The Matchmakers of Butternut Creek (17 page)

“I went in the bathroom and…um…sat down but didn’t turn on the light because I was in such a hurry.”

Gretchen laughed. “Then what, Mommy?”

“I heard tapping on the wood floor in the hall. Daffy was running back and forth, looking for me. She was my dog, you know. She became very worried when she couldn’t find me.”

“What did she do?” Carol pushed herself closer to her mother.

Using her fingers, Ouida explained. “She ran up and down the hall, frantic. I shouted, ‘I’m in here,’ but she couldn’t hear me.”

“’Cause she was deaf,” Carol said.

“’Cause of the ’fection,” Gretchen added.

“I yelled again, but she kept running back and forth. I could hear her searching because her nails tapped on the hardwood floor. Finally, when she passed the bathroom door, I picked up a roll of toilet paper and threw it at her. Not hard. I didn’t want to hurt her, just to get her attention so she could find me. The roll missed her by a few inches but she stopped in the hall and looked all around her.” Ouida acted that action out and the girls joined her. “And looked confused. I know she was thinking,
Why is someone throwing things at me?
”

“Did she find you?” Carol asked, knowing well the end of the story.

“No, I finished my business and went out to the hall. She was so happy to see me, she danced.” She hugged the girls. “After that, I always turned on the bathroom light so she could find me.”

George shoved away from the wall and took a few steps toward them.

“Doesn’t Mommy tell wonderful stories?” Carol said.

The girls leaped from the bed and put their arms around his legs and squeezed.

“Mama tells wonderful stories,” he said as he knelt to hold both girls.

The flowers had finally died. When she first received them, Gussie’d carefully removed any petals that had turned dark and tugged off wilted leaves.

Now the few remaining leaves and petals were crispy. Holding on to them seemed maudlin. She should toss them. Instead she wrapped them in a towel to prevent further disintegration and put them on the shelf in the closet behind her hiking boots.

She’d behaved like a jerk. Because Adam’s unexpected visit and the roses had startled her so much and she’d had to explain the flowers to her parents—well, all in all, she’d behaved rudely. As usual, she’d closed herself off. Probably acted almost catatonic when he’d handed her the bouquet, then she’d rushed out as if he had threatened her, which, of course, his very presence did. On top of that, she’d sent that abrupt email and pretended it took care of everything.

Aah, yes, her nemesis, that closing herself off, not responding, hoping that whatever intruded into her safe place would go away if she ignored it. Her normal operating procedure. In times of stress, she isolated herself, abandoned logic, and navigated on hysteria.

Well, she’d ignored Adam to shield herself from the situation for two weeks and still hadn’t forgotten. She hadn’t heard from Adam since her terse, “Thank you.” Why would she? She’d hardly encouraged him to keep in touch.

Bet he wouldn’t bring her flowers again anytime soon.

It would only be polite for her to write him a nice thank-you. He’d made an effort to visit her and how had she reacted?

Yes, she’d write him another, more cordial thank-you note. Not that she’d encourage him to answer because she wasn’t looking for anything from him.

When had she become such a terrible liar—and to herself?

She turned toward her laptop and composed another short note, a pleasant one. An apology as well as a much nicer thank-you. After reading and editing it several times, she decided it would serve her purpose: Be polite, show interest, don’t push. She paused before hitting
SEND
. Should she tell him she’d like to hear from him? Ask him how things were in Butternut Creek?

“Gussie.” Her mother tapped on her open door. “Your father and I are going to bed now.”

“Good night,” Gussie replied as she hit
SEND
.

“Are you going to stay up much longer? You need your sleep.”

“Only a few minutes,” Gussie said.

Was this any life for a thirty-one-year-old woman? Being told by her mother that she should go to bed? As a kid, Gussie turned off her light when her mother told her to, then hid beneath the covers, read with a flashlight. But now…

She sighed. She still lived in her parents’ home and habits were hard to break. Not that she regretted her decision to stay. She loved her parents and had chosen this life.

No reason not to get ready for bed. She had to get up by six, only eight hours away, and she liked to read for an hour before turning out the light. As she slipped into bed, Gussie took one more look toward the closet where she’d hidden—no, saved—the flowers. Not that she could see them from here.

It seemed like a metaphor for her life: hidden in a closet, nice and safe and isolated at the very time she yearned for romance, for another person in her life, just more, more of life.

Could she change? Live another way? Accept?

Could she allow herself to find another life, a different one?

Could she stop hiding?

Independence Day was a huge celebration that would take place around the courthouse square, a true small-town commemoration. The high school band would play in the pavilion and, because the fire ban had been lifted, a brilliant ten-minute display of fireworks would follow.

Toting lawn chairs, Hector, Bree, Janey, and Adam stopped by the Kowalskis’ at eight to take the girls to the show.

“They slept all afternoon so they should be fine staying up so late,” George said after he hugged his daughters. “This is Gretchen’s first fireworks display. She was too young to take last year.”

“Just a minute,” Ouida said before they could leave. “The mosquitoes and the no-see-ums will be all over tonight, so give me your arm.” She sprayed an oily but fragrant substance on Adam’s arms. “Now rub that on your face and spray it on your legs.”

“What is that?” Adam rubbed his arms, which covered his hands in the same substance.

“Skin lotion, but also the best thing ever for keeping the bugs away.”

Must be a Southern thing, Adam decided.

Once Ouida had sprayed everyone’s arms and George had covered their legs, the group oozed from the house on the protective oiliness covering their visible skin.

“Sure hope this stuff works,” Hector said, batting his hands at the clouds of biting flying creatures ahead of them.

It seemed to. By the time they arrived at the park and found a place for their chairs, the bugs left them alone. However, the stuff also made the kids so slippery that when Bree and Adam attempted to hold their hands to cross the street, they slid away.

As the sun dropped, the temperature fell to a comfortable ninety degrees.

The mayor welcomed the crowd, the band played patriotic songs, and everyone joined in singing. Janey played with Carol and Gretchen to keep them entertained.

Then the fireworks started. Brilliant flashes filled the sky and explosions went off. Carol looked up at the sky, enthralled, but Gretchen leaped into the air at the sounds. In only seconds she’d forced her body under Bree’s chair, sobbing. “They’re shooting at us,” Gretchen shouted. “They’re shooting at me.”

They left immediately and watched the display as they walked home, backward, Hector carrying Gretchen. In the safety of Hector’s arms, she settled down the farther they got from the noise.

When they’d returned the girls to their home and Bree had helped George wash them off and put them to bed, Bree and Hector sat on the porch swing while Adam sat inside to work on his very sketchy sermon.

Saturday, they went to a church picnic at Jesse’s farm. Late that night, after finishing what might be, with the help of the Holy Spirit, an acceptable sermon, Adam checked his email. Because he hadn’t checked for a few days, he had dozens of new messages.

He scrolled through, deleted spam, and read a short note from his sister before he saw a message from Gussie.

Why had she written?

Didn’t she realize he had gotten her message:
Not interested
? Or did she believe he needed to read it again, over and over because he was so thickheaded? The subject line said, “Hello.” Great. That helped a lot, told him exactly what the message contained. Did she plan to stomp on his ego again?

He didn’t want to open it. Really did not. He’d thought he’d recovered from the rejection over the past few weeks and from the embarrassment of taking flowers to a woman obviously astounded by his appearance and not interested in him. Guess not. But it could be about the area youth program. He couldn’t ignore that. He placed the cursor on the message.

Women really messed with a guy’s brain. Did they attend classes for that or did they learn it at their mother’s knee? Secrets passed down through matriarchs?

And yet, here he sat, gazing at the list of emails and not opening any more of them, especially not the one with the cheery “Hello.” Realizing the stupidity of doing nothing, he clicked on it.

“Sorry about the quick thank-you email I sent earlier. I really did like the flowers. They were on my desk for a week. You surprised me and I didn’t react well. I’m sorry. Again, thank you.”

What in the world did that mean? Did she want to hear from him?

Answering wouldn’t hurt. He typed a short, friendly response that ended with, “I’d love to hear from you.” No, that sounded desperate and needy and too emotional. He deleted the words, wrote, “Hope to hear from you soon,” and sent it.

Another middle-of-the-night call. Drat.

Adam fumbled for the phone but before he could say a word, a woman said, “Meet me at the diner for breakfast.”

He rubbed his eyes and attempted to focus on the alarm clock but they kept closing on him. Only a sliver of light filtered through the blinds. Guess it was what Texans called “dark thirty.”

“Who is this?” he mumbled.

“It’s Mattie.”

“Oh.” He paused in an effort to wrap his sleepy brain around the information. “What time is it?”

“Five fifteen.”

“Why in the world are you calling this early?” he muttered around a yawn. For a moment he fell back to sleep, but he woke up when Mattie nearly shouted through the receiver.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Now? Why?” Fully awake, he sat up in bed. “What happened? Did the church burn down?” Must have been some terrible emergency, a disaster, to warrant such an early call.

“No, I want to talk to you. Meet me at the diner at six.”

“Are you dying?” he asked stupidly, but no other explanation had leaped into his groggy brain.

“Of course not. Meet me. I’ll explain.”

“Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to get the kids going.” Not true. Hector could handle that, had done it often before, but Adam liked to give the kids a heads-up, drink a cup of coffee while Hector fixed breakfast. Of course, in the summer, that didn’t happen until nine thirty, but that excuse worked. He did not want to get up now. “How ’bout eight?”

“If you want everyone in town to listen in, fine.”

“Everyone in town will be listening in or will hear it from a friend at whatever time we meet.”

She sighed. “I know.”

“Do you want to wear a disguise? Have a secret password?”

“You’re really weird this early in the morning.”

“My social skills aren’t at their best before the sun rises.”

She laughed. “Okay. See you at eight.”

Coffeepot in hand, Birdie gave the breakfast crowd a quick once-over. Looked fine. Everyone was eating or chatting or sipping coffee.

“Here you go, Charley.” She poured a cup for Charley Parsons, the nice town plumber who was a hundred or more pounds overweight. When he sat at her table, she made him eat those fake eggs and didn’t allow him to use butter on his pancakes. Actually, she never brought him pancakes, just whole-grain toast with margarine. That’s why he always chose to sit at Dolores’s table, but Birdie filled his cup anyway. She also picked up the sugar shaker and moved it to another table.

She looked around. No one held up an empty cup.

Except for Farley Masterson. Birdie wanted to completely ignore him but he was a customer and her boss would throw a conniption if she didn’t serve every customer with a smile. Besides, he was at one of her tables and she needed the tips, both from Farley and from the person who took his place. If filling his cup would hurry old Farley along, she’d do it.

“Hey, good lookin’.” He winked and held his cup up.

Old fool. Did he think she didn’t know she looked like a—what had Mercedes called her?—a dried-up piece of beef jerky?

“How are you this morning?” Birdie asked in her brightest, most welcoming voice.

Obviously, Farley didn’t recognize how pleasant she was behaving, because he said, “Sounds like you’ve had a tough morning.”

She smiled.

“Dentures hurt?” he asked.

Old coot. He didn’t have the slightest idea how to court a woman. “I have all my own teeth, thank you.”

He tilted his head, puzzled. “I was being friendly.”

“If you have to explain you’re trying to be friendly, you might should work on that more.”

He winked.

Birdie was stunned. “Are you flirting?”

If he weren’t a customer, she’d pour the entire pot of coffee over him. It wasn’t hot enough to burn him, not badly.

Fortunately, he stopped talking and looked behind her. “Isn’t that your minister by the door?”

She turned to see Adam standing right next to Reverend Patillo. Didn’t that beat all? Had they come together? How long had they been standing there?

What was wrong with her? She hadn’t noticed their entrance and they had to have been waiting in line for a few minutes. Been too wrapped up in Farley Masterson and his antics and insults.

Of course, the arrival of the two ministers wasn’t all that big a thing. They were friends. Often stopped by for breakfast or coffee and a piece of pie, sometimes lunch. As much as she and Mercedes had attempted to match the two up when Adam first arrived in Butternut Creek, it had never taken. So what was he doing here with the Presbyterian minister? Trying to destroy their latest schemes?