"What are you doing out here?" Griffin asked from the doorway.
"Thinking."
"About what?"
"Life."
He yawned.
"Sleepy?" she asked.
"Tired to the bone."
"Good night, then."
He opened the door and stepped outside. The night air wasn't bad. Looked like maybe winter had done most of its damage but he couldn't be sure. It was a long time until it was really spring. He sat down beside her.
"Marita just called."
"And?"
"They'll be here on Friday to move their things out of the house. Paul will be moving in after that," he said.
"Tell me about Paul. I know Elsie pretty good and she's a sweetheart."
"Paul is fifty-five and Elsie is a little younger. Kids are already grown and gone. They are both hard workers, quiet and laid back folks."
"It'll be good to see Marita again. I know Lizzy misses her," Julie said. "You know what I feel like right now?"
"I've got a feeling you are about to tell me," he said.
"Damn straight I am. I feel like I'm in a rut. I feel like I don't know where I stand in the grand scheme of things around here."
A broken record inside Julie's head said, "Run, run, run," and wouldn't be quieted.
"I told you there would come a time when you'd get bored," he said.
"Not bored. Oh hell, you don't understand a thing I'm saying," she said.
"You got that right."
Pickup lights turned down the lane. Julie watched them as if they were lights sent just to get her out of the doldrums. She was surprised to see Milli and Beau step out of the truck.
Beau called out as he crossed the yard. "Hey, it's late but we were in the neighborhood. Got any coffee?"
"Sure. Come on in," Julie said.
"I'll just sit out here with Griff. Got a problem with a bull I want to talk to him about," Beau said.
Milli followed Julie into the house. "Date night. We went to Gainesville to dinner and a little shopping. Beau had ulterior motives. So here we are, making the big loop and going back home through the country."
"Come on inside. Elsie left cookies. The kids are in bed already," Julie said.
Julie arranged a tray with brownies and two cups of coffee and carried it out to the porch. When she returned, Milli had poured two cups of coffee and set the pan of brownies on the table.
"I've got a confession to make. I was determined not to like you. I got this idea that you were out to take Griffin for a ride, since Graham wasn't around for you to hoodwink. I was wrong. Nellie and Ellen got me and Jane told in a hurry when they heard that we'd been catty. I'm sorry," Milli said.
"Forgiven. Had I been in your shoes, I would have felt the same way," Julie said.
"So how are things goin' around here since the dance? Seemed like you and Griffin were getting along fairly well then," Milli asked.
"Tonight, honestly, all I want to do is run. Things were going pretty good and then slam, the brakes were put on the whole thing."
"Been there. Done it. Runnin' don't help."
"Griffin told me how you and Beau got together. I think of it as a fate miracle."
"A what?" Milli asked.
"I've doubted the existence of fate. You know my sister met and married Alvie Marlon in less than a week?"
"I heard about it. Cinderella story, ain't it?" Milli said.
"She had this theory that my moving to Saint Jo was all tangled up with fate and how that because I moved here she had this uncontrollable urge to quit her job and come to see me. Then because she succumbed to the voices in her head, she met Alvie and it was all fate."
Milli sipped coffee and nodded.
"So," Julie continued, "I asked Griffin if he believed in fate and he told me about you and Beau and how you ran back to west Texas after you'd had the fling with Beau in the trailer."
"Oh, honey, I just went home that time. The time that I ran was another thing altogether," Milli said.
"Well, you know how men are. Bare bones only. When did you really run away?"
"After the afternoon in the hay barn. A storm was on the horizon and Poppy John left his tractor out. He wanted it put in the barn, so I rode my horse out to the pasture to take care of it. Fate is a hussy and has to be female. Only a woman could plan something so intricate. Anyway, here comes fate again. Beau was out getting his prize bull away from a pecan tree in a lightning storm and we wound up in the same barn. One thing led to another and we damn near set the barn on fire ourselves."
"Milli!"
"Well, we did and let me tell you the sex was every bit as good as it was the night he was dog drunk in the trailer. It scared the liver out of me. The only thing I could hear was this booming voice inside my head that kept screaming at me to take Katy Scarlett and get the hell out of Dodge."
"What happened?" Julie asked.
"I got the hell out of Dodge. Made it all the way to the north side of Oklahoma and that old song by Trisha Yearwood came on the radio."
"Which one?"
"It's the one from the movie
Con Air.
'How Do I Live.' Remember it?"
"Yes, I do. But what made that one so special?"
"It talks about getting through a night without him and asks how could she live without him. She says he's the world, her heart, her soul, and that everything good in her life is him."
The song began to play in Julie's head.
"So I called Beau and turned the truck around and came back home. Learned a hard lesson that day. I couldn't run from my problems or my heart. My mind might say that I had to run, but my heart refused to go. And I couldn't live without it. I stopped the truck and cried my eyes out. I was scared to death Beau wouldn't have me back and that he'd tell me to take my sorry ass back to Hereford and never come around him again."
"I think I'm a believer," Julie said.
"Just because I told you about my life?" Milli questioned.
"No, because of what you said about fate being female," Julie answered.
Milli picked up another brownie. "I love these. Be nice to Elsie or I'll steal her. Now tell me truthfully if you believe in fate."
Julie sipped coffee. "I do and it is because of the timing. If I'd moved to Saint Jo before you came to Oklahoma, then you wouldn't be here to help me understand these feelings tonight. Only a woman could get lives organized in such a way that one woman could help another through a crisis. Besides, what were the chances that I'd have the feelings I had tonight, the same ones that told you to get the hell out of Dodge, on the very night that Beau needs to talk to Griffin about a bull?"
"You got a point there," Milli said.
"Hey, you women through gossipin' in there?" Beau called from the door.
Milli leaned across the distance and hugged Julie. "That's my cue. Hang in there. It'll work out. Maybe not as fast as your sister got hers solved, but Miss Fate will take care of it."
"I'll take your word for it."
"And make a trip to the barn. You'll be surprised how it helps every now and then," Milli winked.
"Griffin is six years younger than I am," Julie said.
"So what? You are both adults," Milli said.
The truck's taillights left Julie and Griffin sitting on the porch again. Her mood was only slightly better. At least the record inside her head had stopped. Now there was a very different song than what Milli had heard when she turned her truck around. It was by Trisha Yearwood, though. An older song called, "Thinkin' About You." She began to hum it without thinking.
Griffin recognized the tune and the words ran through his head. It was the gospel truth set to music, for sure. He had been thinking about Julie and he was ready to admit his life, his heart, and his soul weren't worth shit without her in them.
"Tell me a fate story. You promised me another one and we've never had the time for it," she said.
"It'll have to be short. I'm sleepy and it's getting late," he said.
"Give me the bare bones. I'll get Jane to fill in the details later," she said.
"Okay. I've got to go back to dirt, though."
"Why?" Julie said.
"Because that's where it starts. There were five little girls who grew up together south of Bowie. I guess they were hellions. Granny Nellie says they were the very ones that they used for that Ya-Ya movie. She was one of them and her sister, Ellen, was one and there were three others. One of those five married and moved to Arkansas. The others stayed pretty close. The one who moved away came home once a year and they holed up in an old house and had a big time. Then that one died, so they had their own personal little funeral. Put her picture on a raft made of Popsicle sticks or something like that and floated it out into the pond where they'd all five almost got caught skinny-dipping as teenagers. Set it on fire and gave her a private ceremony with a bottle of Jack Daniels."
"What's that got to do with Jane and Slade?" Julie asked.
"I told you it would have to start at dirt. Anyway that one that moved away, I can't ever remember all the names, had a daughter who had a daughter. Jane is the granddaughter and she'd heard of the five little girls but had no idea who the others were. So remember that while I tell this part of the story. Jane is living in Greenville, Mississippi. She's pretty close to her twenty-fifth birthday and when it arrives, she'll inherit her own oil company. She already owns a horse ranch. Her mother and father are both dead and her stepfather is the CEO of the oil company. But if she's dead before she's twenty-five, he inherits everything. So he puts a contract out on her."
Julie clamped her hand over her mouth. "You are shittin' me."
"Nope, he really did and it gets worse. He almost carried it off. He hired a woman assassin to kill Jane. The woman had a boyfriend trying to break into the business, so she passed the job off to him so he could make his bones." He stopped and yawned.
"Don't stop there," Julie said.
"Sure you don't want to save the rest until tomorrow night?"
She swatted his arm.
"So the man has to meet the mark, who is Jane, right? He goes to the oil company in the ruse of being some kind of art dealer and meets her. Decides to make a few bucks on the side. He courts her, takes out a million dollar insurance policy on her, proposes to her, and the wedding is about to come off. It's the night before and Jane can't sleep, so she goes out on the patio only to hear her groom and his girlfriend discussing the subject of her death in between bouts of lovemaking.
"Jane took only a few things and left some messages about having cold feet. She left her credit cards, took what cash she had, and ran. Slade told me that she went to Jackson and bought plane tickets to New York, left her car in the airport parking lot, took a taxi to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Dallas. When she got there, she had a tough time deciding on Houston or Wichita Falls. She chose the latter." Griffin yawned again.
"Keep going. It's not that late," Julie said.
"Meantime, Granny Nellie isn't supposed to be driving because she has macular degeneration and can't see. But Ellen has been visiting and wants to get home and she rides the bus in and out of Wichita Falls. Slade said he'd take her to the bus station but he's working late and the old girls panic. Granny Nellie drives to Wichita and has a wreck, which shakes her up, and even though she gets Ellen to the bus on time, she sits in the bus station a while to settle her nerves."
"Why didn't Ellen drive? She's pretty spunky." Julie asked.
"That's the other story. Ellen is a piece of work. Married umpteen times and ornery as they made them back in the old days. Short version is that she likes speed and Jack Daniels and totaled her boyfriend's Corvette one night when she'd had too much Jack. It was her thousandth offense driving while drunk, so they took her license."
Julie laughed until her sides ached. "I want to grow up and be just like her."
"Well, you've got a head start with that red hair and sass."
"Tell me more," Julie begged.
"Granny Nellie is sitting there trying to calm her nerves when she thinks she sees this ghost, but it's really Jane, who looks so much like her grandmother it's uncanny. She sits down beside Granny Nellie and before you know it, Granny Nellie has talked her into working for her. Her jobs are to drive Granny Nellie and Ellen, when she's in Ringgold, anywhere they want to go and to help with the kitchen duties. But she doesn't say a word about knowing who Jane has to be."
"So she met Slade and it was happily-ever-after?"
"God no! She met Slade, who thought she was a con artist of some kind and it was hell-ever-after. I was over there for Granny Nellie's party and he had this girlfriend who was the devil's spawn. That woman and her girls gave Jane and Lizzy hell all day long and Slade was right there letting it happen. Lord, he hated Jane with a passion. And she didn't back down a step from him. I remember she said once that she was going to grow up and be like Ellen, too. Y'all are about two of a kind."
"I don't hate you, Griffin," Julie said softly.
"Well, stop the damn presses. There's a new front page story."
"I wouldn't live with someone I hated," she said.
"So I'm just your roommate?"