Double Wedding Ring (8 page)

“Come on,” Sam persisted. “We'll have fun. I'll show you the twenty-seven varieties of dipping snuff in little tin cans on aisle nine. Bet they don't have
that
in Atlanta.”

Malorie ducked her head and dimpled. Susan thought she would agree then, because he'd made her smile. But when Malorie looked up, she'd managed to bury her smile again. “I don't think so, Sam.”

After supper, when Cody was in bed and Butch banished to the garden shed on Betsy's orders, Malorie sat beside Susan's bed and read to her from the morning paper. Susan tried to listen to news of a business in Muscle Shoals adopting a poverty-stricken neighborhood, offering job training and moral support and donations for day-care and rec centers and refurbished bikes. But she was more interested in understanding the interplay she saw each day between her physical therapist and her daughter.

“You should like Sam,” she said at last, knowing her comment wasn't subtle but no longer certain how to initiate the polite little subterfuges she knew most people employed.

“I like Sam,” Malorie said, rattling the paper.

“No.
Really
like him.”

“Mo-ther. Don't be silly.”

“
You
don't be silly. He likes you. I can tell.”

“He's your therapist, Mother. And I'm not interested in a romance.”

Susan smiled. “Did you ever have a romance before?”

Malorie frowned and gave the paper another noisy shake. “Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?”

“Not.”

“Fine. Then you can go to sleep.”

“Not sleepy. I want to know why you don't like Sam.”

“I do like Sam, Mother. I—” Malorie folded the paper and set it aside, then leaned over and clicked off the bedside lamp. She stood in the moonlight and looked down at Susan. In the silvery darkness, Susan thought she looked barely older than Cody, her forehead puckered in a frown, her lips settled into a full pout. “I do not need a boyfriend. Not now.”

Susan watched as her daughter walked toward the door. “Because of me?”

Malorie looked over her shoulder and spoke softly. “No, Mother. Not because of you. Because of me.”

* * *

M
ALORIE TOOK THE STAIRS
slowly, knowing it was too early to sleep. But the only alternative to retiring to her room was keeping her grandmother company. So she called out a soft good-night to Betsy and climbed the stairs.

She stopped on the way to her room and eased open the door to the room where Cody slept.

The full moon made the night-light unnecessary. Cody lay on his back, arms flung wide, legs tangled in the sheet. He had already kicked the blanket to the floor. She tiptoed in, indulging herself for a moment as she tucked the covers around him neatly once again. His body was sturdy and warm and his hand involuntarily groped toward her as she touched him. Just as involuntarily, she pulled away before the sleeping toddler could grab her.

She hurried on to her room, as if she could walk out on her thoughts of Cody and Sam and the confusing set of lies that were— now that her mother no longer shouldered part of the burden—hers alone to bear.

* * *

T
AG FELT HIMSELF
pulled into the sparkling enthusiasm in Malorie's soft blue-gray eyes.

“So I think,” she was concluding, “that if we offer a landscaping service, instead of just selling the plants and shrubs and shovels people need to do it themselves, you'd not only have a new source of income, but you'd sell more of your original product line as well.”

She sat back then, quite pleased with herself to judge from the small, expectant smile on her face. Just looking at her like that, the way Tag did a dozen times a day, was both a torment and a joy.

“Source of income?” Tag repeated. “Original product line? Hell, Mal, this isn't Atlanta. This is Sweetbranch. People fertilize their own azaleas and yank their own weeds. Sweetbranch doesn't need—or want—landscaping. We've got yards and vegetable gardens, not landscapes.”

He noted that her self-satisfied smile did not dissolve into shrinking uncertainty at his gruff tone.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hutchins, but you haven't been around Sweetbranch in a long time and—”

“Oh, and you're the long-time local expert, I guess.”

“And I believe you aren't in touch with what has happened here in recent years. Sweetbranch has changed, Mr. Hutchins.”

“Changed? Sweetbranch? That'll be the day, Miss Hovis.”

“If you'll look around, you'll see that Sweetbranch is thriving, Mr. Hutchins. Thanks to Ben McKenzie's paper plant, there are plenty of jobs. Did you know that last year alone twenty-five new families moved to Sweetbranch because of job opportunities?”

Now she definitely looked pleased with herself.

“Who told you that?”

She pointed her pencil at him. “It was in last week's edition of the
Sweetbranch Weekly Gazetteer,
Mr. Hutchins. We have a tavern now in the abandoned church on Main Street. The story said business was up in all the old businesses along Main Street, from The Picture Perfect to The Clock, sometimes as much as ten percent over last year alone. If you're smart, Mr. Hutchins, you'll pay attention to me, since I obviously have my eyes open.”

“And I don't, is that what you're saying?”

Her only response was to give her chin a perky little lift and walk away. “I have a customer, Mr. Hutchins, if you'll excuse me.”

Hellfire and damnation, but she's the spittin' image of Susan.

Oh, not so much in her looks, although they had plenty of similarities. Malorie was a honey blonde, with thick, bouncy waves, where Susan's hair was soft and fine and pale as corn silk. Malorie's skin was honey-gold, too, with a fine bloom in her cheeks, where Susan had always been as pale as a porcelain doll. Malorie was tall and softly muscular, where Susan had been fine-limbed. But as far as piss-and-vinegar, they were damn sure cut from the same cloth.

Everything about this musty old store brought out the fire in Malorie's eyes. She saw the possibilities and they revved her up, just the way possibilities had always revved up Susan. For Susan, the world had always been a magic music box, playing a new tune each time she opened it.

Tag hadn't remembered feeling that way himself in a long time. Malorie reminded him that, once, he had.

He'd tried staying away from the store, but each time he saw Malorie, the pull grew stronger. He loved the reminders, and he hated them.

Some days being around Malorie was the only way he kept himself from obsessing over Susan and the fact that she sat in a wheelchair just a few blocks from here, needing help. Some days he wanted to offer that help, needed to offer it with a longing so intense he felt the hurt in the tips of his fingers.

Other days it was all he could do not to listen to that mean streak in him that had been his only defense against pain these past twenty years. The part of him that kept telling him Susan deserved a little pain, too, for not keeping her promise.

But not too much pain.

1969

T
AG WONDERED HOW HIS
brother had popped the question.

For once he would've been glad to follow in Elliott's footsteps. But Elliott wasn't around to ask. Wouldn't be around to ask, ever again.

The ground beside Willow Creek was damp and the fallen limb where Tag rested his head didn't make much of a pillow. He already felt the cool dampness seeping into his jeans and through the back of his clean T-shirt. It would be hours before Susan finished her shift at the Dairee Dreme and joined him. By then, Tag knew, he would be uncomfortable and lonely and bordering on grouchy.

He also knew that as soon as he saw Susan's cheery face peering around one of the pine trees, as soon as he heard her expectant voice calling his name as she approached the creek bank, all that would disappear.

In the meantime, damp ground and all, this was a better place to be than home.

Here, at least, he could pretend that the days of magic that had started in the summer of 1967 would go on forever. Here, at least, he could forget about the letter to Eugene Hutchins, Jr., lying on his dresser.
Greetings, my ass.
He might even be able to forget about the headstone in the graveyard down by the church, where Elliott's name was etched onto a small, white stone. He wouldn't have to think about the new baby boy, Sammy, who would never know what kind of daddy Elliott would have made.

All those things were still too strange and too overwhelming for Tag to feel them yet.

Tag closed his eyes against the memories swimming in his head. He'd hoped being outside, in the place where he'd spent so much of the past two years with Susan, would make the time he had to kill pass more quickly. Being at home had been no damn good. He'd showered after work, then sat in his room staring at the letter on his dresser, staring at the baseball glove he'd brought in from Elliott's room after...after. Staring at the small, fuzzy ring box and wondering why it had taken him all this time to realize how much easier life could be when you had a big brother.

Too late to be realizing that.

Tag thought he might freak out sitting up in his room all alone. But the rest of the house was off limits, because his old man had been sitting downstairs making friends with a bottle of whiskey and his mama had run out to church to lose herself in her charity work.

That left Tag with plenty of time to worry over the dreams that were about to be blown to pieces.

He lay on the creek bank, hands clasped behind his head, and tried not to think of that first summer with Susan. The very best days of his life. But trying not to remember those days, and all the others that came after, was as futile as trying not to touch her lips with his when she was nearby. As futile as trying not to want to do what their own good sense—and fear of the consequences—told them not to do.

Memories of that first summer called him like a dream, promising him sweetness and joy.

Crash's teasing hadn't meant much, after all. Tag had spent every moment she would give him with Susan. Not that she gave him enough moments to suit him. She wouldn't give up her dancing time and she wouldn't give up her reading and she wouldn't give up the hours she spent hunched over that darned Double Wedding Ring quilt for her hope chest.

Just finding out the name of the thing had given him the heebie-jeebies.

“Never mind what it's called, Eugene Hutchins,” she had said with that almost haughty lift of her chin. “This quilt is none of your concern.”

“Sure it is, Susie,” he said, marveling at the endless rows of tiny, even stitches she made. He was certain that no other girl in all of Sweetbranch High had such long, elegant fingers, capable of such sure and nimble movement. Tag told himself he was a low-life swine to watch her fingers work the needle and wish they were moving as surely and nimbly over other territory. But the thoughts crept in, nonetheless, and Tag vowed to feel the guilt later. “Susie, I want to know everything about you. I want us to do everything together.”

A funny, uncertain look wrinkled her forehead. “Well,
I
don't want it to be like that, Tag. I've seen other kids date like that and they end up hating each other.”

Tag had frowned, too, because he couldn't imagine another way to be except one hundred percent wrapped up in Susan. “Then what
do
you want us to be?”

“I want you to be with me because you
want
to and not because you
need
to.”

“Aw, Susie, you're making everything too complicated. Just tell me what you call the quilt. I really want to know.”

So she told him, and he discovered he really didn't want to know as much as he'd thought.

Still, Tag had sat at her feet on the side porch of her big two-story house on Mimosa Lane and talked with Susan for hours while she pushed her needle in and out, in and out.

They talked about Vietnam, which few other kids were doing then.

“Are you scared about it?” she asked him, a question that would have been off limits with the guys.

Tag thought he probably wasn't supposed to answer with complete honesty in front of a girl he wanted to impress. But something about Susan left room for nothing
but
honesty.

“Yeah. I guess I'm just chicken, but I don't want to go over there. I don't want to think about shooting people. Or...”

“That's not chicken,” she said, pausing long enough to put her fingers on his shoulder.

Her tiniest touch zapped him like a high-voltage shock. Tag told himself he was a real sicko, feeling that way about a sweet girl like Susan. A perfect, innocent girl like Susan. Sometimes he wished her kisses weren't quite so warm. Sometimes he wished her small, high breasts weren't quite so soft against his chest. That his hardness didn't find such a friendly haven in the V of her thighs when they stood by Willow Creek and kissed.

Sick, Hutchins. Sick and pathetic.

He told himself those feelings were for other kinds of girls. But they were so strong with Susan. And they didn't
feel
wrong. No, they felt way too right.

She argued with him when he told her, after the fireworks on the Fourth of July that first summer, that he'd decided not to leave for college in September.

“Tag, that's crazy! Why would you even say that?”

“I've got a new job, Susie. A better job, on a construction crew.”

“Is that what you want?”

She'd sounded so dismayed at the thought that Tag had a moment of doubt about his decision.

“I want to be with you.”

She shook her head, her stubbornness all rolled up into one big frown. “That's wrong, Tag. You can't do that. You've got to do what's right for you and—”

“What's right for me is staying here and saving my money. I'll start college when you do. You'll see.”

Still she looked uncertain, and he pulled her into his arms. Just having her there, all soft and warm against his chest, confirmed that he'd made the right decision, no matter how much Susie protested. “It's perfect, don't you see? We can be together and I can save up. And then...”

He stopped, because he wasn't ready to tell her what kept coming into the back of his mind. He wasn't sure he was ready to say the words out loud. But he kept thinking about other kids who got married and went off to college together. Two can live as cheaply as one, they said.

But saying so out loud might scare off Susan. After all, she was only sixteen.

Heck, saying it out loud might scare
him.

“But can't you see, Tag, that's not right. For you to put things on hold like that, just for me.”

“Not for you. For me. For us.”

He kissed her then, careful to keep his hands at her waist and out of trouble.

But when summer ended, a lot of people got bent out of shape when Tag didn't pack up and leave Sweetbranch. Tag's old man, for one, who found a lot of excuses to drink over the fact that his boy gave up a shot at college ball and wouldn't help out in the family business, either. Crash Foster, for another, who had only applied at the junior college in Birmingham because he thought Tag was going to be there, too.

“Holy moley, Tag, this just isn't right! Friends are supposed to stick together. And here you are ditching me for a
girl.
“ Crash almost ran down a mailbox on the corner of Mimosa Lane, he was so upset. As it was, the mailbox took a swipe along the passenger side of the car, but it hardly mattered, the old Studebaker was already so battered. “Not just a girl. Cripes, Tag, my
sister!
You're crossing me up for my
sister!
“

Tag couldn't manage much beyond a guilty shrug. Crash was right, and he knew it. But Tag was in love and he didn't know how to fight it. Didn't even
want
to fight it.

But the person most bent out of shape when Tag's change of plans came out in the open was Susan's mother.

Betsy Foster marched across the street and demanded a summit with Tag's mom and dad, which ended abruptly when Eugene Senior smashed a half-empty bottle of whiskey against the fireplace. Betsy Foster then talked to the minister, who preached the following Sunday on the evils of the flesh. Finally, in desperation, she wielded the secret weapon every young couple dreaded most.

“Young man, I forbid you to see my daughter again,” she said, her presence on her front porch so formidable that Tag forgot, for a moment, that she was neither as tall nor as broad as he was. “I have all the respect in the world for your mother, Eugene. But you are your father's son, and I won't have you ruining Susan's life.”

“But that's not fair. I'm not—”

“You are wasting your breath, Eugene. And my time. Susan is underage. I think you'd best keep that in mind.”

For the first two months of the school year, Susan was so intimidated by her mother's implied threat that she refused to see Tag. For two months, Tag couldn't remember ever being so miserable in his life—not even the summer he was fifteen and he'd done it for the first time with Lida Cooper and she told him she was late. Heck, he hadn't even known what that meant until Crash told him. Then he'd had to spend the next three weeks having nightmares about marrying Lida Cooper and having a little baby with a bleached-blond beehive.

No, that was nothing compared to those two months without Susan.

He went to the homecoming football game in November, knowing he would see her and not sure which would be worse, going and having to pretend he didn't want to hold her and kiss her and talk to her, or staying home alone and thinking about her, wondering if she went alone, wondering what she would wear for the homecoming dance that followed the game.

He was almost sorry he decided to go.

Susan sat smack on the fifty-yard line, in the middle of a bunch of squealing, silly high school juniors on row three in the old stone bleachers out back of the school. Tag watched her from the tenth row near the end zone, which was as high as the bleachers went, and as far away from her as he could sit without going to the visitors' side of the field, which would have set everybody in Sweetbranch to talking. She wore a bright red coat with a black, furry collar, because it was a cool night. Her hair was all done up in little curls on top of her head, with a big red satin bow in back. She looked so sweet and pretty, Tag thought he might start tearing the bleachers apart with his bare hands if he had to look at her much longer.

Then, at halftime, she went out onto the field with the three other girls who were nominated for homecoming queen. She left her coat in the stands and went down on the arm of weasely Edwin Plankton with his glasses and those stringy Beatles bangs. Her dress was creamy white and fit snugly across her small, high breasts, and Tag ached with the memory of those breasts against his chest. She wore a corsage with red ribbons to match the bow in her hair, and when she was crowned homecoming queen, Tag knew everybody could see that Susan Marie Foster was the most beautiful girl at Sweetbranch High—and too good for the likes of Eugene Hutchins Junior.

She spotted him that night when she was going back to her seat after halftime ceremonies, and froze right in the middle of effusive congratulations from Rose Finley, her auburn-haired best friend who had been her only real competition for the homecoming queen crown. Susan's eyes locked with Tag's, and he saw that she was still as miserable as he was.

Knowing it gave him no peace.

In fact, he thought as he pulled his old Ford into his driveway later that night, it might have been easier to put her out of his mind if he'd been able to tell himself that Susan was okay, that she'd forgotten him, that she was now in love with that creepy Edwin Plankton. But he'd seen the misery and longing in her eyes, and he couldn't stand knowing it perfectly matched the misery and longing he'd been living with for two interminable months.

As he killed the engine, Tag toyed with the idea that he might have to leave Sweetbranch.

Clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, Tag was consumed with wondering how far he would have to go to leave Susan behind. So consumed was he that he didn't realize he was no longer alone until he heard the passenger-side door shut. He jumped, startled. Was even more startled when he looked over to see Susan sitting beside him, the black, furry collar of her coat snugged against her chin.

“Susan...”

“I can't do it anymore, Tag.”

Her presence stunned him. “But Susan...”

“Just kiss me before I absolutely die from missing you, Tag Hutchins.”

And because flying would have been easier than saying no, he did kiss her, with the taste of sweet fruit punch on her soft lips and the tickle of her collar on his chin.

In an instant, he grew painfully hard, and dangerous thoughts possessed him. Knowing he risked going too far, he tried to keep the kiss gentle. But Susan teased against his lips with the tip of her tongue and all the good sense in the world couldn't have kept him from opening his lips and meeting her tongue with his.