by Annie Jones
Pseudo relationship? Nonpermanent, nonrelationship? She didn’t even know how to think of them anymore. All she knew was that after she had left his home Friday night he had stayed on her mind and their situation weighed on her heart every minute.
He hadn’t even called.
“Sorry,” he said as he fiddled with his bulletin, adjusted his tie then took a quick look around them. Even though nobody seemed to be looking at them and not even the musical prelude had begun to tell the congregation to quiet down, he employed the classic shoulder to shoulder, whispering out of the side of his mouth as he spoke to her. “I missed you yesterday. Thought you’d come by after helping out with Billy J.”
“I guess that took longer than I anticipated.” All too true.
She had opted to go to help get Billy J at the hospital instead of pitching in with Fabbie on Saturday to give herself some time and perspective. Of course, the way that turned out, she was glad she went along, but even so, she had not counted on the simple errand being an all-day task.
Waiting for the doctor to show up to sign the order took until early afternoon. The prolonged and often comedic effort to get all the flowers and plants, sent by Santa Sofians and regulars from the Bait Shack, into Dodie’s car so that they and the human cargo could all survive the trip home without coming uprooted ate up another hour. Getting Billy J situated and comfy at Moxie’s place was no small accomplishment, either.
“If you’d have called and asked me, I’d have come over after we got him home. Though, it took all three of us to keep the old boy from throwing on a Hawaiian shirt, some khaki shorts and tennis shoes and heading down to the Bait Shack to make sure everything was all right.”
Vince laughed. “You should have called for backup.”
She gave him a sidelong glance, realizing he had a good point. She’d been so fixated on him not calling her that she hadn’t even considered calling him, even when they all could have benefited from it. He’d have done a much better job at keeping the boisterous old boy in line than three doting ladies who waffled between scolding and babying him. “I didn’t think of that.”
“And after that big speech we all gave Moxie at the clinic about dropping everything to come help when it’s needed?”
About family dropping everything and coming. She tried not to read more into his leaving that out. “You had your own hands full with Fabbie. We certainly wouldn’t want you to have dropped her.”
“Especially just for such a losing proposition as talking sense into Billy J Weatherby.” Moxie turned around from the pew in front of them.
“It’s not polite to eavesdrop,” Kate reminded her.
“Who’s eavesdropping? I’m family, remember? I’m just including myself in the conversation.” She smiled broadly.
“It’s not so much a conversation as an explanation,” Vince volunteered. “Kate was just letting me know why she left me high and dry taking care of Fabbie yesterday after she promised to—”
“Oh, no.” Kate twisted in the pew to face him. “You are not laying that at my doorstep.”
“Huh?” Moxie crooked her arm over the back to the pew so she could not only join the conversation but actually insinuate herself into it physically.
“What are you trying to say, Kate?” Vince asked quietly.
“I’m saying that I’ve said goodbye to Scat-Kat Katie. Goodbye to the girl who runs at the first hint of genuine commitment. That’s not me anymore. I thought I made that clear when I left Friday, Vince. I said I would come by to honor my promise to take care of Fabbie, if you needed me to. You didn’t call. I got the message. You don’t need me.”
“Kate, I never said—”
“Just don’t try to make my not helping you out yesterday about me. It was you, Vince. From this point forward whatever happens to our relationship is your call.” Kate pushed up from her seat and used a combination of lunging and lurching to get herself into the pew next to Moxie.
“It’s not me, Kate. If only it were just me and you, I’d be on one knee right now.”
Kate thought that should have excited, or at least comforted, her more. If only…
She jerked her shoulders taut. “This is neither the time nor the place for this, Vince.”
“Are you kidding? This is Wayside Chapel, Kate, not some fancy ‘everybody hush up and sit still’ kind of church,” Moxie whispered. “This is the kind of place where people come to be fed spiritually and physically. If you can’t speak honestly and openly here, then you two don’t stand a chance of ever working this out.”
Kate looked up at the large driftwood cross hanging above the simple candlelit altar. “Who says we stand a chance of working this out?”
“The man just said he would get down on his knee for you.” Moxie punched Kate lightly in the arm then jerked her head toward Vince.
He had, hadn’t he? The full impact of that hit her at last. Kate whipped her own head around to look directly at him.
“But it’s not just you and me, Kate. I can’t make any kind of plans much less proposals until Gentry makes up his mind whether to take that job in Miami or not.”
“See?” Kate glared at Moxie, too humiliated to even look in Vince’s direction. “You should stay out of other people’s business.”
“Sounds like Moxie isn’t the only one who feels cramped by having your family always so close at hand,” Vince mumbled.
“No kidding. Apparently Gentry does, too,” Moxie snapped.
Kate raised her hand to quiet her sister but Vince scooted to the edge of his pew and demanded, “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, let’s see. Gentry has only just begun managing his life without your intervention, financially or otherwise, for a couple of months now, right?”
Vince kept his lips pressed tightly together and gave a curt nod.
“And already he’s job hunting in another city?” Moxie made a motion with her hand which indicated he should draw his own conclusion from that.
“You think he’s doing that to run away from me?”
“No, sweetie.” Kate touched his arm. “He’s not running. Take it from an expert on that subject. He’s just…He’s trying…He needs…”
“He needs to create a little space to build a life for himself. You’re suffocating him and that messes with his relationship with Pera and Fabbie. He’d never want to hurt you, but he has to put his wife and child first.”
“I was getting to that part,” Kate told her sister. “I just wanted to word it a bit more diplomatically.”
“You can thank me for my bluntness later.” Moxie crinkled her nose.
“Is this true?” Vince asked.
“Yes, she’s quite blunt.” Kate gave Moxie a one-eyed squint.
“About Gentry,” Vince said softly.
“Vince.” She slid her hand down his arm and gripped his hand in hers. “You know the answer to that.”
He had to know it. If he didn’t know it, if he didn’t have just a deep-down inkling about it, then no one could ever convince him of it. “If you don’t already have the answer to that question then you can’t change. Even if you try to change, you’d always have that niggling feeling that you had been forced into a hasty decision.”
He lifted his head at that. “Is that how you felt?”
“I don’t—”
“When you took off and broke our engagement? Did you feel that I had pressured you based on my assumptions about what was best for us rather than letting you find your answers?”
“I suppose it was.”
“You were pretty wise for a kid just out of college, Kate.”
“Just out of college, yes, but a kid? I was never a kid, Vince. Not since the night…” Her gaze shifted to Moxie.
The younger sister put her hand on the older one’s. “I’m just now understanding that living with what our birth father did closed in around you and Jo and Dodie far more than finding an instant family is cramping my lifestyle.”
“Thank you for t
hat,” Kate said softly.
“Like I said, thank me later.” Moxie scooted over to nudge Kate over. “Right now, you have work to do.”
“Work?”
Moxie moved closer still.
Kate thought of pushing back against the younger sister. Or at least planting her cane solidly to hold her ground. But just then the music that told everyone to find a place and prepare themselves to worship the Lord started up. Kate put out her hand to protect her personal space as best she could. “Hey, get back over where you belong. You’re crowding me here.”
Kate gripped her cane and glowered at her younger sister.
“There is a man sitting one row back who said that if it were just you and him, he’d get down on one knee. And just about now he’s probably realizing it is just you and him, because his son is a grown man with a wife and child, who doesn’t need him tagging along when he goes out to make his way in life.” Moxie gestured toward Vince. “So why don’t you get back there where it will be just you and him?”
“Because he…I…” Kate glanced over her shoulder.
Vince tipped his head to encourage her to join him.
“I’ll move,” Kate said to Moxie then added to Vince, “But it’s not because I can’t commit.”
“That’s too bad because I was thinking about how much I’d like you to do just that.”
“Move?”
He smiled, stood to help her work her way around to sit beside him, leaned in and whispered, “Commit.”
Her knees almost buckled.
He held her up then helped her sit.
“Vince, are you…?”
He sat beside her. “This is the place where people speak the truth and work through their issues, Kate. I may not have all our issues worked out—”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” he concurred. “But the truth is that I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped loving you.”
“I feel the same way. I love you, Vince.”
The music came to an end and everyone stood. Vince got up from the pew first, then turned and held out his hand.
Kate put her fingers in his and reached for her cane, but before she could get it, Vince moved it aside.
“I need—”
Vince dropped to one knee in front of her.
She held her breath.
The music swelled but when the time came for everyone to begin singing not a single voice rose in song.
“Kate Cromwell…” Vince took her hand, not seeming to care that everyone in the place started gaping at them.
The music stopped.
Travis, who had come out to stand by the informal altar, held his hands up to tell everyone to stay as they were, in essence giving them license to gape and ogle all they wanted.
Vince gave a nod to Travis then to the congregation before turning back to Kate. He looked up at her, his eyes hopeful and a huge smile on his face. “Kate Cromwell…”
“You said that part already,” someone called from the group.
“Thanks.” He gave them a wave then fixed his eyes on her again. “Will you marry me?”
Suddenly Kate didn’t care about the stares, either.
“Oh, Vince!” She threw her arms around him.
“Is that a yes?” the same person wanted to know.
“Yes,” she murmured into his ear for him alone before she pulled away from him and shouted for all to hear, “Yes!”
A cheer went up.
The pianist played the opening chords of “The Wedding March.”
Travis held his hands up to get everyone’s attention. “Before we sing our opening hymn, let’s all join in a moment of prayer for the happy couple.”
The happy couple. At last.
They prayed together and when they raised their voices to sing, Kate looked up at Vince.
He slipped his arm around her waist and smiled at her.
She stole a peek at Moxie and mouthed a thank-you.
Moxie touched two fingers to her lips and blew her a kiss just the way an adoring kid sister would to her big sister.
Kate grinned and when her gaze fell on Travis she thought of Jo. Then she thought of Moxie and their mom wanting to find a way to reach out to the middle Cromwell sister and hopefully bring her home. Suddenly Kate wanted that, too, more than anything.
And she had an idea how to nudge that along.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The open house started in less than an hour.
Jo had planned to arrive much earlier but when she got up this morning she’d felt the tug to go to church. Her intellect kept nagging: too much to do, too little time. But her heart listened to another voice. That voice convinced her with the reminder that she could never hope to make a fresh start if she fell back into serving her old priorities.
So she made time to attend her former church and trusted the rest of her dealings, with debt, Mike Powers and the house, would wait.
After that, she had made a quick stop at a grocery store to pick up a tube of cookie dough. It was an old Realtor trick and one she normally didn’t employ, but with the house devoid of anything but the basic furnishings that she could beg or borrow on short notice, she really needed something to give the place a homey touch.
Of course in doing all this she had forgotten about Atlanta traffic, which wasn’t too awfully bad on a Sunday, and hadn’t accounted for the distance. She’d spent the past two months living in a small town that only took a matter of minutes to move through and had lost her edge for driving in a real city.
Jo pulled to a stop by the large sign at the entrance to the subdivision. She’d just get the signage up to advertise the open house then get down to the property to bake the cookies and see to any last-minute…
“Balloons?” Jo pulled up short just inches shy of tripping over the familiar Mike Powers Realty open house sign. The sign that had not been there when she finally dragged herself away from working on the house at 2:00 a.m. this morning. She had neither placed it there nor authorized anyone else to put it in the common area to lead people to the house she so needed to sell.
“This can’t be right.” She stood back to check the street address again. It was her house all right. “What’s going on here?”
She didn’t know, but the suspicions it aroused in her made her stomach hurt.
She hurried back to her car and wound her way back through the upscale new subdivision to the house where she had spent almost every waking hour since returning to Atlanta. She parked in front and took a cautious look around before getting out from behind the wheel.
No cars in the drive. No sign of anyone on the premises. Nothing amiss at all, except…
Jo squinted at the door. She was sure she had locked up using the standard key box that Powers Realty kept on all its houses. Someone must have come by, posted the sign, gone in the house and left it unlocked.
“Not good.” She took out her phone. Maybe Mike could clear things up. Though, if Mike knew anything, surely he’d have let her know. “Not good at all.”
She glanced at her phone and hoped she’d find an explanation waiting for her in her messages.
She pushed the button and all thoughts of explanations fell away.
“Travis,” she whispered. One. Two. Three. Four. Five missed calls but only one voice mail.
“Hey, Jo. Just wanted to call and tell you…I miss you. I mean, I…I really miss you.”
She bit her lower lip but she could not rein in a broad, spontaneous smile.
“Anyway, there’s more than just that but it’s not ‘leave a message and get back to me’ kind of stuff. I’ll try to call again. I can’t wait to talk to you.”
She brushed her fingertip down the face of her phone. “I can’t wait to talk to you, either.”
Which made it all the more imperative that she get this house sold and get back to her real life. She put her hand on the driver’s-side door handle and paused long enough to check her phone for any other messages. Not a one.
She
got out of the car, fished her supplies out of the backseat and marched up to the door. She had a spare key but for her own satisfaction she had to try to turn the handle. It would be locked. She knew it.
The handle turned without a hint of resistance.
Jo gasped.
The heavy door swung open.
She held her phone up, trying to think who to call for help, or if she should call for help.
A shaft of sunlight hit the gleaming tile floor and created an almost-blinding glare into which stepped…
“Oh!”
“What are you doing opening the door at my open house?”
“I thought you were Brittney,” the young girl explained.
“I thought you were Brittney.” Jo didn’t know which Brittney but she felt certain it was one of Mike’s eager young protégés.
“I am,” the girl explained. “I thought you were the other Brittney.”
“Why in the world would you think that?” Jo asked.
“Because I’m here.” Duh. She didn’t say that, or whatever young women her age said now to make it clear they are less than impressed with someone, but her expression got the point across.
Jo folded her arms. She’d gone through too much, paid far too many dues in this business to find herself cowed by a younger, less polite version of herself circa ten years ago. She stepped over the threshold. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
“Mike set it up for us. He said we could use the practice.” Brittney gave the door a push and it closed with a bang. “We’ve done all the prep work and Brittney will be here any minute with our handouts on this place.”
“First, you did not do all the prep work on this house. I have been here nonstop since I got here.” Jo winced. Even Brittney had to know what she’d meant by that.
“Oh, yeah? Well…” Jo imagined hearing the little marble that rolled along the tracks of the kid’s train of thought sliding from one side of her brain to the other. “Yeah, well, so have I,” Brittney insisted.
If Jo had had a free hand she’d have rubbed her forehead. Not that the action would ease the slow throbbing beginning to build behind her eyes but it might send a signal to the girl that she had reached the end of her patience. The stress of all this had definitely begun to get to her.
