“No, that’s just one in a long line of many. If we were talking the first one, we’d have to ask Mimosa about it, and I’m afraid her memory wouldn’t stretch that far,” Roxie said.
“Let’s not put me in the glass case tonight,” Mimosa said. “Let me see those papers, Dee. I’m not a lawyer, but I can read.”
Dee shook her head and picked them up like she was handling a rattlesnake. “I’ll read them first. Actually, it’s written in fairly easy language.” She read for a while, then looked up.
“Not much lawyer jargon at all. Just says that I’m sane, which would be stretching the truth a bit coming from this family, and that I’m relinquishing all rights to the inheritance left to me in July of this year by one Marjorie Suddeth Lancaster. It doesn’t even state or list the inheritance. Could be Ray is right and it amounts to very little, but the money isn’t the issue here. It’s the fact that he lied and came all the way out here himself. This isn’t an acceptance paper, it is a relinquishing paper. I smell a rat.”
“Hmmph,” Bodine snorted dramatically. “That ain’t no rat you smell. It’s the stink of a sorry rascal. I’d call him something worse, but Roxie would make me eat soap.”
Mimosa patted her granddaughter’s arm. “Well done, Bodine. I’m proud of you. You are beginning to learn your lessons. I’d never met the ex-husband, you know. He is a right fetching man. I can see where he would sweep a woman off her feet. Matter of fact, if he’d been driving an eighteen-wheeler, I might have gone pantin’ after him like a hound dog after a coon myself when I was younger.”
“Mimosa!” Bodine and Tally both said at the same time.
“Just statin’ facts, darlin’s. Just statin’ facts,” Mimosa said.
“Well, I reckon if Lucifer walked around the side of the house, he’d come disguised as a good-lookin’ man too,” Roxie said. “But it wouldn’t make him an angel, no matter how much he tried.”
“If he had on tight-fittin’ jeans and boots, I might be so inclined to do a little pantin’ myself,” Tally said.
Jack leaned in closer to Dee to peer over her shoulder and read the papers with her. “It’s not a will at all? It’s a relinquishing of rights?”
His warm breath on her neck made a mountain of goosebumps creep up her arms and backbone. Ray, at six foot four, was several inches taller than Jack. Ray, with his jet-black hair and brooding brown eyes: movie-star qualities that would make a nun’s pantyhose itch to crawl down around her ankles. Jack, with his unruly, sandy-brown hair that always needed a cut or comb, hazel eyes that glittered when he was happy and brooded when he was sad. Of the two, at first glance Ray would win the handsome-man contest. Yet he’d left her with a bitter taste in her mouth. And Jack? Well, Jack was still sitting there and she’d trust him with her very life.
“Know a good lawyer?” she asked.
“Sure. Got one I use all the time right in Sulphur. She’s handled all my affairs except my mafia business.” He winked at Bodine.
“Mamie Rockford?” Dee asked.
“That’s the one. I’ll call her when I get home this evening and see if she’s going to be in the office tomorrow. I see there’s a lawyer’s number on the letterhead. Reckon that’s who she’ll need to talk to about this inheritance?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Dee said. “And I want to thank all of you for closing ranks and standing with me while he was here. Thanks, Roxie, for not killing him. He’s not worth the bullet. Thanks to everyone for letting me handle it the best way I could when I know you’d have liked to have done him bodily harm.”
“Jack, too?” Bodine asked.
“Especially Jack. When he slipped his arm over the back of my chair, it gave me strength to tell Ray to leave.” Dee looked over at her friend, who was blushing scarlet.
“Ah, ’twasn’t nothing. Just didn’t want you to think we weren’t here for you,” Jack drawled. So she’d had to have strength to tell the man to leave, had she? Did that bode well for him or against him, he wondered? If Ray ever caught her out alone without family to steady her up, would she capitulate?
“Enough of this unpleasant business. When trouble comes, it does come in threes, doesn’t it?” Roxie said. “First the robbery and now this.”
“That’s only two. Where’s the third?” Bodine asked.
“Oh, it’s there. I expect Tally is thinking about gamblin’ and Mimosa is thinkin’ about truck drivers,” Roxie said.
“I am not. I was thinking about tight-fittin’ jeans and boots and a man with blue eyes.” Tally defended herself.
“And I was thinkin’ about cutting your hair tomorrow evening.” Mimosa did the same.
“Sure you were. And I’m going to choose to believe you and hope that in this instance trouble doesn’t come in threes. Now, Dee, you take Jack on home and see to it he’s got Vick’s rubbed on his chest and feet. Put a warm washcloth on his chest and good thick socks on his feet. You can watch a movie with him so he won’t be so lonesome, but don’t keep him up late. The chicken soup won’t do him a bit of good without his rest.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said.
Dee handed Roxie the papers. “I’m not getting that awful-smelling stuff on my hands. He can put it on himself. He’s not a baby.”
Roxie pushed her ratted red hair back out of her face. “All men are babies when they’re sick. Now get on out of here, you two. At least there won’t be a young’un for me to raise if you stink.”
“Roxie!” Dee blushed.
“Truth is truth. Ain’t no use in sugarcoatin’ it,” Roxie said flippantly and carried the papers into the house.
“Shall we?” Jack offered her his arm, and the two of them disappeared across the lawns as the sun slipped beneath the horizon, twilight gone, darkness covering Buckhorn Corner one more time.
“Jack, I really do thank you for being there beside me,” she said.
He opened the door and let her enter the trailer before him. “Couldn’t very well get up and leave you. Sun wasn’t quite down past the horizon yet. Roxie would have had my hide if I’d left before a beautiful sunset finished putting on its show.”
“All teasing aside.” She turned abruptly and found herself chest to chest with him, his eyes going all soft as he looked down at her upturned face.
“All teasing aside,” he repeated her words in a hoarse voice.
The silhouetted tableau, lit up by on the moon, hanging like a great white light in a dark blue velvet sky twinkling with diamonds, lasted only a few seconds, but it was an eternity before he looked away and found the light switch.
She hurried to the kitchen. Away from Jack and those soft, green eyes. The moment, born because of a difficult time, had passed, but not without tossing out unwanted emotions to rattle around in her heart. “Where is the Vick’s? Still keep it where Nanna always did?”
He picked up the remote and channel surfed to see what was on television. “Still in the same place, but I’m not putting it on until bedtime. No way am I wearing socks as hot as it is. Not until I have to. Then I’ll turn the air-conditioning down to a notch above freezing so I won’t fry.”
He kept his eyes on the television, trying to make sense out of what had just happened. He’d almost kissed Dee. Was he ready for that step past friendship? He’d thought he was, but now he didn’t know. What if their relationship didn’t work? What if they split up too? He’d lose the best friend he ever had.
She came back into the living room and eased down in the recliner, away from the sofa where he was sprawled out, his legs stretched out over one arm, his head resting on a pillow tossed on the other end. “Well, I don’t like to smell the stuff so I’m not going to argue with you.”
“What do you want to watch? Looks like Sweet Home Alabama is playing on HBO. There’re old reruns of Law and Order, and Friends,” he said without looking at her.
“The movie. I wanted to see it when it came out, but going to the movies is so bohemian. Unless it’s one of those you are invited to attend a p
remiere for.”
He jerked his head around to see if she was joking. “For real. You went to premieres?”
“Of course. The governor of the great state of Oklahoma was right behind me, and Elvis Presley’s ghost in front of me. Ray might be rich as Midas, but he’s a great big fish in a little bitty pond. He wouldn’t have taken this southern rebel to a premiere even if he’d been invited.”
“What are you going to do with what his aunt left you?” Jack changed the subject as he poked the buttons to bring up the movie, which was just beginning.
“Depends on how much there is. I reckon it’s a sight more than he wanted to tell me about since he came down here himself and since he mentioned they’d tried to break the will. The jewelry? Well, honey, it’s not going to be handed back to him for Angie to wear. If she wants rubies, and Aunt Marjorie was real partial to a mixture of diamonds and rubies, then Ray can buy them for her,” she said.
“Little touch of bitterness there?”
“Probably, but I’m entitled,” she snapped.
“That mean you still got feelings for the man?” Jack didn’t look at her when he asked.
“I’m not going to answer that question. I’m going to watch this movie and pretend you didn’t even ask it.”
In an hour and a half, the movie had raised more questions than she wanted to face. Had she always loved Jack as more than a friend and had hoped down deep inside her soul that he would still be single when she came home to Oklahoma? Where did Ray fit? Was Jack right in thinking she still had feelings for the man? After all, they’d spent seven years together. Could she turn her feelings off and on like a water faucet?
“So?” Jack asked when the end credit rolled.
“So what?” she asked right back.
“Did you like it?”
“Loved it. I want to own it and watch it every week.”
“Which one is Ray? The husband or the fiancé?” He picked a fight. Maybe it was because she’d said what she did about needing the strength of family and one old friend to help her reject the Yank.
“Neither,” she raised her voice.
“Hey, don’t holler at me. I’m just asking the question you need to answer before you can get on with your life, darlin’.”
“You’re being obnoxious.” She stormed out the door, slamming it behind her.
God save her from men. The Big Man Upstairs had surely known what he was doing when he made all the Hooper women. If she’d have had a brother, she would have considered going home and strangling him in his sleep right then. Ray was a first-rate skunk. Jack was a meddling rascal.
She stomped across the yard and into the house. “Don’t say a word to me. I’m going to bed, and I don’t want to hear about Ray or Jack or which one is a husband and which one is a fiancé or a friend,” she told Roxie, Tally, Mimosa, and Bodine, who were finishing a game of Scrabble at the dining-room table.
“Whew, sounds like she and Jack just had a big one.” Tally fanned her face with her hand.
“Who won?” Bodine asked.
“No tellin’,” Roxie said. “I’d say it’s still up in the air from the way she’s acting.”
“It’s a good sign.” Mimosa added up the points while Bodine put the game away.
“How’s that?” Tally asked.
“It was going too easy. They’ve been kind of sitting on a blanket, falling in love without realizing it the past few weeks. They need some conflict. Some kind of big old fight to see if they’d survive in the real world of relationships.”
“Well, I do declare, my mother is a philosophizer,” Tally laughed.
“No, just statin’ facts. Folks who have everything all perfect and then marry are in for a rude awakening.”
“Voice of experience?” Roxie asked.
“Third husband. Perfect. Cards. Roses. Love oozing out of him. First time we had a disagreement, it rocked the marriage so bad it never was right again. Remember that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
“Think it’ll kill them?” Tally asked.
“No, I think it’ll make them stronger,” Mimosa said. “Now, Bodine Delight Hooper, it is your bedtime. So go say your prayers and get to sleep. You little minx, you’ve whipped us all at Scrabble. When did you get so smart?”
“I was born that way.” Bodine ran up the stairs before her grandmother could swat her bottom.
Dee jerked off her T-shirt and slammed it on the floor, angry that it didn’t make any noise. She unzipped her shorts and flung them against the wall. Still no noise. She had a lamp in her hand and was about to hurl it at the door when she realized what she was doing. Roxie would go into an instant heart attack if Dee shattered an antique. She carefully put it back on the nightstand and instead chucked her shoes at the door. At least that brought a little instant gratification.
When she’d showered and flung herself onto the bed, with a good-sized mad still storming through her, she laced her fingers behind her head and stared at the darkened ceiling. She’d thought she was over the hissy-fit stage, even past the numb stage and moving on with her life.
You are, crazy woman. You couldn’t care less about Ray. He didn’t set your heart to fluttering or put you in a black mood. It’s Jack you’re angry with, girl. You’re mad because you can’t control the way you feel and because it scares the devil out of you.
Chapter Seven
Jack slam-dunked his pillow on the floor. As a child, he hated it when he and Dee argued. As an adult, it was ten times worse. It was his fault, pressuring her like that because of what she’d said about needing strength to say no to Ray. He picked up the newest John Sandford mystery and read ten pages before he realized he was looking at words and hadn’t retained a single idea from the book.
He looked out the front window across the lawn at the big house next door. Lights were on upstairs, but the downstairs was dark. When they were kids, if he remembered something after Dee went to sleep, he’d throw gravel at her window and she’d open it and lean out to see what he wanted. He wondered if she was sleeping yet.
He slipped his feet back into his rubber flip-flops and was almost at the house when the lights in her bedroom window went out. He picked up a handful of gravel, then changed his mind. Perhaps they’d do better to sleep on the argument. It might not seem so big by morning, and by then they could even find humor in it. He dropped the gravel and went to the front porch. Easing himself down into the swing at the far end of the porch, he started a rhythmic motion, back and forth, with his foot. Someday he was going to build a deck on the back of the trailer and install some kind of swing. A man could solve all the problems of the world sitting in a porch swing with the late summer-night breezes cooling down the daytime temperatures.
Dee squeezed her eyes shut, but sleep wouldn’t come. All she could see was Ray in that expensive suit, barely a bead of sweat on him even though the outside temperature was near a hundred degrees. Like some kind of Italian mafia don, telling her to sign her name to the papers without reading them. Just as he’d always been, from day one of their marriage: he spoke, she obeyed.
Resentment, bitterness, anger—all balled into one big round lump that was difficult to swallow. She might have forgiven him for an affair with Angie, or would she? Had she wanted a normal family so badly that she would have stood on the sidelines of an affair and taken him back?
Sure, she’d been discontent with the way she’d been raised. What kid wasn’t? But she’d been jealous of those who had a traditional mother who came to school parties in plain old jeans and T-shirts, who came toting uneven cupcakes with thick icing. Hell’s bells, she even called her mother by her given name—Mimosa. Then there was Roxie, who had brought perfect petit fours with little flowers on the tops to all of her school functions. Who wore ruffles, ruffles, and more ruffles, ratted hair, and three-inch heels.
She remembered the first fight she got into at school. Lisa Colley asked if her grandmother was a madam. Dee had told her that Roxie was just a grandma, tha
t’s all, but that she called her Roxie because that’s the way they did things in the Hooper house. But after she’d asked Tally what a madam was, Lisa Colley was taken home the next day with a black eye and a bloody nose. Dee had spent every recess in detention for two weeks and figured it was time well spent.
She smiled thinking about that day, but a frown replaced it before it had time to really blossom. Somewhere deep inside her heart, she thought she’d find a normal happy home with Ray. What she’d landed in was as dysfunctional as what she’d jumped out of. From the fryin’ pan straight into the fire, it seemed as if Roxie’s voice whispered over her shoulder. She jerked her head around, half expecting to see her grandmother standing beside the bed.
She’d been so angry at Ray, so numb with the knowledge of what a fool she’d been, that she hadn’t had time to think about what would happen if she ever had to face him again. Well, she’d faced him all right, and instead of wanting to beg him to take her back and she’d forgive him, she’d wanted to do just what Bodine had suggested earlier. Shoot him and bury him. Was it under the compost pile? Or in the basement? No, the basement was Jack’s idea.
Jack! Oh, no! She’d been so hateful to him. But then, he’d been just as obnoxious, thinking she was still harboring feelings for a man who’d been willing to cut her heart out with a dull butter knife, throw it on the floor, and stomp it with his imported shoes until it stopped beating. No, she didn’t have any feelings for Ray anymore. But she shouldn’t have to tell Jack that. She shouldn’t have to explain a thing to him. He was her very best friend. He should know without asking. He should see with his eyes shut. Hear with his ears plugged with cotton. Jack knew her better than anyone in the world. Why was he so pushy about hearing her say the words?
Her eyes grew heavy. She wrapped her arms around the extra pillow and snuggled. Tomorrow she’d tell him if it was so important for him to hear the words in his own little ears. See the expression on her face. Know without faith. Tomorrow she’d make the argument go away. Right now she was going to sleep.
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