LOVE in a Small Town (Ladies of Legend Boxed Set)

by Janet Eaves

  “Yeah. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it. The place was a rental before I bought it. Some of the renters were pretty rough on it. I had to repair holes in the plaster. That kind of thing. And I put in the fireplace. Greg helped with that since I’d never done one before. Can’t use it yet, til the new chimney’s finished. Still working on that. The house is old—built in the late 50s—but solid.”

  “Well. It’s really nice. So, um, you’re building a stone chimney?” She remembered the piles outside.

  “Chimney first, then the rest of the house gets a stone façade. Should look pretty good when it’s done, probably late summer.”

  “I bet it’ll look like—” It will look like a storybook cottage. Like I always told you I wanted. A little stone house with a fireplace. Just for us.

  “Right. You don’t need to say it, Betsy. You know what it is. Probably think it’s lame.”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “I’ll most likely sell when I’m finished with it. What do I want with a storybook cottage?”

  “Well, for LizBeth Ann…”

  “To be honest, I didn’t plan it for LizBeth Ann. Sure, she likes it, but she’s just a happy kid. She’d like wherever I was. Just like she is with you. Wherever you take her, she’s happy there, right?”

  “Mmm. So, um, where is she?”

  “Hiding from you, of course. She doesn’t want to go with you.”

  That hurt.

  “Don’t look so stricken. She didn’t want to come with me when I picked her up from Mom’s.”

  “Well, I’ve never had that happen to me. She’s always been with me. There was never a question.”

  “Don’t let it get you. I have enough cousins to see it all the time.” He jerked his head toward the archway to the side. “I’ll go get her.”

  “Sure. If you don’t mind. She needs to get to bed.”

  A few minutes later he carried LizBeth Ann back into the living room, clinging to his neck. It took a while to talk to her and settle her down, let her say her goodbyes and strap her into the car seat. Exhausting.

  That night, lying in bed looking up at the skylight, Betsy thought about the little house. No wonder Marie hadn’t tried to dissuade her from going there. No wonder she’d given such explicit directions—twice. Marie had known that Mike worked on the house with Betsy in mind. She wondered, though, if he’d done it intentionally, thinking maybe she’d come back to Legend and he could win her back. Or had it been subconscious, creating the little house she’d always told him she wanted. Either way, it was touching.

  She looked over at the day bed where LizBeth Ann slept. Here they were, in a lovely apartment they could rent for a good price as long as they wanted. And on the other side of town a lonely man lived in a darling little cottage he’d created for a wife who didn’t want him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Life settled into a new pattern. Betsy drew a color-coded calendar and at supper each night she and LizBeth Ann talked about it. Yellow days were spent at Marie and Bill’s, Pink days at Aunt Dorothy’s, and Green days, Theresa’s. Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons/Sunday mornings were Blue, because those were Mike’s times. The calendar seemed to help, or perhaps it was the repetition. LizBeth Ann dropped her mantra of “I don’t wanna go to…”

  Betsy learned to use her time wisely when LizBeth Ann was with Mike. Sometimes she hung around at The Emporium or at Midnight’s house, visiting with her good friend. Most of the time, though, she read her books for the two real estate courses she’d signed up for. She stayed up late some nights doing that, too, but didn’t mind. Here was an opportunity she’d never given much thought to. She could actually better herself. An education beyond high school had never seemed a possibility, yet she was in the midst of it now, and loving it. School had always come pretty easily to her, and although she had an occasional question for Martin, most of what she was learning now came easily, too. Of course she’d had a couple years’ experience helping Martin, so she had some background.

  Mike seemed to be okay with the status quo. He’d quickly agreed to the visitation schedule, and fixed up the second bedroom in his house in pink and purple, with plenty of advice and encouragement from LizBeth Ann. She told Betsy that she’d not only chosen the color scheme, but also picked the furniture when he took her to a few second-hand stores. A new mattress set for the now-pink wrought iron twin bed, and an upholstery job—pink and purple daisies—done by his cousin Chloe, the artsy one, on the overstuffed chair LizBeth Ann chose. This chair was where Mike sat when he read to her on Saturday nights. Betsy saw the room after it was finished, and was enchanted by it.

  Life was good.

  Which is why Betsy was so frustrated. She didn’t lack for anything. Yet she woke up many nights feeling sad, and sometimes lay there for an hour or more before falling back into a fitful sleep. She dreamed of Mike—of good times they’d had early in their relationship, rough times before she’d left Legend, and the mixture since she’d returned. It wasn’t the late night studying that was wearing on her. It was the almost nightly emotional trauma. She needed to get him out of her system once and for all.

  Which meant the divorce needed to be finalized. She arranged for LizBeth Ann to stay with Chloe one Saturday morning. Chloe would then take her to Mike’s house at noon—their usual exchange time. Betsy drove her daughter to Chloe’s little cabin outside Legend and got her settled. Setting out again, she chuckled to herself at Chloe’s morning plans of teaching her young cousin the rudiments of painting. Ah, the blissful ignorance of a childless woman! She knew both of them would have fun, though, and would grow closer in the process.

  Betsy’s task for the day was considerably more grim. She was going to Knoxville to clean out the storage unit she’d rented when she’d come north from Atlanta. At that time she hadn’t known whether she’d give Knoxville a try. Now she’d decided that was definitely out. She’d also decided most of the stuff in the storage unit wasn’t going to Legend. She knew exactly which of the unit’s contents was important to her, and all of it would fit into the Bug if she packed carefully. The rest she would sell at a consignment place she used to frequent. Some of the furniture, in fact, had been bought there.

  She’d called ahead to arrange for the owner to meet her at the storage place. It was something he did on occasion, he said, and was no problem at all. Of course there was a fee for it, but Betsy decided it was reasonable. She had no inclination to haul a bunch of rickety furniture home with her. Midnight’s apartment was beautifully, if sparsely, furnished. All she needed were the pictures and mementoes, her books, winter clothes and coats, and her wedding china. The rest would be gone, and good riddance to it.

  Of course the main item was the packet of divorce papers. That was her real reason for today’s trip. It was in with her other paperwork—tax information and such. She knew exactly which box it was in, and what the envelope looked like. She’d taken it out and looked at it enough times to memorize everything about the agreement. She would need to revise part of it, now that her address had changed, and now that Mike had taken care of the insurance, and was exercising visitation. Yes, a lot of things had changed since she filled out those papers on her lunch hour at her first job in Atlanta. She’d been hurt and angry, and had brushed away tears while using the old typewriter in a back office. She made a copy to keep and sent one to Mike, to be sure he didn’t change anything or use the excuse that he’d lost them so she had to start over again. She hadn’t taken any chances with the papers, and had sent them to him by certified mail, even though she hated the extra expense. There was no reply beyond the return receipt showing he had signed for them.

  After a few weeks she typed a letter threatening to get a lawyer and make him go to the county court for a hearing if he didn’t just sign the papers and get it over with. He hadn’t replied to the letter either, and when she called around to attorneys’ offices she decided she couldn’t afford the lawyer’s time to talk to her, let alone
his travel and court time for a hearing. She’d been desperate enough then, she looked up the circuit court office in Knoxville where David McClain was judge. He was such a good guy. Surely he’d give her some free advice so she could be sure she was doing the right thing. Lots of people at work were ready to give her free advice. But some of them had come out of their divorces more damaged than she was now, and it didn’t seem wise to take advice from someone like that.

  So she thought of David, looked up the number to his office, even got the court reporter on the phone. But she lost her nerve. It wouldn’t be fair to ask David for advice. He was Mike’s cousin—Joe’s brother. Charles and Dorothy’s son. No, she couldn’t do that. So she’d apologized to the court reporter saying it was a wrong number, hung up the phone, and put the divorce papers in an envelope where they’d been all this time.

  “You sure you’re gonna get all that stuff in that little bitty car, honey?” The consignment guy loaded up the last of the furniture into his trailer and spit some tobacco toward the next storage unit.

  “Yes. It will all fit fine, thanks.”

  “Well… All righty then.” He wrote the date on the receipt he’d been creating on his clipboard, then initialed at the bottom. “You just sign right here and we’ll call this thing done for now.”

  She reviewed the list and signed, was given the second sheet as her receipt.

  “You-all keep in touch. I wouldn’t expect a lot of money out of this stuff, though.”

  “Well. You do the best you can.”

  “Sure thing.” He put his pen into his shirt pocket, tipped his ball cap to her, and spit another stream of tobacco. “You take care now, hear?”

  When he backed out of the space and then drove off, she resumed her packing. As she’d thought, it all fit, but just barely. And as she’d known, the packet of papers was there, just waiting. She got the storage manager to verify that she was ending the rental, turned in her key, and headed home.

  ****

  Monday morning she’d just finished turning on the office equipment and was in the back getting water for the coffee when the bell over the door jingled. Assuming it was Martin, she didn’t hurry but returned to the front office ready for whatever grief he would start their day off with.

  “Mike.”

  “Yeah. Martin here?”

  “No. Not yet. Do you need him?”

  “I need you. I need to talk to you. Doesn’t ever seem to be a time when we can talk without LizBeth Ann around to overhear. And she gets upset when we fight.”

  Betsy was careful to pour the water into the coffeemaker without spilling. Were they going to fight? It seemed everything was going so well.

  “Who were you with Saturday?”

  “What?” She walked to her desk chair and calmly sat. This would be fine. He was just being difficult for some reason.

  “Who were you with? You left LizBeth Ann with Chloe. Which I didn’t know ‘til Chloe showed up with her at my house. She wouldn’t say, and obviously I couldn’t push it. Now she won’t even talk to me. Told me to ask you.”

  “That’s reasonable. Chloe shouldn’t be put into the middle of it—”

  “Which you did when you left our daughter at her house. And I didn’t even know where she was!”

  “For goodness’ sake, Mike, she’s your cousin. Don’t you trust Chloe? I certainly do. I mean, she’s an artist and maybe a little flaky, but—”

  “That’s not the point and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it. I have no clue what your point is, Mike. You might just tell me instead of shouting ridiculous things about Chloe.”

  Mike came the rest of the way into the room, stood with his legs touching her desk and rested the palms of his hands on it. His handsome, angry face was just inches away.

  “Let me make this real plain for you then. Number one, I deserve to know where my daughter is, and who she’s with. You always know where she is when I’ve got her. Right?”

  Betsy had to nod. Of course that was true, but she was LizBeth Ann’s mother…

  “And less important, but still my business, is where my wife is. And who she’s with.” He stood and glared down at her. “So. Saturday?”

  “Midnight said something similar to me the other day.”

  “Midnight?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “She said I needed to talk to you more.”

  “Huh. Well, good for her. This time you need to listen to what she says.”

  “Part of it, maybe. But my opinion is that you have no right to know anything about me, Michael McClain. You gave that up a couple of years ago. You gave it up when you let me be mother and father to a tiny baby because you were too worthless to help out. You gave it up…when you let me leave.”

  “Let you leave? I don’t remember you asking my opinion. One morning I left the house like usual, and when I got back you and the baby were gone.”

  “Because you didn’t care about us.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course I cared!”

  “You had a strange way of showing it. Never helping out with the baby, not holding down a regular job. I had to do it all.”

  “Betsy, you’re only remembering part of it. You took care of LizBeth Ann—”

  “I even brought her to work with me.”

  “Your choice. Martin felt sorry for you and let you do it. Hell, she slept most of the time, so it may not have mattered much, but my mom would have watched her. The people who take care of her now would have gladly done it then, too.”

  “Except you.”

  “Not fair.”

  “Why not? You were her dad then too. Or at least you were her father. You sure didn’t act like a dad.”

  “God, Betsy. I did what I could.” He brushed his hand through his hair. “I did what I could.”

  “Right.”

  “I cooked as much as I knew how. Remember that? I got pretty good with scrambled eggs. And when you needed stuff at the store, I did that. When you had a grocery list stuck up on the fridge, I’d take it if I was home and go do the shopping.”

  True. She’d forgotten that.

  “You should have let me run to the Piggly Wiggly that time—you know—that time you were in a hurry, and you were mad at me for whatever reason. You told me you’d go to the store and be back in twenty minutes. You left me with her, Betsy, and you never had before. I was scared to death. All of a sudden she started to stink and cry about it, and I had to change her diaper. I’d never done that before. You never trusted me to do it, never showed me how.”

  “Had you ever asked? Offered to do it for me?”

  “Probably not. But there I was, with a crying baby in my arms who smelled horrible, and a wife who was mad at me for like the ten millionth time since she told me she was pregnant. Betsy, you were always mad at me. It was like the day you announced, I have news was the day our marriage ended. After that it was all about the baby. And it was never about us, ever again. Do you remember that?”

  “Well…”

  “You know what? I didn’t want a baby right then. We were still kids ourselves, and we should have had some time to get used to being married, but instead, all of a sudden we’re parents and everything falls apart. You never loved me after that.”

  “Mike! That isn’t true! Of course I loved you.”

  “Oh? Did you ever say one kind word to me during that time? I sure don’t remember it. It was always complaints. About my job, or losing my job, how I hung out with my family too much or didn’t comb my hair enough. Every. Little. Thing. I. Did. Was wrong. I got real tired of that, and when I was there with the baby by myself, changing that diaper, I was thinking, LizBeth Ann, you have ruined my life. Why did you have to be born?”

  He wheeled around, and pounded his fist on the wall. “God! I actually thought that, Betsy! It was just for a second, but I thought it! I cleaned her up and got the diaper changed, and when you got home she was still crying—I guess she was upset because I was upset—and I just handed her to
you and walked out.”

  “I was so hurt by that. I didn’t know what was wrong. Why didn’t you talk to me?”

  “You wouldn’t have listened. You had too much of everything and everybody else on your mind. I got in my old pickup and drove up into the mountains, spent the night layin’ in the truck bed looking at the stars and hating myself for what I’d thought about that baby. And hating myself for being in a marriage that was such a failure. I never blamed you. Did you know that? Only me.”

  So had she, always. Now as she listened to him pouring his heart out, she realized how much of their messed-up marriage had been her fault. She had been overprotective of LizBeth Ann. She had discounted Mike’s helping around the house, which now she looked back had not only been trips to the grocery, but also an attempt to keep the little house clean. Even then he’d been good at repairing things, so they never had to wait on someone to come to the house to do odd jobs…

  “Mike. Maybe we should both cool down a little. Maybe we should make a time and sit down and talk some more about this.” She sighed, suddenly exhausted. “And what I was doing Saturday—we can talk about that too. We need to discuss it. I just wasn’t sure when we could. Like you said, it’s hard to find a time…”

  “Exactly like it used to be. You still can’t find time for me.” He left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  It wasn’t her fault she was busy. She had work, and studying, and her daughter—their daughter. Well, she’d call Midnight and see if LizBeth Ann could spend part of an evening with her and Martin. Midnight had offered, after all. It was time to get this divorce over with and move on.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The plan evolved quickly. Midnight would pick up LizBeth Ann at Marie’s house after closing The Emporium. Everyone in the McClain family, it seemed, was getting good at moving the car seat from the Bug to their own vehicle, and back again.