Valetta frowned. “I know, I know. Do you want me to talk to her?”
“Would you? I don’t want a scene, but I don’t want to steam about this all day.”
Valetta got up and circled their group of blankets to bend over and talk to Kathy. The other woman shook her head, shrugged, then twisted in her seat, giving Jaymie a poisonous look. She got up and walked around her chair, standing on the edge of Jaymie’s blanket, hands on her hips in a defiant stance.
Her plain face set in a grim expression, Kathy said, “So, you have to poison my friends’ minds about me too, now, right? You have to try to turn everyone against me.”
Valetta, twisting her bony hands together, said, “Kathy, that’s not—”
“You just hate me so much,” Kathy went on, ignoring their mutual friend.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kathy,” Jaymie said, standing up. “I don’t hate you.”
“Oh, come on. You hate that I’m the only one in this town who doesn’t kiss your precious Leighton ass.”
Jaymie, stunned, opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Daniel, seeing the confrontation, began to walk toward them.
“And now you’re trying to hook a millionaire,” the angry woman said loudly, gesturing toward Daniel. A nerve jumped in her forehead, and her whole body trembled.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jaymie retorted. She would not get angry, she just wouldn’t! They had coexisted in the same small town for years with just a subversive feud that amounted to little more than nasty gossip and snide remarks, but now, for it to flare out into the open…what was going on?
“You’re too flipping lazy to go out and get a job like everyone else, so you’re chasing down the only rich guy available,” Kathy taunted, her lips curled back from slightly buck teeth in an unpleasant sneer. She tossed her ponytail. “It’s pathetic. You just want to stay home, play tea party and marry a millionaire.”
“Kathy Cooper, you have no right to speak to me that way,” Jaymie said, her cheeks flaming with a mortified blush that was spreading down to her neck. “You should really watch what you say to me, you know,” Jaymie said, her voice trembling, “or you’ll be sorry.” How she’d be sorry, Jaymie didn’t know, but she was humiliated and furious and had to say something.
Craig Cooper, his expression dark, strode toward them as Anna approached Jaymie’s party hand in hand with her little daughter. The confluence of new arrivals broke up the argument. Craig angrily whipped his wife’s blanket off the ground and folded up her chair. He grabbed her arm, talked to her in low tones, and moved a ways away, setting up their spot off the walkway, just down from Jaymie’s group.
“What was that all about?” Anna asked.
“That was one more incident proving Kathy Cooper’s hatred of me,” Jaymie said, watching the couple, who appeared to be arguing.
“Kathy Cooper?”
“Yeah, Kathy and Craig, her husband,” she said, motioning toward the couple. “You know. At least Craig seems to have some good sense.”
Anna looked toward the two and frowned, but as Valetta claimed Jaymie’s attention, she spread a pretty pastel plaid blanket on the grass and set down their little wicker basket. It was one Jaymie had found for Anna, and she had filled it with children’s melamine dishes and pastel vintage linens for the Joneses. Tabby then insisted on having her fairy wings attached, and she fluttered around while Hoppy barked at her.
As Valetta went back to her brother, Anna tugged on Jaymie’s sleeve. “We need to talk,” Anna said, shooting worried glances toward the Coopers.
“Okay. What’s—oh, wait; there’s Becca!”
Arm in arm, up the walkway from the docks, came Becca and her new fellow. Jaymie examined him from afar, wondering if this would be brother-in-law number three. Number one had remarried and now had a family, and number two had moved back to England, leaving Becca a poorer but wiser woman. This guy was older than Becca. He looked to be in his early fifties, with a trim gray beard and sunglasses, and he wore cargo shorts, a short sleeve shirt and a Tilley hat.
“Jaymie, this is Kevin Brevard. Kevin, this is my sister, Jaymie.”
“Hello, Jaymie, so nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand, then pulling Jaymie in for a hug. He smelled nice, like a bottle of allspice, and had a faint English accent.
They chatted for a while, and he gratefully shared her tea, doled out into melamine mugs. He didn’t sit down on the ground. Instead, he had a walking stick that folded out into a stool, and he sat on that while Becca fussed around him, making sure he was comfortable. Tabby took to him immediately, and he picked her up to sit on his knee and told her a story while they waited for the sailboat race to begin.
Becca pulled Jaymie aside. “Well?” she said.
“Well what?” Jaymie said, with a deliberately blank look. When Becca made a sour face, Jaymie laughed. “Of course I like Kevin. He seems really nice.”
“He is. And he’s…kind.” Becca chewed her lip while she watched Kevin and Daniel talk. Daniel was pointing into town, toward where his house was. “We went to see Grandma Leighton on the weekend, and she took to him so fast! You know how she can be; no one is good enough for you or me. But Kevin told her a joke about a parrot, a vicar and a barmaid, and she was howling with laughter. She took me aside and told me to marry him.”
“That’s a little fast, isn’t it?” Jaymie said, watching her sister’s face.
Becca had a round face, and right now an earnest but undecided expression, her mouth pulled down, her eyes squinted. She fiddled with her long string of red, white and blue beads. But at Jaymie’s assertion, she nodded, and said, “Of course. Too fast.” She turned to Jaymie. “What about you and Daniel? How is that going?”
“I like Daniel,” Jaymie said, “but…” She trailed off as she saw Joel Anderson and his girlfriend, Heidi, walk over and first talk to Kathy and Craig Cooper, then move on to Valetta. Heidi, a pretty, slim blonde, bent over to talk to Brock’s kids, then took his daughter, Eva, by the hand to some open grass and showed her how to do a cartwheel.
Becca followed Jaymie’s line of sight, and her lips tightened. “You’re not still pining after him, are you? Joel is a jerk.”
“Why do you always do that?” Jaymie said, rounding on her sister. “Do you think I’ll magically one day agree with you and hop away transformed?”
Becca put her hand on Jaymie’s arm. “I’m sorry. I should know you have to get over this in your own time.”
“I’m almost there, Becca, really. Just leave it alone.”
“Okay, I just…” She trailed off and shrugged.
“No, I’m fine. I don’t miss him, I don’t want Joel back. I think I miss the naïveté I had, that my feelings were true and returned, that I had nothing to fear, that it was all real.”
Becca nodded. “I get it. I’ve been there.”
They rejoined the others, and Heidi skipped over to Jaymie and squealed, jumping up and down. She grabbed Jaymie’s bare forearms in a tight grip. “I’ve been dying to talk to you! Guess what?” she asked, then continued, “I can’t wait for you to guess. Joel and I are getting married this December! Isn’t that great?”
Four
JAYMIE SAT ON the blanket watching, through the railings along the walkway, the brilliant sun sparkle off the St. Clair. Sail craft from the marina were jockeying for position at the harbor mouth, the starting point for the race, anchoring until the official start time. Each sailor was likely testing the wind, hoping it would stiffen and praying it wouldn’t die.
Daniel eyed her with concern, and that was irritating the heck out of Jaymie. After Heidi’s announcement, she had done pretty well, she thought. She’d hugged her new friend and congratulated Joel. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, intent on not alienating Daniel with her irritation at his concern. But it reaffirmed that she was still a ways away from being ready for something more serious with him, despite his obvious interest.
The race, part of the week-l
ong St. Clair Regatta, started, and the boats sailed off in the stiffening breeze. Jaymie and the others watched, but once they disappeared downriver, it would be an hour or more before they were back in sight.
“Want to go for a walk?” Jaymie asked, turning to Daniel. He took her arm, and they strolled off with Hoppy.
There was a carnival atmosphere in the riverside park, and they wove in and out among groups of picnickers. There were lots of folks dressed up, and a proliferation of Uncle Sams and Betsy Rosses. There was even one clever Statue of Liberty costume. They really should have a costume competition, Jaymie thought, pointing out to Daniel two Uncle Sams playing Frisbee. She giggled at the incongruous picture, as Hoppy jumped and quivered, wanting to join the game.
To deflect the inevitable conversation about Heidi and Joel, Jaymie told him, as they walked, about her troubles with Kathy, and how she really did not know what it was that had started the feud between them. He talked about his own high school days, how he was the techie nerd who took a lot of flack, which changed when he got into college and found friends with whom he could really bond. It had been a revelation to him, he said, that he didn’t need to be friends with everyone, and that he would always find people who liked him just for himself.
Again Jaymie was reminded of Daniel’s stellar qualities as a man and a friend. He was someone whose advice she should be seeking, she realized suddenly. She moved closer, and he put his arm around her. It felt right to be walking with him this way, and it was comfortable. “How do you think I should handle the trouble with Kathy?” she asked, looking up at his beaky profile. “If I had any clue what I did that upset her, I might be able to fix it, but she won’t tell me!”
“I think you’re on the right path. Just keep hold of your temper. I had an employee once who liked to push his coworkers to the brink. Then, when they blew up, he could act innocent, like they were the ones who had the problem, not him. She seems to be trying to irk you enough that you’ll blow up.”
“I never really thought of it that way. She’s doing a good job,” Jaymie said. They had reached the far end of Boardwalk Park, where a large gazebo, built in the style of a Victorian bandstand—octagonal, with ornate gingerbread and a railing around it—provided a stage for local dignitaries and school bands. Jaymie and Becca had agreed that it would be too crowded and too noisy near the gazebo, preferring the farther end of the boardwalk for their picnic ground. They were right, as the mass of people milled around listening to the fife-and-drum corps of a local Revolutionary War reenactment society. She and Daniel listened for a moment, but when one of the fife players screeched an especially sharp note, she grimaced, and said, “Let’s go back. What do you think of Becca’s new boyfriend?”
Their conversation returned to Kevin as they strolled back, hand in hand; they agreed that he seemed to be a nice guy from their limited observation so far. When they got back to the others, Jaymie noticed that little Connor, Kathy’s nephew, was nearby, sitting with his mom, Kylie Hofstadter, and an older man Jaymie assumed was the late Drew Walker’s father, Andy. Craig was sitting with Kathy, but the two were not talking; instead, both appeared to be texting, while Kathy kept shooting unhappy glances at both her husband and her sister.
Once Jaymie sat down, Valetta tugged on her T-shirt.
“Look down there,” she murmured to Jaymie, pointing down the walkway to a tall, shambling fellow in ripped shorts and enormous, unlaced work boots. “Johnny Stanko.”
Jaymie kind of remembered him from high school. Stanko was always a troublemaker who started fights, skipped classes and smoked in the washroom—and not just cigarettes. He was the local pothead, a grade or two ahead of her. Each grade had taken him a couple of years to complete, so he was older, probably in his late thirties by now. Hands shoved in his shorts pockets, gaze turned out to the river, he seemed to be just ambling with no goal in mind. But on his current course, he would inevitably meet with Craig Cooper, the object of years of his relentless bullying.
“And here we go,” Jaymie whispered, as Stanko came up even with Craig and Kathy Cooper and stopped to stand and watch a freighter ease upriver in the shipping channel. “Surely he must know what he’s doing? He can’t have stopped there accidentally.” There was a tension in Stanko’s powerful shoulders that warned that he knew exactly who was behind him.
Kathy said something to Craig; he shook his head. She leaned over and said something more vehemently. He ignored her. She stood and walked over to the railing and tapped Stanko on the shoulder. When he saw her, he did a double take, then stepped back. So maybe he hadn’t known who was sitting there. Jaymie watched, fascinated. Daniel asked her what was going on, but she just shook her head and said, “Wait. I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Valetta grabbed Jaymie’s wrist. “Kathy’s totally peeved; you can see it in the way she’s standing, hands on her hips. I think she’s going to rag him out.”
“For all that stuff that happened between him and Craig back in high school?” Jaymie said. “Good grief, she really can hold a grudge and not just with me!”
It was like waiting for the fuse to burn down on a Roman candle, watching Kathy and Stanko together; Craig kept his distance, his wrinkled brow and frown evidence of his uncertainty. Stanko turned away, but Kathy grabbed his arm and shook it.
Isolated words from their confrontation began floating on the river breeze: years ago, mean, old days. Jaymie glanced over at Valetta, whose compressed lips indicated that she heard, too. Craig finally got involved, but not before Stanko shook his free fist at Kathy and pulled his arm out of her grip. Kathy’s husband surged to his feet and approached, saying something to Stanko.
“Then you oughtta keep your old lady in check, Pooper,” Stanko shouted, his booming voice now making every word audible. “If I had any guts at all, I’d whack the both of you!” He stormed off and headed down to the dockside.
Daniel, who had watched the whole scene, shook his head as Kathy and Craig went back to their blanket on the edge of the walkway. Gesturing toward Kathy, he said to Jaymie, “She may be one of those who you just can’t reach. That guy, though…why would she push him like that? He looks like trouble.”
She briefly explained about the Coopers’ past association with Johnny Stanko, how the older guy had made Craig his personal punching bag for three years. “One thing Kathy is not, is a coward.”
Valetta got up and walked away, and a few minutes later Jaymie saw her down on the dock with Johnny Stanko; the two were talking intently, then Valetta patted his shoulder and turned toward the steps up to Boardwalk Park. What on earth did those two have to talk about?
The sun climbed in the sky, and while Daniel played with Hoppy and Tabitha, Jaymie chatted with Kevin; he seemed like a very nice man. He told PG jokes and mildly amusing stories, and was fascinated by Jaymie’s fondness for vintage kitchenware. He shared some stories of his mother’s kitchen, in a small village in Dorset county in England, and relayed how sorry he was that he had missed the Tea with the Queen the month before. He’d be there next year, he said. He would love to have a part, but supposed it wouldn’t be appropriate, since he wasn’t really a Queensvillian.
“I’d very much enjoy playing Mr. Brown to the local Queen Victoria!” he said, and in his best Scottish accent, admittedly superior to most, added, “Och, aye, and wearin’ a kilt…I’ve verra good legs, you know!”
Becca watched them chat and beamed with joy, which Jaymie found both sweet and a little unsettling. When her older sister had gotten married for the second time, it had been sudden, a spur-of-the-moment decision that she ended up regretting and that had left her climbing out of a deep pit of debt for years. Kevin seemed like a genuinely nice guy, but Jaymie hoped her sister wouldn’t make any sudden decisions.
When the ball that Daniel was tossing to Tabitha landed close to Kathy and Craig, he strolled over to pick it up and engaged them in conversation. Jaymie watched uneasily while nominally listening to Kevin talk about his childhood and the yea
r that the Christmas pudding blew up. She dutifully laughed, but then excused herself and got up, approaching to hear Daniel saying to Kathy, “You should give her a chance, you know, because she’s a wonderful person.”
Oh crap! Why did he feel the need to intervene? Kathy, of course, shot her a disgusted look, while Craig responded in a mumble to Daniel’s comment. She stood a ways away, debating how to get Daniel’s attention without ruining the day by engaging with Kathy again, when she saw Connor trot over to his aunt. Relieved that Daniel’s intervention would be ended by Connor’s arrival, she turned away, but was caught up short by the screech of Kathy’s angry voice. She turned back, and saw Kylie Hofstadter pulling her son away from Kathy as she stood and yelled after her sister, “Kylie, let him stay! It’s up to him, isn’t it?”
“You ruined that, Kath,” Kylie yelled back, as Connor wriggled in his mother’s grasp. “You ruined that when you told him Grandpa Andy doesn’t want to see him.”
Jaymie was reminded of the scene in the Emporium, and how Kathy had said to Connor that his grandfather didn’t want him around.
Craig said to his wife, “Just leave it, Kathy. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. Don’t ruin the day.”
Kathy broke down in tears, watching Connor with Kylie and Andy Walker. Craig awkwardly patted her shoulder, but she moved away from him, her shoulder hunched. “Andy Walker has been deliberately trying to alienate Connor from me for months now,” she sobbed, anger and pain mingled in her voice. “You know that’s true, Craig, you know it!” She looked up at her husband, watching his face as she said, “If Connor’s going with us, then—” Craig put a finger to her mouth and pulled her away from the group. He spoke to her in a hushed tone.
Hands on her hips, she listened for a moment, but then shook her head and grabbed his arm, furiously talking in his face. He looked about to reply, but instead shrugged and pulled away from her, then strode off, shoulders hunched. Kathy watched him go, then sat down alone, pulling grass and tossing it onto the path. Jaymie was torn. There was so much pain evident in her slumped posture and obvious loneliness, but Jaymie was not going to approach her in public just to be rebuffed. If there was ever going to be a reconciliation between them, it was going to have to be in private where they could hash out their differences.
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