Love Remains (25 page)

“It’s not a true corset. It’s one of those long-line bustier bras. Only way I could fit into this dress without my top tummy roll showing. Can I borrow a pen?” She reached for Zarah’s purse and pulled one out and promptly used it to scratch her head through the wig. “So
who was that beautiful man sitting next to you tonight, Zarah?”

“You—you could see him?”

“Sure, during the curtain calls and when everyone was singing and the house lights were up. So, who is he?”

“He’s one of Flannery’s author friends.”

“And…?” Caylor raised her eyebrows, creating even more wrinkles in her artificially wrinkled forehead.

“And what? He had to go home because his muse called and told him he was out past his bedtime or something.”

Flannery made a sharp sound in the back of her throat. “That’s not what happened. He got an idea and wanted to get home to write before he forgot it. You understand that, don’t you, Caylor?”

Caylor, who’d had six romance novels hit national bestseller lists before she switched to writing sweet and inspirational romances, shrugged. “I don’t know. If I’m out and an idea for a scene strikes, I write it down in my notebook and then go back to what I’m doing.”

“See?” Zarah hooked her arm through Caylor’s. “He wasn’t any more interested in me than I am in him.”

“No, he’s just not still in love with someone who broke his heart half a lifetime ago.” Flannery crossed her arms. “You saw him today, didn’t you?”

“Him?” Zarah tried to affect an innocent expression. “Him who? Senator Warren? Yes, I saw him this afternoon.”

The astonished expressions on both Flannery’s and Caylor’s faces were worth knowing she’d have to tell them the full story now.

One good thing about Bobby’s coming home and Senator Todd Warren’s intrusion into her life: now
she
, Zarah Mitchell, was the one with man problems to talk about instead of always listening to Caylor or Flannery talking about their dating issues.

Hopefully tomorrow she’d have a chance to see if Bobby’s coming home would bring other good things back into her life. Like his respect, admiration, and love.

Chapter 18

T
rina paced the square layout of the first floor of the house—from kitchen to dining room to living room and into the entry hall, pausing at the front door each time she passed.

Lindy had sounded agitated on the phone—and that was so unlike her friend. Lindy could be high-strung and was very excitable but rarely anxious or worried. Not when her son had been in Vietnam nor when her grandson had been in the Middle East.

“Will you sit down already?” Victor looked up from his book when she entered the living room again. “Your wearing out the varnish on the floor isn’t going to make her get here any faster.”

“Something’s wrong. I know it is. Why wouldn’t she tell me on the phone whatever it is? Why did she have to come tell me face-to-face?” Trina stopped and straightened the already-straight books stuffed into the bookcase behind her husband.

“I’m certain there’s a reasonable explanation that doesn’t warrant—”

“Greeley has cancer—
she
has cancer!” She grabbed the back of the wingback chair in which Victor sat as though he had not a care in the world.

“Has she gone to the doctor recently?” Victor removed his reading glasses and twirled them with his hand.

“No—not that she told me. But maybe she didn’t want me to worry—”

The doorbell rang. Ignoring the arthritic ache in both knees, Trina bolted for the front door. The square frosted glass in the top half of the door revealed Lindy’s tall, trim figure.

Trina flung the door open. “What is it? Are you all right? What can I do for you?”

Lindy’s face registered her surprise. “Do for me? What are you talking about?”

Trina ushered her into the house. “Just tell me straight out. I can take it. Are you sick? Is it cancer?”

Lindy threw her head back and laughed, showing all her teeth—and she had lots of prominent ones. “I’m not sick. No, Greeley isn’t sick, either. No one in the family is sick as far as I know. I shouldn’t have sounded so mysterious over the phone obviously.” She grabbed Trina’s hand and started past the stairs toward the passageway to the kitchen.

In the living room, Victor looked up from his book. “Mornin’, Melinda.”

“Good morning, Victor. I’m just going to take Trina to the kitchen so that we don’t disturb you.” Lindy pulled Trina into the kitchen and slid the pocket doors shut behind them.

Knees aching, Trina sat down at the kitchen table. “What is going on?”

As if it were her kitchen instead of Trina’s, Lindy filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove then retrieved two teacups from the cabinet to the right of the stove and two teabags from a canister on the counter.

“You remember our little project?”

Trina shook her head, frowning. “Project?”

“Our grandchildren.” Lindy leaned a hip against the cabinet.

“The setups we’re supposed to be doing? I haven’t been able to get Zarah nailed down for a date in October for us to have the family cookout.”

“I haven’t been able to get a date out of my grandson, either. But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

The kettle whistled, and Lindy stopped to pour the steaming water into the cups and carry them to the table.

“Go on, please.” Trina took her cup and saucer and set it on the table for the tea to steep.

“I told you Robert has purchased a condominium over near Hillsboro Village and that he hopes to move by the end of the month.” Lindy dunked her bag repeatedly in her cup.

“Yes. Do you think that will create more of a problem with trying to set him up with one of our granddaughters?”

“Perhaps. But I have reason to believe that you and I may not have much to worry about.” A coy grin danced around Lindy’s wide mouth.

Her earlier anxiety gone, curiosity took a foothold—cautious curiosity, though, as Trina still couldn’t be certain how much Bobby had told his grandmother about his prior relationship with Zarah.

“Because Robert has been working such long hours, I volunteered to do his laundry for him this weekend so that he could get some rest and start packing what he’s had to use since he’s been living with us.”

Trina pulled her teabag out of the cup and added two sugar cubes to it. “Very thoughtful of you to ask instead of just doing it.”

“I know. I thought so, too.” Lindy squeezed out her teabag and set it on the saucer before adding four sugar cubes to her cup. “Well, having always had boys and men in the house, I learned a long time ago to check the pockets before putting anything in the washer. And in the pocket of the shirt Robert was wearing last night, I discovered this.”

Trina looked down at the object Lindy slid across the corner of the table toward her. She gasped.

“Recognize it?”

“Recognize it—I have the eight by ten hanging on my wall in the hallway.” She picked up Zarah’s senior picture. The white edges
around the image were no longer white but smudged, not sharp but soft, almost featherlike, indicating years of handling. She turned it over and recognized Zarah’s handwriting on the back. “
To my one and only. Love, Z.”

Trina looked up at Lindy—who regarded her with narrowed eyes.

“There’s something you haven’t told me about your granddaughter and my grandson, isn’t there?”

“Zarah asked me not to tell anyone. Not even you.”
Especially not you
. Trina looked again at the picture. Though smiling, Trina recognized the emptiness in Zarah’s eyes—the emptiness that had been almost overshadowed by pain when she’d arrived, unannounced, on their doorstep to tell them her father had kicked her out of the house and she had nowhere else to go. Between the emotional trauma inflicted on her by her father and that of having the man she thought was the love of her life walk out on her, Zarah had seemed unlikely to ever recover. But she had.

She fingered the soft edge of the photo—and then looked up at Lindy again. “Wait—you said you found this in Bobby’s shirt pocket? A shirt he was wearing just yesterday?”

Lindy nodded, eyes bright with excitement. “He told me that he knew Zarah when he was stationed in New Mexico and that they didn’t part on good terms. But I read what she wrote on the back of that picture, which leads me to believe he meant they broke up after dating for a while.”

Breaking up was putting it lightly.

“But I can only assume that if he’s still carrying her picture around with him all these years later, he must still have feelings for her. Has Zarah said anything to you about him? I know they’ve seen each other several times, as they’re in the same Sunday school class.”

Trina took a few sips of tea to give herself time to formulate an answer that wouldn’t reveal any secrets. “She mentioned running into him at the singles’ party before Labor Day. She hasn’t really said much else about it.” Not that she could repeat, anyway.

“Well, he’s going with us to see that musical this afternoon. I understand Zarah is going with y’all?”

“She is.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to watch them to see what happens and how they act around each other. And maybe, with a little hint here and there, it won’t be long until they realize they’re still in love with each other and”—Lindy waggled her eyebrows—”I can almost hear the great-grandbabies crying now.”

Chapter 19

P
eople in their midthirties who complained about feeling old only needed to take a ride in the backseat of their grandmother’s Cadillac to feel twelve years old again. Of course, Greedad had offered to let Bobby sit in the front seat so he’d have more legroom, but Bobby wouldn’t hear of his grandfather trying to get in and out of the backseat. So he folded himself into it instead.

Of course, if Mamm hadn’t gotten back from running her errand just in the nick of time, Bobby could have ridden in comfort in Greedad’s truck. But now they’d help the parking situation by arriving in only one vehicle. At least, that’s how Mamm had convinced him to ride with them—by complaining of how little parking there was on campus.

As soon as she put the car in park—in what did turn out to be a very small parking lot—Bobby jumped out and opened her door for her.

She slipped her arm through his. “My grandson, the gentleman.”

He shaded his eyes to look up at the massive columns extending the full height of the three-story building, lining the deep front porch. “This is the building the auditorium’s in?”

“Yes, sir.” Mamm tugged his arm to get him moving. “When we were in school here, it was where they held graduation and other
all-school assemblies. Now there are far too many students for that—they hold those events over in the field house.”

“It’s hard to believe that all these years later, you still live within five minutes of your alma mater.” He ascended the front steps ahead of his grandmother and opened the door for her.

“Thank you, dear.”

The doors opened into a large foyer, which made the perfect theater-style lobby. He fished the tickets out of his shirt pocket and handed them to the young woman standing at the double doors leading into the auditorium.

“It’s open seating, so please feel free to sit wherever you’d like.”

“Thanks.” He turned and waited for Mamm and Greedad to enter ahead of him. If the room hadn’t already been half filled with senior adults, he might have been able to pick out Mamm’s best friend. But it had been so many years since he’d seen Katrina Breitinger that he couldn’t trust his memory.

“There they are.”

Bobby looked in the direction of Mamm’s wave. “Seems like they got here early enough to get good seats.”

Mamm grabbed his hand and pulled him through the clumps of people impeding the aisles. The woman with the salt-and-pepper hair and a very prominent nose came out into the aisle and hugged Mamm like she hadn’t seen her in ages, which Bobby knew wasn’t the case. They’d seen each other on Thursday for their regular coffee date.

“Trina, Victor, you remember my grandson Robert.”

Zarah’s grandparents greeted him enthusiastically.

“And this is Celeste Evans. Her granddaughter is a professor here at JRU and is in the play.” Mamm pulled forward a petite lady with white hair in a short, very modern style.