I'll Stand by You (14 page)

“Okay,” Vera said and hung up.

Ruby took another sip of her coffee and then went to get a pad and pen. Ruby liked to make lists. They kept life orderly, and she liked order. She made two headings. One was for Dori Grant. The other was for “baby boy.” Now she needed to find out where Dori was staying and give her a call to find out their clothing sizes. Her first appointment this morning was Pansy Jones. Pansy lived across the street from the house that burned. Maybe Dori was at her house. She’d find out soon enough.

* * *

Pansy was in a rare state by the time she got to the Curl Up and Dye. Everywhere she went, people were asking her about Dori Grant and her baby. Just because she lived across the street did not make them her responsibility. It was her opinion that if people had been keeping tabs on her like they should have, she wouldn’t be raising a little bastard.

The fact that Butterman had basically told her not to say anymore about Dori Grant’s whereabouts made her angry. Men were always telling her what to do. The next time someone asked, she was spilling the beans, and Peanut Butterman could just have himself a big old fit and then get over it.

She parked in front of the salon and, when she got out of the car, accidentally shut the tail of her dress in the door and then ripped about three inches of the waist seam before she realized it and opened the door again to free the fabric.

“Oh, well, for heaven’s sake!” Pansy sputtered, then tucked the torn bit back under the belt and hoped for the best as she stomped into the shop.

“Good morning, Pansy! All ready for your hair color?” Ruby asked.

“Yes, my roots are starting to show something awful,” Pansy said and followed Ruby back to her station.

“We’ll get you fixed up in no time,” Ruby said and proceeded to fasten a towel and then a cape around Pansy’s neck.

She sectioned off Pansy’s hair and began talking as she was applying the color.

“I really like this color on you. It favors your skin tone, don’t you think?”

Pansy smiled. Finally, someone wanted to talk about something besides that fire.

“Yes, I like it just fine,” Pansy said. “Bart even mentioned it, and he never notices anything.”

Ruby laughed. “Isn’t that just like a man?”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. Just when I think the man is oblivious to everything, he goes and says something nice like that.”

Ruby thought it strange that Pansy hadn’t mentioned the fire, especially since it was right across the street from her house. She decided to feel her out.

“So I guess you had some excitement last night. Sure is too bad about Mr. Webb’s passing. I always found him to be a very likable fellow.”

“Yes, it was a shame,” Pansy said shortly.

Ruby waited for her to elaborate, but she did not, nor did she mention Dori and her baby. She kept methodically applying color and humming lightly to herself until she saw Pansy relax, then she tossed another question into the silence.

“So, we’re going to start a donation box for clothing and such for Dori and her baby, but we need to know sizes.”

“That’s nice,” Pansy said.

Ruby frowned. “Do you know where I might find her? I want to give her a call.”

Pansy clenched her jaw again. Butterman’s warning was running through her head, but she’d had enough.

“Actually, I do. That boy Johnny Pine showed up, and she and the baby left with him. I thought it strange myself, but maybe the missing father finally came to claim his own.”

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “Well, personally I don’t believe a word of that. That young man never turned his back on his little brothers when his mama died, and I can’t see him denying a child that would be his, either. So, what did Dori say to you when she left?”

“Oh, that boy came after everybody left. I’d already told her I would pray for her and gone home. I was in my house watching out the window when—”

Pansy stopped and looked at Ruby. She’d just given herself away, and from the look on Ruby’s face, she knew it.

Ruby paused, the bottle of color in one hand and a rattail comb in the other.

“You mean everyone went off and left that girl and her baby alone?”

Pansy’s face turned a dark, angry red.

“I don’t know about everyone. I said my piece and went home like Bart told me to do.”

Ruby blinked and then undid another section of hair and began applying more color without looking at Pansy.

The fact that she wasn’t talking made Pansy uneasy, and instead of staying quiet, she just dug the hole she was in a little deeper.

“That baby was screaming and screaming. We could barely say a thing to Dori for the noise.”

Ruby kept applying color as fast as she could, then finally finished and slipped the plastic bouffant cap on Pansy’s head and set the timer.

The silence made Pansy even more uneasy.

“I told Dori we’d pray for her,” Pansy said. “I’m starting a prayer chain with our church ladies just as soon as I get home.”

Ruby paused, eyeing Pansy curiously, as if she’d never seen her before.

“That’s real Christian of you, I’m sure,” she said and then gathered up the wet and stained towels and carried them to the back.

Chapter 9

Pansy saw herself in the mirror and frowned. She didn’t much like what she was seeing and turned her chair toward the front of the salon so she could watch the street instead.

Ruby killed several minutes muttering and slamming drawers and doors in the workroom, and she was still there when the Conklin twins came in the back door.

“Ruby, you won’t believe what we just heard!” Vera said.

Ruby pointed toward the front of the salon and then put a finger to her lips to indicate quiet.

The girls’ eyes widened, and then they scooted into the small workroom with Ruby and closed the door behind them.

“What’s going on?” Vesta asked.

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m just getting a dose of the Christian charity the town of Blessings is so good at handing out. If you belong to the right social circles, they can’t do enough. But if you’re unfortunate enough to have committed a sin in their good Christian eyes, they conveniently forget God didn’t set them up as judge and jury.”

Vesta nodded. “Well, anyway, back to our news. You won’t believe where Dori Grant and her baby are staying.”

“With Johnny Pine,” Ruby muttered. “And from what I can gather, it’s because he’s the only one with a kind enough heart to take her in. According to Miss Holier-than-thou sitting in my chair with Chocolate Sin stewing on her roots, Dori Grant is a fallen woman with a crying baby that nobody wanted to be saddled with.”

“You already knew,” Vera muttered and glared at Vesta. “I told you we should have come to the shop earlier. Ruby knows everything before anyone else in Blessings.”

Ruby frowned. “Well, I could do without ever having heard this. I am disgusted to the core. I don’t suppose either one of you knows where Johnny Pine lives?”

The sisters shrugged. “On the other side of the tracks is all I know.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “I’ll find out before the day is done. In the meantime, I better not hear one bad thing said about that girl and her baby or, for that matter, about Johnny Pine.” She glanced at the clock. “Pansy’s time will be up in a few. I need to get my game face on before I go back out there.”

Vera patted her arm.

“I’ll go man the front. I don’t have anyone until almost noon.”

Vesta sighed. “I have a haircut due in a few minutes.”

They left the workroom as Ruby began digging through the cabinets. She searched and searched until she found the large plastic jar she’d been looking for.

“Finally,” she muttered as she shook a dead wasp out of the bottom and pulled a marker out of the junk drawer.

She wrote
For
Dori
and
her
baby
on a piece of paper and taped it to the jar, then took a five-dollar bill out of her purse and dropped it into the jar, like salting a gold mine and waiting for takers. She carried it through the salon with all the ceremony she could muster and set it on the front counter beside the cash register, then flounced back to Pansy just as the timer for her hair color went off.

“That’s what I call timing,” she said and ushered Pansy back to the shampoo station.

Ruby was still congenial and talkative, but Pansy felt the woman’s disapproval of what she’d left undone.

After her shampoo and style, Pansy followed Ruby up to the front to pay. She saw the donation jar and frowned, then reluctantly dug out an extra dollar and dropped it in the jar.

“You are so sweet. Thank you for helping Dori and her baby,” Ruby said and smiled big and wide as Pansy made a hasty exit. “Two-faced bitch,” Ruby added and returned to her station to clean up before her next appointment arrived.

* * *

Johnny was on the job site, pushing dirt to build a pad for Buzz Higdon’s new barn. The dozer engine was throwing back heat on his face and legs, but the sun was hotter on his back and neck. If that wasn’t misery enough, the hog pen a hundred yards to his right smelled to high heaven.

The hogs were lying in the shade because their mud wallow was drying up, and the flies were so thick around them that they swarmed in little black clouds. He paused long enough to lift the dozer blade and then shifted into reverse, backed up, and turned around to work the pad from another direction. He would not let himself think about the girl and baby back in his house. It would be too easy to become invested in her life.

A lone white heron flew across his line of vision and landed in the shallows of the pond off to the east, but Johnny had no time to admire the scenery. He glanced at his watch. It was almost one. He would be done with this job before long and would, happily, get away from the stench.

* * *

Dori cried some more after she’d finished her conversation with Evelyn Harper at the funeral home. She kept imagining her granddaddy’s body all laid out on some table with strangers doing only God knows what with it, and no one caring about who he was or how special he had been. She cried until she gave herself a headache, then washed her face and dried her tears and went to check on Luther. He was still sleeping.

She thought about Lovey Cooper spending the day gathering up clothes for them and was grateful for such a good friend. Then she wondered what Johnny was doing and if he regretted his offer to give her shelter. The last thing she wanted was to be a burden to someone again, but right now it seemed she had no choice.

If she’d been home, she would have had cookies baking or a cake in the oven. But this was not her house, and she didn’t dare use up foodstuff they might be saving. The floors were swept and mopped. The bathroom had been scrubbed, and she’d dusted the house from top to bottom. It smelled like lemon and pine in every room.

When she’d taken down the curtains in the boys’ room to wash, she’d found a stick-figure pencil drawing behind one curtain with the word Mama written beneath it. It was heartbreaking to see the simple drawing, obviously done in secret so that Mama, who was no longer with them, would not be forgotten. She’d noticed the only family pictures were of Johnny and the boys. It was as if this family had begun only after he had become the man of the house. She wanted to hurry up and get the clean curtains rehung, so that their secret would still be safe.

She was pacing the floor and watching the clock when she saw a car turn off the street and come up the drive.
It
must
be
the
lawyer
. She wiped her hands on the sides of her sweatpants as she watched the tall, lanky man getting out of his pretty white Lincoln. He looked a little bit like a younger version of Clint Eastwood, and Dori wondered what had possessed his parents to name him Peanut.

The lawyer knocked twice. She took a deep breath and then let him in.

“Miss Grant, I’m Peanut Butterman. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“I thank you for coming,” Dori said and stepped aside. “Please take a seat.”

Peanut’s long legs made the trip from the door to the sofa in three steps, and then he stood, waiting for Dori to sit first. She sat at one end of the sofa. He sat at the other.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She shrugged, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“About like you’d expect. I keep praying this is just a bad dream, but I can’t seem to wake up.”

He frowned. She looked so young. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that she was a mother.

“I can only imagine,” he said softly. “I can’t mend your sadness, but maybe after we talk, you’ll feel better about your future. Mr. Webb made sure you would not be destitute.”

“Really?” Dori said.

“You didn’t know?”

“No, sir. I assumed one day he’d leave the house to Luther and me, but it’s gone and I’ve been trying to figure out how and where we’ll start over.”

Butterman opened his briefcase and pulled out a handful of papers.

“I will, of course, file all the necessary papers to have Meeker’s will go through probate, but considering these drastic circumstances and that you are the only heir, I wanted you to know where you stood, okay?”

She nodded.

“You were correct in that your grandfather left you the house, and the four city lots on which it stood. Yes, it’s been destroyed, but it was fully insured. The insurance value on the house was two hundred thousand dollars, so once all of his estate has settled, that money will be yours to rebuild on the site or buy another house if you choose.”

Dori was stunned. “That’s a lot of money!”

Peanut shrugged. “It costs a lot to build a house; even the most simple of houses can cost dearly. Now, with regards to his car, which also burned up, it, too, was fully insured, and since he had you listed as co-owner on the title, you will be getting money to replace this almost immediately. He had fifty-five thousand dollars in his checking account. There is a safety-deposit box we have yet to open, and since his key probably burned up in the fire, we’ll have to get the bank to have it opened by a locksmith, but that’s all in the future.”