15 Tales of Love (2 page)

“You were suggesting you could bribe me with lunch.” She noted that her voice was also louder. “You wanted to influence what I write. I can’t allow you to do that.”

She saw a shadow cross his face. “You are all wrong, Miss Cummings.”

“About what I write, or what you were trying to do?”

“Both,” he said. “You don’t understand this town. You don’t know what’s going on.”

“I can hear,” she told him. “I know what you’ve been saying for weeks now. You can’t change it.”

His face grew harder. He nodded abruptly, said, “Good day, Miss Cummings,” and strode off.

She did not dissolve into tears there on the street. There were people around who had seen them together, probably heard what they had said. She refused to be intimidated or to make a spectacle of herself. She held her head high and went quickly to the newspaper office and her computer to write her story the way she had half planned to write it before she went for her ill-fated walk.

Then she gave in to frustrated tears.

She kept herself busy until press day. There were a lot of jobs to do, stories to research, papers to organize, drawers to clean out. She cried several times and told herself not to be silly, that it had all been a daydream to begin with. But it didn’t help.

On Friday morning, the day after
The Recorder
was published, she was too depressed to think properly. She went to The Coffee Shop for breakfast, a thing she rarely did because it seemed an unfriendly place. Today she didn’t care. Today she would begin that search for a better job so she could leave this cold uncaring place. That thought, too, depressed her and she realized she didn’t want to leave. She actually liked it here and wanted to belong.

The Coffee Shop seemed a little different this morning. Several patrons smiled and nodded as she passed. A man she barely knew spoke to her, calling her by name, as she made her way to a well-worn back booth. But she was too numb to analyze it. Her world had collapsed into a pool of salty tears. She ordered coffee and an egg and sausage breakfast sandwich and tried to firm up her resolve to leave.

She felt someone beside her and looked up self-consciously. Her heart skipped at least two beats and she couldn’t speak.

Duncan McGuire asked, “May I join you?” He held a mug of coffee in his hand.

“I guess.” She thought he looked a little embarrassed, and could think of no good reason for him to be there.

He sat down awkwardly, sort of folding his long legs into the booth. “I apologize,” he said, not too quietly. “I was wrong.”

She thought she heard a smothered laugh from the next booth. She looked down at her coffee cup, not sure how to answer.

“You were right,” he said, still a little loudly. “I did try to bribe you. Sort of.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s all over.”

He stirred the coffee in front of him, staring at the swirling liquid in his cup. “It is indeed. All over but the voting.”

“How will it go?” she asked, for want of something better to say, something more intelligent.

“Who knows? It doesn’t matter. We all said our pieces and we will all live with the result.”

She glanced up at him and saw that he was not looking at her. “Why are you here?”

“To apologize.”

She didn’t answer, but somehow felt he was not telling the whole truth.

“Did I come across that bad at the meeting?” he asked, still not looking up.

“You stated your piece, Mr. McGuire. That is how I heard it.”

He met her gaze. “That’s what I admire about you, your honesty, and your integrity. A lot of us do.”

She gaped at him, speechless.

“It’s refreshing,” he said. “It’s nice to have someone around who can stand up for her convictions.”

She recovered herself slightly. “Thank you. I try.”

“It’s all any of us can do, and it isn’t easy.” He paused and their eyes met directly for the first time. She noted a sparkle of amusement in their greenness. “Will you have dinner with me this evening, Beth-Anne?”

She hesitated, wondering.

“There is nothing between then and now for you to report. This time it’s an honest invitation.”

“Yes,” she said, trying to still her heartbeat, to breathe normally. “Of course.”

Maybe I can ask him about the lilacs. If there’s time.
There was so much she wanted to know about Gavin’s Falls, but those questions would take time. A very long time.

THE COPPER RING

Having tea on Thursday afternoon was a habit of long standing.
Josephine Carter still lived by herself in the house that her late husband George had built for her almost sixty years ago on the quiet, tree-lined village street. She now occupied only those rooms on the ground floor that she could care for by herself. Those rooms consisted of the kitchen, dining room, living room—which she insisted on calling the sitting room in spite of her children’s comments about it being old-fashioned—and the little room in the back that
she used as a bedroom, the one that had once been George’s office. Even those few rooms were a week-long chore to keep tidy, but the work gave her something to do, something she would not have to do if she were to move to where her children wanted her to go. Besides, it was her home, the one she had shared so long with George, and she had always loved it. She would miss it terribly in some new apartment somewhere.

The ring was old and a little worn, made of copper and painted with tiny, blue for-get-me-nots. Henry Walston gave it to her after tea on Thursday. He had held her arthritic blue-veined hand in his larger, more calloused, but equally aged hand when he had slipped it on.

“It probably won’t help the arthritis, my dear Josephine,” he said with his sweet, gentle smile, “but it is a pretty thing. Like you.”

She was amused as always by his old-fashioned courtly ways. “I shall treasure it always, Henry, even if it doesn’t stop the pain.”

Henry Walston was a dear and life-long friend and neighbor, but he had given in to family pressure two years ago and now lived with a son and his family. It was a move that Henry more than occasionally regretted.

So Josephine invited him to tea on Thursday afternoons to give him some time away from them. It was the least she could do for an old friend.

Tea was a simple affair: soup or a sandwich, depending on the weather, and a few small cookies. Their conversation consisted mostly of their recollections and gentle complaints about the modern world. Henry was much too well-bred to discuss the distressing state of the political world with a gentlelady on whom he was calling.

“And I am calling on you, Josie,” he would say occasionally when she laughed at him, teasing a little. “You are the same lovely, gracious girl I have always known. Too bad George got there ahead of me.”

She smiled at that. Henry had only one love in his life, and Helen had been gone for fifteen years. Josephine knew Henry had no desire to replace Helen. Theirs had been a very happy marriage.

Nor did she wish to put another in the place that George had held so long. Henry was company, he was nice, and looking forward all week to Thursday tea was a pleasant anticipation in a week that had little else to offer.

The copper ring was something warm and pretty. It represented a little part of the past carried to the present, for it had belonged to Helen, which made it doubly precious. “I’m sure she would want you to have it,” Henry said. “She found it in a little gift shop out West somewhere on one of our trips. She wore it quite often.”

She looked at it on her slightly crooked finger. The little blue forget-me-nots were a cheerful spot of color. “It’s beautiful,” she said, recalling having seen it before.

She was wearing it on Saturday when Peter came to visit. Peter was her middle child, her only son left, and he always came on Saturday morning to see if she was all right. Her daughter Elizabeth called at odd times, when she wasn’t too busy or wanted something, but Peter came regardless of his mood and what else he had planned. To do his duty by her, she supposed. His duty as he saw it.

Today his mood was not good, as it frequently wasn’t, but he noticed the ring and asked about it.

“I never saw you wearing that before. Were you upstairs rummaging around in your old stuff again?”

She looked at the ring and smiled. “Henry gave it to me.”

Peter snorted. “What is that old coot after now?”

She sighed. Peter could be very trying. “Henry is a fine gentleman,” she said. “He gave it to me to help my arthritis.”

“Baloney! A copper ring can’t help anything. He’s just after your money.”

She knew that wasn’t true. Henry did not lack for anything except company and something meaningful to do, but she did not contradict him. She had found that it was much easier not to argue with Peter.

“He came over for tea,” she said. “It was just a thank-you gift. It belonged to his wife.”

“Humph.” Peter began his weekly check of the house. He changed a light bulb in the bathroom, picked up the newspapers and bundled them, checked to be sure the locks were all right, looked in her cupboards and refrigerator at her supply of groceries. He asked if she had put out the trash, if the boy down the street mowed the lawn properly, and had she paid him what Peter had agreed was a fair rate.

She sighed. Her young neighbor, Mark, was such a nice boy. He did a good job, and so much more than Peter had hired him for, and he certainly deserved the little extra money she gave him. She smiled at Peter. “Yes, Mark did as you asked him.”

“I’ll have a carpenter come to fix the back porch steps and railing.” He added sourly, “Keeping this place up is costing me too much.”

It costs me.
The money is mine.
She didn’t comment, but wondered, fleetingly, why he was so concerned about the money.
Does he think I don’t have enough?
But she had long ago found it easier to say nothing.

“And about getting new wallpaper for the living room . . .”

“No.” George had picked out that paper. It was the last thing he had done for her, and it would remain as it was, and it was one of the few things on which she stood firm. That, and not moving.

“Mother . . .”

“No,” she said again. It would be her money that would pay for it, and she did not want it changed.

Peter pouted a bit, an expression she found amusing on the face of a man over fifty. “If you’d just move to an apartment, one of those nice places for the elderly with some assistance so you wouldn’t have to work so hard, unload this place . . .”

“It’s mine.” She knew his arguments, and she was determined not to give in, even if it would be so much easier for her, as deep inside she knew that it would be. She was determined to do for herself as long as she could. She also knew they were his wife’s arguments. Rachel thought Peter spent way too much time helping his mother.

Peter gave in, ungracefully as usual. “But I wouldn’t invite Walston here so much. He’s just after your money. He wants this place, you know. Since he sold his at a good profit, he wants to do the same with yours.”

She ignored that, pretending not to hear him.

“And another thing—”

“Not now. Elizabeth called yesterday. She said she hadn’t heard from you.”

“What did she want?”

She heard an odd note in his voice, an annoyance perhaps, and wondered if Peter and Elizabeth had been arguing again. “Only to say hello and ask about Rachel and the kids.”

“Hum,” Peter said.

She wondered what Peter had started to say, but decided not to ask. She was tired of the arguing.

“Well, if that’s all, I guess I’ll be going.”

“Some coffee?” she asked, knowing he would refuse. “I have a few cookies left.”

“No, I don’t think so. Rachel has a list of things I need to do.”

She sat down when he had gone and had a cup of tea. She looked at the copper ring and smiled. It brought Henry close, recalled his gentle voice, and brought a comfortable, warm feeling.

She had another visitor that weekend. Her grandson, George, did not look like his namesake grandfather. He was dark and stocky where her George and their son had both been tall and much fairer. Young George was the son of her younger son, Dan, who had died in a car accident. She was glad, sometimes, that her grandson did not resemble his father in his looks. That would have hurt too much. George was such a pleasant boy, and so like his father in many ways: an expression in his eyes, a quirky smile, the way his hair curled around his ears, but mostly his kindnesses. Dan had been generous and giving, so different from Peter.

Young George brought her a bouquet of field flowers, daisies and musk mallows, a black-eyed Susan or two, and some little white flowers she didn’t recognize. Smiling at her, he said, “I remember when you used to go walking with me when I was little and you put all of my bouquets in one of your pretty vases.”

He sat with her and drank tea and ate a couple of the rather stale cookies. He was a shy boy in his late teens, and he reminded her frequently of his grandfather in his gentle caring.

He asked about the ring.

“For my arthritis,” she said, testing him. “It is supposed to help with the pain in my hands.”

“I hope it helps. I wish you could still knit like you used to. I need another pair of mittens.”

She laughed with him. All of her grandchildren had worn her hand-knit hats and mittens.

“The copper will help, Grammy,” he said, “if you really believe it will.”

She arranged his flowers in one
of her antique vases and set it on the little marble-topped table in the sitting room. They looked quite cheerful against the faded and slightly stained cream and blue wallpaper. She hoped they would still be fresh when Henry came again.

On the following Thursday, Henry said it was time to repay her kindness
and invited her out to lunch on Tuesday. They went only as far as they could easily walk, the little coffee shop in the village, but it was a pleasant excursion on a nice day.

The following Tuesday they had a picnic in the park. Again they walked, enjoying a lovely day and pleasant conversation. Henry knew the names of all the trees, a long ago interest, he said.

When Peter heard of these excursions, he did not approve. “If you want to go out, just let me know,” he said. “I’ll see you get to where you want to go. I don’t want you having an accident. Walston’s not a responsible driver, you know, not at his age.”

She did not point out that they walked, an activity her doctor strongly encouraged, and that although Henry still had his driver’s license, he rarely used it, and in fact no longer owned a car.

She decided to ignore Peter and continued to take the small outings on Tuesdays when the weather was good, in addition to tea on Thursdays. And then her daughter Elizabeth called.

“Peter is upset,” Elizabeth said.
“He thinks you are doing too much, you’ll overdo and be sick, or fall and break something.”

“Nonsense.”

“Your arthritis,” Elizabeth reminded her. “You have to take it easy.”

“It is much better, and the doctor said I should walk a little.”
When you reach eighty, you should be able to do what you want.

“Only because it has been so warm,” Elizabeth said. “It’s fall now and going to get cold pretty soon . . .”

“It isn’t right now.”

“Crotchety as always,” Elizabeth said, “and I suppose you are still wearing that foolish copper ring Henry gave you.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t help with the pain in your hip or your knee. Believe me.”

On Thursday that week, Josephine discussed it all with Henry.

He sighed, picked up her hand, and kissed her fingers. She giggled because his moustache tickled.

“We can’t upset the children, Josie,” he said sadly. “You had best not wear the ring if it annoys them so much.”

“My hand will hurt again if I take it off.”

He smiled with his pale blue eyes, so like George had smiled, teasing a little. “I would ask you to marry me,” he said, “if I had anything to offer you.”

“I have enough for both of us.” She knew the offer was conversation. Neither wanted it, had never discussed it. All they needed was a little pleasant company.

“I cannot do anything,” he said, a twinkle growing in his eyes, “that would deprive Peter of whatever it is he wants.”

Deprive Peter? Of what? He knew that the funds George had left were adequate for her, but not that large, and did he really want it? Is that why he came every Saturday, why he was so concerned about what she spent? Was he concerned about the house only for its market value? It was in a good location and his share of the selling price would be nice, but still . . .

When Henry left, she took the ring off and put it on the marble-topped table beside another bouquet of field flowers that young George had brought her. Her finger ached with the sudden lightness.

On Saturday, Peter saw it there and was obviously relieved. “No more Tuesday lunches?” he asked.

She was surprised at the relief in his voice. Testing him, she said, “And probably no more Thursday tea.”

“Great. And now if you’ll only listen to reason about the house.”

She again wondered, very briefly, what its market value was. She didn’t care. But her hand and her heart hurt, and even her tea tasted bitter.

Later that day, young George dropped in. Only for a minute, he said. He had to decide which colleges he would apply to and wanted her advice. Hadn’t his grandfather gone to Clemson? He thought he’d like to try the South for a change, get away from New England winters.

She asked about finances, knowing his father had left an insurance trust, but not much else, and his mother and stepfather worked hard for what they had. And there was a younger half-sister as well.

“Scholarships,” George said, sounding hopeful. “My grades are okay, and I’ve been saving from my part-time jobs.”

She sipped her tea, thinking about that and George’s desire to attend his grandfather’s school. He had never mentioned that before.

“And put your copper ring back on,” George said, his voice suddenly more assertive than usual. “Don’t pay any attention to Uncle Peter and Aunt Elizabeth. It’s your life, your house, and your money. I think Mr. Walston is a neat guy. I say it’s your life and you should go for it.”