“I recall my history. When this country declared war on the aggressors, an arrangement was made to repatriate all those pilots who wanted to come home, an agreement that allowed them to keep their rank already earned in battle.”
“Exactly. They trained others to fly because this country didn’t have much of an air force at first.” Caleb said.
“But we sure made up for it.” Pam nodded. And it was thanks to men like Caleb’s fathers.
“So, we’re finally getting a private jet,” Adam said.
“We are. It’s going to be a couple of years before we actually have one, but the proposal received approval. At the meeting of the town trust, Uncle Martin—Martin Kendall—explained how it wouldn’t be all that expensive, considering the soaring cost of air fare. Those prices have soared thanks to the cost of jet fuel. But when you own an oil company…” Caleb let his sentence trail off.
“One thing about Lusty,” James said. “We’re proud of our past, but we’re not chained to it.”
Pamela thought that sounded perfect. A few minutes later, she had occasion to mentally repeat that word, for the house that Caleb Benedict drew to a stop in front of was…perfect.
When she’d been an adolescent, she’d dreamed of a castle with a turret. This was no castle, but the house, built in the Victorian style, appeared to boast three dormers and a turret. The latter appeared to house a small room, as did each of the dormers, one of which was a third floor room. Five steps led up to a porch that curved off to the right, as she faced the building. The front door was straight ahead, at the top of those steps. Steps that seemed to be calling to her.
“We don’t have a basement here,” Adam said. “We need to be mindful of keeping mold out because of the heat and humidity. So, we have a little extra bit on top. Our grandparents, whom you’ll meet tonight, lived here until they moved into the New House. They live there now with our Uncles Nicholas and Martin and our Aunt Miranda.”
“It’s beautiful!”
“I have it on good authority that our mother and the aunts have been through the place, opening windows and making sure we weren’t bringing you into a stale home.”
“That was very kind of them. Stale only means unlived in. We’re home now. I think we’re going to do a lot of living, here.”
“I’ll help you with your bags,” Caleb said. “Then I have to get home to the farm. Have one of the guys give us a ring tomorrow. I know Bernice would love to meet you.”
She and Bernice Benedict should be of an age. It would be good to have a friend—a woman friend—here in her new home.
“I’d love to meet her, too. Thank you, Caleb, for the ride home.”
Her husbands beamed, and Caleb’s smile lit his eyes. “My pleasure. Welcome home, Mrs. Jessop.”
* * * *
Was there ever a more perfect woman?
James didn’t think so. He felt an enormous weight lift off his shoulders. He watched Pamela touring her new home, and didn’t the grandparents’ place now feel like their home, at last? There could be no mistaking her joy at what she discovered as she explored.
Pamela’s sassy fire-tinged brown hair swayed as she toured her surroundings. Her beguiling hazel eyes saw everything. Simple things delighted her. There would be no airs put on by their Pamela. Her heart was as good and as large as he’d ever seen. When she looked at him, he saw more than affection, and when she focused on him as he spoke, he felt as if they were the only people in the world.
And yet, she had a way of making sure that Adam was a part of their conversations, and he was with the two of them if they were talking. She enveloped them both and had from that very first shared lunch in the cafeteria at Johns Hopkins, through all the coffee breaks, suppers and excursions since.
He already loved her with all his heart. He really was the luckiest man in the world.
Pamela ran her hand along the kitchen counter and had a look in the fridge. There was fresh milk and butter, a pitcher of sweet tea and a plate of sandwiches, covered over with plastic wrap. There were eggs and sausage links and bread and jam.
A package of cold cuts was in the meat drawer, and the freezer atop the fridge held a whole chicken and a nice-sized brisket. James knew without looking there would be casseroles and likely sweets in the small chest freezer in the laundry room.
“It looks like someone brought over some groceries,” Pamela said. Her smile was a sight to behold, and he and Adam couldn’t help but return it.
“Mother would have seen to it the place was ready for you. She hates traveling herself, and she would have thought you could do with a rest when you finally got home.”
“Your mother’s very considerate. The truth is the flight did take a lot out of me. Likely because it was my first, and I used up a lot of energy worrying about it.”
And likely worrying about meeting your new relatives. James didn’t speak the thought aloud, but he thought it might be so. He couldn’t honestly blame her, if that was the case.
Tonight’s supper would be a small group by Lusty standards—just their parents and their grandparents. He had enough friends and knew enough about how the world worked outside of Lusty to know two things. The moment a woman met her in-laws for the first time was an important moment in her life. And women inevitably worried about such meetings far more than men did, though men did worry a little.
He could certainly empathize because that Friday evening when he and Adam spoken to Reg Franklin was very recent in his memory. The fact that it had been Adam asking to marry Pamela hadn’t diminished the nervous factor for James one bit. He brought his attention back to their woman.
So far, Pamela clearly liked everything she’d seen.
“We want to show you our bedroom.” Adam’s simple sentence must have shocked Pamela, because she turned her head quickly to look at him.
“No coy invitation to see your ‘etchings’?”
James laughed, and Adam chuckled. “No, sweet. Seriously, we want you to see it. We’ll unpack our bags…well, ours should stay down here because we have mostly laundry in them. But we can help you unpack. If you’d like a rest, we can do that, too.”
James decided to rescue his brother. Neither of them was a smooth talker and likely never would be. But James understood he was a little less awkward with his words than was Adam.
“We’re hoping that, tonight, we can have some intimate time together with you in our bedroom,” he said. He picked up her hand and kissed it. “But I think seeing the room will assuage some of the doubts I know you have about life here in Lusty.”
Pamela met his gaze. He didn’t think he imagined the relief he saw there. He looked over at Adam, who seemed surprised by James’s words.
He loved his brother, who was truly his other half despite their not being twins. And he accepted that Adam would always have challenges with the concept of nuances.
Since he had hold of her hand, James began to lead her up the stairs. Her eyes widened when she realized that the two of the three good-sized bedrooms on the right side of the hall were occupied.
“This one was mine, and that one, Adam’s. We’ll both be moving into the master suite today. Come, look.”
Adam went ahead of them and opened the large double doors on the other side of the hallway.
She hadn’t even crossed the threshold when she gasped. James held back his smile. He’d heard that, for those not used to the private amenities here in Lusty—which pretty much covered the rest of the world—seeing the bed could be a shock.
“Good heavens look at the size of that bed!”
“We call it Jessop-size. But it’s also called Benedict-size and Kendall-size or, perhaps, just Lusty-size. Depending.”
Adam turned to her. By the expression on his face, James saw that big brother finally seemed to understand what was needed. “This is the master suite. It’s been here, waiting for the day we’d find the woman meant to be our wife. We’ve never slept in this bed. No one has, as it was brand-new when we mov
ed in. This is our sanctuary, as is the attached master bath.”
She followed Adam’s nod and walked toward the attached room. The clawfoot tub, he knew, would fit four comfortably, as would the shower and the newly installed Jacuzzi tub.
There were three sinks. She explored the linen closet, which was filled with towels and had the added luxury of a mini dryer in the bottom part of that space. She opened the other closed door in the room, discovering the toilet and bidet in that private inner room.
“Most every home in Lusty has a comparable master suite,” James said. “There are families comprised of a single husband and wife. There are some, like ours, that are three, and some that are four. And there are some, men and women, who’ve remained single. The founding principle of Lusty was that people should be free to love who and how they chose, if they chose.”
“Our town appears to be the ultimate expression of the right to the pursuit of happiness cited in the Declaration of Independence.”
Our town. James sighed. He really was he was the luckiest man in the world. He walked over to Pamela and used a finger to lift her chin.
“That’s exactly right. Tonight, at supper, you’ll meet our mother and our fathers, as well as our paternal grandmother, and our grandfathers. And I can tell you without a doubt, they will be delighted to meet you.”
“I’m nervous. I want to make a good impression.”
Adam joined him. They gathered her in, together, and James’s heart soared to have their woman in their house, between them.
“Baby,” Adam said, “they’re going to love you. I absolutely guarantee it.”
Chapter Five
“Oklahoma, huh? Why the hell do you want us to go all the hell and gone out there? I like the East Coast, Scooter. I like New York City with its hustle and bustle. Because that’s who I am, a hustler. Oklahoma is a wild and uncivilized land.”
“You might like the East Coast, Gary, and so do I. But the East Coast isn’t going to be liking us very much longer. There have been complaints lodged in Baltimore already against the Genesis Fund. And in New York City against the Eden Fund. And in Boston, and even in Hartford and even up in Bangor.” Fred Thomas, aka Scooter, aka an entire long line of aliases including, most recently, John Adams, shook his head. “You know what I was thinking, Gary? If we head to Oklahoma, we could look for a couple of really rich widows or some wealthy yahoos who don’t know anything beyond their own little Okie lives. You know, there’re a lot of oil wells out that way, and so therefore, there has to be a lot of oil money. Those folks are so damn rich, they likely don’t know what to spend their money on. I figure that if we can hook just a couple of them, and add that to what we have, we can retire.”
“Retire and do what, Scooter?” Gary asked. “We’re grifters! We’ve been grifters forever.”
Scooter knew what he wanted to do. He also knew the odds of their continuing to get away with conning people without being caught were getting smaller and smaller. They should quit while they were ahead.
Scooter had long known that Gary didn’t like change. His lifelong friend and business partner did his thing best when he knew the sides and the depth of it. Scooter had thought some about the approach he’d use with the man.
“We can pull a long con,” Scooter said. “We can look for a couple of nice women, get married, and then pretend to be respectable citizens. Imagine the challenge of taking on that kind of a role, the kind that never ends!”
Gary sent Scooter a look that said he wasn’t buying it. Neither was Scooter, the man selling it, but they did have to get away from the East Coast.
“I get the heat’s going to be turned up,” Gary said. “I’ve heard from one of my contacts that there have been complaints lodged about our Baltimore business with the county police. And I know that if we’re not careful, sooner or later, we’re going to get caught.”
Scooter smiled at the way Gary made it sound like they were a couple of businessmen and yet celebrated being a grifter. It gave him hope he could convince the man to pursue a life of ease. They were con men, men who lived by their quick wits and silver tongues. Despite that, he didn’t feel much remorse for the suckers they took. This was the land of free enterprise and let the buyer beware. Anyone not smart enough to do their due diligence deserved to be fleeced, and he and his partner might as well be the ones doing the fleecing, as far as he was concerned. But there came a point when a man had to take stock and take care, and he was certain they were reaching that point.
“See? By your own sources you know we can’t afford to keep operating where we’ve been operating. I figure, if we head to Oklahoma now, we can start working that whole area—Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Now, I understand that mostly Texas and Oklahoma have those rich oil deposits. I looked it up at the library. There’s a lot of money flowing around down there. And those folks? Not at all sophisticated like the people in New York City. I bet you we’d be able to work that entire area. It’ll be as easy as mom’s apple pie.”
“My mom never made apple pie. She never made pie, period. She was too busy scoring tricks and drinking gin to give a rat’s ass about me. I used to see those commercials on TV showing those so-called ‘all American’ families.’” Gary snorted and shook his head. “Bunch of bullshit, if you ask me.”
It didn’t happen very often, but every once in a while, Gary took him literally at the wrong moment. Scooter had been using a common expression. Gary’s reaction told him that he probably could be talked around to settling down, playing that “long con.” Scooter’s mind scrambled to find the right words. They had to get the hell away from their usual stomping grounds, and they needed to do it yesterday.
“This is our chance,” Scooter said. And then he had it. Gary himself had given him the inspiration, and he ran with it. “This is our chance to change our lives, to get some of what we never had. Let’s pull a couple more cons and make them huge. Then we’ll go see Mikey, get a couple of brand-new names. We walk out with a couple mil, we’ll have it made. New names, new realities. We can find us a life where we can have that apple-pie dream we never got as kids. What do you say?”
Gary looked out the window of their Queens apartment. Scooter stood beside him. They stood quietly gazing down on the same scene they’d watched for the last couple of years. Mrs. Lansky, their landlady, lived downstairs, and they had to go down and out through her place. They made sure to pay her cash every month, and she was happy because no one knew she had this little apartment. There was a john with a shower and a kitchen with a sink and a two-burner stove. They each had a bed and a dresser, and they’d even splurged and gotten themselves a television.
But the time had come for them to cut bait and go someplace else, someplace new.
Gary turned and met his gaze. “Okay. I guess we have gotten all we can get from this area. I sure don’t want to go back to Chicago, so I guess Oklahoma is far enough away from both places.” He sighed. “A couple mil? You think we could score that big, Fred?”
Fred smiled. Gary only used his real name when he was being absolutely serious. “I do. Somewhere out there, in one of the states bordering on Oklahoma, or hell, maybe in Oklahoma itself, have to be a couple of old ladies who want to leave a secure future to their loved ones.”
“And if anyone can convince those ladies to hand over those bucks for investment, that person is you.”
“You’re pretty good at the grift yourself, pal.” Fred felt a weight slide off his shoulders. Knowing Gary, he’d want to take a week or two, getting his ducks in a row.
But he’d been persuaded, and that was all that mattered. Oklahoma, here we come!
* * * *
“This picture was taken when Adam was three and James was two.”
Pamela looked down at the adorable shot of two brothers sharing a bath—both with their hair covered in shampoo suds, both with adorable, almost gamine smiles, and of course, both totally naked.
Maria Sanchez Jessop’s finger caressed
the image of her toddlers, and then she met Pamela’s gaze. Her grin was wide, and she flicked a quick look at her sons, who currently flanked Pam and were actually squirming in their chairs. “I warned them, when they were fifteen and fourteen and getting into mischief, that the moment they brought a woman home, I would show her this picture, if they didn’t behave. To what I imagine now is their deep regret, they did not listen to their mama.”
Pamela caught further proof of the discomfort her men were feeling when she saw Adam grimace in her peripheral vision. She laughed. “I’m pleased to know you’re a woman of your word, Maria.” Her mother-in-law had embraced her on first sight and invited her to call her by her first name. Her fathers-in-law had done the same.
Their grandparents, Chelsea Benedict Jessop-Kendall, Jeremy Kendall, and Dalton Jessop, had been just as welcoming. Over supper, Pamela had gotten to know these new relatives. The two triads had one notable thing in common, and that was that the men fairly doted on their wives. Men outnumbered women at this supper table two to one, but no one would know that based on the dynamics she’d witnessed.
Pamela had had a sense of that same kind of treatment already from Adam and James, and now she knew it came very naturally to them both.
“Gentlemen, I believe now is a good time for us to withdraw to the kitchen.” Her father-in-law Warren grinned at his wife then directed his eyes toward his sons. “We’ll put on a pot of coffee, cut the pies, and begin working on the dishes.”
Pamela knew surprise showed on her face as the men got up and began to clear the table.
“It’s tradition,” Chelsea said. When James and Adam got to their feet to do their father’s bidding—and no doubt, grabbing at the chance to escape possibly more of Maria’s motherly teasing—Chelsea moved and sat down beside Pamela.
Grandmother Chelsea patted her hand and gave her the sweetest smile. “And it’s not always the women who do the cooking, so it’s not always the men who do the cleaning up.”
One Thanksgiving in Lusty, Texas Page 5