He sat there a while, not expecting an answer, exactly. Maybe a sign or a flash of insight or something like that. But the only thing that came was the sound of a pickup truck and the brief gleam of its bouncing headlights as it came to a stop near where he’d left his own. A door slammed, and then he heard footsteps in the tall, dead winter grasses and weeds, and knew someone was coming toward him.
And he also knew before she got all the way there, who it was. Vidalia. He smelled her signature scent–the same one she’d worn all those years before. It used to drive him crazy, make him want to bury his head near her neck and rub himself in it.
She didn’t say a word, just came right on out and plunked herself down on the log next to him. “Beautiful night for star gazing,” she said.
“Sure is,” he agreed, and as he looked up at the stars, he sent God a smile. Message received. Thanks.
“Cold though,” she went on.
“Downright brisk.”
“I met your son, Jason, tonight,” she said.
He looked at her then, figuring he’d pretended the stars held more interest for long enough. And then he just drank in the sight of her. She wore a suede jacket that ended at the waist just above her jeans. And those boots of hers with heels most women her age wouldn’t even try to run around in. Her hair was long and wild and dancing with the chilly breeze that the falls seemed to generate all on their own.
“He seems like a good man. You raised him well.”
“His mother did,” Bobby Joe admitted. “I was too busy with work to take much credit for the man he turned out to be.”
“Well, it’s never too late to start. Seems like you know that, already. Is that why you summoned them all out here for the grand opening?”
“He told you about that, did he?” She nodded. “He tell you anything else?”
She smiled a little, lowered her eyes. “That you talked about me. Said I was pretty.”
“Nothing but the truth,” he said.
“He seemed...I don’t know. Sad. Troubled.”
Bobby looked away from her probing eyes. “I hope that changes when I give him his Christmas present.”
“Oh? You have a great one in mind?”
He nodded. “Best one ever. The Long Branch. I’m signing it over to him and his brothers before we open.”
She lifted her brows in surprise. “But Bobby Joe, I thought you were planning to run it yourself.” Then she looked at her hands in her lap. “Does that mean you’re...not planning to stay here in Big Falls?”
“You say that as if you care. Do you, Vidalia?”
She didn’t look up and she didn’t answer. So he caught her chin with his forefinger and tipped her head up, and he was surprised to see tears sparkling on her thick lashes.
And what happened next, well, he didn’t have much control over that at all. Because if he had, it wouldn’t have happened. He looked at her for about a second longer, and then he kissed her.
Her arms crept round his neck, and his slid around her waist, and she kissed him right back, and that made him want to kiss her even more, which resulted in her kissing him back even more. They sat there on that fallen log, all wrapped up in each other, making out like a couple of horny teenagers. And when he lifted his head and stared into her beautiful dark eyes, there was snow falling on her hair. Tiny white flakes of it drifted down all around them. It wouldn’t stick. And come morning, no one would even know it had ever happened.
It was like a gift, just for the two of them.
She smiled up at him. “I’ve been praying for snow,” she said softly.
“Are your prayers always answered, Vidalia?” he asked. He wondered if, in her experience, God answered her prayers as quickly as He had just answered Bobby’s own. He’d asked what he should be doing with the time he had left, and God had sent him Vidalia. He’d as much as told him to go ahead and spend his final days with her, just the way he wanted to.
Made him wish he’d talked to the Big Guy more often. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy or for the answer to be that immediate, that clear. Unless it was just his imagination, and coincidence, and wishful thinking.
She was nodding hard. “Always, Bobby Joe. Every single time I pray, I get an answer. Every once in a while, though, the answer is no.”
He nodded at her. “So you’re still a believer?”
“Look around us,” she said turning her head and looking at the stars, the waterfall crashing down, and the gentle fall of snowflakes in the dark. “How can I not be?”
His heart knotted up and told him right then that he was as much in love with this woman as he had ever been. And he knew it wasn’t fair not to tell her the truth, not when it seemed like she might be feeling fondly toward him as well.
But not yet, not tonight. Tonight was too special, too magical to ruin with talk about death and dying.
He slid his arm around her shoulders, held her near to his side, and continued looking at the sky and noticing how you could hardly tell the stars from the snowflakes, way up high. “I need to get a Christmas tree for the Long Branch,” he said.
“Well, I need to get one for the Corral,” she told him. “What do you say we do it together?”
“I say, you bet. How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s great. Perfect, in fact. It’s Sunday, so it’ll have to be in the afternoon. I go to church in the morning.” She took a deep breath, lowered her eyes. “You could come with me, if you want.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “I um...God and I are working through some issues right now, Vidalia. We’re communicating, Him and I. But I’m not quite ready to visit Him at home just yet.
She frowned and studied his face through the snowflakes, but he didn’t elaborate.
Chapter Five
* * *
Vidalia was like a kid on Christmas Eve for the rest of that night. She didn’t drive home, she floated on a cloud of romantic pink fluff she hadn’t felt since....
Well, heck, since Bobby Joe had left town so long ago.
She felt as giddy as a seventeen-year-old in love for the first time. And maybe that was unseemly and maybe it was silly, but it was. That’s all. It just was.
She got herself home and took a long hot shower and didn’t sleep a wink all night. Just laid there, imagining how it would be if she and Bobby could start over. Imagining how it would be if he stuck around Big Falls, and what people would think about that. And yet all that time, there was a dark shadow lurking in the back of her mind, casting a pall over her excited, romantic thoughts. The secret she’d kept from him. The one that was standing smack in between the two of them. But she pushed that shadow out of her mind and kept it at bay, just like she’d done for the past twenty-plus years.
She was up before dawn, bustling around the kitchen to get Sunday dinner underway. It was a family tradition. Even on Sundays when the girls and their families didn’t come to church, they always came to Sunday dinner. And while she didn’t want to get ahead of herself here, she was thinking of inviting Bobby Joe and his sons too, if they felt like coming along.
She was halfway through chopping onions to go into her famous pot roast, when the shadow of her guilt escaped from where she’d buried it, jumped up and hit her square in the chest, knocking the breath right out of her. Here she was, acting like she was about to embark on a new romance. But it wasn’t new at all, was it? It was an old attraction that had led to the biggest sin she’d ever committed, which she had then compounded by adding the biggest lie she’d ever told.
She had no business feeling giddy or romantic or excited at all. And if anything was going to develop between her and Bobby Joe McIntyre, she had to take care of all of that old baggage first.
Because chances were, once he knew the truth, he’d never forgive her.
She should’ve told him long ago. It was the only stain on her soul, and it was a big one.
“Mom?” Selene had come in all but silently. “Are you crying?”
�
��Now what on earth would I have to cry about, darlin’? It’s the onions, that’s all.” She used the blade of her knife to scrape them from the cutting board into the roasting pan, popped on the lid, and slid it into the oven to cook slowly. Then she went to the sink and washed her hands.
“You sure?” Selene asked.
“Sure I’m sure.” Vidalia turned around to face her youngest daughter, and found herself lost in Selene’s mysterious, pale blue eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re coming to church with me this morning,” she asked to change the subject.
“Nope, not today. I celebrated the winter solstice last night, a couple of nights early, with some friends. It was more spiritual to me outside under the stars than church will ever be. It snowed, you know.”
“I know! I saw it too. And I have to say, daughter, I agree with you there. It was truly magical, wasn’t it?”
Selene frowned at her. “Now what were you doing up at three a.m., Mom?”
Vidalia shrugged and smiled mysteriously. “If you’re not going to church, what are you doing here so early?”
“We thought we’d start putting up the Christmas lights on the house for you. You’re late getting them out this year, and I can’t stand looking at this place unlit this close to the holiday.”
“We?” Vidalia asked.
Selene nodded. “Cory’s outside unloading the ladder and tools.”
“You’re a good girl, Selene. To tell you the truth, I was hoping one of you would offer.”
“You should’ve just asked.”
She shrugged. “So, as long as you’re here, will you keep an eye on my pot roast?”
“Sure thing, as long as you can tell me precisely what time to turn it off.”
“I set a timer.”
Selene smiled. “Go on to church. We’ll have your halls decked in no time.”
“Thank you, sweetie. And happy Winter Solstice.”
Selene nodded. “Thank you.”
“What’s important to my girls is important to me.” Vidalia took off her apron and headed out, sad that none of the snow from the night before had stuck. She’d forgot it was the twentieth already. Only two more nights until The Long Branch’s grand opening. And only four more until Christmas Eve.
Where had the time gone?
The Reverend Jackson’s sermon was about redemption. The son of God paying the price of our sins so we would never have to suffer death. It was a rouser, and one he repeated every year at Christmas and Easter, with minor tweaks.
Vidalia hung back afterward, chatting with her neighbors and friends, and wishing them happy holidays, until the last of them had left, and she stood there in the open, welcoming doors of the little country church all alone with the minister.
“I can see something’s on your mind. You were preoccupied throughout my entire sermon,” he said when the building was empty.
“Nonsense, I heard every single word.”
He lifted his bushy, gray eyebrows as if he didn’t quite believe that, but graciously didn’t say so out loud. “Shall we go back inside for this, Vidalia?”
“I think we probably should, Reverend Jackson.”
She went fist. He closed the red double doors and followed her down the aisle, around the pulpit, and through a small door into his little office in the back. Once there, he waved her into a chair while he poured coffee from a fairly fresh pot and handed her a cup. “It’s decaf. At our age–”
“Speak for yourself,” she said.
He sent her a wink. But his smile died as he settled into his chair behind the desk. “I can see you’ve got something on your mind, Vidalia.”
She sighed. “I’ve committed a terrible sin, Reverend Jackson. And I just can’t seem to figure out how to make it right, or if I even can.
“You?” he frowned. “Tongues have been wagging around town. About you and this McIntyre fellow. Bobby Joe. Does this have to do with him?”
She nodded. “Has to do with him, and me, and John...and maybe Selene. It’s a guilty secret I’ve been keeping for more than two decades. I need you to tell me what to do.”
He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “We’re not Catholics. You don’t have to confess your sins to me.”
“I know that. And if there was a way to figure this out without telling you, believe me, I’d rather. But I need guidance right now.”
“Guidance.” Reverend Jackson lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “I’ve learned more from you, Vidalia Brand, than you probably ever have or ever will from me. How to be a better parent to my daughter tops the list. So I’m
gonna give you a suggestion. And then if you feel you still need my guidance, I’m here to listen. All right?”
“All right.”
“Whatever this is, whatever sin you committed, and whatever action you need to take to make it right, I want you to imagine one of your girls coming to you and pouring out everything that you were about to pour out to me. Every detail. Pretend it all happened to Maya or Edie or Kara. And then I want you to think about what you would tell them to do about it. How you would tell them to make it right.”
She frowned at him. “It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s exactly the same thing. They’re the age you were when all this happened, aren’t they?”
“Well, yes, but–”
“And you’ve raised them with the same moral code you believe in, haven’t you?”
“Well of course I have but–”
“Write it all down, in the form of a letter to your younger self, or do it all inside your head, and talk to that younger Vidalia as if she were one of your own daughters. And then, Vidalia, no matter how hard, you take your own advice.”
She sat there blinking slowly, and realizing that she knew exactly what she would tell one of her daughters about something like this. Tell the truth. Apologize profusely, beg forgiveness, offer atonement if necessary but first, buck up and tell the truth.
She drew a deep breath, got up from her seat and nodded. “You’re one hell of a preacher, Reverend Jackson. I ever tell you that?”
“A time or two.” He got up as well, reached out and took her hand, holding it between both of his own. “You remember one thing, Vidalia. God would never judge you as harshly as you are judging yourself right now. And there is nothing He wouldn’t forgive.”
She knew that. She knew all of that. Why had she been half-expecting divine retribution to come crashing down on her instead of loving forgiveness? She knew better, didn’t she?
She just had to come clean. And not just to Bobby Joe. But to her daughters. Oh Lord, why couldn’t doing the right thing ever be easy?
By noon, Bobby’s sons had all arrived, and he’d given them the grand tour of the Long Branch, and pitched his invitation to help him with the grand opening, and then stick around for the holidays.
Joey was eager right off the bat, always up for a good time. Rob was less than enthusiastic, until Jason chimed in with an unrestrained yes and a meaningful look at the other two.
Hell, if they didn’t already suspect something was up, they would now, Bobby Joe thought. But he wasn’t going to let that put a damper on his day. He had every intention of enjoying his time with Vidalia this afternoon. So he left his sons with a list of jobs that needed doing around the place. Now that the crews of workers had packed up and gone home, there was no one to do it but him, and he tired a lot easier than he used to. Which was one of the symptoms that was supposed to warn him when things were...winding down. But he wasn’t going to think about that right then.
He met Vidalia at the Christmas Tree farm five miles from Big Falls and drank in the sight of her in her snug jeans and suede jacket. She didn’t wear a hat. It was chilly today, and he thought she should have but didn’t say so. He’d brought along a hand saw, and the two of them hiked out into acres of pine trees with a map showing the layout of the place. Balsam firs this way, blue spruce that way, and so on.
“I’m dying for the perfect Douglas Fir,” she said. “Eleven feet tall. You?”
The Douglas Fir section was a long ways back. He hoped he’d have the wherewithal to drag the tree back to the road for her. “I’m opting for a blue spruce,” he said, choosing the kind of tree closest to the road. “But we’ll get yours first.”
“Deal.”
She smiled, and he just basked in her for a second. The sun was beaming down on her hair, the chilly breeze lifting it and playing with its curls, and her eyes were like a chocolate bar in the sun. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and it made her even more beautiful to him.
“What?” she asked after a moment.
He shook his head. “You’re just pretty enough to take a man’s breath away, is all.”
Her smile seemed to falter. She lowered her eyes.
Sweet Vidalia Brand Page 6
