I heard Evangeline sigh. “Honestly,” she said.
“I wasn’t dating him, Lisa Leann. He was just a friend. And of course I remember him.”
“What was his name?”
“Van. Van Lauer.”
“Did you ever think that maybe if you had dated him, you might have exacted some sort of revenge on Jack?”
I didn’t answer right away. I had to process what this little powder keg was asking.
Goodness, I hadn’t thought of Van Lauer in months. How could I? When he’d come into my life—the friend and fellow attorney of my boss, Chris Lowe—he’d been like a healing balm on a gaping wound slashed across my heart. There’d been little doubt that if I’d not been married to Jack, I would have dated Van. The feelings we’d felt were undeniable and strong. But strong and undeniable or not, they were wrong—as my married daughter Olivia had pointed out to me every chance she had—and so I brought our friendship to a swift end and began working on salvaging my marriage.
“Lisa Leann, my relationship—my friendship—with Van wasn’t about revenge. He was a nice guy who was there to help me process where I was in my life. In my marriage. In my . . . well . . . everything.”
“But it wasn’t about revenge.”
“No.”
“What are you getting at, Lisa Leann?” Evie asked.
Lisa Leann turned to face Evangeline again. “I’ve been wondering . . . worrying, I guess . . . that Henry might try to have some sort of relationship with a woman to get back at me for . . . you know.”
“Has he said or done anything to make you think that?” I asked.
“Oh heavens, no.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry,” I said.
“I agree with Goldie,” Evie added.
But I could see a flicker of worry in Lisa Leann’s eyes. God bless her, I could feel a little of her pain. Maybe mine was, in some ways, different. But in many ways it was the same.
———
We arrived back at the shop in the late afternoon. The sky was clear, and though the sun had begun its descent toward the western horizon, the weather was still quite warm. I’d worn a couple of gold bangle bracelets and pulled them off immediately upon exiting Evangeline’s car. Somehow it just seemed to help ease the heat.
“Is it me, or is it unusually hot?” I asked.
Lizzie had pulled her SUV into the parking place next to ours and was stepping out of it. “It’s you,” she said with a smile. “In that glorious time of our lives.”
“Wipe that evil grin off your face, Lizzie Prattle,” I teased. “Just because it’s almost done for you . . .”
“If ever there were joys in being so close to sixty, this is it. At least I think it’s almost over.”
I’d worn a summer’s pants set made complete with a short-at-the-hip jacket. I shook the jacket off as I walked toward the front door of the wedding boutique Lisa Leann owned. It also housed our catering office and kitchen.
“Are we needed inside?” I heard Donna ask. “Because I have to scoot. Dad assigned me to the night shift tonight to make up for being in Denver all day.”
“I told him not to do that,” Evie threw in.
“Well, apparently, he’s not taking orders from you today.”
I turned in Donna’s direction and was relieved when I saw her wink at her new stepmother.
That relationship was another one that could be unsettling at times.
“I think we can all go home,” Lisa Leann said. “Unless one of you has something you want to go over?”
We all said the only thing we wanted to do was go home. Minutes later I was in my car with the air conditioner blasting. I used the time to call my daughter, Olivia, to see how her day had gone and to ask if she’d watched the show. When she answered I could hear her toddler, Brook, playing boisterously in the background as her newborn squalled, apparently while being held close to the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” I said after she greeted me.
“All this and the spaghetti sauce is spilling over onto the stove top. Mom, I really have to call you back.”
Spaghetti sauce . . . dinner! I thought as I disconnected the call. An idea for what Jack and I might call supper hadn’t even crossed my mind. And, whatever it was, it had to be easy, delicious, and low in fat and sodium. I snapped my fingers. Vonnie had made two chicken potpies and had brought one over a week or so ago. I’d placed it in the freezer for an occasion like this.
I pulled into the driveway of our ranch-style home, shut off the car, grabbed my purse and the discarded jacket, and headed inside. “Jack?” I called out. “Jack?”
He didn’t answer.
I could hear the muted sound o
f a television from the back of the house, probably the one in our bedroom. Knowing Jack, he’d gone there to take a nap and had then turned on the television upon waking. I sighed. I just had to get him exercising again.
But when I stepped into our bedroom, I found that Jack hadn’t been napping. He was still napping, oblivious to the television’s blaring volume. I put my purse on the dresser, laid my jacket across the end of the bed, and turned off the TV. I looked to see if the lack of sound might wake him, but it didn’t.
I crossed my arms as I leaned against the dresser to stare at my husband. Even with his mouth open and his eyes at half-mast, he was still the most handsome man I’d ever known. I was a young girl in high school when we’d met. Totally infatuated with him and completely “gone” over him. While I’d grown less infatuated over the years, I was still in love—that much was for sure. Maybe now more than ever after seeing him work so hard to regain my affection and trust.
I shook my head lightly as I smiled, then blew him a kiss from across the room as I turned toward the door. Once there, though, I looked back over my shoulder. Something was wrong. I felt my brows knit together as I inched toward the bed to get a closer look. What was it?
Then it hit me, as if in one moment I had no comprehension of the truth and then, in the next moment, I did. Jack isn’t breathing.
I bolted to his side and grabbed his shoulders. Even through his clothing I could feel the icy cold of his skin. “Jack!” I screamed. “Jack!” I shook him. Tears pooled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. “Jack! Oh God, oh God, oh God!” I threw my head back, my face toward the ceiling. “Jack!” I shouted once more. “Don’t you die on me, don’t you die on me!”
But he wasn’t listening. His head lopped over, and when it did I sprang from the bed, tripped over bedroom slippers I’d not noticed before, and fell onto my backside. Wailing, I crawled to the bedside table and picked up the phone to dial 911.
“Police or medical,” the voice on the other end said.
But I gave neither answer. “Donna Vesey,” I cried out. “I need Donna Vesey and I need her now!”
Evangeline
3
Flaming Tempers
I called Vernon from my parking space in front of the Gold Rush Grocery Store. I had in mind to speak with him about two things.
The first was that I was picking up some pork chops for our dinner and wondered if there was anything else he might know of that I needed to buy while I was there. “No need to waste trips,”
I said.
“Get some of that rocky road frozen yogurt you brought home last time,” he said.
“Why? Don’t we still have some in the freezer?”
He chuckled. “Not anymore.”
“Vernon Vesey. You’ll get fat as a pig if you keep this up.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s just so good! Besides, it’s yogurt, not ice cream. I can afford to splurge.”
I pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them into my open purse, which sat on the front passenger’s seat. “First of all, your waistline says differently, and second, just because it’s yogurt doesn’t mean it’s fat free.”
“Don’t toy with me, woman,” he said, his voice low and appealing. “Just bring the rocky road yogurt home and no one gets hurt.”
“Funny.” I opened the door of the car but didn’t budge from my seat. “Before I go inside, there’s one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
“And that is?”
“Why did you schedule Donna for tonight? I thought I asked you not to do that.”
“Evie-girl,” he said, using the term of endearment he’s called me by since we were kids. “I don’t tell you how to run your tax business and you don’t tell me how to run the sheriff’s office.” There was a firmness in his voice that just ticked me right off. At times I find that vocal bravado quite sexy, but right now wasn’t one of those times.
“But Vernon . . . you don’t know how difficult these interviews can be. How tiring.”
“I do too know. You manage to tell me after every one of them. But Donna’s a deputy first and a reality celebrity second. She’s got a job to do, she’s got citizens to protect, and my job as the sheriff is to make sure she does it well and when we need her.”
“Well, you may be her boss but you’re also her daddy and—”
“And she’s a grown woman, Evangeline. Now quit arguing with me, get your chops and my yogurt, and come on home so we can eat one and snuggle up with the other. I’ll even let you have the bowl with the most marshmallows.”
My arguments weren’t going to get Donna out of her shift; there was no doubting that. I might as well get what I needed from inside the store and go on home. “All right, Vernon,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll see you in about half an hour.”
I got four thick center-cut pork loin chops from the meat department, a box of onion and mushroom soup mix from the soup aisle, and the yogurt from frozen foods, placed each in my handheld basket, then headed up to the checkout lanes at the front of the store. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was Doreen Roberts standing last in the shortest line.
When we were children, Doreen was one of my best friends. That is, until the day she stole Vernon Vesey’s love with her twelve-year-old lips, which were free and available for full-on-the-mouth kisses. She and Vernon began a love story that was on again/off again until we’d all graduated from school. Then, one sweet and sunny (and I say that with all the sincerity I can muster) Saturday afternoon, they met the preacher at the front of Grace Church, where they said their “I do’s,” sealing their lives, one to the other. Sometime later they welcomed Donna into the world, and four years after that, Doreen, who sang a lovely alto in the Grace Church choir, took off with the choir director, leaving Donna and Vernon to pick up the pieces of their lives.
None of us—not Donna, not Vernon, and certainly not me—had heard a word from Doreen until late last year when she returned as Dee Dee McGurk, a worn-out, washed-up, pathetic waitress over at the Gold Rush Tavern. We might not have ever realized it was her if it hadn’t been for the fact that her daughter Velvet James, whose father is not Vernon, looks so much like our Donna.
Dee Dee (aka Doreen) and I have had our squabbles since her return, but we’ve also had a couple of moments when we (mostly me) made efforts toward putting the past behind us and getting on with our lives. After all, Doreen’s return to Summit View was a chance for Donna to get to know her mother. Not that Donna has always been warm to the notion. Still . . .
“Hello, Doreen,” I said as I stepped behind her. She was wearing the tavern’s golf shirt and a pair of too-tight black jeans. I wondered how she could even sit down in them, not that I said it. In fact, all I did was stare at the back of Doreen’s head; she didn’t acknowledge me in the least. “Hello, Doreen,” I said again, refusing to be ignored.
She turned then, eyes red-rimmed, the blue of them looking more like water than sky. Her face was splotchy, her lips swollen.
“You look awful,” I said. My words didn’t sound at all the way I meant them. I felt sorry for Doreen, I really did. But my words came out catty.
“I guess if I had makeup artists doting on me 24/7, I’d be lucky enough to look like you.” Her voice was loud enough and snide enough to draw some attention.
I felt myself grow warm. “I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean . . . you didn’t mean . . .”
The smell of stale alcohol assaulted me as she spoke. When my eyes lowered, I noticed that her basket was filled with a bag of chips, a bottle of Cold Duck, and a six-pack of beer. Seemed to me she had enough opportunity to drink at the Gold Rush Tavern, and I couldn’t imagine why she’d need to come all the way to the grocery store to purchase what she had plenty of at work.
“Shhh,” I said. “There’s no need to draw a crowd.”
“What?” she stormed, turning her head to the left and then the right as she turned to face me head-on. “What is it y
ou don’t want people to hear?”
Well, for pity’s sake. She was speaking loud enough now to alert people in distant counties. “Doreen, maybe you shouldn’t be buying that beer and—”
“Maybe you should mind your own business!”
I felt the sting of tears. Why did she have to be like this? Hadn’t I gone to her not too long ago and asked her if we could let bygones be bygones? Hadn’t we agreed to work through our differences for Donna’s sake? Hadn’t we grown, even a little?
“Okay,” I whispered, holding up my free hand. “You go ahead and do whatever you want to do. Just . . . please, keep it down. I have a reputation in this town.”
She barked in laughter. “Hey, everyone! This little lady’s got a reputation in this town! Well, my gosh! Everyone knows who you are, Evangeline. You’re the star of The Great Party Showdown. And you’re the sheriff’s wife.” She stumbled back, banging against the display of wrapped candy bars and packs of gum. I moved to try to help her, but she waved me away. “Well, I was his wife first and I’m the staaaaar of the Gold Rush Tavern.” She righted herself as the customer in front of her—who had turned for a better look—took a step backward and then gripped the arms of a toddler sitting in the buggy seat, as though to protect the child.
Everyone was now staring. Cash registers had ceased ringing up purchases. Children had stopped begging for sweets. Shoppers had quit shuffling through their coupons and scanning their bank cards.
And I’d had enough.
“Doreen, so help me, if you don’t stop this nonsense—”
“What? You’ll what? Call Vernon and have him arrest me?”
I saw the manager then—a short fellow wearing a white oxford shirt, black slacks, and a thin tie—walking around the front side of the checkout lines, cordless phone to his ear. “Sheriff,” I saw him mouth.
“Doreen . . .”
“Dee Dee! My name is Dee Dee!”
“Shhh . . . you’re making more problems than you realize.” The manager was now looking out the large glass panes along the front wall, no doubt waiting for someone from my husband’s office to show up.
Bake Until Golden: A Novel (The Potluck Catering Club) Page 2