She indicated that Rachel should sit down at the kitchen table. “I understand the situation fully. I’m so sorry for your loss.” She set down a full teapot, and followed that with cups and saucers. Once she’d placed a plate of shortbread cookies on the table she poured the tea, and Rachel realized she had been brewing tea. She was not just being polite by offering it.
“Thank you,” Rachel said as she put a little sugar in the tea Mrs. Ping had just poured. She took a sip, savored the taste, and then took a cookie from the plate. As she bit into it she thought about food, cooking, and how Carrie had referred to her as a guest that morning, how she’d basically told Rachel she wasn’t wanted.
Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she fought them back.
“Remember the good times with her, dear,” Mrs. Ping said, her voice gentle. “Death is never easy to deal with, but it happens to us all. If we remember the love and laughter it is easier for those of us who are left behind to heal and move on.”
“You’re right,” Rachel said. Despite her best efforts, the tears she’d been holding back started to fall. She wiped them away and said, “Maybe I should go.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Ping said. She got up and came back with a box of tissues. Rachel took one and wiped at her eyes. “Now, tell me what’s really bothering you. Treat me as a sounding board. That’s the term my daughter uses when she needs to talk.”
Rachel watched as Mrs. Ping took a drink of tea, then she did the same. After she’d swallowed, she sniffled and poured her heart out, starting with her failed relationship with Dex, and how Agatha’s death had brought them back together.
“I’m scared, though, that I’m going to screw it all up again.” She took another drink of her tea.
“It takes two to screw up love, my dear,” Mrs. Ping said. “My late husband would start fights because he said the makeup sex was so good.”
Rachel laughed at the thought. Would she and Dex be like that? Would she start fights just so she could be spanked? It wasn’t a bad idea, really. Except for the fact that she wasn’t overly fond of punishment spankings, and that was what Dex would give. The lack of residual pain told her that Dex had taken it easy on her last night, even if she had cried and felt the swats at the time.
She was out of practice. She needed to get back into the swing of things, so to speak.
“What makes you think you’re going to screw things up?”
Rachel groaned and told her about her run-in with Carrie that morning.
“Well, that does make things a little more difficult,” Mrs. Ping said. “Obviously she blames you for what she saw was her friend’s broken heart.”
“From what her husband told her was a broken heart,” Rachel said. “Carrie wasn’t around when I was with Dex before. It makes me wonder what Dex said to him. It makes me wonder if Dex really does blame me for us drifting apart before.”
“There’s only one way to find out—ask him.” Mrs. Ping took a drink from her cup. “Don’t go into a relationship with a negative attitude, and this situation could produce just that. Get it out in the open. Talking about it will make things better.”
Mrs. Ping ate a cookie, and then she smiled. “It’s obvious to me that the two of you are meant to be together.”
“Agatha always said that,” Rachel said.
“I think she was right,” Mrs. Ping said. “Tell me, can you see yourself experiencing good things with Dex? Do you dream of seeing him every day? Do you imagine what it would be like to have a family with him? To give birth to his children?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“Then by all means don’t let this woman get under your skin,” Mrs. Ping said. “Stand up to her. Show her that she might be defending her friend, but you have no intention of harming him, or letting him go this time.”
“You’re right, of course,” Rachel said. She would have to make friends with Carrie, no matter how much time and effort it took.
But Mrs. Ping had brought up other things that Rachel needed to talk about, too. Thinking of families—of babies—made her think of Agatha, and before she knew what she was doing, she spilled the beans on that front, too.
“How intriguing,” Mrs. Ping said. “You’ve found no information on the child yet?”
“I haven’t had time to go through Agatha’s papers,” Rachel said. She drained her second cup of tea. “I’m still working on the clothes.”
“What was the child’s name?” Mrs. Ping asked.
“Brett,” Rachel said. “Agatha didn’t provide any more information in the obituary, and Dex’s father was very tightlipped about it all. I might find a birth, and death, certificate amongst Agatha’s things. That will give us some answers.”
“I’m not sure I can wait that long.” Mrs. Ping pulled a cell phone from her pocket. She tapped the screen and brought it up to her ear. After a moment she said, “Trixie, darling, how are you?”
There was a pause, and then Mrs. Ping continued, “I have a research challenge for you. I want you to find out everything you can about a deceased woman named Agatha Bales and her son, Brett, who is long deceased.”
There was another pause, and then Mrs. Ping said, “The only date I have is the date of Miss Bales’ death, Jan. 1 of this year.
Rachel’s heart seized at hearing someone speak so casually about Agatha’s death. It hurt to think about it, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about this Trixie woman looking into Agatha’s life. That was Rachel’s job. She had planned to go to the library when she had the time. She waved her hands in an effort to get Mrs. Ping’s attention, but the older woman ignored her.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right. She was a local woman.”
“Mrs. Ping,” Rachel said, but Mrs. Ping shushed her.
“You’re so wonderful, Trixie. You send me a bill for your time and let me know what you find out.”
When the call was disconnected, Rachel said, “I can’t let you pay for a search. Call her back, please.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Ping said as she refilled her teacup. “I have more money than I know what to do with, and I love a mystery. Trixie is a wonderful woman who works with a genealogical society. She has all sorts of resources that she can use to get to the bottom of this. She said it might take a day or two, but I’ll keep you informed.”
Rachel fought the urge to say, “Gee, thanks for taking over and being generous enough to keep me informed.” But instead she said, “You really shouldn’t have.”
“I like you, Rachel, and you have a lot on your plate right now.” She held her teacup up in the air. “If I can help in some small way I want to do so.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ping.” Rachel blinked back tears. She’d been doing that a lot lately, and it was very unlike her.
“Now go on, and meet your bison boy.” She winked at Rachel. “If it works out, the two of you can buy me dinner sometime.”
“We’d be delighted,” Rachel said. After she was in the car and headed back to Agatha’s house, Rachel wondered how Dex would feel about Mrs. Ping initiating her own investigation into Agatha’s son. Would he be angry? Or would he welcome the help? She liked to think she knew him well enough to imagine it would be the latter.
As she took a few turns she realized she hadn’t gone by the loft to check her mail. She did so, then hurried inside to make sure everything was okay. Once she was sure nothing was amiss she drove straight to Agatha’s, only to find Dex’s truck already in the driveway.
She parked behind him and went inside. Dex had put out the blanket they’d used for their tamale meal. On it he’d stacked so many cartons of food that Rachel wasn’t sure she would be able to count them in one try.
“Did you invite the entire neighborhood?” she asked. “Because something tells me if you did, we’ll still have leftovers.”
“I couldn’t decide what I wanted,” he said. “So I bought all my favorites.”
“And then some, it seems.” Rachel kicked off her shoes and sat down opposite him. She took the bot
tle of water he offered and then started to check the boxes. “Pad Thai, chicken curry, fried rice and… yum, shrimp rolls. You did good. But we’ll be eating off this for three or four days.”
“Not that long,” he said. “Carrie is making lasagna tomorrow night.”
Rachel kept her gaze on the food and didn’t respond.
“Want to tell me what happened this morning?”
She put several different scoops of food on her plate. “Not particularly,” she said after a few moments. “Carrie and I just have to get used to each other. I think it’s best if we do it on our own.”
“Why?” She looked up to see him holding chopsticks, laden with rice noodles, near his mouth. She smiled as he placed the whole bite in his mouth.
“Will she like me anymore when her husband goes to her and says you’ve reported that I said she was mean to me?”
His jaw stopped moving and he stared at her. Then he chewed some more, swallowed and said, “You have a point.”
“Let us work it out on our own.” She bit into a shrimp roll. “How did they meet, anyway?”
“Brock Watson,” he said around a mouthful of food.
“That nerd who was always getting beat up in school?”
“That’s the one,” Dex said after he’d swallowed. “He runs some sort of company now, I’m not exactly sure what they do, but they run one of those bachelor auctions and he talked Tommy into doing it. It was for charity. Carrie won the auction. They got married six months later.”
“Six months?” Rachel put down what was left of her shrimp roll. “Wow.”
“Wow what?” Dex asked.
“No wonder she thinks—” She picked up her roll and stuffed it in her mouth.
“Thinks what?” Dex asked.
“Mumflphs,” Rachel said around her food.
“Don’t pull that garbage on me,” he said. “I want to know what the two of you fought about this morning.”
“We didn’t fight,” she said after she’d swallowed her large bite of food and taken a drink of water. “Listen, Carrie is overly protective of you.”
He frowned, and then suddenly he nodded. “Don’t listen to her.”
“Like I said, let us work it out.” She picked up a carton and sniffed it. “Yum, curry.”
“I bought several orders of that, because we both like it hot.”
Rachel scooped a huge portion of it onto her plate.
“What else happened today?” he asked.
Between bites of food she told him about her visit with Mrs. Ping, and how she’d arranged for someone to look into Agatha’s past.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” he said. “I mean I want to know the truth, but I kinda wanted us to do it together.”
“Then we need to go through things in the office,” she said. “I think that’s where we’ll find the most information. I can finish the clothes tomorrow.”
He shoveled in several more bites of food, and, deciding to channel her inner-Agatha, Rachel told him to slow down. “You’ll get an upset stomach if you don’t give yourself time to chew and swallow.”
She started to laugh, and he joined in. “If you teach our kids your sense of humor I’m in big trouble.”
Rachel stopped chewing. “You don’t like my sense of humor?” she asked. “I’m wounded.”
“It’s one of your better qualities,” he said. “I don’t mind jokes from you, but I’m not sure how I’ll react to my son or daughter squirting me with water, or starting a food fight.”
“You started the last food fight,” she said. “That means you have a strange sense of humor, too, especially since it turned into sex.”
“Good sex,” he mumbled just before he swallowed another bite of food.
“Speaking of children,” she said. “What do you want our kids to be like?”
“Themselves,” he said. “If I learned anything from Agatha it was that the best part of life is living it according to what makes you happy. You make me happy. I’ve laughed more in the last few days than I have in the last three years, and that’s saying a lot considering the fact that I just lost a woman I loved more than almost anything in this world.”
She picked up a wonton and waved it at him. “Clear away everything except the shrimp rolls and the wontons.”
“I’m not done eating,” he said.
“Do as I ask,” she said.
“Do as I ask,” he said in a singsong voice as he started to close up the containers. He pushed them aside and said, “I’ve done as you wished.”
“Do you remember the first time we went on a date? I mean an actual date, where there was no one around but us, no parents, no Agatha, no Tommy.”
His eyes widened, and she smiled. “You do,” she said. “We went to eat Thai food, and then we saw Jurassic Park. It was the fifteen-year anniversary and they were showing it in theaters again.”
“We sat in the back and necked,” he said.
“And we stopped when that poor kid came screaming down the aisle, afraid of the dinosaurs.”
“Then we laughed when his mother blamed the theater manager for the dinos scaring her kid.”
Rachel fed him the wonton she had in her hand. “We shouldn’t have laughed at the poor woman, even if she was a bitch.”
Dex stroked her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. “I want to marry you. Will you marry me, Rachel?”
“Tonight?” She giggled. “I think it might be hard to find a priest tonight.”
“Be serious,” he said. “I want to marry you. Do you want to marry me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry it took us longer than the six months it took Tommy and Carrie.”
“I’m not,” he said. “True we missed time together, but I think our love is stronger because we spent time apart. I know I realized what I missed. I know I can’t live without you in my life. I know I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”
“I feel the same,” she said. “I’m scared, but I feel the same.”
He picked up a shrimp roll and held it out to her. She took a bite, much as she had on that first date. They’d sat on the same side of the booth and fed each other while people pointed and talked. She could tell by the looks on their faces that some people thought it was sweet, while others thought it was disgusting.
“Let’s elope,” he said. “We have to take Agatha’s ashes up to her cabin in Red River. We’ll stop in Santa Fe, just the two of us, and get married.”
“Do you want me to wear white?”
“I want you to wear whatever you want,” he said. “As for me, it will be boots and jeans.”
He lunged for her and they tumbled to the floor, his lips ravishing hers until she thought she would never be able to breathe again.
“When should we go?” she asked when they came up for a breath.
“This weekend?” he asked. “No, we have an appointment with the lawyer on Monday. We can leave on Tuesday, if you can get someone to watch over your business.”
“I can do that,” she said. “Tuesday it is, and then we get married on Wednesday, and go to Red River.”
“For a perfect honeymoon,” he said.
“I’ll have to give up the loft,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “And commute into town every day. It will be a hardship.” She looked up at him. “Unless you don’t want me to live at Buffalo Gap.”
“Do you want to live there?” he asked.
“Only if you’re there,” she said.
“You mean only if we’re there together,” he said. He kissed his way down her neck, pulling down the tee-shirt she wore so he could get closer to her breasts.
Rachel moaned as he licked and kissed her skin, and then she tried to pull away from him.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I can have sex in Agatha’s house.” She rolled away and stood. “Let’s go to the loft. Or out to Buffalo Gap.”
“Or let’s be like teenagers and go out to the lake on the east side of to
wn and go necking.”
“Isn’t it a little cold for that?” she asked.
“I’ll warm you up,” he said. “I like sex outdoors, and so, if I remember correctly, do you.”
“You’re talking about the tree,” she said.
“Refresh my memory,” he said as he pulled her close and kissed her neck.
“We had a picnic,” she said.
“Why is there always food involved in our dalliances?”
“Did you just use the word dalliance?” She pushed against his chest. “That is not a word I would ever expect to come out of your mouth.”
“Why is there always food involved before we fuck?”
They fell onto the sofa together, laughing.
“Well,” he finally asked. “Why is there?”
“Because we like to eat,” she said. “Because it stimulates our senses and leads to other things that are… delicious.”
“Am I delicious?” he asked. He kissed her. “Just my lips, or other parts of me?”
“Oh, many different parts,” she said.
“You haven’t tasted me in a long time,” he said.
“Maybe I should do it now,” she countered.
“Maybe we should make use of that big tub of Agatha’s,” he said.
At the mention of Agatha’s name the spell seemed to be broken. He stood and walked toward the door. “You’re right, we can’t have sex here. It would be…”
“Weird,” Rachel finished for him.
“Let’s go to the loft,” he said.
They put up the food and turned off all the lights. When they were outside on the steps he said, “I hate the thought of selling this house.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But if we’re going to live at Buffalo Gap, there is really no need to have a house in town, is there?”
The cold seemed to wrap itself around her and she took his hand. “So lake, or loft?”
“It’s too cold for the lake,” he said.
Rachel nodded, and then her eyes widened. “What is that?” she pointed to the left of the front door. Dex turned to follow her gaze, and then he bent over.
“It’s just a box. You must have dropped it on your way into the house.”
“No,” she said. “The boxes I carried in were broken down. This one is put together. I wonder if Mrs. Perkins from next door brought something over.”
Getting Caught in the Rain Page 10
