A Chance of a Lifetime (9 page)

The other blonde took over. “We work on a first-name basis around here. The three of us are easy enough to remember—Meredith, Jessy, Angela—and fortunately, the rest of you, dogs included, all wear name tags. We do have some cats who are also tagged, but you'll probably never get close enough to have any interaction with them. They prefer to be worshipped from afar.”

Along with the Lab, Gran had had a cat. It had had three legs and was blind in one eye, and it gave the Lab so many vicious swipes with its paw that he'd whimpered and hidden when he saw it coming. Calvin had had to hide from it a few times, too. He hadn't worshipped it—hadn't even liked it—but he'd had a very healthy respect for it.

They divided into groups, Calvin finding himself alone with the redhead. She was close to a foot shorter than him, but she moved fast and talked slow, the sharp edges of her words softened by a lazy Southern accent that reminded him of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. She wore shorts and a top that exposed her legs and arms, thick-soled sandals, and a platinum-set diamond on her left hand.

He followed her inside the shelter and through to the backyard, where she took two pairs of gloves and two rakes from a storage shed built against the outside wall. “It's your lucky day, Calvin—lucky that it's not cold, raining, or snowing, that is, because we're cleaning the yard.”

“Cleaning?” He accepted a rake, then looked past her. “Oh. ‘Cleaning.'” There were a lot of dogs at the shelter, some inside at the moment, the rest outside, yapping at them or keeping their distance. A lot of dogs equaled a lot of dog sh—

“We call it poo, but feel free to use whatever word fits best for you. I'll tell you, if they could clean up after themselves, they'd be the perfect creature.”

“More perfect than the guy who gave you that ring?”

She eyed it a moment, then shrugged. “Well, he does clean up after himself. Mostly. How long have you been in Tallgrass?”

“A couple weeks. How long have you been working here?”

“About six months. These guys saved my life, so I try to return the favor.”

He didn't ask, didn't want to know, didn't care, except somewhere inside, maybe where his mom and dad had ingrained in him to care. As they began raking dog shit, er, poo into piles to shovel into the nearby wheelbarrow, he asked, “How?”

Jessy looked at him, her eyes the clearest, cleanest green he'd ever seen. “I'm an alcoholic,” she said evenly, without self-consciousness or embarrassment. “Getting a job here helped me stop drinking.”

Would he ever be able to state his problem as easily as she did? To set aside the shame at how weak he'd become, to admit that life had overwhelmed him so deeply that he hadn't wanted to live? He wanted to get to that point. If he was going to be in this world, then he wanted to
be
in it. To accomplish things. Love people. Laugh. Be happy.

Right now he'd settle for not hurting.

“Congratulations,” he said shortly.

“It's an ongoing battle, but I've got support. From my fiancé”—she waggled her fingers, drawing attention to the ring—“his family, my friends, and my babies.” At that, she bent to scratch a young beagle under its chin. “You guys are sweet babies, aren't you?”

A half-dozen more dogs crowded in for their scratches, and she accommodated them all before returning to the raking.

Calvin had family and friends. Not close friends, like he, J'Myel, and Bennie had been, but friends who'd been where he'd been and seen what he'd seen. Friends who'd found some weakness in themselves and dealt with it better than he had.

Friends who were scattered everywhere around the world but here. And the guys with PTSD in the WTU company—they'd been there, done that, gotten damaged in the process—but they weren't friends. Maybe someday they would be, maybe not. But they hadn't coped any better than he had to wind up in the WTU.

He and Jessy started raking in the back corner of the fenced yard. By the time they'd cleaned a nice-sized section, one of the standoffish dogs, a tall muscular mix of breeds, circled in the middle of it and added a new pile.

Jessy grinned as she pushed her hair from her face. “It's like every kind of cleaning I've ever done. You get about ten seconds to enjoy it, then the crap starts piling up again.”

Calvin had heard similar comments from his mom.
I just finished the laundry, and there you are in dirty clothes. I just washed the last dish, and now I have to dirty new ones to fix dinner.

“The solution would be to not waste time in futile tasks that you'll just have to do again.”

“Oh, this is not futile. Setting aside the obvious downside of a yard full of poo, there's the secondary and more offensive scourge: flies. You know in Oklahoma, they're classified as instruments of torture. If we don't keep the yard clean, they'll carry off animals and small workers, and since I'm the smallest one here…”

Calvin's laugh was rusty. The poo did smell something awful, but there weren't any flies to do battle with today, and it was a nice, cool, sunny day to be out. It was a good change from his last job of dealing with troops to his most recent assignment as a professional patient. Things could be worse.

By the time they'd cleared the back third of the yard, other teams were finishing the job in the side yards. While explaining that a kind rancher who had more land than he used would haul the poo away for them, Jessy returned their tools to the shed, then led him inside. As they passed through the storage room, he caught a glimpse of a cat black as midnight except for a white spot on his forehead. The animal moved silently, elegantly stalking along an upper shelf, tail lazily above him. He reminded him of Gran's old cat, not in looks but in the stealthy way he moved that suggested confidence, brashness, pride, and trouble.

About half the space of the shelter was filled with kennels. Just the number of dogs outside was disheartening, but adding in those who remained in their kennels was depressing. “Where do they all come from?”

“Some are pets who've been surrendered by people who were moving or because their owners have died. We're a no-kill shelter, so we take some in from shelters where they're scheduled to be euthanized. Some are strays who aren't tagged or chipped, but most of them are dumped. Your dog has puppies you don't want, so you take them for a drive, toss them out somewhere far from home, and problem solved.”

She pointed out the kennel dogs recovering from spaying, neutering, or injuries they'd had upon arriving. A few were large animals, a couple of German shepherds and mixes, who reminded him of the working military dogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beautiful animals, smarter than the average soldier. And sad. These guys were sad, too.

“You don't put any of them down,” he repeated, wanting confirmation as he looked at them.

“Only when their condition is so far gone that Meredith can't help. We don't let them suffer.”

Physically maybe, but what about mentally?

One of the shepherds became aware of his attention, stood, and moved to the front of its cage. Almost silently, it drew back its lips to show a deadly set of teeth, then exploded into cringe-inducing barks.

“Heidi,” Jessy chastened. “She considers it her job to shake things up around here every few hours. She's not ready yet to put up for adoption. We're still working on her manners.”

“Too vicious?”

“Oh, no. If she didn't know she was safe in her kennel, she'd be huddling in the back corner, whimpering and shaking like a leaf. She's so afraid of people that Meredith had to sedate her to bring her here. Meredith's been working with her, but progress is slow. I told her, first thing, she needs to give that baby a name to be proud of. Heidi's fine for a little girl with blond braids, but not for a hundred-ten-pound authority figure of a shepherd.”

“Yeah, maybe something like Bear, Killer, or Fang would fit better,” he agreed. “Or maybe Jessy.”

She flashed a grin at him. “I like you, Calvin Sweet. We're gonna have fun here.”

D
o you suppose I could learn to knit and make a gift in time for Christmas?” Bennie wondered aloud as she picked up a booklet of patterns for knitting scarves with various embellishments. Though she'd been speaking to Marti, on the next aisle looking at jewelry-making material, it was a shop clerk who answered.

“One of those scarves would be pretty simple. Once you get started, it's really just a matter of keeping it going until you've got it long enough. Is that what you were thinking of?”

“Actually, I was thinking about a blanket for our friend's baby.”

Marti glanced over the top shelf that separated them. “Then why were you looking at patterns for scarves?”

“Marti, please don't expect me to be rational and logical on my day off. It's been a long week. Work, class, and—” Bennie practically bit her tongue before Calvin's name could get out. She'd never told anyone in the margarita club about Calvin and had never thought she would. Had
never
thought the Army would send him back here. What were the odds of that?

Hard to calculate, especially since she didn't even know what Calvin's field was. He and J'Myel had gone into Infantry together, but after Calvin had earned his bachelor's degree, she assumed the Army had put him someplace where they could take advantage of his specific education. By then, the great divide had appeared, and none of them had tried to cross it.

“You're off Sunday, too,” Marti reminded her, shaking Bennie's thoughts back to now.

“Breakfast, Sunday school, church, after-church dinner, studying, evening church, bed. Show me a spare minute.”

“Hmm. Well, Sunday's a day of rest for me,” Marti said, “which means my Saturdays are pretty calm, too.”

Calm probably came pretty easily when Marti didn't go to church or school, wasn't living with anyone, and didn't have to worry about meals. Everything she put down was exactly where she left it when she wanted it again, and if she wanted ice cream for breakfast, popcorn for lunch, and cotton candy for dinner, she got exactly that, without any lectures on balanced diets.

Bennie wouldn't trade places with her for the world.

The shop clerk was still waiting to explain the intricacies of knitting, but Bennie made a face. “You know, I think I'd rather try a quilt. Cut out pieces of material, sew them together, quilt them…I'm pretty sure I can do that while ‘knit one, purl two' is a foreign language. Besides, Mama used to quilt. She'll help me.” Mama would help make little John Gomez's first Christmas quilt something really special.

“We have some beautiful quilting fabric over here, along with pattern books,” the sales girl said. “If you're a beginner, you might want to try a simple nine patch, but if your mother's experienced and working with you, you can do an appliqué piece so beautiful you'll cringe to see the baby touch it.”

“When Joshua and I moved here, my mother gave me a chest filled with baby blankets and quilts and garments,” Marti remarked, holding a large dangly string of beads to one ear and studying herself in the mirror. “They'd all been gifts to me when I was a baby, but she was sure I would get them dirty. Overflowing diapers, spit-up, drool—you know, all those nasty things newborns do. So she never dressed me in the clothes or wrapped me in the blankets.”

“At least she gave them to you in pristine condition so you could use them with your own baby if you have one.”

“You'd think, but you see, now they're thirty-plus years old. They're
vintage
baby clothes. Heirlooms. And I couldn't possibly dress my infant in family heirlooms except for special occasions.”

Bennie laughed at Marti's wry head shake. She'd heard a lot of stories about Marti's mother, Eugenie. She was currently in her fourth widowhood—or was it fifth?—and each husband who'd passed had left her with even more money than before. She lived in Florida, where the world rotated around her, dated endlessly, and sent frequent dispatches to Marti and her brothers. As far as Bennie knew, Eugenie had never visited Tallgrass and, with luck, Marti liked to believe, never would.

The margarita sisters liked to remind her that luck could and often did change.

Following the clerk, Bennie found herself in the fabric section, surrounded by bolts of material in more colors and patterns and fabrics than she'd ever imagined. Immediately, Mama's opinion on dinner buffets came to Bennie's mind:
Too many choices is just too many choices.
How was she supposed to pick only six or eight fabrics for John's quilt when they were all beautiful and colorful?

The clerk's smile was a tad smug. “I'll let you look and check back in a few minutes.”

Bennie browsed baby-patterned material, little boy themes, Christmas themes, jewel-toned solids, high school and state university logos, and specialty fabrics. There was a hand-painted fabric that she absolutely loved, but it cost more per yard than her college classes per credit hour.

She was exaggerating a little. Okay, maybe a lot, but still…The idea of working with the gorgeous material made her smile, as well as the idea of John teething and slobbering all over it.

Her meandering had taken her to the front windows of the craft store. She was glancing outside, acknowledging that she would have to come back with Mama to help her make choices, when a familiar figure on the sidewalk caught her attention. Rickey Duncan, tall and broad-shouldered, was deep in conversation with a man whose back was to her, but when she waved, Rickey's face brightened, and he waved back, gesturing her to join them.

Then his companion turned, and Bennie's breath caught. There were a boatload of tall, slender, muscular black men in town. She had to start reminding herself that any one of them, seen from a disadvantageous position, could be Calvin.

Leaving the few items she'd selected to buy on the measuring table, she slipped out the nearby door, a ready smile on her face. “Rickey!” she said with real pleasure as she stepped into his embrace. Their old friend who'd taken the drugs, sex, and rock-'n'-roll path to the ministry was easily one of the most cheerful people she knew. He was so grateful for the life he lived—wife, kids, friends, calling—that when he said he couldn't complain, he truly meant he couldn't complain.

Bennie wished she had that kind of utter and complete gratitude.

“I'm trying to persuade Calvin to drop in on our service tomorrow morning,” Rickey said as she stepped back to include the other man in their small circle.

“If I visited your church, Emmeline would track us both down for a come-to-Jesus meeting, and it wouldn't be pretty,” Calvin said. His gaze flickered across Bennie's face, away, back again, then away. She didn't know if he was aware of it, but his feet were shifting, too, like he was looking to get away before he'd fully arrived. Was it just her that made him want to run? Though her skin should be plenty thick enough with all her heartaches, the idea stung. But it beat the alternative, that everyone made him so antsy he wanted to escape. That was entirely too sad a possibility.

“Everyone in town knows the Sweets and the Pickerings and Miss Emmeline's people founded that church over in the Flats,” Rickey said, “and not one of them's ever gone anywhere else since.”

“We make allowances for weddings, baptisms, and funerals,” Bennie teased.

Across the street, a horn honked, and Rickey waved in that direction. Bennie glanced across at a silver minivan with Rickey's wife in the passenger seat and their four kids crowded into the driver's and left rear seats, heads stuck out the windows, taking turns calling their daddy. “I'd better go before they make a real disturbance. Calvin, it's really good to see you.” Rickey enveloped Calvin in a hug. Bennie had expected it—most pastors she knew were huggers—but Calvin hadn't, and she watched how stiffly he held himself. Was hugging something else he'd given up along with J'Myel, visits home, and her?

That little sting inside sharpened its bite.

After another blast of the horn, Rickey called, “I'm coming,” then trotted across the street at the first break in traffic.

“Are all those kids his?” Calvin asked quietly.

“Yep. And one more on the way. They'll have five under the age of six.”

“Wow.”

She felt the same in a stupefied kind of
Don't they know what birth control is?
way.

As the Duncans drove away with one last wave, Calvin faced the building, his gaze sliding across the bright sign overhead. “‘Crafty Minds,'” he read before glancing at her. “Even in vacation Bible school, the stuff you made with ice cream sticks was crooked and fell apart before we got home. Don't tell me you finally learned to use glue or knit or thread a needle.”

Huh. That look in his eyes showed a tiny bit of the humor she'd always loved about him, and with a little effort, the set of his mouth could almost become a smile. Lord, how she'd missed his smiles.

“I'll have you know I've watched Mama do all those things a million times. She's even let me help cut out quilt pieces before.” She glanced inside and saw Marti, still lingering on the jewelry aisle, trying to pretend she wasn't paying more attention to Bennie and Calvin than she was to the merchandise.
Nobody special,
Bennie would say when she asked.
Just some guy I went to high school with. He and J'Myel and I were friends.
With the right degree of carelessness and no guilty look in her eyes, Marti might even believe her.

Why shouldn't she? It was true. Mostly.

“My friend Ilena had a baby this summer. Kid's got a wonderful mom and a dad who—” Breaking off, she swallowed hard. Combat deaths could be hard to talk about, especially with someone with firsthand experience. She knew Calvin had lost friends, and those losses had hit him hard. How accustomed was he to a discussion of death that, on the surface, seemed casual? Less than she and the margarita girls, that was sure.

She moistened her lips before continuing in the most normal voice she could force. “A dad who died in Afghanistan before he was born, plus eight or ten godmothers. I want to do something special for John's first Christmas, so I was checking the possibilities.”

She'd been right that it wasn't an easy topic for him. A hard look swept across his face, and he took a few steps back, scuffing his feet on the pavement. She thought again that he was emotionally preparing to flee but not necessarily from her this time. He was just itching to run in general.

The bell dinged behind her, and Marti came to stand next to Bennie. Maybe it was the appearance of a gorgeous woman that eased the lines of his face, or maybe it was just the interruption itself, the third person to change the direction of the conversation. Whatever, Bennie actually felt the air around Calvin soften.

“There I am looking at beads and loops and lobster claws, and you're standing out here talking to a man.” Marti stuck her hand out, but just as surely as Rickey hadn't given Calvin a chance regarding the hug, she wasn't going to give him a chance to refuse the handshake. He seemed to realize that and offered his hand, his long brown fingers easily, perfunctorily gripping hers.

For a moment, Bennie envied Marti the touch. She and Calvin had always been generous with physical contact—a punch here, a hug there, shoulder bumps everywhere. They had been so comfortable together that the awkwardness now just about broke her heart.

“I'm Marti Levine.”

“Calvin Sweet.”

“Oh, the plays on words I could make with that name.”

Something of a smile flitted across his face. It wasn't the first time he'd heard that remark, Bennie knew. His last name had been a source of teasing since he started kindergarten.

“But I won't.” Marti directed her gaze at Bennie. “You've been holding out on us.”

“Calvin's parents live down the street from Mama and me. He just came to town a few weeks ago.”

Marti nodded, her sleek ponytail bobbing. “Are you married, Calvin?”

His face darkened a shade. “No.”

“Looking?”

Another shade of embarrassment as curiosity deep inside Bennie perked its little ears. “Not at the moment.”

“Like to have fun?”

“Marti,” Bennie chastened, telling herself it was just curiosity. The old friendship, the nosiness she'd inherited from Mama. Nothing more. “We're going back inside now to finish our shopping.”

As Bennie shoved Marti back into the store, her friend caught hold of the door. “If you decide your answer is yes, Calvin, I know a lot of wonderful, fun, beautiful, available women who would love to meet you.”

To Bennie's surprise when she turned around again, Calvin was still there. She'd thought he would take advantage of the distraction to get the heck out of Dodge. He stood there, though, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, and that almost-a-smile was back in place. “Matchmaker, weird, or just desperately seeking?”

“Matchmaker. I'm sure the only thing Marti has ever been desperate about was her husband's death. That was tough for her, but of course, that's true of all of us.”

“All?” he echoed.

“My best friends here in town.” Again, she hesitated a moment before plunging in. “You've heard of wives' clubs. Well, we've got a widows' club. The Tuesday Night Margarita Club. All our husbands died in the war.”

Bennie was used to various reactions when she told people about the margarita club. Some people instinctually understood the club for what it was: a group of women helping each other through the worst times of their lives. There were some, though, who heard “widow” and imagined a bunch of heartbroken women, complete with black scarves and veils, who sat in gloomy rooms talking endlessly about their dead husbands, God rest their souls. To ensure Calvin wasn't in that last group, she added, “Forget the widow part. Just hear the best friends part.”