by Peggy Webb
It’s a good thing Rick says, “I’ll take the time,” because I’m scared if I open my mouth I’ll shout, Goody!
Rick puts his arm around his wife’s waist. “Jenny, can you stay?”
“As much as I would love to, I have to call about two dozen people to organize a cakewalk for the Bougefala Baptist Church, and then I have to start putting together a roster for the diabetes telethon.”
“Maybe I can help you,” I tell her.
“I’ve got it covered. You stay and have coffee with Rick and Tuck. Angie can help me.” Angie rolls her eyes, but when her daddy winks at her, she doesn’t protest. “Rick can bring you home, or call my cell and I’ll come and get you.”
“I’ll take her home,” Tuck says, and I think I hear the word eventually tacked to the end. At least, I hope that’s what I hear.
The view from our table by the window is not much—a parking lot and a couple of oak trees looking worn-out from the heat—but there’s a feeling of comfort here, of home. I can see how people settle into small towns and stay.
As we slide into our seats Tuck comments about my lack of crutch and I tell him the sprain was on my lower ankle, the crutch was just a precautionary measure for a day or two.
“Good.” The way he says this, surveying me as if I’m a feisty thoroughbred he’s thinking of buying, he’s not talking about the condition of my ankle.
An older couple appears hard on Tuck’s heels, the man in overalls, the woman in a print dress and tennis shoes. The man starts telling Tuck they’re looking forward to the barbecue at his place.
He introduces them to me as Lanford and Elaine, and when she hears my name she lets out a little screech.
“My goodness. You’re Jillian Rockwell.” She tugs her husband’s sleeve. “This is the woman I watch on TV. Quick, give me something to sign. I’ve got to have her autograph.”
“Heck, Elaine, I don’t have anything except my checkbook.”
“You can have this.” Rick hands me the menu, and while I sign I’m aware that Tuck is studying me with a quiet intensity.
Elaine thanks me profusely and probably would have stayed the rest of the afternoon pumping me for information about Love in the Fast Lane, but Rick stands and gently steers them toward the door, talking about Lanford’s soybean crop as they go.
“Do you want to leave?” Tuck asks me.
“I’m used to fans. Most of them are extremely nice. The trick is to keep my feet on the ground and be who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Not Jillian Rockwell. That much I know.”
“Why not?”
No one has ever asked that question. And judging by the serious way he said it, Tuck’s not asking out of idle curiosity.
“Jillian’s far more complicated and sophisticated than I. She’s also very high-maintenance.”
He glances at my emerald. “I believe you were driving a Ferrari Spyder.”
“I believe you were driving a Jag. And riding a million-dollar thoroughbred stallion.”
He laughs. “If I’m going to make a fool of myself, I’d prefer to do it in the privacy of my own turf. Would you like to see Tuck’s Farms?”
The name turns out to be a misnomer. There’s no farm-like modesty to this place. A long driveway winds through massive oaks and ancient magnolias to a house that resembles Tara in Gone With the Wind. Huge barns and paddocks sprawl on the west side where sleek, beautiful horses race around with their tails streaming behind like flags.
“This place could be addictive,” I tell him.
“It is. I’ll show you the patio where we’ll be holding the barbecue. Or do you want to see the horses?”
“Horses.”
There’s something about a barn that’s just ready-made for racing pulse and pheromones gone wild. Tuck says, “Watch your step,” and puts his arm around me, then doesn’t let go, even when he starts introducing me to the thoroughbreds peering over their stalls.
“Is it okay to pet them?”
“Yes. As long as I’m with you.”
Reaching toward a black beauty he calls Tucker’s Mississippi Midnight, I caress the velvety muzzle. “It’s so soft.”
“Yes.” His hand slid up my back and into my hair. “It is.”
If this were a segment on Love in the Fast Lane, the writers would have me turn in his arms while he leaned down to kiss me. Sunlight would filter through the open doorway and romantic music would play in the background.
Alas, a cat streaks by and startles the horse, who rears up in panic. Tuck scoops me up and out of harm’s way—though I don’t know how much harm I’m in since the stall door looks as if it could withstand a good hurricane.
Now. Here’s where the kiss is going to come. My skin gets tight with anticipation and I stop just short of puckering up.
“We’d better get you home. I keep forgetting you had a wreck just a few days ago.” Tuck’s still holding me, and I swear, from the look on his face you’d think he couldn’t decide if I’m angel or demon.
“Well. I’m not broken.” I murmur this in a noncommittal way. Jillian at work, no doubt.
“I can see that.” Matt sets me down, anyway, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “In fact, I imagine it would take something along the lines of Armageddon to break you. Are you ready?”
“At the risk of being mistaken for an outright flirt, I can tell you unequivocally that I’m always ready. For anything.”
“Lord, help us all.”
Roaring with laughter, he offers his arm. Obviously to keep me from tripping over heaven knows what on the way to the car, because he’s making sure that not one other tiny portion of his body touches mine.
I almost wish I’d fall. I have an absurd desire to land in a pile of hay with this man.
CHAPTER 8
They give wings for things like this, but I think you have to be dead to be an angel. Or at least somebody who has never used a four-letter word.
—Gloria
Back home, Jenny looks up from the telephone and asks, “How did it go?”
“On a scale of one to ten?” I ask, and she nods, grinning. “Ten for me. Two for him. Maybe.”
“Even men like Tuck run scared after a really bad marriage. Give him time. He’s bound to see you’re nothing like his wife.”
“Maybe they should have X-rayed my head when I crashed into the light pole. What in the world am I thinking, anyway? I’ll be leaving as soon as my car’s fixed.”
“You forgot the barbecue.”
“I’ll be there.”
“So will Tuck.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Jenny.”
“Oh, but I do. And so should you.”
Jenny personifies my favorite lines from Emily Dickinson: “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul…” I can almost see the trail of feathers she leaves in her wake.
I wish I had her innocent belief in the basic goodness of mankind, in endless possibilities, in the capacity of the spirit to rise up every day and not merely prevail but triumph.
I believe in working hard and charging forward and fighting tooth and toenail for what you want and never giving up, never. Maybe that’s the same as hope, only not quite as gentle as a thing with feathers perching in the soul.
“Show me what I can do to help.” I sit down beside her in the kitchen where papers are spread all over the tabletop.
“Nothing. Just keep me company while I categorize this list of cakes.”
“Where’s Angie?”
“Off with Jackson Tucker. And Rick is doing God knows what. I swear, I’d like to run away.”
“Drive back to California with me.”
My impromptu invitation stuns both of us. We’ve only known each other a few days, and yet extraordinary circumstances have created an extraordinary bond.
“It would be a nice vacation for you. And the least I can do after all you’ve done for me.”
“Oh, I can’t. Definitely not. Angie needs me here.”<
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“She can come, too.”
I can just hear Roberta. Are you out of your mind? How do you expect to regain your TV role if you’re entertaining guests?
The thing is, I don’t feel out of my mind at all. I feel better than I’ve felt in a very long time. I could be turning into somebody I’d like to know better.
How can you land on your feet if you’re in quicksand?
—Jenny
IT’S MIDNIGHT. Gloria’s asleep, and Angie’s finally back from heaven knows where with that wild buck, Jackson—thank goodness. And Rick’s not home. Again.
In spite of a wonderful day at the spa and Gloria’s advice, not to mention my own instincts screaming that I’ve lost my last marble, I sneak out of the house.
The dogs perk up, wanting to come, but I tell them I’m taking care of business and it’s their job to guard the house. It’s dark as pitch out here. I forgot my flashlight, and besides, I don’t think burglars use them.
Of course, I’m not a burglar. I’m just a wife on a mission. Is he or isn’t he? Cheating, that is.
I navigate my yard without a problem. Even in the dark I know and love very bush, tree, nook and cranny. It’s the vacant lot between my house and the restaurant that could be my Waterloo. The weeds are higher than my head and eager to tangle me up in their prickly fingers so the snakes lurking nearby can eat me alive.
I don’t know how Napoleon would deal with all this, but if I so much as spot a weed move, I’ll die on the spot. Nobody will ever find me. Angie will mourn and Rick will be sorry.
What am I doing out here defying death, anyway? I start to turn back, but the urge to find out what’s really keeping Rick at the restaurant night after night is so strong I press on.
Finally I get across the vacant lot, but my target is at the end of a long downhill slope. Full of overgrown briar patches. And small gullies. And big rocks.
If I scream will Rick leave Miss Pink Passion Notes and come to my rescue?
I consider creeping down on all fours, but that would put me closer to the snakes. Instead I turn sideways and inch down like a crab.
Halfway down, a rock waylays me and I end up on my butt, scooting and crashing along at what feels like the speed of light. And screaming. Did I mention screaming?
At the bottom I startle a stray cat who yowls as if the world has come to an end.
And maybe it has.
Rick’s in the doorway behind the restaurant backlit from the lamp in his office. And he’s training a flashlight into the night.
“What the hell?”
Worse. He trains it on me.
“Jenny?
“Hello, Rick.”
“What are you doing back here?”
“I was worried about you?”
When I’m in hot water I end every sentence as if it’s a question. Rick knows this. As he heads toward me, I figure my marriage is now as good as dead. Killed by suspicion and snakes wearing pink high heels.
He helps me up, wipes the leaves and twigs off my shirt and my jeans, then just looks at me as if I’m somebody he doesn’t even know. Just before I think I’m going to die of embarrassment if I don’t die of a splinter in my butt first, my husband says, “Let’s go home.”
“Okay.”
Sometimes it’s these small, tender mercies that hold the fabric of a marriage together.
Moonlight in Mississippi has improved exponentially.
—Gloria
MY NAME is all over the local papers this morning. Jenny has them spread across the kitchen table where she’s drinking coffee and looking as if she’s lost her last friend. I pour myself a cup—so much at home with the Millers I know where the cutlery and dishes are located—then slide in beside her.
“Good morning. What’s up?”
“I’m not sure you want to know.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.” She tells me about her misguided midnight mission.
“Maybe you need a break. Reconsider coming to California with me.”
“I’d have to talk to Rick. He didn’t say a word when we got home last night, and he was gone before I got out of bed this morning. So I guess we’re not speaking.”
“Why don’t I talk to Rick? I’ll make our trip seem very casual. You won’t have to burn bridges. It will just give you some breathing room.”
“You’re a saint, but I just don’t know yet what I’m going to do. Of course, the trip would give Angie a chance to see something beyond Mooreville and Jackson Tucker, but I’m not sure this is the right time for me to leave.”
I’m far from a saint, but what I’m about to do might qualify me. Either that, or label me certifiably insane.
“Even if you don’t go, Angie could ride home with me and I could buy her a ticket to fly back.”
“Are you sure? She can be a handful.”
I can take this graceful way out or I can be a friend and keep the hope alive on Jenny’s face.
“I’m sure.”
AFTER BREAKFAST Jenny lets me borrow her truck while she’s working in her rose garden. First I drive to the restaurant.
Rick is circulating with the coffeepot, greeting his customers. I don’t think for a minute he’s seeing another woman, and I told Jenny so before I left the house. I don’t think she believes me.
He pours two cups then joins me. I issue the invitation to take Angie to California before I chicken out.
“Angie will be thrilled. It has meant so much for all of us to have you here. Especially Jenny. She’s stuck in this little town.” Rick shakes his head, as if all things female confuse him. “I don’t know.”
Seized by a sudden inspiration, I say, “Why don’t the two of you visit me?” When he protests he can’t leave the restaurant long enough to drive cross-country, I offer to buy tickets for them to fly out. “Just for a weekend, if that’s all you can spare.”
I can picture the two of them away from the daily stress of running a business and raising a teenager. I imagine them drinking margaritas beside my pool, sitting in side-by-side deck chairs and holding hands, recapturing all the old feelings that first brought them together.
I’m no romantic. I know capturing magic is impossible for couples who have not only grown far apart but have eviscerated each other with barbed tongues and wounded each other’s spirits with cold silences. But Jenny and Rick are not like that. I think in the daily grind of living, they’ve simply lost sight of each other.
When Rick declines my invitation, I’m disappointed, but there’s nothing else I can do. Really.
Except drive over to the garage to check on my car. And talk to Jackson.
I can just hear Roberta saying, Are you out of your skinny mind? Who made you God?
“Roberta, you old sourpuss, you won’t even know me when I get home.” I say this aloud, pulling up into Tucker’s Garage, full of intentions to talk to Jackson about responsibility. And also full of hope that Jackson’s father might come riding down the hill on his black stallion. That he might whisk me off to his big barn that smells of sweet clover hay and do all manner of delicious things to me in the haystacks.
I know, I know. I said I wasn’t a romantic, but maybe this is Jillian talking. Maybe I’m turning into my TV persona. But only her better side.
I hope.
When I pull into the parking lot, Jackson looks up from the raised hood of a Ford Escort and waves.
“How’s it going, Miss Hart?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“The parts came.” He takes me inside to show me the Ferrari which is looking almost as good as new. “I’ve got a few more little dents to pull out, then do the paint job, and she’ll be ready.”
“You’ve done splendid work.”
He grins and says, “Thanks,” then I move into the hard stuff.
“Jackson, Angie is only seventeen.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I’m not about to give a big speech about the consequences of unplanned
pregnancy. It’s not my job. Still, if I can help Jenny and her family, I’m willing to look like a meddler.
“There’s a possibility she will drive back to California with me, and if she does I think it’s important she knows it’s all right with you.”
“Jeez. I’d give my eyeteeth to drive this baby across the country.” He pats the hood of my car, then smiles, so much like his daddy I feel goose-bumps on my arm. “You’re cool, Miss Hart.”
“Call me Gloria.”
I glance up the hillside and see no sign of Tuck, then the cool Miss Hart does what she always does when life kicks her in the gut and her hopes are dashed. She gets into her borrowed truck and drives home.
It’s funny how quickly I’ve come to regard the Millers’ place as home. Funny, but wonderful.
Just a few days ago I would not have imagined a single good thing that could come of my accident. Now I see that nothing in this world is chance. Everything you do, everywhere you go, every person you meet is the Universe’s way of saying, Hey, be still, look, listen and learn.
“You missed a call from Tuck,” Jenny tells me when I walk in. “The number is on the hall table. He’s coming by at seven to take you out. Unless you have other plans.”
There are miracles, after all. For the first time in my life, I don’t mind that somebody else is taking charge.
“Did he say where?”
“No. Just to wear jeans.”
TUCK AND I are sitting on a patchwork quilt on a hilltop overlooking his paddocks and a large lake. A picnic basket with the remains of thick roast beef sandwiches sits on the grass beside us, and we’re holding two wineglasses filled with merlot.
The moon is the kind a set director might order, big and round and orange, so impossibly bright you’d think it’s fake if you didn’t know better.
Below, a horse as pale as moonlight drinks from the lake, then shakes her mane before she bounds off to join the others.
Tuck points all this out to me, calling their names and relating their racing history. Then he sits back and watches me.
“It’s a kind of heaven, isn’t it?” I tell him.