Lucky In Love (26 page)

The Lucky Clover Ranch property started a mile out of Saint Jo and covered most of the ground on the east side of the road from there to Capps Corner. Then he owned a fair-sized chunk of land on up toward Illinois Bend, a small community on the border of the Red River. It had a church and a few scattered houses. Capps Corner was only slightly bigger. Saint Jo had less than a thousand people, and Alvera Clancy said that was counting the dogs and depending on several girls to get pregnant and keep up the population. Why would any single mother come to Saint Jo?

He made a right-hand turn down the paved lane, through a brick and wooden arch with a swinging sign at the top. The ranch brand, a four leaf clover, was burned into the wood on either side of the words, Welcome to the Lucky Clover Ranch. It was the truth: everyone was welcome at the ranch.

Everyone except Edna Lassiter, who had kept a hundred-year-old feud alive with the Luckadeau family. She had gone to the courthouse once a year to file a restraining order on anyone with the last name of Luckadeau or anyone who might be kin to those heathens, as she called the whole family. As if he or any of his family preceding him would have any business on that ramshackle property of hers. There was an old rumor that it went back farther than her generation— something about a Lassiter being jilted by a Luckadeau a hundred years before.

Edna had been a recluse except for Sunday morning services, so not many people even knew she existed. However, there was that day that she called Lizzy the spawn of the devil when Lizzy bumped into her cane in the church parking lot. Lizzy would spit out a cuss word as slick as scum on a farm pond, but she whispered the word spawn anytime she used it, and had been terrified of the elderly gray-haired woman after that.

Griffin wondered why in the world a schoolteacher would buy that property. The house was probably haunted and if the inside looked like the outside, no one would want to live there.

Lizzy opened the truck door and bailed out, taking off in a dead run toward the two-story ranch house with a porch around three sides on both the bottom and upper floors. Painted white, it sat in a grove of pecan trees and had a white picket yard fence all around it. Lizzy left the gate hanging with a yell for her father to close it and went tearing into the house hollering for Nana Rita.

“Right here, child. What is the matter?” A thin Mexican lady emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the tail of her apron. Her black hair was pulled up into a bun on top of her head. Her jeans bagged slightly on her slim frame, and a red T-shirt peeked out from under a bibbed apron made of red gingham checks.

   “There’s another me. She’s in my room, Nana Rita, and her name is Annie. She’s got a streak in her hair just like mine and blue eyes just like mine and even a dent in her chin. Her momma is my teacher, Miss Julie, and she’s got curly red hair but she don’t have a lucky streak in her hair. Is Annie my sister? Why didn’t Daddy tell me I have a sister just like me?”

“Because you don’t,” Griffin said from the doorway.

Marita tucked her chin and raised an eyebrow. The questions were on the way and he still didn’t have an answer for any of them.

“She might be my twin sister. We’re just alike,” Lizzy argued.

“I was there in the delivery room when your mother gave birth to you. Believe me, you were just one baby,” Griffin said.

“But I want her to be my twin sister. Can you go buy her so she can be?” Lizzy asked.

“No, he cannot buy a little girl. Now you come in this kitchen with me and help me make cookies. You can tell me more about this little girl while we cook. And you”—Marita pursed her lips—“can tell me about the new teacher later.”

Griffin nodded. At least he wouldn’t have to go into the whole thing that day. Maybe by the time he did have to discuss it, he’d have more information. He’d heard that everyone had a double somewhere in the world. Evidently, Lizzy had found hers on the first day of school. Probably by the time they were in school a week they’d be fighting and wouldn’t be friends anymore. Or maybe the teacher would be gone when he took Lizzy to school the next day.

Julie opened the closet doors to the slightly sweet smell of baby powder and an old woman’s cologne. Starting at one end she took down dresses and pantsuits—some of which had to be thirty years old, judging from the mate rial and style—and folded them neatly into big black garbage bags to take to the nearest Goodwill store.

When she picked up the pink floral, double-knit dress she sat down in the floor and leaned back against the wall. Her aunt Flossie had a dress just like that and had worn it to the hospital to see her when Annie was born. She’d taken one look at the baby and quickly came to the same conclusion Derrick had.

“That baby is beautiful, but she does not belong to your husband. You’ve been sinning, Julie Donavan, and it has come back to bite you on the ass,” Aunt Flossie whispered. Julie had been as surprised to hear that word come out of Aunt Flossie’s mouth as she’d been when they laid the new baby in her arms the first time. Aunt Flossie didn’t even use the word pregnant in mixed company and said it behind her hand when she absolutely had to use it among female friends. Most of the time the guilty party was “in the family way.”

That damned pink dress brought on a flood of memories Julie thought she’d buried and faced for the last time several years ago. She’d moved from Jefferson, Texas, to Saint Jo to get away from the gossip and here it was, following her around like a puppy in the form of a blasted pink double-knit dress with a zipper down the front. Along with one fine-looking cowboy who didn’t even remember who she was. Had Aunt Flossie still been alive, she would have blushed at the string of scalding words that flowed from her niece’s mouth right then.

It had all started when Julie discovered her husband Derrick had been sleeping with the female engineer in the oil company his family owned. Julie and Derrick had been married six years and she had tried every fertility drug and concept on the market to have a baby. When she confronted him about the affair, he’d declared with bravado that it was her obsession with pregnancy that had driven him to the other woman. It was all Julie’s fault because sex had become nothing but a means to a baby, not a spontaneous spark of fun like it had been in the beginning. Pompous son-of-a-bitch that he was, he’d laid a guilt trip on her.

“Yeah, right,” Julie said aloud. “He unzipped his pants. I damn sure didn’t do it for him, grab his tally whacker, and lead him to the cute little engineer.”

She had filed for divorce even though a little tiny bit of her had always wondered if he was right and it had been her fault. Before the divorce was final, she, her sister, and a few friends went to Dallas for a weekend of shopping and fun. They met some college buddies who drove in from San Antonio, rented motel rooms, and shopped all day Saturday. That night they hit a singles’ bar and Julie met Griffin. Only that night they weren’t Julie and Griffin; they were Lucky and Red and they were both drunk by the time they staggered into her hotel room.

He had been sitting at a table with a dozen other freshly recruited military men, all looking very hand some in BDUs, shined boots, and shaved heads. She had stumbled over his boots when she was returning from the bathroom and he caught her before she fell. She’d looked up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

“Well, they don’t call me Lucky for nothing,” he had smiled.

“I’m so sorry. I was clumsy and not looking where I was going,” she had apologized.

“Don’t be. I saw you come in. I’m a sucker for red hair. Care to dance?”

And so it began. An evening with too many drinks, too much laughter, and two people hailing a cab back to her motel room. She wouldn’t even have known his name if she hadn’t noticed it stenciled into the neck of his shirt: G. Luckadeau. What the hell kind of name was Luckadeau anyway? French? Cajun?

“So what does the ”G“ stand for?” she’d asked.

“I’m off to Iraq tomorrow morning bright and early. Just call me Lucky because that’s what I am. You’re my red-haired good luck charm who’s going to make sure I come back in one piece. I’m calling you Red.”

What had been funny that night was awkward the next morning.

“Good-bye, Lucky,” she’d said from the bed when he left.

“Good-bye, Red,” he grinned.

The grin hadn’t changed in six years but the look in his eyes sure had. At school that morning Julie had recognized nothing but shock. His hair had grown back out and she had seen for absolute sure what gene pool Annie had dipped her head in to get her white streak, but six years had been good to Griffin Luckadeau. He was just as handsome as he’d been back then.

When he had left that morning it was with a backward glance that said he liked what he saw and if he wasn’t going to Iraq he might call her again.

“Come home in one piece,” she’d said as he had walked out the motel door.

“I promise, I will. How can I not? I just slept with the most beautiful redhead in the whole state of Texas.” He shut the door gently behind him.

“That line is so damn corny it’s funny. Besides, darlin’, we didn’t sleep,” she had said before she’d pulled the covers over her face and gone back to sleep.

Julie had been rudely awakened by her sister pounding on the door at fifteen minutes until eleven, rushing her around so they could make the checkout time.

The next week Derrick called. Honey dripped from his words. He missed her. He was sorry. They shouldn’t throw away a six-year marriage because of his mistake. He was willing to take full blame and it would never happen again. Please give him another chance. A dose of guilty syndrome had caused her to set aside the divorce. To celebrate, Derrick took a week off work and they’d flown to Cancun.

“There’s a sucker born every second,” Julie said aloud as she kept packing Edna’s clothes.

Her thoughts went back to six weeks after she and Derrick went to Cancun. She had found out she was pregnant and although he was reserved about the news she was ecstatic. The day Julie gave birth to Annie he took one look at his daughter and ordered a DNA test.

   “I’m willing to wait for the proof, Julie, and if the child is mine I will admit I’m wrong, but she’s not. I see now why you were so agreeable to take me back. I won’t be home until the DNA test results come back. That will give you time to move out. I’ll be filing for divorce on grounds of adultery as soon as I know for sure.”

   Julie had nodded numbly. One look at the baby they pulled from her and she knew immediately who the father was: G. Luckadeau. She’d even bet dollars to donuts that had his head not been shaven slick as a baby’s butt, he would have had a white streak in his dark hair. Her new baby daughter had one in the front of all that beautiful black hair, along with a dimple in her chin and big round eyes that Julie had no doubt would be crystal clear blue in a few weeks.

DNA was just a formality. The baby did not belong to Derrick Wayne Williams, III. When Julie filled out the birth certificate, she left the father’s space blank and named her daughter Annie Grace Donavan, because one thing Julie would insist on was her maiden name back. Annie was not a Williams and Julie wanted nothing from Derrick, not his property or his name.

   She never did blame Derrick. Maybe he was trying to make the marriage work and felt betrayed. Julie certainly had felt that way when she discovered the affair with his engineer. She took her baby home from the hospital, moved into the garage apartment her parents rented out for extra cash, and paid her mother to keep Annie while she taught school.

 Five years later her Aunt Flossie died and left Julie her entire estate. It wasn’t millions, but it was enough to buy the Lassiter property. She folded the pink dress and packed it into the garbage sack, hoping the memories would stay in the sack and not haunt her anymore. Evidently Lucky had left a pregnant wife behind when he went to Iraq, because Lizzy and Annie were born only two days apart. They were almost the same height, the same size, and could easily pass for twins.

Julie felt sorry for his wife. She’d been the wife; she didn’t ever want to be the other woman. That must be why he pretended not to remember her that day. He sure didn’t want to go home and explain that he’d just run into a drunken one-night stand and the little girl that it had produced.

   “Momma, can I bring the kittens inside?” Annie whispered.

Julie jumped. “You scared me,” she said.

“It’s hot out there and there’s a spider on the back porch and I know the kittens are afraid of it. Can I bring them in the house?”

She nodded. “We’ll have to make a litter pan in case they need to go when they are visiting you in the house. I’ll find an old pan and put some gravel from the driveway in it. You go bring them into your room and I’ll turn on the air conditioner in there. And I’ll take care of that spider on my way to the driveway.”

 “You are the best momma in the whole world,” Annie beamed. “But you know what? I wish Lizzy was my sister, then I’d have a real person to play with instead of the kittens, and we could play with them together. I bet she’d like yellow kittens, Momma, I just know it.”

“I’ve been thinking some about that little girl, Annie. Some folks say that everybody has a double. Do you know what that means?”

Annie shook her head.

“It means somewhere in the world there is a little girl who looks so much like you that it was like you were looking in the mirror if you looked at her. I think Lizzy is your double.”

 Annie hung her head. “Can she be my sister if I wish real, real hard?”

 “I don’t think so. Now you go get your baby kittens and I’ll get them a potty box.”

“And some milk in a bowl for snack time?” Annie pushed.

Julie smiled. “Yes, but just a tiny bit. Their momma is still feeding them and her milk is better than the kind we buy in a jug. It’s special just for them.”