Bittersweet Creek (15 page)

Julian

A
fter checking on the rest of the cows and horses as well as the garden, I headed back to the house. The beagle came out to meet me halfway and trotted beside me with her tail wagging. “I guess I'm going to have to give you a name if you're going to insist on following me around, huh?”

She whined in response and jumped up for me to scratch behind her ears.

“I will tell you one thing,” I said to the dog. “I sure as heck ain't naming you Shelley Jean.”

Even she didn't like that idea. She jumped down and started trailing something with her nose to the ground and her tail in the air. Kinda reminded me of Little Ann in that
Where the Red Fern Grows
movie.

But naming the dog something else didn't keep my mind from wandering back to Shelley Jean and, more importantly, back to Romy. It had been ridiculous to think she would be a nun while she was gone, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

I mean, I'd made it through the first few years thanks to too much booze and whatever pain pills I could find. Mama always had a ready supply. When I'd broke myself of the worst of those habits, I'd watched some movies I didn't want to quote to Ben. Then I realized I had to break myself of that habit, too. Finally, I'd settled into feeling low, not feeling much of anything at all.

Little Ann bayed at something invisible, then disappeared around the trailer. I started to call after her, but I heard voices in the front yard. Then Curtis told her to “Git!” and she yelped, which told me he'd given her a good kick.

I walked around the front of the trailer ready to kick him until he yelped. He'd only kicked her because she was mine, but she'd picked me—not the other way around. She dashed past me, head low, and hid underneath my porch. Anger welled up inside me. I was sick and tired of how he hurt things just because they belonged to me.

“Curtis McElroy, we need to have words.”

I stopped short at the sight of the tiny red convertible in the driveway. And the paunchy guy in a beret beside Curtis.

“Son, here's someone I'd like for you to meet. Mr. Marsh, this here's my boy, Julian.”

Mr. Marsh extended his hand, and I shook it. It was pale and limp. “Julian, what a pleasure to meet you. I called your father last night to tell him, unofficially, that our deal is on. Your family is about to become a very wealthy one.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't punch someone. “How's that, Mr. Marsh?”

“Well, I've been after both your father and Hank Satterfield for a couple of years now wanting to buy these two farms and put them together to make a world-class golf course community. Hank Satterfield is finally on the verge of agreeing.”

He beamed. It was all business to him. I stared through Curtis instead. “Let me guess: You're offering a lot of money for his part of the farm.”

“One fifty, actually. Curtis says that you own the other ten acres. I'd be quite willing to offer you a generous twenty just for your little portion.”

That's all I needed to know. “My land's not for sale.”

“Fine, fine. How about thirty? Surely, everything has a price, Mr. McElroy.”

Oh. So now I was Mr. McElroy, was I? “I'm not selling. I was born here. I'm going to die here. If all I have are my ten acres, then that's all I have. Some things are more important than money.”

As I walked off I could hear Curtis putting on the charm he brought out for special occasions: “Don't you worry, Mr. Marsh. I'll get him straightened out yet. Just young and stupid, you know?”

I slammed the door behind me so hard the pictures on the opposite wall fell. By habit or instinct, I couldn't tell which, I walked straight back to my punching bag. I threw a punch without taping up, but it didn't help. Instead I sank down into the glider rocker that'd been Mamaw's.

How in the blue hell had such a sweet woman produced such an asshole of a man? I meant every word of what I'd said, too. I would squat in this old clapboard house until the day I died. Or the day I finally snapped and shot Curtis McElroy then had to go to jail. That was assuming a jury of my peers would ever convict me.

And then the bastard started banging on the front door. I stomped through the house and flung open the door. “What the hell do you want now?”

Romy shrank back. She'd already been crying.

“I'm sorry, darlin', I thought you were Curtis.” I clamped my mouth shut. The “darlin' ” had slipped out because nothing hurt me more than seeing Romy Satterfield cry.

“Julian . . .” She tried to say something, but the words were lost in a hiccup as she started crying again. I leaned toward her, already about to take her in my arms when I remembered I couldn't. Or I shouldn't.

“Did that sonuvabitch do something to you? I told him I'd kill him.” More words I shouldn't have said, out before I could stop them. She shook her head no. I gestured for her to come in. Instead she flew into my arms.

Ah, God, the feel of her arms around me and my arms around her. Then the smell of her shampoo and I was dizzy, so dizzy, like that time I rode the Tilt-A-Whirl after sneaking a flask into the fair. I drew her closer into me, smoothing her hair away from her face while she sobbed into my chest. God had made me to hold her but I'd screwed that up, so I gently pushed her away and guided her to the couch.

If it had felt right to hold her close before, now it felt so wrong not to. The world felt cold without her. “So it's not Richard?”

She shook her head no. And with a sickening thud in the pit of my stomach, I knew. “It's about Hank wanting to sell the farm, isn't it?”

She bit her lip, tears still coursing down her cheeks.

I ran a hand through my hair. “How bad is it?”

“He's letting me have until the end of the summer to make a decision.” Her shoulders heaved up and down, and my palms itched from wanting to take her into my arms again.

“Okay, well, what do you want to do? Have you told Richard about all of this?”

“Richard.” She said the name as though she'd forgotten who he was. I was seized by an overwhelming desire to help her forget him.

She is still
your
wife.

“Yeah, he could probably buy the whole thing outright.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I'm not asking him to buy our farm.”

The way she said “our farm” caused my heart to skip a beat.

She
is
still your wife
....

Romy stood and paced, which was a good thing considering she had no idea where my mind was going. She hesitated a moment before walking down the hall, but I heard her blow her nose before I could remind her where the bathroom was. Slowly, she trudged back into the living room and flopped beside me. “It's because Richard proposed, isn't it?”

I started to answer, but she cut me off. “All that talk about a fancy storybook wedding in a cathedral in Nashville's got Daddy afraid I'll move there and never come back and—”

“How long has it been since you came home, Romy?”

“Almost a year. And two before that,” she whispered.

I swallowed hard. I didn't want to say what I had to say next. “So is it fair to ask Hank to hang on to the place when you only come home once a year? If that? He is getting older—”

She leaped to her feet and resumed her pacing. “No. I'm through with that. I thought I was staying away because home made me think of Mom. Now I know I was staying away because I was afraid I'd run into you, but here I am. We're both still standing. I won't make that mistake again.”

“Still, I don't want to see the man get run over by another bull, and it takes a lot of money to keep paying the property taxes when—”

“God, Julian! Whose side are you on anyway?”

She stared holes through me, her mood moving quickly from sadness to righteous indignation and stopping shy of mad as hell, which, as I recalled, always resulted in some truly incredible sex. I cleared my throat as a reminder to myself that I was strong enough to handle both the appeal of mad as hell and pear shampoo.

She resumed her pacing. “I need help putting up hay for the cows.”

“I can do that.”

“Great. Then I . . . no, not great.” She stopped there beside me then slugged me in the arm. “I'm in this predicament because Mr. Man up the road never taught me how to drive a tractor. I need someone to teach me
how
to do it, not do it for me.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. The time I'd tried to teach Romy how to drive a stick shift had been . . . interesting. “Fine. I'll teach you. What else?”

“I don't know.”

She started chewing on a hangnail on the side of her thumb. It wasn't my favorite habit of hers, but it was endearing because she only did it when she was really nervous about something. It was a part of her that hadn't changed. Or a part of her, like her accent, that she'd forgotten to hide.

“I'll do whatever you need me to do, but I'm not going to help you break that old man's heart.” I almost added “again,” but I'd already given too much of myself away because she studied me with her head turned sideways.

“And since when have you and Hank Satterfield become such bosom buddies?”

I stood and crammed my hands in my pockets. “We're not buddies. He's just a decent fellow.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That's not what you said when we were in high school.”

I shrugged. “A lot's changed since then, I guess.”

“And I don't guess you're going to tell me what changed?” Her hands moved to her hips.

“Nope.”

“Fine. We can start those tractor lessons tomorrow at seven.”

I gave the little night owl a double take. “Seven? You're going to be up and ready to go at seven?”

“What else can I do, Julian? I've got to feed Star, go through the garden, learn how to drive this tractor, and figure out how I'm going to get this all together. I've got another meeting with Genie, and I'm going to have to call Richard to tell him we're postponing the wedding. If he'll still have me.”

“If he'll still have you?” My fists were already out of my pockets and clenched.

“Yeah, this hasn't been a good week for him, what with finding out we were still married, getting into a brawl over at The Fountain, and”—she crinkled her nose—“then he and I sorta got into it over the calf.”

“What?”

“I was trying to get Star to take the bottle, and he came in guns a-blazing and scaring the poor thing. Then he told Hank that we were still married, and—”

I closed my eyes. If Hank Satterfield knew I'd kept a secret from him, he would have absolutely no incentive not to tell Romy the one thing I didn't want her to know. Blessedly, Romy was still carrying on about what had happened with Richard and the calf.

“All right, Romy,” I said to get her attention. “You've got a lot to do tomorrow. I understand. Why don't you go get started today? As long as you're all right.”

She treated me to a grin, a dazzling smile that took my breath away. “I'm going to be fine now. Thank you, Julian.”

“You're welcome. Seven tomorrow.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“I've got stuff to do. And so do you.” My voice came out gruffer than I intended, but that teeny bit of hurt behind her eyes might do her some good, might remind her to stay away from me.

“Fine. Tomorrow at seven,” she snapped before flouncing out of the house.

For the second time in one day I caught myself watching her go. This time I had to remember she wasn't coming back. At least not permanently.

I wandered through the house, finding myself standing in front of my friend, the punching bag. This time I was ready to give it a go for a whole different reason.

Romy

“W
here've you been?”

Daddy was trying to stare me down, but I wasn't going to let him. “I went to see Julian, if you must know.”

He frowned. “Don't reckon that's a good idea.”

I dug in for a fight. “And just why's that?”

“Well, Richard's called about four times, for one.”

And I'd left my cell phone upstairs to charge all day. Muttering some distinctly unladylike words, I didn't stay to find out any more reasons why Daddy thought I shouldn't go see Julian. Instead I ran upstairs for my cell—the Satterfields didn't believe in unlimited long distance on the landline, either.

“Supper'll be ready in thirty minutes,” Daddy hollered after me. He was puffing from the effort of trying to cook from the wheelchair, but I knew better than to try to stop him. He'd tell me he had to feel good for something.

I didn't answer. Now it was time to tell Richard we might have to postpone the wedding. He, however, didn't need to know I'd gone to Julian for help. His response would be, “Why don't you just buy some hay?” He wasn't following the news about the drought. He didn't understand that people like my father and Julian were the ones who
made
the hay. He sure as hell wouldn't understand my sudden desire to learn to do some of these things for myself. I didn't understand it, either, but there were some things I had to prove to myself.

I hugged myself at the memory. I wasn't too proud of my actions, but letting Julian hold me had felt so good. Once upon a time I'd believed there was nothing I couldn't stand as long as I had him to hold me and tell me it was all going to be okay. It was a momentary lapse because I was still upset about the farm, and it wouldn't happen again.

I checked the bars on my phone, but it wasn't happening. Instead I had to tromp downstairs and go sit on the edge of the front porch to make the call.

“There you are!” Relief whooshed from Richard when he answered the phone. “I've been missing you so much. I don't like the way we left things.”

I felt a twinge of something behind my breastbone. I had missed Richard, at least our easy companionship. I missed the steadiness of life with him, of what should have been a lazy summer of sleeping in and catching up on the housework I'd neglected during the school year. “I've missed you, too.”

“So, we're still engaged?” He sounded so small, so vulnerable on the other end of the line.

“Of course, we're still engaged! But . . .”

He sighed deeply. “I don't like the buts. Please tell me you don't have a child somewhere.”

“Richard! Of course not! No, Daddy's thinking about selling the family farm, and—”

“That's great! He can come to Nashville and live closer to us!”

My mouth went dry. No, not great. Hank Satterfield wouldn't last a day in Nashville. In his not-so-humble opinion, Memphis and Nashville were the Mecca and Medina of idiots. “No, Richard. Not great.”

“What do you mean?”

I flicked chips of paint from the porch post.

“He's a farm boy, Richard. This farm has been in the family for . . .”

“What'd you say? You're breaking up.”

But I wasn't. I had run out of words to explain how Daddy felt about the farm. Hell, how I felt about the old place. Finally, I said, “This farm has been in the family for six generations, and he's only selling it because I'm going to Nashville.”

I could almost hear Richard frown as he tried to puzzle through what could possibly be wrong with what I was saying. “But that's a good thing, right? I mean, he's getting older and he can't really take care of things by himself, so—”

“Richard, I don't want to lose the farm, and I sure as hell don't want him to sell it just because I choose to live in Nashville.”

“Oh.”

“I was thinking maybe we could postpone the wedding? I might need to stay here for a year and help him see that he can manage the place or at least find some help for him.”

“Oh.”

Oh, indeed. Now that I'd said the words, they sounded ridiculous even to me. What could really change in a year? My father was still getting older. I'd still have to choose between home and Nashville. We'd be right back to this place sooner or later.

“This is about having the wedding so soon, isn't it?” Richard asked.

I chewed on my lip. “No. Maybe. I don't think so.” I didn't want to be a Christmas bride. I wanted to get married in May on the day that my parents had married.

“Well, we can wait a little longer,” he said.

That gave me pause. Richard wasn't one to back down.

“Say, Richard, did you find out anything about getting an annulment?”

His pause told me more than words would've. “It's looking like you won't be able to get an annulment through the state. It'll have to be a divorce and then we'll have to petition for an annulment through the church.”

“I'm sorry I let my temper get the better of me that day,” he said as though reading my mind. “I'll text you my lawyer's number in a few minutes. You can get him to draw everything up.”

“Well, how about having the wedding here? Say, next May maybe? We don't have to get married in the Catholic Church, do we?”

Silence yawned between us, and I wondered if I'd stretched him as thin as he could go. “You know what? Let's just postpone the whole thing indefinitely.”

His words slammed the breath out of me. “O-o-kay. If that's what you want. . . .” Tears stung my eyes for the second time that day.

“Rosemary, getting married shouldn't be this difficult. I'm beginning to wonder if you even want to marry me at all. Ever since you've gone . . .
home,
you've been a different person. Maybe you need to sort some things out.”

I swallowed hard. His words hurt more than yelling would have. So calm, so reasoned, so Richard. “I'm sorry.”

“Oh, and now I've made you cry. Honey, I don't mean to make you cry, but it's so frustrating. Why didn't you just tell me you were married?”

“We could've taken care of the whole thing years ago.” He paused, waiting for me to say something, but I couldn't push the words over the lump in my throat. He continued, “Look, just take some time for yourself. Think everything over. I'll be here when you're ready.”

We murmured our good-byes, and I realized
that
was one of the reasons I was with Richard. He would always be there when I was ready. In that way and every other he was the complete opposite of Julian McElroy.

I frowned down at my engagement ring. It winked at me with the last rays of the setting sun, not aware of the drama that surrounded its beauty. I wrenched it from my finger and took it inside and upstairs to put back in the velvet box that still sat on the end table.

My hand felt lighter. My heart felt lighter. Maybe Richard was right. I needed time to think, time to figure out how to keep the farm and Richard, too. That light feeling continued as I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen for supper. A peculiar happiness welled up inside me, and I giggled. Lightness of being wasn't so unbearable after all—take that, Milan Kundera!

“What are you so happy about?” Daddy grunted as he took meat loaf out of the oven. “Did you and Richard coo at each other?”

That thought sobered me up. Having space and time away from Richard should not make me this happy. After all, my first semester at Vanderbilt without Julian had been miserable. “Not exactly. We've decided to hold off on the wedding until we figure some things out.”

“Might be wise,” Daddy said.

“You don't like Richard much, do you?”

He looked up from his plate of meat loaf and corn bread. “Don't much matter what I think. I don't have to live with the guy.”

We ate in companionable silence for a while. “Are you still mad at me for not telling you about marrying Julian?”

“Why didn't you?” His question surprised me because I thought for sure he knew the answer.

“I was afraid you'd say no.”

“Damn right I would've! You were eighteen and headed off to college. Marriage could've waited until you got your education.”

I had to stop eating at that answer. “But you wouldn't have said no to Julian?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. I probably would have. Back then.”

“What happened between you and Julian after I went to college that the two of you are so chummy now?” The question came out before I could stop it.

Daddy chuckled. “I wouldn't say we're chummy. We just understand each other better now.”

“But, Daddy—”

“Nope. You'll have to ask him if you want to know more. Now come give me a hand with these dishes.”

And that was all I'd get out of Daddy.

For now.