Fat Lightning (22 page)

“We need some men around here,” Suzanne says, too loud, and a couple of matrons glance at her on the way out.

“Well,” Nancy says, “you can't expect Wade to pass up a job interview. There'll be more of these. I'll get even, though. I won't go to his graduation.”

“What time does your old man get back from that conference?” Suzanne asks.

“His plane got in about 45 minutes ago,” Nancy says, looking at her watch. “I told him I'd meet him at home. You all're coming over, aren't you? We've got some celebrating to do.”

Just then, the front door to the women's club swings open and a man with graying hair and a hurried, disheveled look walks in.

“Did I miss it?” he asks, looking from one woman to the other.

“Daddy!” Polly says. “Mom was great.”

“You missed it,” Nancy says, smiling, “but thanks for trying, sweetie.”

And then Buddy Molloy gives his wife a big kiss, in front of everybody.

Sam never did come back. Nancy stayed at her parents' house for two days before he called, but by then everything was in such disarray, he said, that he felt he ought to stay for a while, to help deal with the police and reporters and gawkers.

So Nancy stayed with her parents. Two weeks turned into a month, with Sam coming to visit on weekends. He understood, he said, why Nancy would be shaken by all that had happened, although she never told him or anyone else more than she told the police: that she left dinner on the table in the Chastain house and never saw a living soul, just the collapsed sawdust pile. He wished that she would come back, but he didn't think he could leave Monacan for a while.

Five weeks after she moved back to Richmond, Buddy came by one Tuesday afternoon. Marilou and he were still dating, once a week or so, but Marilou wouldn't be home from work for three hours. Only Nancy and Suzanne were there, watching an old movie on TV.

Buddy asked Suzanne if he could talk with Nancy alone, and before she could answer, he took Nancy's hand and led her to the big den, Pat's room, in the back of the house.

And that's where Buddy Molloy proposed to Nancy for the second time.

She thought he was crazy at first, but he kept her in Pat's den for an hour and a half, and when they were through, she said she'd think about it. She couldn't believe she even said that. She was, as she pointed out half a dozen times, a married woman. He was, she pointed out a dozen times, dating her sister.

But Buddy Molloy felt that he had one last chance, and he wasn't going to mess it up. He stopped seeing Marilou and started “courting” Nancy. Suzanne and Pat didn't like it much when roses starting arriving, and they insisted that Nancy definitely would not be dating a man, even her former husband, while she and Sam weren't even separated. But they liked Buddy, and they did let him come over to visit, and they would let Nancy and him have the den to themselves occasionally.

On a January day, with snow covering the O'Neils' back yard, Nancy accepted Buddy's wedding proposal for the second time.

It was all very civil. As Nancy suspected, Sam couldn't work up enough enthusiasm to either try to woo her back or get very angry about his wife getting engaged while she was still married. They eventually decided that Wade would spend weeks with Nancy, weekends with Sam. Nancy went to Sam's father's and mother's funerals and stayed in touch with his aunts, who all died within a year of each other.

And Sam, five years after the divorce, married a 22-year-old redhead who, everyone in Monacan said, looked an awful lot like the former Corinne Cobb.

Marilou pitched a fit about the whole affair, from the time Buddy told her he intended to marry her sister again, and it would be two years later, at Marilou's wedding, before they made peace.

But within a year of the night that the sawdust pile collapsed and killed Lot Chastain, Nancy and Buddy were married. Candy and Robbie liked to refer to her as Nancy O'Neil Molloy Chastain Molloy.

She was relieved that her family had a sense of humor.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Howard Owen

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1209-6

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