by Luanne Jones
“You’re all going to make me cry.” Since Rita expected to drive later that night, then turn around and come back at the crack of dawn, she had had only a few sips to drink. Still, her head was light and she felt warm in ways that had nothing to do with alcohol. She adjusted the tiara on her head and tipped her chin up. “Thank you again for this fitting end to an…interesting summer.”
“To all the summers yet to come, may they be as…memorable.” Miss Peggy lifted her champagne flute.
Rita’s pulse quickened. She didn’t think she could survive a summer more memorable than this. Of course, she was game to try. That much had changed about her.
“To summers.” Cozie’s glass joined Miss Peggy’s in the circle. “And to new endeavors—for all of us.”
“To new endeavors,” they echoed.
And Rita’s stomach knotted tighter.
“To caring friends,” Jillie stepped up.
A car’s headlights swerved across the front of the Palace, and tires crunched on the gravel drive.
“Who’d be driving up at this time of night?” Cozie started to move out of their circle, but Jillie caught her arm and pulled her back.
“To caring friends,” she started again.
Rita drew in her breath and held it.
“And careless hearts.”
The car door slammed.
Rita curled her fingers around the narrow flute and put it to her chest. “No! You didn’t…”
“And the wild winds that rearrange the best-laid plans.” Jillie clinked the rim of her glass to Rita’s. “I think you’ve got company, girl, and nowhere left to run for cover.”
Chapter 20
EVERY DIXIE BELLE WHO LOVES HER MAN LEARNS AT LAST:
He apologized, explained himself, and said he loved you.
Only a damned fool would ask for anything more.
“I can’t believe you drove over here at this time of night expecting…well, heaven only knows what you were expecting.” Rita’s voice carried down the stairwell as he walked behind her.
He considered telling her to save it until they got all the way upstairs and could shut the door but he doubted she would take the advice kindly. He also held no illusion that the threesome who had met him in the dark parking lot, then rushed him upstairs after a retreating Rita, would let a little thing like doors keep them from listening in for whatever morsel they could hear.
“I can’t believe you’re here now, tonight. The timing is just so…” She made one of those female sounds of utter aggravation, a mix of a groan, a moan, and a sigh pressed through clenched teeth. “I just can’t believe it.”
“And I can’t believe…”
At the top of the stairs she turned and flipped on the light in the kitchen.
He stopped a scant three treads down from her and just took in the sight. He had not seen her in six weeks, had not spoken to her. And here she was.
She took his breath way.
“And I can’t believe,” he said as he moved up another step and reached out, “that you are wearing this thing again.”
“Oh, I forgot about that.” Her hand went to the sparkling crown to remove it.
He stopped her. “Don’t. It becomes you.”
“An old beauty-pageant crown? I don’t think so.”
“I was thinking more of a princess or—”
“A goddess?” She narrowed one eye, daring him to cross the line with her.
He took the next step up so there were only inches between them.
“Thought we determined that goddesses did their outdoor frolicking buck nekkid.”
The line of her mouth was grim, but there was a wavering deep in her lovely eyes. “When you look at me like that I feel naked.”
He wanted to touch her hair, her cheek, to take her hand. He grabbed the banister instead. “Rita, I…”
“Did you want to come in to talk or what?”
He wanted to “or what.” He wanted to “or what” with her until the whole town buzzed with gossip about their staying locked in Rita’s apartment for days on end. He wanted to “or what” with her until neither of them could move another muscle and both of them understood that they truly belonged together.
“Well?” She tipped her head.
“I’d like for us to talk.”
She moved aside and motioned him to come in.
The place looked wrong.
She flipped on the lone light over the kitchen table.
It illuminated the familiar shabby rug, walls, and furnishings. Everything as he remembered it. But somehow it all seemed so impersonal now. Empty.
He glanced at the old refrigerator and realized the photos and colorful magnets were gone. “Where are your things? What’s going on?”
“Me.” She pulled a wooden chair out and sat down. “I’m going on.”
“Moving?”
She nodded.
“You can afford to do that after paying for the renovations? Wouldn’t it be wise to wait until the Palace started bringing in a real steady income to make that kind of move?”
She sat up straight. “You disapprove of my finally getting up the courage to change a few things?”
“Not disapproving.” He took the seat to the left of hers at the table. “I’m worried about you.”
“Is that why you came back to Hellon tonight? Worry over me?”
“Actually I told myself I was coming because I missed my family. And because I had just realized that while I am still every bit the donkey head you once spotted me for, I am no longer a self-involved bastard.”
Her face paled. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know if I do either, except to say that when I told Jillie I wanted to come to Hellon tonight it was because I genuinely wanted to see my family, to come home.”
“Home? You think of Hellon as home?”
“I thought that was all it was, until she mentioned your name. Until I walked up those stairs and saw you standing there with the light behind you and that damned tiara on your head.”
Her hand shot up, but before her fingers brushed the headpiece, she sank them into her hair and blinked. “And?”
“And then I understood it wasn’t the place I wanted to come home to, it was you, Rita.” He held his hand out to her.
Her? He’d come back for her? How many times these last few weeks had she dreamed, even prayed for this very thing to happen?
Now it had. He’d done it. The ball was in her court. She shifted her head, and the Dixie Belle Duchess crown wobbled. Stupid, stupid! Once again he’d caught her looking a fool. Taking so long to come up with any kind of response to his amazing statement only made it worse. Stupid, Rita. Stupid, stupid…wait. No!
She refused to beat herself up like that. She was not stupid! She was strong and resourceful. And she was not going to let someone who broke her heart, then had the gall to show up again talking about home, make her retreat into her worst fears.
“Well, if you’ve come to Hellon to make a home with me, Wild Billy, leaves-a-girl-all-alone-on-a-hotel-lounge-stage, West…” She stood, not caring that it made her crown slip to the back of her head. “You are too damn late.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I’m not so self-centered that I’d think that I could walk back into your life armed with nothing but an apology and—as you said—a ‘too damn late’ profession of love and hope to make up for what I did.”
His what? She waved her hand in a slow, jerking motion. “Back that train up. Your profession of what?”
“Love. I love you, Rita.”
“Damn it, Will.” She whipped around so he would not see the tears in her eyes or read the emotions on her face. She had no idea what emotions he might see there, of course, and that made it all the more frightening. Would he pick up on her frustration? Her anger? Her joy? Her confusion? Or worst of all, would he see that despite the way he had behaved, she loved him right back? “Why are you doing this?”
“Maybe because I finally realized a taste of heaven wasn’t enough for me, Rita. That’s why I left you that night in Memphis. And that’s why I’ve come back.”
“It can’t be both!” She whirled around, her arms out. “It can’t be the reason you left and the reason you came back.”
“It sounds impossible, but that’s the truth of it.” He pulled at the knot in his tie, and his jacket rustled against his cotton shirt. “I left because by staying I knew I’d become another excuse for you to keep things the way they were. I left for your sake.”
“What made you think you could make that decision on my behalf?”
“It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, Rita, I swear it. Made more difficult by the fact that I knew the one thing you despised in this world was someone who didn’t stick around for the people he loved.”
“But you walked out anyway.”
“I had to. And I hope you’ll let me tell you why.”
“I’m listening.” She stood behind a chair, gripping its back so hard it felt like the wood grain was being burned into her palms.
He hung his head for a moment but as he talked, he raised it again and looked toward the curtainless kitchen window. “All my life people have wanted things of me—put their expectations on me.”
“The first son in the West family. I can believe that.”
“The first son. Not a West, though. Not by blood.”
“What are you saying?”
“Now, do not hold this against my mother, she’s done her penance in spades, and it’s a matter between her and my…my daddy.” He looked at his hands, then out the window again. “But Jillie and I have different fathers.”
“Things like that do happen.” She felt herself smiling, and for only an instant wondering if Will’s biological father had been one of those gentlemen callers who bade Miss Peggy to come out in the moonlight. “If Pernel hadn’t decided to marry me in high school, Lacey Marie might have called another man her father in time.”
He nodded without meeting her gaze. “Then there’s the whole Wild Billy, football-hero stage of my life. Suddenly I’m just a kid but I’m carrying the responsibility and reputation for even more names that were not rightly mine. You know there were times in the past I sort of wished we had lost that state championship.”
“Lost? You could never have held your head up in town again.”
“Naw, they’d have gotten over a loss quicker than they did that win, and you know it. Thing was I didn’t deserve to become a local legend. I was part of a team but when people talk about the championship, Wild Billy West is the one who gets the credit.”
“You felt guilty about that?”
“Not at first.” He gave her a sheepish grin. Then he sighed. “But later, yes, guilty and more than a little stifled. Spending your life under a mantle you don’t really believe you earned takes its toll, Rita.”
“I can see how it would.”
“As problems go, that one is petty, and I admit it. But it affected me in ways that worked themselves into the rest of my life. After I left Hellon, the reason I couldn’t come back is because I couldn’t let myself live under other people’s expectations anymore. Especially if those expectations were that anything I did was fine, even if it was foolish.”
“Like the story of Midas, having everything you touch turn golden is not as great as it sounds to others.”
He laughed, but his face reflected no joy. “I’ve spent a lot of time making sure no one put their expectations on me again. What I’ve realized is that meant I never had to strive to do things that I knew were beyond my reach.”
“Welcome to the club.” She put her hand on his chest.
“I never had to grow up as Wild Billy in Hellon, and in trying to escape that I created the same situation, only it was my own fears and stubbornness that kept me from growing. The one exception was when you told me off, Rita.”
She shut her eyes and groaned.
He touched her cheek. “There I was feeling sorry for myself for having another title thrust on me that I didn’t merit, feeling sorry for myself, hiding behind my past and you…”
“I never did anything like that before. I never have since, really. But I had always wanted more children, and there you were having a baby, not even caring about your own flesh-and-blood child.”
“He had my name. And he was like me.”
“Of course he was. He was your son.” She rested her hand on his shoulder.
He looked at her with those same, aching, haunted eyes he had the first day he’d come to the Palace. “He was like me because he had the name of a man who was not his blood father.”
“Will.” She started to sit again, then felt too restless for it. She walked the few steps to the counter, turned, and studied his weary expression. One of the reasons Norrie never became Mrs. West was that she had a rather relaxed approach to fidelity. Cozette’s tidbit of gossip rushed back into Rita’s mind. “And I said those awful things to you. I am so sor—”
“No.” He stood. “Don’t apologize for that. Never apologize for being the one person in my life who had just enough faith that I could do the right thing that she would dare to speak the truth to my face.”
“But I didn’t know the whole story. There I went on and on berating you for not being supportive of Norrie and putting your selfish pleasure above the needs of your unborn baby…”
“A baby who needed a decent father. You were right to do that, Rita. That tiny boy deserved a decent father more than anything on earth.”
She hung her head and sniffled.
“You gave me another kind of glimpse of heaven then, Rita.” He came to where she stood and lifted her chin with his finger. “By allowing me to know for even a preciously short time what it meant to be an innocent child’s daddy.”
Tears washed onto her cheeks, but she did nothing to wipe them away.
“After the baby passed, I understood more deeply than ever what it was I had lost. I had lost my one tiny sliver of heaven on earth.”
“That’s kind of what children are, aren’t they?”
“That’s what love is, true love, unselfish love.” He took her hand. “I didn’t know it when I came here, but that’s where I would find my peace of mind again. In loving you, physically, spiritually, and unselfishly.”
“This is all so much to take in, Will.” She drew her fingers out of his grasp so slowly that she felt every nerve tingle at the parting touch. “You say you love me, but that night in Memphis you walked out.”
“Because I realized that night that I wanted you too badly, that I cared about you too much to let you use me as another crutch to keep from going after your real dreams.”
“You did.” She sank into her chair again.
“Yes. I did.”
“No. I said ‘you did.’ Not a question. A statement of fact. When you walked out of that lounge and there was no one left around for me to play martyr to, I had to take a good long look at myself and my life at last.”
“And?”
“And I came back to Hellon the next day, got the paperwork to enroll in college in Memphis, and sold the Palace.”
“Sold it? That fast?”
“I had a motivated buyer.”
“Who?”
“Cozette and her husband. All this time they’ve been getting financial advice from your mother about how to invest money they made from selling off lots of the farmland.”
“My proper mother, who gave herself the name Peggy to honor Margaret Mitchell, still holds formal tea parties and rules this town’s social set with an iron cane, gave financial advice to aging bohemians? Telling them to buy a half-gutted pig rib restaurant?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Your mother was against them buying the Palace. But once Mouse heard about the stage he was sold. Being vegetarians, they did dump the whole rib thing. They’re calling the place the Java Palace and—” She sank into her chair and started to laugh.
“What?”
“Well, we started out talking about love and then you told me that incredible story about your son and finding peace again then I told you about Cozie and Mouse and now we’re onto the Palace.”
“The conversation has had more twists than—”
She held her hand up. “Don’t say it.”
He knelt in front of her. “Then what should I say, Rita?”
What more could he say? He had apologized, explained himself, and said he loved her. Only a damned fool would ask for anything more.
“Say absolutely nothing.” She leaned forward and kissed him passionately, lovingly, carelessly.
They would still have so many things to work out, but she was a smart woman, and he was a decent man. Together, they could handle anything that life threw at them, and they would still be standing—together.
Pernel Stark Presents an Epilogue
(after a fashion)
So, Rita got her own story.
Should you stop into the Java Palace or the Cozie Mouse, the boutique the new owners just opened upstairs and brought me in to run—it ain’t turned a profit yet, but it sure has got a few boxers in a bunch (and that’s better than money around here any day, if you ask me)…Anyway, if you find yourself passing through Hellon, Tennessee, one day and decide to stop at the Palace and ask about Rita Butcher Stark people will…Now, first thing, they’ll correct you. It’s Rita Butcher Stark West, and she kindly asks you lop out the old last names. I ain’t offended at that especially now that there’s a new Mrs. Stark, who doesn’t mind sharing my closet space and the occasional fashion tip. It’s just good sense.
And before we get too far along I will tell you that folks will still want to tell you about that tornado. Good stories do not die easy in a place where not much happens.
That is one reason they will go on about The Wedding. Now, not just any wedding, this is The Wedding. The Wedding to which all weddings heretofore in Hellon will forever be held up against and find themselves lacking. Nobody would expect anything less than big doings for the only daughter of the West family. Jillie not only had the most beautiful dress and the handsomest husband going, they had the happiest matron of honor and best man ever.
