Double Wedding Ring (4 page)

“I don't mind sneaking out,” he said, hazarding an uncertain smile.

She smiled that unfathomable smile again. “Neither do I.”

He waited on the edge of her lot, sitting under the big oak tree, on the side away from the house, just the way she'd told him to. But he couldn't keep himself from peering around the big old trunk right at ten to see if she was coming. What she was doing was climbing right out her bedroom window onto the waiting limb of the apple tree. He grinned as she shinnied down, thinking he'd never seen anything half so mesmerizing as a goddess who shinnied down apple trees.

“What are you grinning at?” she asked when she reached him. She looked down at him, hands on her hips.

“You. Climbing out the window.”

“I may be a girl but I'm not a sissy.”

He took the hand she offered and leaped to his feet. He didn't let go of her hand all the way to the creek. The difference between her hand and his was the difference between his mama's everyday plates and the Sunday-best china with the roses twined around the rim. His hand was thick and ordinary and maybe a little rough; hers was fine and smooth and delicate.

“Why do you do all that dancing?” He marveled that he'd never noticed the way the moonlight glittered on the surface of Willow Creek.

“That's what I'm going to be when I grow up.” She looked at him expectantly.

“A dancer?” The notion intrigued him. All the girls he'd dated talked about being clerks for the county or maybe moving to Birmingham for secretarial school or going away to college to make a teacher.

“What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It's just...I never knew anybody who wanted to be a dancer before.” More than anything, he admired her courage in admitting she wanted to be different from all the everyday folks in Sweetbranch. It made him a little ashamed that he'd never been that brave himself.

“If
everybody
wanted to do it, it would hardly be worth doing, now, would it?” she asked with a certainty that amazed him.

“Crash said your mother doesn't want you dancing.”

She frowned. “Mother thinks it's a disgrace if you don't want to be just exactly like everybody else.”

Everything she said came as a revelation, an epiphany, to Tag. How could it be that here was someone who didn't desperately want to be like everyone else? He'd spent his whole life wishing to be normal, wishing to be regular, wishing for nothing more than to be one of the guys, plain and simple.

“Why would you want to be different?”

“Why would you want to be the same?” she asked fervently. “Don't you have things inside you that are dying to get out, things you never heard anybody around here talking about, things that make you wonder how the rest of the world got dull as dishwater?”

And Tag thought of his crazy dream. The one about going to college and learning how to help people who couldn't figure out all the confusing things in their heads. He thought about being someplace where people wouldn't notice if he slipped up and used big words or wanted to talk about ideas instead of what kind of defense the Tide would be using come fall.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I do. I just never knew anybody else did.”

“Maybe they don't,” she whispered. “Maybe we're the only ones.”

That was when he kissed Crash Foster's kid sister, his lips touching hers ever so slightly, his big ugly knuckles against her heart-shaped face, leaning over carefully so as not to touch her anywhere else. Her mouth was as soft and sweet as he had imagined it to be. But one thing was different. It wasn't cool the way he'd figured a goddess who danced in the spring breeze would be.

Her mouth was warm. He breathed in that warmth, drank it right from her. It spread all the way through him, filling him up with something golden.

By the time he walked her back to her house and stood at the foot of the apple tree while she climbed back up to her bedroom window, Tag Hutchins had discovered the wonder of being in love with the most perfect creature in the world.

M
ALORIE RATTLED THE FRONT
door of the unkempt-looking storefront on Main Street, then cupped her hands around her eyes to look through the grimy glass. The place certainly
needed
a manager.

At her grandmother's suggestion, Malorie was looking for a job. It had not been a subtle suggestion. Betsy Foster was not a woman who minced words.

“I understand you want to be here with your mother while she recuperates,” her grandmother had said the day before, after her uncle had returned home. “But we have a physical therapist coming every day starting tomorrow. Fixing Susan is not your job.”

“But there's Cody...”

“I'll be here all day myself, like always. I dare say I'll have a better idea how to handle him than you.”

Malorie had flinched at the harsh judgment and all it implied.

“Besides, you're twenty-one, Malorie. High time you got on with your life.”

Malorie had known better than to explain to her grandmother that, as tragic as her mother's accident had been, Malorie accepted it as another excuse for avoiding exactly that—getting on with her life. Nothing would make Malorie happier than escaping into a life made up of two-year-old Cody and a mother who needed her again.

She was worried, too, that her grandmother hadn't paid attention when the people in rehab had talked to her about working with Susan. Had she really listened when they'd talked about Susan's mood swings, about how easily distracted she was now, about the myriad ways the accident had left her impaired and in need of patience and understanding?

Malorie had watched her grandmother closely since they had arrived and was convinced that Betsy Foster could undo in a few weeks all the progress Susan had made.

Betsy insisted on bombarding Susan with information—where she had stored towels and soap and a supply of kitchen utensils at a level Susan could reach, for example—although she'd been told lots of details all at once might make it difficult for Susan to process the information. She also insisted on doing every little thing for her daughter, despite the fact she had been encouraged to allow Susan the independence to do things for herself, even if she was slow, even if she didn't get things quite right.

“Well, that's ridiculous,” Betsy had said when Malorie followed her into the kitchen to remind her that Susan should be allowed to pour her own glass of juice. “Then who'll clean up the mess she makes, that's what I'd like to know?”

Malorie sighed. Her concerns about Betsy Foster aside, here she stood on the sidewalk in front of Hutchins' Lawn & Garden, wondering if whoever had taped up the hand-lettered Store Manager Wanted sign had changed his or her mind.

These days, Main Street bustled. Over the past few years, Sweetbranch had perked up economically, and its resurgence was reflected in the bright new awnings on storefronts such as The Picture Perfect beauty salon and the window box of mums adorning the front of the Sweet Boutique. Sweetbranch had become a different town in the years since the paper plant opened. Compared to the rest of the shops on Main Street, however, Hutchins' Lawn & Garden looked forlorn and abandoned. Malorie saw no lights inside the store, no indication of any activity.

She was about to walk away—her mother's therapist would make his first visit soon and she planned to be there, even if Grandmother didn't think she was needed—when she heard the metallic thunk of a dead bolt being thrown. She looked up just as a glowering face appeared in the partly open doorway. Instinctively she stepped back.

“We're closed,” the man said in a voice that could only be described as a growl, both in tone and timbre. A perfect match for the expression on his face.

“Yes. I see.” He moved to close the door, and Malorie remembered her purpose. “I'm here about the job.”

He didn't follow her gesture when she pointed at the sign to the left of the double plate-glass door. He stared at her, his eyes dark beneath the shadow of low, heavy brows. He was all darkness, it seemed to Malorie, from the hair that nearly touched his shoulders to the brush of a mustache and his sun-bronzed skin. Even his T-shirt was black. The whole package made her heart thump. Nothing about the man—including his depressing store—fit with the rest of this sunny, cheerful town.

“You know how to run a store? This isn't just a clerking job.”

Malorie had no illusions that running the cash register at a fast-food restaurant during those awful months her dad was sick actually qualified her for anything. But the challenge in his voice made her unwilling to admit that, at twenty-one, she had absolutely no marketable skills and little if any practical experience.

“I can do it,” she said.

Her heart sank as he stepped back, opened the door wider and gestured her in.

* * *

B
UMP
F
INLEY SAT
on the vinyl-covered stool at the counter of the Around the Clock Diner, keeping one eye on his mug of coffee and another on his great-nephew. The coffee pretty much stayed put. Three-year-old Jake was another matter. Once, when no one was looking, he had emptied a pepper shaker into a pot of coffee Mellie had left sitting unattended on a table. Nobody much had minded except that old geezer Luther Eggleston, who'd discovered Jake's experiment with his first swallow.

“You're grinning like you know something you can't wait to pass on, Bump,” Mellie said, leaning one ample hip against the counter and taking a sip of her own mug of coffee.

“Naw,” Bump said. “I was countin' on you folks for something worth tellin'.”

At midmorning and midafternoon, The Clock was the place to congregate for most of the old-timers in Sweetbranch. Rose, Bump's niece, swore her beauty shop was the only place in town where gossip passed muster. At The Picture Perfect, Rose said, gossip was either deemed fit to pass along or died a fast death amid the fumes of permanent wave solution and copious amounts of hair spray.

Rose was Jake's mother and Bump pretty much let her run the show back at the house. But when it came to swapping tales, Bump had his own sources.

Mellie exchanged a glance with Hec Griffin, whose Adam's apple more than made up for his lack of a chin. Hec was the mayor
and
the funeral director in town, so Bump set great store by Hec's view of the world.

“Susan Foster's back in town,” Hec said.

Bump raised an eyebrow over that one. “Thought she dang near died in that wreck a few months back.”

“All we really know is what we heard from Betsy,” Mellie reminded him.

Bump grunted. “And Lord knows it's been harder on her than on anybody.”

They all chuckled, although after all this time Bump still felt a twinge of guilt for speaking ill of Betsy.

“Saw the girl on my way over here,” Hec continued. “Knocking on the door of the Lawn & Garden.”

Mellie took a new paper place mat over to the table where Jake sat coloring the one she'd given him when they came in. “Tag still in town?”

“Yep.”

“Looking like the very devil, I'd say.” Bump reached for the pot to warm up his coffee. “Seen him at his mama's funeral. Been up a lot of hours if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you, Bump Finley,” Mellie said. “Rough as a cob, I'll grant you, but there's something about him...”

“Womenfolk! Rose said the same thing.”

“I say they'll get back together now they're here in the same town.” Mellie was a big one for predictions.

“Not if Betsy has anything to say about it,” Bump reminded her.

“She's not exactly the sentimental sort, is she.”

Hec threw his dollar bill on the counter and stood. “Still, might be interesting to have a few fireworks in town this fall. Either of you seen the girl, Susan's daughter?”

Bump and Mellie shook their heads.

“Spittin' image of Susan.” He called back over his shoulder as he opened the door. “Hope Tag Hutchins still has a strong heart.”

* * *

S
USAN SAT IN HER CHAIR
on the side porch. She shivered slightly but didn't have the ambition to tackle the task of pulling up the ugly orange afghan her mother had tucked around her legs. She had started the job with her one good arm. The afghan had slid farther in the direction of her knees.

She liked the side porch. It was the only place she felt she could breathe in this house where they said she'd grown up. From here she could see the edge of the woods, the fluttering willow tree as it lost its leaves, and neighbors moving up and down the street.

The door back into the house opened directly into her bedroom. Not really her bedroom. She'd overheard her mother and understood right off that the house had been turned upside down to make room for Susan and her wheelchair.

“I've had to turn the family room into her bedroom, of course,” Betsy Foster had said to someone on the phone the very night Susan had arrived. “Malorie is sleeping in Susan's old room, which is fine. But I've had to send the piano home with Steve. And the dining room furniture, too, because of this therapy she'll be doing. Seems ridiculous to me. She can't even walk! At any rate, I expect she'll be falling and I don't want her hurting anything. And I'm glad for Steve to have the furniture, of course. Still...”

There was a pause. Still, the silence said, Betsy Foster didn't mind one whit making all the sacrifices she was having to make. As long as it was known around town that she was making those sacrifices.

“Oh, no,” Betsy continued. “I don't think you'd want to do that yet. I don't really think she'll want anyone to see her for quite a while.”

When she heard that, Susan had also understood that she ought to feel ashamed of her present condition. She remembered she ought to feel grateful that her mother was even willing to take her in.

She thought it must be part of her illness that she didn't feel grateful. Why should she feel grateful for being a burden?

So Susan sneaked off to this screened side porch whenever possible, a place where she could pretend she had nothing to be ashamed of.

“Mommy?”

She turned toward the high-pitched voice, thinking she would have to force a smile for Cody. But, as always, his bright eyes made it easy to return his mischievous smile.

“Me can push?”

She leaned closer and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not now. I'm hiding.”

Although she wouldn't have thought it possible, the round-cheeked face grew even brighter. “Awright! Me, too?”

“Sure. You, too.”

Cody clambered into her lap, which sent the slip-sliding afghan all the way to the floor. No matter. With Cody in her lap, the world already seemed warmer.

“Whatcha hidin' fwom?”

“A new doctor. He's coming today.”

Didn't she wish hiding was possible! Right now, she would have given anything to sit out here in the fall sunshine long enough to avoid this first meeting with her new physical therapist. She wanted to get well. Had given her therapy everything she had back in Atlanta. But she had trusted her therapist. They understood each other. Yolanda knew how tough it was for Susan to remember little things, such as whether or not she had already shifted the weight from one leg to the other so she could take the next step. Yolanda didn't frown no matter how many times Susan couldn't get her left hand up to grab the foam ball when it was thrown in her direction. Even when Susan slurred her words or slumped in her chair or couldn't get a spoonful of soup from her bowl to her mouth, even at times like that, Yolanda had respected her.

Susan feared discovering that a new therapist wouldn't respect her. Or worse, that a new therapist would decide she had made all the progress she was ever going to make. That particular fear grew stronger daily.

“Him have a needle?” Cody squirmed around to aim a solemnly sympathetic look in her direction.

“Ooh, I hope not.”

Cody nodded. “Me'll pertect you, Mommy.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Then Cody launched into a vivid retelling of his most recent experience with doctors and needles, while Susan reminded herself of the incredible joy of being able to feel the breeze, see the bright colors of the falling leaves and the dazzling autumn sky. While Cody chattered, she pretended this accident she couldn't even remember had never happened. She was whole again. In a few moments, she would get up and go to Lolly's dance studio. She remembered Lolly because the woman had visited her at the rehab hospital plenty of times during her two months there. So Susan could imagine talking to Lolly about the costumes she wanted made for the next recital. And when Lolly left and the studio was empty, Susan might stay behind for a while. Might just punch the buttons on Lolly's fancy sound system. The music would begin and Susan would rise on her toes and leap into the air and settle back to the ground with a sweep of her arms. She would dance.

She felt the thrill of the movement, as real as the wiggly little body in her lap at this very moment.

“Me wants a party, Mommy.”

“A party?”

“Mallie said so, for my birfday?”

She remembered a party then. A party on the lawn right outside this very porch. A metal card table had been set up and covered with a yellow-and-white paper tablecloth. Her mother—much younger then, with a softness about her angles that made her less forbidding than she was today—brought out a white cake decorated with yellow roses. Nine yellow candles burned on the cake and everyone cheered when a gawky, freckle-faced girl with a wispy blond ponytail blew them out. Susan knew she had been the girl, and she could almost grab hold of the feeling of being there, blowing out the candles, hearing the cheers.

In a sudden flood of memory, she could also picture that same girl sitting on this porch with her best friend Rose Finley and cutting paper dolls out of discarded Sears Roebuck catalogs. She remembered a man they all called Pops teaching that little girl—taller and even gawkier, now—to pitch, catch and bat before softball season. She remembered a basket of fabric and the tedious work of cutting that fabric into tiny, uniform pieces. She remembered—