The Wedding Pearls

by Carolyn Brown

  “Y’all deserve one night of privacy. Melody gets the Miss Josie room,” Frankie said.

  The lady handed Melody the key and smiled at the way the teenager was trying to take in everything from the purple walls to the fabric-draped ceiling to the gorgeous claw-footed tub. “Kind of makes you wish you’d lived in a different time, don’t it?”

  “This is way too cool. It’s like I’m really the person in the pictures we took. Thank you, Frankie. This is, like, beyond grand.” Melody wrapped her arms around Frankie and hugged her tightly.

  Frankie patted the girl on the head. “Now on to our rooms. Me and Ivy are staying in the cowboy room because it’s got two beds and we don’t want separate rooms so tonight it’s going to be the cowgirl room.”

  “I’ll stay right here. I’ve got to take dozens of pictures of everything to send to Mama and to Jill. This is, like, the coolest room I’ve ever seen. Y’all call me when you’re ready to do the next thing,” Melody said.

  Frankie hugged her tightly. “I’m so glad you like this room, and yes, you can. Branch, darlin’, push that cart on to wherever this sweet lady leads.”

  After he got their things unloaded, the woman took them on to Lola’s room and then to Tessa’s and finally she put Branch in the gunslinger’s room. “Y’all have about taken up my whole place. I’ve only got two rooms left. Oh, and please be aware that we don’t serve breakfast on weekdays. But there are lots of fine places to eat within a short distance.”

  Branch tipped his hat and nodded. “Thank you. I imagine I will go out and get some pastries and coffee and bring it in to the ladies. As you could see, one of our crew is on oxygen and mornings are tough on her.”

  “That’s sweet of you.” The lady handed him a key and quickly answered the ringing cell phone that she pulled from her pocket.

  “A cell phone sure looks out of place in a hotel like this. I guess it’s the old and the new combining,” he muttered.

  Ivy could barely get Melody out of her room to go down to the street and watch the cattle drive at four o’clock. But once she was there she was more excited about the whole thing than any of them. Tessa loved seeing everything through the eyes of both a sixteen-year-old kid who had a full life ahead of her and two old gals who were approaching the end of their time on earth. As the rangy longhorn cattle, herded by cowboys on horseback, made their way down the street, she was already forming the story that she’d write that night about that particular Wednesday in September.

  The smell of cattle, horses, leather, and dust filled the air as the cattle passed so close that she could have reached out and touched their extralong horns. Branch leaned on a post right beside her and looked like he belonged there. Melody couldn’t snap pictures with her phone fast enough.

  “You aren’t taking pictures?” Branch asked Tessa.

  “I don’t need them,” she said. “This day, this whole journey, is branded on my mind and in my heart so deeply that all I have to do is close my eyes and it’s all right there.”

  “Me, too.” He took her hand in his. “Would you ever want to go back to a time when this was real, like in the cattle run days a hundred years ago?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t expect those rooms we have would have been air-conditioned in those days or had indoor plumbing,” she said. “What about you?”

  Branch nodded. “I would have loved it.”

  “Why are you a lawyer, Branch?”

  “It’s a means of making a living so I can ranch and do what I want. Someday I hope to be able to quit that side of my life and only run my ranch for a living,” he said.

  Tessa nodded. “I understand.”

  “Why are you a travel agent?”

  “I love helping people put together a dream vacation, but probably the biggest reason is that Clint and I get to be our own bosses. With my lack of grace, I wouldn’t last three days working for someone else. Maybe we should move to this part of the state and put in a bordello,” she teased.

  “You aren’t old enough to be a madam, and I couldn’t stand it if you were one of the girls,” he said.

  She stepped closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Oh? I thought I’d make a good barmaid.”

  His arm went protectively around her shoulders. “No, ma’am. The bordello is out. But I could be one of those cowboys who herd the cattle down the street twice a day and you could take pictures in the old-time place down the street.”

  “Okay, now it’s time for supper,” Lola said. “Let’s herd the six of us up to the Lonesome Dove for a steak.”

  Branch kept Tessa’s hand in his. “You don’t have to twist my arm for that.”

  Tessa tried to ignore Ivy and Frankie’s wide grins, but something told her that they had planned this from the beginning.

  “I’m having buffalo,” Ivy said.

  “Yuck!” Melody’s pert little nose snarled. “They do have something else on the menu, don’t they?”

  “Sure thing. They’ve got grilled quail quesadillas,” Frankie told her.

  “Good. I like quail. I just don’t like the taste of buffalo,” Melody said.

  Lola giggled. “Guess that backfired, didn’t it?”

  “Guess so,” Ivy said. “But we’re not home yet, so I can still have some fun with her.”

  Melody took over pulling Blister along on his wheels. “Don’t forget I can still have fun with you, too.”

  The hostess seated them, took their drink and appetizer orders, and then left them to look at the menus. Melody decided on the quail quesadillas and Ivy wanted the buffalo steak. The rest of their crew stuck with rib eyes, baked potatoes, and salads.

  Lola laid the menu down. “Okay, now the rest of the night is lining up like this. After supper, the kid here and I are going back to Miss Molly’s to see if we can catch a ghost on film, and you four are going to spend some time at Pearl’s. Mama and Ivy really do want to belly up to a bar and order a beer and dance.”

  “You sure, Frankie?” Tessa asked.

  “Never been surer of anything. Me and Ivy are going out with our boots on. See?” Frankie held up a leg for them all to see that in addition to the bling on her fancy shirt, she was wearing bright-red cowboy boots.

  “And mine.” Ivy did the same, only her boots were black with hot-pink stitching.

  “How come I didn’t notice those?” Melody asked. “And why don’t we get to go dancing, Lola?”

  “Because you are sixteen and you can’t go into Pearl’s, and if you could, you would text it and the judge would revoke Aunt Ivy’s care of you. And I don’t care to dance if I can’t be in Hank’s arms so I’m your babysitter tonight and you are mine. We might need each other if the ghosts come out to play,” Lola answered.

  Frankie and Ivy both seemed pumped up, almost as much as they’d been at the carnival but not like the day they left Boomtown. Tessa leaned over and whispered in Frankie’s ear, “You sure about all this? It’s not written in stone. It can be changed.”

  Frankie patted her on the shoulder. “Do you realize that you hardly ever have an accident anymore, and that since Lola owned up to loving Hank that she’s not been clumsy one time? I’m beginning to think maybe it has something to do with love, which makes me wonder if Lester really loved me because if that’s what it took to cure someone, he wouldn’t have stained every tie I ever bought him.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Lola exclaimed. “You are right, Mama. I should have said I’d marry Hank years ago, and I’d have saved a ton of bruises and stains.”

  “I didn’t say I’d marry anyone,” Tessa said.

  “Then Lola broke the cycle when she did and now you don’t have to be clumsy anymore, either,” Ivy said.

  And that’s when Tessa began to worry. She couldn’t dance. She had two left feet and she’d always, always avoided places where she’d be required to do a simple two-step or waltz. She’d been a wallflower at her high school proms because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself on the dance floor. Now, wha
t in the hell was she going to do at Pearl’s? What if Branch asked her to dance and she stepped on his toes or worse?

  “We have our own rooms,” Branch said softly when everyone else was talking about the ghosts.

  “I can’t dance,” she blurted out.

  “Don’t worry, I can teach you,” he promised.

  “In one night?”

  “There might be a price for lessons.”

  “Not as thin as those walls are. I swear I could hear Melody talking to her mother as I was brushing my teeth,” Tessa said.

  “You heard what?” Ivy asked.

  “Probably everything we said. Those hotel walls are not soundproof, so we’ll have to be careful what we say,” Frankie said.

  Lola hummed the music from the old Twilight Zone. “It’s so we can hear the ghosts when they walk down the hallway.”

  “You are beginning to freak me out,” Melody said.

  Dancing in Branch’s arms was like floating on air. Her feet didn’t feel like lead as he swept her around the floor in a country waltz while Ivy and Frankie sat up to the bar with an empty bottle of beer in each of their hands and two empties in front of each of them.

  “Blister is liable to go up in a blaze of fire if she drinks much more and gets the hiccups,” Tessa said.

  “Right now, I’ve got better things to think about than Blister.” Branch buried his face in her hair and held her so tight against his chest that she could not only hear but feel every beat of his heart.

  “What are we doing, Branch?” she asked. “And what kind of name is Branch, anyway?”

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name and since I’m the third son and they’d used up all the important names, it’s all she had left. I was supposed to be a girl and my name was going to be Sally. Now, to answer your other question, what do you want us to be doing?”

  “I can’t think about us right now with Ivy on her last leg. I have to think about Lola and Frankie,” she said.

  He spun her around and then gathered her back into his arms. “But you are, whether you want to or not, aren’t you?”

  She was amazed that she’d been graceful. “I do not believe in love at first sight.”

  He kissed the top of her hair. “Me, either.”

  “I have to know someone, really know them before I fall for them.”

  He squeezed her hand gently. “Me, too.”

  “Stop agreeing with me.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes. “Yes, ma’am. We will have spent almost two weeks, twenty-four hours a day in each other’s company or in close proximity by the time this trip is over. If I had asked you out on a date the first day I walked into your travel agency and each date lasted four hours, two dates a week . . . let’s see, fourteen days for the two weeks, twenty-four hours for each day is . . .”

  “Over three hundred,” she said.

  “Now divide by four and you get about seventy and divide that by two for twice a week and we would have been dating over six months. And we’ve only shared a few really amazing kisses. Don’t you think we should take this to the next level and see where it might lead?”

  “I think you are a damn fine lawyer.” She laughed.

  “Does that mean you’ll think about going out with me on a real date when we get back to Boomtown with those two drunks up there on the stools?”

  “It does,” she said.

  “Good. Now it’s time for you to sit on a stool and for me to dance with each of them so we can go to our hotel,” he said.

  She didn’t want to know the answer, but she had to ask. “Am I that bad of a dancer?”

  “No, darlin’, but you’ve got me hotter than a two-dollar pistol and I need a cold beer and a cold shower in that order,” he answered.

  Branch walked with his hand on her lower back to the bar and waited until she was on a stool beside Frankie before he held out his hand to Ivy. “May I have this dance, please, ma’am?”

  Ivy jerked the tubes from her nose and left them hanging on the stool as she slid off. “Thank God. I thought I was going to have to ask some old man myself. Now I’ll be the envy of every young girl in the joint. One thing for damn sure, I wasn’t going home without a dance at Pearl’s.”

  “Beer, please,” Tessa told the bartender.

  Frankie sipped at her beer. “It’s almost over and it’s kind of bittersweet. We’ve about used up the last of our energy, but it’s been worth every bit of it.”

  “You could go home and be comfortable in your own house and in your own room. We could hire a full-time nurse,” Tessa said.

  “No, darlin’. I can’t do that because I don’t want that kind of memories in the house for Lola. I should go into that final sleep in a place that she never has to see or visit again. Tomorrow night, we’ll stay in Huntsville, and Friday at noon when we stop for lunch, I will tell her. I’m waiting until the last minute because it’s going to make her so sad. I’m so glad you’ll be there to help her.”

  Tessa took a long draw from the beer. “But Frankie, she’ll have Hank and Inez.”

  “She loves Inez like a sister and she loves Hank. But neither of them are blood, and it’s only that kind of relationship that understands this kind of loss. Don’t tell me that you’ve changed your mind. I couldn’t bear it,” she said.

  Tessa shook her head. “No, I’m staying for sure, and if I need to, I can extend my vacation.”

  Frankie slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I love you, Tessa. When you think about this time we’ve had to get to know each other, you remember that I said that and that I mean it with my whole heart.”

  “I love you, too,” Tessa said and she meant it.

  Like Branch said, if she’d spent four hours twice a week visiting with Frankie and Lola, they’d be six months down the road, but since Frankie didn’t have six months—or Ivy, either—she was glad that she got a crash course in getting to know them. Her mama had been right when she advised her to use her vacation time to go on vacation with these amazing people . . . her family.

  Ivy didn’t waste any time getting herself wired back up when the song ended. “Whew! That takes it out of a woman.” She panted until the oxygen began to take hold.

  “And I’ve saved the best until last, Miz Frankie.” Branch held out his hand. “Please dance with me.”

  She put her hand in his and let him lead her out to the floor. “I was about to go into a pout and refuse to let you bill me for a whole day but you are forgiven since you came up with that pickup line.”

  When she stopped wheezing, Ivy took a long draw from her fourth beer. “She’s getting real weary. After this dance, I’m going to say I need to go back to the room. You and Branch can stick around and dance long as you want.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Tessa said.

  “It’s been fun, but I’m glad it’s almost done. Person sees things different when they see that finish line up ahead and I’m gettin’ tired of this. It’s not living, Tessa. It’s barely surviving. I’m ready to lie down on a bed and talk to Frankie when she’s awake and remember all the good times and cuss the bad times. I hope that God sees fit to take us at the same time and if he can’t do that, then to make the one left behind not be lucid so we won’t ever be alone.”

  That damned lump in her throat was back. “I can’t stand to hear those words.”

  “It’s okay.” Ivy downed the rest of her beer. “It’s a good thing to know the EDT. That’s estimated departure time. I feel so sorry for those poor people who drop dead in their bathrooms from a blood clot or retire one day and die in their rocking chair the next day. They never got to plan a final farewell party like this one. They never got to spend every hour of every day with their loved ones, to enjoy three meals a day with them and be silly at a picture place like we did today. This is a gift from God, so don’t be sad.”

  “I can’t help it.” Tessa’s voice broke.

  “Then we won’t talk about it anymore. Will you come see us every day in the place where we are
headed?”

  Tessa couldn’t make a single word come out of her mouth, so she merely nodded.

  “Then it’s all good. Now finish your beer and put a smile on your face. There’s still more of this trip and we’ve got stories to tell and things to do.”

  Branch brought Frankie back and held her arm while she got settled on the bar stool. “You two ladies about wore me out. I’m going to need a cold beer. Thank goodness there’s a stool left down here beside Tessa or I’d fall on the floor.”

  “God don’t like liars,” Frankie chided, but her old eyes were twinkling.

  “Then he should love me, because I’m not lyin’,” Branch said smoothly.

  “Looks like this bunch of party animals is about ready to head to the hotel. Y’all with me?” Tessa asked.

  “I am.” Branch nodded. “I’ll take my beer with me.”

  “You?” Tessa asked Frankie.

  “You two kids can stay and party. Us old party animals know the way to the hotel and we can lean on each other,” Frankie answered.

  Tessa leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “No, ma’am. I’ve been watchin’ those two old guys over there at that far table trying to catch your eye and there ain’t no way I’m letting you walk down the street without chaperones. Lola would have my hide if those two sweet-talked their way into your bedroom tonight.”

  “Honey, them old men wouldn’t know what to do with two hot women like us.” Frankie smiled.

  “I’m not taking any chances,” Tessa said. “So finish your beers and we’ll go to see if Lola and Melody have had any luck with the ghosts.”

  Branch had just gotten out of the shower. He’d pulled on a pair of pajama pants and a tank top, but his hair was still wet and he hadn’t had time to brush his teeth when he heard the gentle rap on his door.

  Hoping to hell it wasn’t Avery, he opened it a crack before he slung it wide open and pulled Tessa into the room. Tears flowed down her cheeks. Her hair was wet and she was dressed in faded blue pajama pants and an oversize nightshirt with a picture of Betty Boop on the front.