“Thanks, Jolene,” Caroline said. “You’re the best.”
“Hey, Smokey,” Jolene said as they pulled Smokey to the double doors beyond the waiting room. “Good to see you again, sugar.”
Smokey gurgled a response.
Jolene raised an eyebrow at Caroline as they passed. “Jolene, this is Noah Cranwell. Noah, this is Jolene Simpson.”
“Nice to meet you,” Noah said, batting one of Smokey’s hands away from his face. “Caroline says this happens a lot. I don’t believe her.”
Jolene’s petal of a mouth twitched into a smile. “Oh, honey, believe it.”
MAX O’CONNER WAS waiting for them. He did a double take when he saw Caroline at one end of Smokey and Noah on the other. Ever the professional, he addressed his patient first. “Sit down, and let me have a look.” Her father flipped on his medical flashlight and pulled up one of Smokey’s eyelids. “When was the last time you had anything to eat, son?”
Smokey blinked back the doctor’s fingers. “I reckon yesterdee?”
Max sighed. “I’ll have someone bring you a bite to eat once you can sit up straight. For now, we’ll get you started with some electrolytes and ibuprofen. You’re really getting too old for this, you know.”
“I know, but I got me a job with that’n over there.” He jerked his thumb in Noah’s direction. “Gotta be sober for th’ mornin’.”
“You’ll feel like hell,” Max replied. “But by tomorrow you’ll be on the mend. Stay in this room. You can lie down on the bed if you want. I’ll take you home tonight after I finish up here.”
Smokey nodded.
Caroline’s father ushered them out of the room. “Caroline, I know you mean well,” he said, “but you cannot continue to bring Smokey here. I haven’t the time or room for him today.”
“Noah needed a roofer,” Caroline said. She shrugged, forgetting that her father and Noah had not yet been introduced.
Noah stuck out his hand. “I’m Noah Cranwell, sir. I bought the gas station across from the bait shop.”
“I knew who you were the second you walked through the door,” Max O’Conner replied, shaking his hand. “I’m Dr. Max O’Conner, father to this urchin next to you.”
“My father thinks I have a bleeding heart,” Caroline said. She grinned at both men. “But I’m not the one volunteering at the free clinic.”
“It’s a tax write-off,” her father replied.
“Sure, that’s why you do it.”
“Regardless, I’d prefer it if you let Smokey find his own jobs from now on. You’re both too old for this.”
“It’s what Mom would have done.”
Max O’Conner cleared his throat. “You’ve got me there.” He turned his attention to Noah. “Caroline isn’t wrong about Smokey—he’ll do you a good job. And he’ll stay sober while he’s doing it.”
“So I’ve heard,” Noah replied. “Where I come from, we call up someone from the yellow pages, but I suppose this way has its charms.”
“I remember you as a small boy, but of course that was when you were from here,” Max said. “Where did you grow up?”
“New Jersey, mostly.”
“That’s a far piece from here.”
Noah knitted his eyebrows together. “If by far piece you mean whole other country, then yes, it’s a far piece from here.”
“That is what it means,” Max O’Conner said with a laugh. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have other patients to see today.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Caroline reached out to give her father a hug.
Once he released his daughter, he extended his hand once more to Noah. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, Dr. O’Conner.”
Caroline’s father held Noah’s hand for just a little longer than she was comfortable with. He was looking at Noah, really looking at him, and Caroline wondered what in the hell he was searching for. After her father finally released him, Caroline led Noah back out the front door, all eyes, especially Jolene’s, on them. “I don’t know how you do it,” Noah said, once they were back in the truck. “It must be exhausting.”
“Do what?” Caroline wanted to know. “It’s not like I pick up drunk guys every day. Just Smokey, and only when I know he needs a job.”
“Not that,” Noah said. “The way everyone pays so much attention. I’m just not used to it.”
“Well, get used to it,” Caroline replied. “You’re new in town, but your family isn’t. There were rumors going around about you long before you moved back to town.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s Cold River.”
Noah was quiet for a moment. “Your father seems nice.”
“He is,” Caroline agreed. “A bit stuffy, but he’s a good guy. He has a lot on his plate what with taking care of my mother and all. I don’t know how he manages to still devote time to his patients at the clinic.”
“Well, you help with that.”
“I do, some. But I spend my days at the shop. My father spends at least three days a week with my mom by himself, and that’s no easy task, no matter how much you love a person.”
“How long have they been married?” Noah asked.
Caroline wrinkled her nose in thought. “I’m not sure,” she said, embarrassed. “I’d say forty-five years, at least.”
“That’s a long time.”
“I can’t even imagine being married,” Caroline admitted. “Let alone being married for that long.”
“I was married once.”
Noah said it so casually that Caroline almost drove off the road. He was married? She gripped the steering wheel and tried to focus on the road. “You were married?”
“A long time ago,” Noah replied. “I was eighteen. Just enlisted. We thought we were soul mates.” He laughed. “It lasted just shy of two years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Besides, it’s not like I knew what a good marriage looked like,” Noah replied, just the slightest hint of bitterness rolling off of his tongue. “It was a nightmare, and we both hated each other by the end.”
Caroline wasn’t sure what to say. It had never occurred to her that Noah might have been married before. Of course, she thought to herself, I hardly know him. Still, she couldn’t imagine him at eighteen. She couldn’t imagine him being anything other than the person sitting next to her in the cab of her truck. “Well, I think marriage is probably hard no matter how many good examples you have,” she said, finally. “Most of the people I know who got married right out of high school are already divorced. And my mother doesn’t even know who my father is half of the time.”
“But your father takes care of her anyway,” Noah countered. “You’ve got to admit, that’s not something everybody would do.”
“True,” Caroline said, thinking of the way her father continued to dote on her mother, even after all these years. Even after her brother died. Even after the diagnosis. “You know, I know my father loves her. He is so utterly devoted. But I can’t remember hearing him say it to her. Or to me. He doesn’t like to talk about his emotions. He doesn’t really even like for other people to have emotions. I guess that’s why he doesn’t like to talk about how sick my mother really is.”
“Some people are like that.”
Caroline nodded. Something about the way he said some people made Caroline think that he knew someone like that, too—someone shut up tight like her father.
“No marriage is perfect,” Noah continued. “Everybody has secrets, even married people. There’s a reason people act the way they do.”
“Not my parents,” Caroline replied. “Remember, they live in Cold River. There’s simply no place left to put secrets around here.”
CHAPTER 10
“DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING THAT ISN’T AN old T-shirt or a ripped-up pair of jeans?” Ava Dawn asked, riffling through her cousin’s closet. “Neither one of us is gonna look cute in any of this.”
“It’s a pie auction, not a fashion sho
w,” Caroline reminded her cousin. “Everybody will be wearing jeans and T-shirts.”
“Too bad half my clothes are bein’ held hostage by Roy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he said he’d call the cops if he caught me there.”
“That doesn’t seem legal.”
“It’s his house,” Ava Dawn said with a sigh. “Been in the family for years. Ain’t a damn thing I can do about it.”
“Well, you can wear something of mine.”
“Do you have anything that you didn’t buy in junior high?”
“Don’t be hateful. I’m sure I have something nice in there.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why do you care?” Caroline crossed her arms and looked over at Ava Dawn. “You got someone special you want to look good for?”
“Oh, so now I gotta have someone special to want to look nice?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s just that I’m always just gettin’ off work or gettin’ ready to go to work whenever I go to church for anything,” Ava Dawn said. “Brother Crow probably thinks I live at the diner.”
“Brother Crow probably shouldn’t be thinking about it,” Caroline replied.
Ava Dawn giggled. “He’s cute, though, ain’t he?”
“He’s married.”
“So am I.”
Caroline smirked over at her cousin. “But not for long, right?”
“Lord, I hope not.”
Caroline began to laugh, and so did Ava Dawn. It felt good to Caroline to be laughing with her cousin. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation that wasn’t centered on something serious. She was eventually able to find her cousin a denim skirt and pink lace tank top tucked in the back of her closet, and she settled on a pair of jeans approved by Ava Dawn and a similar tank top in black.
Caroline’s father was sitting in the living room when the girls emerged. He looked up from his book and gave them a grin. “You girls look lovely.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Caroline replied. “Where’s Mom?”
“She said she had a headache. I helped her to bed early.”
“Do you need me to stay home?”
“Absolutely not,” Max O’Conner replied. “Go and bring home one of Widow Johnson’s cherry pies.”
“But I don’t want to leave you if Mom is sick.”
“It’s a headache,” her father replied. “And I’m a doctor. I think I can handle it alone for a few hours.”
“Come on,” Ava Dawn said, pulling at Caroline’s arm. “We’ll be late if we don’t scoot.”
Outside, Caroline pered into the bed of her truck. “What are all these trash bags doing in here?” she asked.
“I picked up some clothes from the hospital thrift shop.” Ava Dawn replied. “Uncle Max called and got them to part with some of their overstock from the back room. I don’t know who donated this stuff, but you’re right, it smells like an old, wet dog.”
“Why do you have it?”
“For the church clothing drive,” Ava Dawn replied. “I told Brother Crow I’d help out with it.”
“Do you ever tell Brother Crow no?”
Ava Dawn shrugged. “I figure it’s a little bit like telling Jesus no, you know? I figure he’s got a direct line to Jesus, and tellin’ him no is like punchin’ Jesus in the face.”
Caroline burst out laughing. She couldn’t help herself. “I don’t think it’s quite that dramatic, Ava Dawn,” she said. “Brother Crow ain’t Billy Graham.”
“I’m late.” Ava Dawn squinted into the fading daylight. “I said I’d help set up.”
“I’m sorry,” Caroline replied. “You could have gone on without me.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” Ava Dawn smiled over at her cousin. “You needed to get out just as bad as I did.”
When they turned into the church parking lot, it looked like everybody in the whole town had turned out. Caroline was glad to see so many people turning out to support the Brannans. Court’s father worked full-time at the sawmill just outside of town and had been there for as long as Caroline could remember. Pam had been a CNA before she got sick, and even with both of his parents working money had always been tight. Most of the other families in Cold River lived paycheck to paycheck just like the Brannans, but it didn’t matter; everybody gave what they could.
Ava Dawn broke off from Caroline once they entered the building. “I’m gonna go find Brother Crow and see what he needs me to do.”
Caroline felt a pang of panic. She knew all of the faces she saw, but she was alone. Ava Dawn was almost always her buffer at social functions. She scanned the crowd for Court, who she knew would be equally uncomfortable, but he was nowhere to be found. As she searched, she began to wonder if she really would see Reese. She knew that Court kept up with him, even though he pretended not to like him much. They’d kept up a friendship long after Caroline and Reese were through. And through was something they’d been for a while. It wasn’t the rumors of him cheating on her that had bothered her as much as it was that Reese thought she’d be stupid enough to believe that he wasn’t cheating on her. She’d known who he was when they’d gotten together, and the only thing she’d been stupid about was thinking that he was going to change—that with her he’d be different.
Luckily, she didn’t see Reese anywhere, but out of the corner of her eye, she did see Court. He was leaning up against a wall in the back, a can of Coca-Cola in one of his hands. She made her way over to him.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Court said. “You’ll never guess who’s here tonight.”
“Who?” Caroline asked. “Is it Reese?”
“No,” Court replied. “You know Reese. He said he’d rather write me a check than show up at one of these things.”
“I figured he could at least come here for you,” Caroline said, trying to hide her relief.
Court slung an arm around Caroline’s shoulder. “That’s your job.”
“Caroline?” There was someone waving to her through the crowd. “Hey, Caroline!”
Caroline looked towards the sound of the voice and spotted two of her high school friends, Kasey and Tyler. Kasey was waving at her frantically, jumping up and down.
Tyler and Kasey moved two towns over after high school graduation to work for Kasey’s parents at their farm supply store. At first, they’d come back often to see everyone, but Caroline couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them. “How are you guys?” Caroline asked, reaching out to embrace both of them.
“Good, good,” Kasey replied. She held Caroline out at arm’s length. “You look good, girl.”
“Thanks,” Caroline replied.
“You seein’ anybody special?” Kasey winked at her.
“No,” Caroline replied.
“I was just telling Court over here that it’s about time for him to get hitched.” Tyler clapped Court on the back.
Caroline rolled her eyes over at Court. “And what did he say about that?”
“The same thing he always says,” Kasey replied. “Not everybody is as lucky in love as the two of us.” She linked her arm through Tyler’s.
“Well, he’s right there.”
“Twenty-five might as well be fifty in Cold River,” Tyler continued. “You and Caroline both better figure somethin’ out.”
“If Caroline and I aren’t married by the time we’re’ fifty, don’t you worry, we’ll partner up,” Court said, a sly smile cropping up on his face.
“Speaking of partnering up,” Kasey gave the room a once-over, “where is Reese? I heard he was gonna be here tonight.”
They were all staring at Caroline. She shrugged her shoulders. “Why are you all looking at me?”
“You haven’t heard from him?” Tyler wanted to know.
“No.”
Kasey and Tyler exchanged glances.
“You never shoulda turned him down,” Kasey said, shaking her head. “You coulda been married to a railroad man!”
Caroline shifted on her feet uncomfortably. As if the only important thing in life was to be married. She searched for an escape, and instead saw Roy Bean walk through the double doors. He was holding the hand of a woman she’d never seen before, and he was making a beeline for the pie table where Ava Dawn was sitting. She hadn’t seen him yet, too busy arranging pies and handing out auction numbers.
“Oh, this is going to be bad,” Caroline muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Kasey wanted to know. “You see Reese?”
“It’s Roy.”
“So?”
“So he and Ava Dawn are separated, and he’s just showed up with some other woman.”
“That ain’t nothin’ new,” Tyler replied. “Them two are always goin’ back and forth.”
“It’s different this time,” Caroline replied. “I better get over there before something happens.”
Roy beat Caroline to the table by a split second, but it was enough for Ava Dawn to look up and get an eyeful of him and his companion. Caroline could practically see the smoke coming out of Ava Dawn’s ears.
“What are you doing here?” Ava Dawn demanded.
Roy grinned. It was the same shit-eating grin he always wore just before he got mean. “You better be Christian-like, Ava Dawn. We’re in a church.”
“I know that, Roy,” Ava Dawn replied through gritted teeth. “What are you doing here?”
“Just tryin’ to show my support for Court and his daddy.”
“You hate Court.”
“Aw, come on now. You know that ain’t true.” Roy was still grinning.
Ava Dawn sighed, gathering her composure. “You want a number?”
Roy looked surprised, clearly expecting more of a fight from his wife. “Well, I reckon so,” he said, eyeing her.
“Here.” Ava Dawn handed him a paper fan with a number written in Sharpie. She didn’t even look up at him as he took it.
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