Double Wedding Ring (10 page)

At twenty-seven, Sam welcomed a little cockeyed thinking, and he had a hunch Malorie Hovis would provide just that.

He followed her out of the Fellowship Hall, up the steps and out into the autumn sunshine. He knew she knew he followed her, but she continued to ignore him, just as she had ignored him for the past hour, when she also knew his eyes were on her.

She hadn't fidgeted, although nervousness sparked off her like noon sunshine off a tin roof. Instead, she had wrapped her arms tightly around her and stayed perfectly still. As if she might be overlooked if she remained motionless.

Sam didn't see how it was possible that anyone wouldn't notice her, wouldn't be captivated by her presence.

Malorie Hovis struck him as a sprite, a fidgety, flyaway sprite who might be easily startled away from the blossom where she perched. By a sound. A movement. A touch.

Yes, certainly by a touch.

But the aura of intensity that clung to her skin like a faint perfume was the only thing about her that spoke of rigidity. Her hair was a tumble of unruly curls. The freckles that hadn't faded with the passing of summer said she couldn't be bothered with makeup. Her only jewelry was loose silver bangles on her left wrist, but she was so still they hadn't made a single sound for the entire hour. And her dress—a gauzy, flowered, flowing thing—said she didn't care whether men looked twice at her or whether the proper Baptist women approved of what she wore to church.

Even her legs, he had noticed as he walked up the steps from the basement, were bare, her feet tucked into little slippers that tied around her ankles with some kind of ribbon.

Sam assumed those little ribbons binding her ankles were designed to set men thinking about loosening them, and loosening whatever else might naturally follow. He hoped that was the intention, for that would make them mighty successful. He wanted to set her bangles ajingle, too.

Sam knew that meant he was in trouble, for he thought he'd never seen a woman less likely to want someone to loosen her ribbons or jingle her bangles.

“Would those shoes fall off if someone untied the ribbons?” he asked after watching her slender feet pick their way carefully through the clutter of fallen leaves littering the church grounds.

He would have sworn she didn't even crunch a leaf as she made her way to the street.

She paused but didn't turn to look at him. “I'd trip over them, that's all.”

He caught up with her then and walked beside her, although he felt distinctly uninvited. “I could catch you.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead; nothing about her faltered. “I think I'll keep them tied if it's all the same to you. Then I won't need catching.”

“Won't you?”

Her crocheted purse hung across her body, the way women learned to wear them in cities like Atlanta, and she clutched it tightly to her with one arm. He wondered what she was really afraid of losing.

“I'll walk you home,” he said.

“It's just a few blocks,” she said. “I'll be fine.”

“I know a better way,” he said.

She looked up then. “You do?”

“I've lived here all my life. You doubt me?” He smiled, and was rewarded with a flash of the impish smile he often saw when she came in from work, full of stories to share with her mother.

“What's it like? Living here forever?”

He turned off Main Street, toward the park. The long way home. He hadn't said it was shorter. Just better. And it was. Especially now.

“Peaceful,” he said. “Reassuring.”

She pursed her lips and eyed him speculatively. “Don't you think that's putting your head in the sand? With so many cities in turmoil, aren't you just hiding away from all the problems?”

He shrugged, stopping at the foot of the sliding board. “Maybe if we all turned away from the turmoil, maybe if we all went searching for a little personal serenity, we'd look around one day and discover that a lot of the turmoil had simply disappeared. Maybe if we don't feed it, it'll starve to death.”

He climbed to the top of the metal slide and hoisted himself into position.

“A nice thought.” But he heard the doubt in her voice, despite being several feet above her.

“It's worked for me.”
Until now.

He shoved off then. The metal popped and rumbled under his weight. His Sunday best shoes landed in the sand at the foot of the slide. He looked around for her, prepared to coax her onto the slide, and realized she was already perched at the top, skirt tucked around her knees, waiting for him to clear the way.

Pleased, he stood and watched as she sailed down, the autumn breeze lifting her hair to the sun and bringing a glow to her cheeks. She closed her eyes, head raised to the sky as she came down.

When she stood, she looked sorry the ride was over.

“Has it worked for you? No turmoil for Sam Roberts? No unhappiness or tragedy or trauma?”

“Well...”

“I thought so.”

“I lost my father in Vietnam. That was right after I was born, though. I never knew what it was like to hurt over it.” Walking to the edge of the park, where a narrow path led to Jasmine Court, the road parallel to Main Street, Sam hesitated. He knew from Susan's records that Malorie's father had died less than a year ago. “Not like you.”

She looked displeased that he even knew, much less that he might sympathize. “He'd been sick awhile. It was a blessing when it finally happened. Where does this lead?”

Since she was following him, Sam saw no urgent need to answer her. “That doesn't always make it hurt less, does it?”

Now she was the one to shrug. “He was a good father. He always...stood by me.”

“When did he stand by you?”

“Whenever I needed him to,” she said, looking around as the path opened onto Jasmine Court. “Why, look! It's Wonderland.”

“Oz.”

“Never-never land.”

She whirled around, taking in the block-long street that was Sweetbranch's oldest neighborhood. Most of the rest of the town had been settled and built up between the world wars. But Jasmine Court had been settled during the Victorian era by displaced coal magnates hoping to get away from the grime in their mines to the south. The two-and three-story houses laced with gingerbread and crowned by turrets were almost incongruous in the working-class town Sweetbranch had become.

“They need work,” Sam said, almost apologetically.

But he could see from Malorie's reaction that she didn't need his apologies. Like Sam, Malorie could see the possibilities in the white houses with their peeling paint, broken porch spindles and crooked shutters.

“They're wonderful,” she said, and Sam took pleasure in the glitter in her eyes as she continued turning in a circle, her soft skirt swishing around her calves. “I'd paint the trim on that one teal. And that one, I'd find a carpenter who knew his stuff to duplicate those broken shutters and turn some new porch rails. Why, you could... Who owns them? Who lives here?”

“A widow and her two bachelor brothers live there.” He gestured to one of the houses, thinking of all the times he'd made this walk alone because so many people in Sweetbranch only saw the imperfections in Jasmine Court. “That one was willed to the library last year, but the library says it can't afford the renovations and nobody in town wants to buy it. That one—”

“Nobody wants to buy it?” She sounded incredulous. “You're kidding?”

“No. Although, Kitty Macauley has made an offer on that one and wants to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. But the bank won't give her the money because they say nobody would come to Sweetbranch to stay in a bed-and-breakfast.”

“If I had the money, I'd buy one of them.”

“Me, too.”

She froze, as if it might have occurred to her that he'd brought her here because he hoped she would share his enthusiasm.

“I always wanted to live in one of them when I was a kid,” he said. “I always thought, when I have kids, that's where I'd want to raise them.”

Malorie started walking, back toward Main. He wanted to ask how many children she wanted, because he'd watched her with Cody and couldn't imagine she wouldn't want several.
Three,
he thought.
Would that be too many to expect in this day and age?

He didn't think it was the right time to be asking about kids, though. So he followed her back down to Main Street, and they turned in the opposite direction from the church.

“Tell me about the rest of your traumas and tragedies,” she said, her voice once again sounding closed and tight.

Her attempt to change the subject was transparent, but Sam decided to grant it to her. Pushing wasn't likely to be effective with Malorie.

“Does being an only child for thirteen years count?” he asked, knowing it really hadn't been a trauma for him. He and his mother had been close all those years they were alone.

“No. I like being an only child.”

“Liked it, you mean? For what, nineteen or twenty years?”

She shrugged and kept her eyes on the ground. “I was grown by the time Cody was born. It didn't matter.”

If he hadn't seen how devoted she was to Cody, Sam would have sworn he detected some bitterness in her clipped reply.

“Does that mean you have a stepfather?” she asked. “That must have been a trauma. Nobody likes stepfathers, do they?”

“I do. It was great just having another male in the house.” Sam recalled the warmth and understanding with which Pete Roberts had approached the adolescent who had never known what it was like to have a father. “You know, I don't think I realized how much I missed having a ‘real' family until I actually had a baby brother and a baby sister. I loved it. Still do. When you're that much older, there's an element of hero worship—pretty heady stuff. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. What about your uncle? Was it tough on Tag, being replaced by a stepfather?”

“Tag hadn't been around for a while, anyway. He...Tag was sort of a wanderer.”

“You seem close.”

“We are. But...I was pretty young when he came back from ‘Nam, so I didn't really understand what he'd been through. What he still had to go through. But it changed my life.”

“How?”

“He'd been a POW for, I don't know, three years or so. He had a lot of recovering to do—physically and mentally. After he got out of rehab, he stayed with us, Mother and me, for a long while. And I...I made up my mind I wanted to help people do what I'd watched Tag do. Get their lives back. That's what it's all about to me.”

They were nearing the end of Main. The now-defunct Dixie Drive-in appeared in the distance, with the giant red-and-white Property Available sign that had been posted so long it was almost orange and yellow. Sam prepared to turn, but realized Malorie had paused to face him.

“Can my mother get her life back?”

He heard the whisper of fear in her voice and wanted to touch her, just to offer reassurance. For a moment, he forgot he was supposed to be professionally noncommittal, coyly blending just enough encouragement with a safe amount of caution. “Of course she can.”

“You're not supposed to say that,” she said. “The doctors never will.”

“I believe in all my patients. I have to. Sometimes I'm the only one who does.”

“And does that work?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes if I believe enough, they start to believe, too.”

He thought he saw mist in her eyes before she lowered them. “Thanks, Sam. Thanks for that.”

He smiled. “Thanks for letting me take you the long way home.”

“It was nice.”

He liked the simplicity in the way she said it. It made it easy to believe she meant it. Sam thought of some of the other women he'd met and played at courting over the years. Especially in Birmingham, where some of the premed students seemed to think their future careers entitled them to limitless research in human anatomy. Perhaps it did, for they seemed to have no trouble attracting willing research subjects. Sam hadn't cared much for that. And he hadn't cared at all for the young women who seemed more interested in their dates' career plans than in what they thought or felt or believed. Sam had tried to fall in love with one or two of the nicer ones, but he couldn't quite muster what it took.

With Malorie, no effort whatsoever had been required. It had simply happened, like being caught by surprise in a summer shower or finding a butterfly content to rest on one of the shrubs beside his porch. He had simply looked around and there it was, filling him with joy and trepidation.

Now remained the task of coaxing that butterfly to stay.

S
USAN DRAGGED HER PEN
laboriously across the small ivory-colored thank-you note, heaving a sigh as she completed her name. She dropped the pen onto the lap desk laid across the arms of her chair and looked up expectantly. Cody ate breakfast in his high chair, also confined by a tray across his lap. But in a few minutes, Susan knew, Cody would be free to run and play. And Susan would still be confined to her chair.

Betsy Foster stood at the kitchen counter, her back to Susan, peeling potatoes to go with the pot roast she was preparing for dinner. Susan waited, wondering if her mother refused to look her way on purpose. At last, feeling like a bother, she said, “I'm finished.”

“Me, too,” said Cody, holding up his cereal bowl so everyone could see. Milk dribbled over the edge of the bowl. The little boy grinned proudly.

Betsy looked over her shoulder, then took her time about wiping her hands on the dish towel tucked into her waistband as an apron. “You're making a mess,” she reprimanded the boy, wiping the spot of milk from the high chair tray.

Susan thought about how Malorie always praised the little boy for finishing his food and wondered why her mother didn't do the same. But Susan was never sure that her perception of a situation was as clear as it should be, so she kept quiet. Betsy, surely, knew better than she.

Lifting Cody out of the chair, Betsy wiped his face and hands with her makeshift apron, then turned to Susan and her thank-you notes for all the flowers and gifts she had received when she was in the hospital. “I hope this is better than the last one.”

Susan didn't know the answer to that, so she didn't answer. The big, looping scrawl looked as unwieldy as it had felt, even though she wrote with her good hand. But maybe it would meet with her mother's approval. She hoped so. Her hand hurt from the effort.

It never hurt from the effort she put into sewing when Addy came over. But it always ached after a writing session with Betsy.

Betsy picked up the sheet of notepaper and studied it. Her lips puckered a bit more with each second that passed. Susan's heart fell.

“I don't see how your pride would let you send out a thank-you note that looked like that, Susan.” She dropped the paper on Susan's lap desk and turned back to her potatoes. “But if that's the best you can do, I guess that's the best you can do. You should let me do it for you.”

The back of Susan's eyes burned and her throat felt thick. She hurt and she didn't want her mother to see, because she was worried that big, fat tears were going to plop right into the middle of the note she'd labored over for fifteen full minutes. She had timed it by the kitchen clock, because Addy had showed her the day before yesterday how to figure out what the movement of the hands meant.

But no matter how much time she'd spent, it wasn't good enough. Would never again be good enough, she supposed.

“Will I ever be good enough for her, do you suppose?”
The young man's voice echoed in Susan's head. She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't like the voice to come when Betsy was nearby. When it did, she felt afraid again. But the voice didn't always do what she wanted it to do.

It didn't this time, either.

“I don't know what she's got against me.”

Susan did, but she didn't know how to say it because she knew he felt bad enough about his father's drinking. Ashamed, he'd told her, and she still remembered the look on his face. It twisted her heart to see it, and she wasn't about to tell him that her own mother looked down on him because of it, just the way he was afraid everyone in the whole town did.

Susan jumped as her pen rolled off the lap desk and hit the floor. She looked up, saw Betsy's irritation, looked away quickly. Could her mother see what she was thinking? Could her mother see the reflection of the young man's face in Susan's eyes?

His face came to her often now. She sank into these memories of talking to him, laughing with him, even touching him, all the time now. But she couldn't control the coming and going of the memories, of the feelings. They swelled up and filled her on their own time, then went away just when she most wanted them to stay.

“Here, Mommy.” Susan looked down. Cody held her pen in the air, smiling proudly. “Me help.”

She smiled and took the pen. “What a good helper.”

Cody nodded. “Me pway now.”

“Play quietly,” Betsy called after the toddler as he headed for the side porch, where most of his toys were stored. “And don't drag out every blessed toy you own. Do you hear me?”

He didn't, of course. Even Susan knew that. She tried hard to figure out why Betsy wasted her breath telling everyone in the house, even a two-year-old, exactly what to do. The effort to figure it out started a throbbing in her temple.

“I'm tired,” Susan said. “Going to rest.”

“That's a fine idea. Would you like me to call Addy and tell her not to come today?”

“No.”

Betsy put her hands on her hips. “There is no need to wear yourself out over this foolishness, Susan. What good do you think it's going to do?”

Susan didn't know the answer to that. And she worried sometimes that the answer was “None.” That, she knew, was what her mother believed.

“I want Addy,” she insisted, and wheeled through the kitchen door into her room. When she was in her room, she kicked the door shut behind her. She felt angry and hurt and frustrated. More than anything in the world, she wanted to leave this house, wanted to go where she didn't have to see her mother every day.

“Don't cry, Susie.”

His voice was soft, a comfort to her, and she closed her eyes, welcoming its visit. She could almost feel his hand, tender against her damp cheek.

“It won't be like this forever.”

“Tell me what it will be like, Tag.”

He brushed his lips over her wet eyelashes. “Here's what it'll be like. We'll have this little house, all by ourselves. About two blocks from campus, with a little porch out front where we can sit and watch fireflies in the spring. We won't even have a phone, so none of our nosy relatives can call us and bug us. I'll hold you close all through the night—”

“Under our quilt?” And she smiled through the drying tears as Tag's daydream filled her head, taking the place of her mother's hurtful words.

“Under our quilt,” he agreed, pulling her closer into the safe curve of his chest. “And we'll wake up together and have Dr. Pepper and chocolate-covered peanuts for breakfast—for the protein—and walk to class together. Or maybe we'll ride bikes. Would you like to have bikes, Susie?”

The comforting memory faded with the sharp rap on her door. Susan looked up as Betsy, as usual, opened the door without waiting for a response.

“I'm going outside,” she said. “Got more work to do to get the garden cleaned up before the first hard frost. I'll watch out for Cody. You're sure you don't want me to call Addy and—”

“Don't.”

Betsy turned away. “Fine.”

And she was gone, leaving Susan blessedly alone with memories of a boy named Tag and the girl he called Susie.

* * *

T
AG POKED AT THE
long-cold ashes in his fireplace. Idly at first. But the longer he stood there, thinking, the more pissed off he got. Finally, he poked so hard he sent ashes flying all over the hearth.

“Dammit, Betsy Foster! Who the hell died and made you God!”

Tag never had been one to do what he was told. Fact was, he was about a hundred percent more likely to do exactly what he was told
not
to do.

So when Betsy Foster issued her personal restraining order on Sunday morning, Tag's second impulse—right after he'd followed his first and roared off on his bike—had been to march right back up to the Foster house and demand to see Susan.

He hadn't done it, though.

The bewildered, fearful look on her face when he'd dashed into her house the week before kept stopping him. As beautiful as ever—fine-boned and fair, with all those short, soft curls clinging to her forehead and cheekbones—Susan had nevertheless looked different in a way that made him cautious. And the things Sam had told him kept coming back to him, kept replaying again and again in his head.

Extensive memory loss.

Some residual loss of motor skills.

Easily confused. Easily upset.

Some nights, when he was fool enough to stay here alone, Tag thought he would go crazy if he didn't see her, if he didn't reassure himself that things weren't as bad as Sam had made them sound.

Other times, Tag thought it might be the final blow, the thing that would finally make him snap, if he discovered that Susan was permanently, irrevocably impaired.

Go ahead,
he egged himself on.
Put it on the table.

“What if she can't—” He tossed the poker into the grate, sending more ashes flying. He turned away abruptly. “Ah, hell! What if she really never remembers me?”

That, he thought, might be more than he could bear. Because then it would be the same as if none of it had happened. As if it had all been nothing but his fantasy, his teenaged daydreaming.

Tag stalked through the living room and into the kitchen, where he splashed water on his face. He stood there, letting it drip off his lashes, his mustache, onto his T-shirt. His eyes felt grainy from another mostly sleepless night. The shower an hour ago hadn't helped. The pot of coffee he had methodically devoured over the past ninety minutes hadn't helped. He knew he had to get moving, get his day on track. Malorie needed help this morning; a new shipment from the nursery was due this afternoon and he needed to clear a space in the fenced area to the rear of the shop.

But here he sat, the way he had spent more of his life than he cared to think of, obsessing over Susan Foster. Susan Hovis. Susie.

“Dammit!”

He grabbed his helmet, straddled his bike and spit gravel in his driveway until he hit Mimosa Lane.

Despite his intention to go to the store, soon his bike was spitting more gravel. This time, in Betsy Foster's drive. He hung his helmet from the handlebars and stalked toward the house, not knowing what he would say, not even knowing what he hoped to find.

Betsy Foster stepped around from the side of the house before he made it to the front door.

“I thought I made myself clear,” she said. “You aren't welcome here.”

“I came to see Susan, not you.”

A little boy toddled around the corner of the building. Tag vaguely remembered seeing the boy when he'd burst into the house before, and in the front seat of the car on Sunday. A little towhead with freckles.

“Susan isn't seeing company. And she certainly isn't seeing you.”

Tag decided to take the risk. After all, how much worse could it get? “Did she tell you that, Betsy? Or was that your decision?”

Betsy smiled. “She can't tell me, Eugene. She doesn't even remember you.”

The sickness spilled into his gut then, rose up through his lungs to choke him, pumped into his brain like a poison.
She doesn't even remember you.
So it was really true.

Betsy turned, took the little boy by the hand and started back around the house. “Come along, Cody.”

Tag stood there, uncertain he could get his legs to carry him, unsure he had the will to keep this day going. Betsy disappeared around the corner of the house, but the words she had used to stab him remained, continued to destroy him.

Then it hit him. Betsy would say anything. From the very beginning, she would have done or said anything to keep them apart. Why should things be different now?

He started after her, an angry roar rising in his chest. “You're lying! Damn you, you're lying to me!”

He caught up with her at the side of the house and grabbed her by the arm, whirling her around to face him.

“Take your hands off me,” she spat out, “or I'll have the sheriff come after you for assault.”

“You would, too, wouldn't you.” He flung her arm away from him.

“You're absolutely right I would. Why don't you do this whole town a favor and crawl back under whatever rock you've been hiding under these past twenty years!”

“I'm going to see Susan. You can't stop me.”

“I beg to disagree. As long as she's in my house—”

“I'll be back.” He backed away from her. “I'll keep coming back until you let me see her.”

Betsy looked over his shoulder and again a brittle smile touched her face. “Go right ahead, Eugene. She's here right now. I think you'll find I'm not lying at all. Susan doesn't even know who you are.”

Fear rose in his chest, stronger than his anger. He kept backing away from Betsy until he stood at the side porch. Then he turned and looked.

She sat in a wheelchair in the threshold between the porch and the room that had been the family room a lifetime ago. She looked frail and confused, maybe even frightened by the argument she'd just witnessed. Tag was overwhelmed by the need to go to her, to hold her in his arms, to comfort her and tell her everything was all right. He even took a step in her direction.

When he did, she flinched away, startled. Frightened.

Hurt tore through Tag's heart as her reaction sank in. “Susan?”

Her forehead wrinkled in a frown, and it was then that Tag once again noticed the pink scar that slashed across her forehead. What was he doing? He was in over his head here. He didn't know what he was dealing with.

Easily confused. Easily upset.

That was it. He had upset her. Betsy had upset her. Emotion made his throat raw, left him hoarse. He couldn't gentle his voice as much as he would've liked. “It's okay, Susan.”

She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head. “No, no, no. Tell me. Tell me who. Who?”