Marriage Seasons 04 - Winter Turns to Spring (8 page)

That vision didn’t fit with the story of the episode at the strip joint. It didn’t fit with Mr. Moore. How had the one man turned into the other?

“Commitment,” Charlie said, wiping his forehead as he leaned on his shovel again. “That’s what got Esther and me through the rough spots. I doubt she ever put me on a pedestal again, but that’s all right. I didn’t belong on one. All the same, she had to work out how she did feel about me after that terrible night.
Committed
is what she finally said. At first, I didn’t think that was nearly as good as love, but later on I found out it was better.”

“Mrs. Moore forgave you because she was committed to you? Sounds like a word my boss uses about the condominium complex we’re building—especially if anyone on the crew shows up late or has a hangover. ‘You’ve got to be committed, men,’ he lectures us. We can all imitate the guy’s voice and gestures. Bill can be pretty strict, but we do get the job done. Nobody wants to quit, either, because he pays well and the work is steady.”

“Well, there you go. Constructing a condo is pretty much like building a marriage. You might not always like the restrictions, but commitment gets the work done anyhow. With strong dedication, neither one is willing to quit. Esther and I were united, you see. We shared a purpose—dreams and goals we wanted to accomplish. And we complemented each other pretty well, too, especially by the … by the end.”

Charlie set his shovel against a tile and gave it an angry push. The tile popped off, spun into the air, and landed on the floor, breaking into several pieces.

“Wow!”
Yappy hurtled over and snatched one of the tiles in his mouth. As the puppy pranced past Charlie, the man scooped him up, buried his face in the soft brown fur, and wept.

Brad leaned his shovel against a counter and brewed a pot of Ashley’s favorite tea. He and Charlie sat and drank several cups in comfortable silence. It was a while before they got back to work again.

“It’s time for minutes.” Cody Goss’s deep voice boomed over the chatter of ladies gathered in the tea area of the Just As I Am salon. “Mrs. Moore is in heaven, and she would want us to do minutes.”

Patsy Pringle glanced across the table at Pete Roberts. With a smirk on his clean-shaven face, her fiancé was dipping a chocolate chip cookie into his English Afternoon tea—a favorite activity that Patsy had begged him to cease.

Pete had cleaned up a lot in the looks department, but he still had a long way to go with manners. She wondered if Cody might teach him some social skills—an idea that put a wry grin on her own face.

“We need a new president, and I nominate Ashley Hanes.” Cody had risen from his chair and clinked the side of his china teacup with a spoon in the same way Esther Moore always had.

“Do I hear any seconds?” Cody asked. He paused a moment. “Meeting seconds are not like seconds at the dinner table, in case you were wondering. Dinner seconds are when you put more food on your plate because you didn’t get full the first time around.”

At this observation, the entire room fell silent. Cody continued. “According to
Robert’s Rules of Order
, meeting minutes are when the president of the organization, who I think should be Ashley Hanes, reads the old business.”

“I don’t want to be president,” Ashley announced, more or less glowering at the crowd. “I’m too busy, and I’m not in the mood.”

The club gatherings had been growing in size, Patsy noted, and the tables seemed extra full today. The one she and Pete had chosen included Cody, Jennifer Hansen, and Ashley. Patsy had observed the two young women engaged in animated discussion as they entered the salon together.

“But Mrs. Moore picked you, Ashley,” Cody protested. “When she had her accident, she chose you to be the president
pro tem
.
Pro tem
is Latin for—”

“I’m not going to take the job,” Ashley cut in. “Mrs. Moore was … well, nobody could do it the way she did.”

When Ashley’s voice began to quaver, Cody looked at Jennifer as if she might have the answer to this dilemma. As it turned out, she did.

“Why don’t you be president, Cody?” she asked him. “You know parliamentary procedure better than any of us.”

“I second that,” Pete spoke up.

“But, wait, we didn’t open the floor to nominations,” Cody  objected. “And Jennifer didn’t make a motion.”

“I move,” Jennifer said, “that Cody Goss become president of the Tea Lovers’ Club.”

“I second the motion,” Pete said again. “Any objections? No? Okeydoke, then all in favor say
amen
.”

As a chorus of amens echoed around the room, Cody surveyed the gathering in dismay. “Well … but that’s not exactly right….”

“It’s good enough for us,” Jennifer told him gently. She touched his arm. “Go on.”

“Okay, old business,” Cody announced, and without even looking at a written record, he began to describe the Thanksgiving parade, bonfire, and barbecue that had been the club’s most recent gathering.

Patsy had to admire the young man’s recall of events. Though Cody tended to focus on details others might miss—like the fact that at the Thanksgiving event Miranda Finley’s chocolate cake had been cut into triangles instead of squares—he certainly captured the occasion in living color.

When the time arrived for new business, several people mentioned the coming of Christmas and New Year’s Day and the fact that the community might want to celebrate those two holidays in some way. But Patsy wasn’t too surprised that no one could work up enough enthusiasm to make plans for a special occasion. Without Esther Moore’s usual cheerful, chirpy chatter to get the discussion going, the whole thing fell flat.

Realizing that he hadn’t been able to get the group to muster up a single bit of new business, Cody ended the meeting and sat down, a deflated expression on his handsome face.

“I really miss Mrs. Moore,” he murmured. “She would have suggested another parade, that’s for sure. Mrs. Moore liked parades.”

“We’ll think up some good ideas, Cody,” Jennifer assured him. “You did a great job on your first day as president. I suspect no one wanted to talk about Christmas because we’re all still sad about Mrs. Moore.”

“Christmas is another problem, Jennifer,” Cody told her, his blue eyes deep. “I tried to talk to Mrs. Miranda Finley about Christmas the other day when I was walking down to the lake to look for bald eagles. I saw three eagles, but I also had to listen to Mrs. Finley explain about pagan roots.”

“Pagan?” Ashley frowned at Cody, then turned to Jennifer. “Christmas is baby Jesus, the manger, the three wise men, and all that, isn’t it?”

“Mrs. Finley told me that Christmas is not really about that,” Cody responded. Before continuing, he glanced at Miranda, who sat across the room with another group of women.

“She is a nice lady who made business cards to help me get painting jobs,” he explained in a lower voice, “but she says no one knows
when
or
if
Jesus was ever born. Christmas trees and mistletoe and stockings and even Santa Claus all came from ancient pagan earth religions. So, ha ha. Which is when I reminded her that God is bigger and more powerful than anyone can imagine, especially her. So, ha ha back.”

Cody took a bite of lemon bar, then added, “Mrs. Miranda Finley and I had a little bit of an argument, if you want to know the truth, but we decided to stay friends anyway.”

Patsy focused on Pete, who had been listening with great interest to Cody’s latest ramble. Pete surprised his bride-to-be on a regular basis. The man had only a high school education. He wasn’t a big talker, had a poor track record where marriage and alcohol were concerned, and only recently had joined the local church. Anyone would suppose such a man might be lacking intellectual depth. As it turned out, Pete
was
a deep thinker, and he enjoyed listening to people’s ideas a great deal more than he let on.

“Cody, you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met,” Pete declared. “I’m not sure I’d want to take on Miranda Finley the way you did.”

“Yeah,” Ashley added. “You knocked the wind out of her on that Christmas argument. I’ll bet you’re brave enough to handle just about anything, Cody. You could probably even be a missionary if you wanted to.”

At that, Patsy noticed Jennifer elbow Ashley in the side. The redhead suppressed a grin. It appeared the two had been discussing Cody—and not just in a general sense.

“Maybe so,” the young man informed Ashley, his blue eyes serious. “But I already know I prefer Deepwater Cove to any other place in the world, because people are nice to me and give me work to do and surprise birthday parties and cut my hair and let me sleep on their porch.”

“I think you’re happiest here,” Jennifer said.

Cody’s gaze fastened on her. “I’m happiest to be near you, Jennifer. You’re my best friend and also the most beautiful woman I ever met. That’s why I love you.”

Before Jennifer could come up with a suitable response to another of Cody’s regular declarations of love, Ashley spoke again. “But what if Jen moved away? What would you do, Cody? You wouldn’t want to leave Deepwater Cove. Maybe you should go with her?”

For a moment, the young man focused on his cup of tea. Then he suddenly grabbed his curls and clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t know,” he burst out. “I want Jennifer to be happy, but I also want her to stay here. I want to be near her. I love Jennifer so much—”

“Yo, Code.” Pete slung an arm around his shoulders. “Jennifer is sitting beside you, and nobody’s going anywhere right now. You don’t have to make a single decision except whether you’re going to eat the rest of that lemon bar. Same with Jennifer. I’m a lot older than both of you kids, and I’ll tell you this—the slower you make a decision and the more clearheaded you are when you step up to the plate, the better off you’ll be. I’ve done a lot of dumb things because I was in a hurry, and I sure learned my lesson on that.”

“You got engaged to Patsy awfully soon,” Ashley reminded him. “You haven’t even known her a whole year yet. Brad and I went out for nearly two years before he proposed.”

“Hmm.” Pete appeared to ponder her words. “So, do you think things are working out better for you and Brad because you waited?”

Ashley’s pale cheeks flushed a bright pink, and Patsy gave Pete a little kick under the table. Everyone in Deepwater Cove knew the young couple had lived together a short time before marriage and now were going through a rocky spell.

Though Patsy always did her best to dispel rumors in the salon, she had heard talk of trouble between the young Haneses for several months now. Some of her male clients had told her they thought Brad paid too much attention to the new singer at Larry’s. Others had overheard Brad and Ashley arguing at Bitty Sondheim’s restaurant next door, the Pop-In. Everyone knew that Brad’s pride and joy—the big white truck he had purchased in the spring—had been repossessed. In fact, folks were surprised that Ashley’s large diamond engagement ring was still perched on the third finger of her left hand. Word had it the two were deeply in debt, and Ashley’s family had been known to frequent the local pawnshop when times got tough.

Furthermore, if Charlie Moore hadn’t stepped in to help Brad finish off the Haneses’ room addition and shore up the rest of the termite-eaten walls, people suspected that the entire house would have fallen down around their ears. None of this made for pleasant conversation, and Patsy wished the subject hadn’t come up now.

“Brad and I are fine,” Ashley fired back at Pete. “You’ve been married before, haven’t you? Was your first marriage one of the
dumb things
you said you’d done?”

Jennifer again elbowed Ashley, but Patsy could see that the young redhead was in no mood to be silenced. She had come into the meeting riled up about something, and Cody’s insistence that she become president had only made it worse. Now she was fairly bristling for a fight with Pete.

“Marriage is a risky business,” Pete told her. “I had
two
wives in my past life, and I sure don’t deserve another. I got married when I was too young and ignorant to know how to treat a fine lady like you or Jennifer or Miss Patsy Pringle. And I was certainly in too big of a hurry to manage things. You’re right to call me out on this, Ashley. I probably should have waited longer to ask for Patsy’s hand. There’s only one thing that makes this time different from the other two, and I’m counting on it to carry us through the rough spots.”

“‘Except the Lord build the house,’” Cody piped up, “‘they labour in vain that build it.’ Psalm 127:1. The house is a metaphor for marriage. Pete and Patsy are going to start their new marriage with God in the middle and underneath and all around. That’s why it’s going to work out happily ever after. Isn’t that right, Pete?”

“Happily ever after sounds good to me.” Pete glanced at Patsy, gave her a wink, and then reached toward Cody’s plate. “You weren’t planning to eat the rest of that lemon bar, were you?”

“Yes, I was!” Cody cried, snatching it away just in time.

Jennifer laughed and punched Pete in the shoulder as Cody gobbled down his dessert. Patsy’s smile faded when she noticed that Ashley’s lower lip was quivering as she lifted her teacup to her mouth.