Small Town Girl (14 page)

“But he did. I think that may be because of you.”

Kate was quiet a minute before she said, “Are you telling me I shouldn’t see him again?”

“No. You’re not a child. You can see who you want. All I’m telling you and all Mike’s telling you is to be careful.”

“Don’t worry, Mama.” Kate leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Jay will be heading on down the road again soon, and then we’ll probably never see him again.” Kate was surprised at the way those words bothered her.

“You may be right. Just make sure he doesn’t take your heart with him.” She put her hand on Kate’s cheek. “Hearts are hard to get back once you give them away.”

“I’m glad you didn’t want to get your heart back from Daddy.”

“Never.”

“Not even when . . .” Kate let her thought stay unspoken. She shouldn’t have brought up those bad years before her father quit drinking.

“Never means never, Kate. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. When your father and I made those promises to each other, we meant them. And that’s all we want for you girls. The same kind of love that will endure whatever life throws your way.”

Kate smiled and tried to lighten the moment. “Well, one down. Three to go.”

“Maybe two down. Victoria seems pretty set on her choice.” Mama peered past Kate toward the couple on the couch inside. “Look at them. Both so young. Your father says he knew he loved me when he was that age and even younger.”

“You think she’s too young?”

“Victoria knows what she wants.” Her mother stood up and reached a hand down toward Kate to pull her to her feet. “You’ll find your dreams too.”

“If I knew what those dreams were,” Kate said.

“You do know, Kate. Your problem is figuring out which to do first.” Her mother caught both her hands and held
them. “Think about it. What would you do if you could do anything in the world?”

“You mean like go around the world in eighty days?”

Her mother gave her hands a shake. “Be serious.”

“Go to college.” The words spilled out. She’d never spoken them aloud to her mother. There wasn’t money for college. “I know there’s no way and I can’t, but there’s so much I don’t know yet. That I want to know.”

“My Kate, always reaching for more. But if you can dream it, it can happen.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Nor do I right now, but the good Lord can sometimes open unseen doors to us to give us the desires of our heart.” She squeezed Kate’s hands and turned her loose. “Let’s go in and listen to Phileas Fogg. Talk about an impossible dream. Jules Verne came up with some interesting ones in his stories.”

Kate trailed after her into the house. College was only the beginning of her impossible dreams. She thought of her notebooks full of scribbled stories and wondered if those stories would ever be in a book like Jules Verne’s for people to read aloud in the night.

T
he sunshine-filled days of October kept going. A few nights carried a nip in the air that began to color the leaves until just walking up to the store to help her mother was a treat. The red and gold leaves were bright against the deep blue of the sky. Cotton clouds floated above them. The talk at the store was more about the World Series and Joe DiMaggio’s hit total for the baseball season than the war. People did talk about how Carl’s mother was worried sick about Carl going off to the Navy, while sometimes casting a curious eye toward Kate, but she simply pretended not to notice.

She was getting very good at pretending. So good that sometimes even she didn’t know when she was pretending and when she wasn’t. She laughed with the people at the store as she measured out their beans or penny nails. She talked her mother into emptying a couple of shelves for books—not to sell, but to exchange or loan out like a tiny library. When her father wasn’t at the store, she pumped the gas or tried to. Most of the men jumped out of their cars to do it themselves after she set the pump. They did let her wash their windshields while they filled their tanks.

In ways, everything was the same. In other ways, everything
was different. Evie was Mrs. Mike Champion, the preacher’s wife. Carl was gone. Alice Wilcher did her best to jab Kate with every tidbit of news about Carl when she came into the store. That didn’t bother Kate as much as the way the girl went on and on about Jay Tanner. It was more than plain that Alice had succumbed to Jay’s charms. She hinted that the feelings were mutual.

“A girl knows,” she told Kate on Friday morning when she stopped by to get a loaf of bread for her mother.

“Knows what? The kind of bread her mother wants?” Kate smiled to take some of the bite out of her words. But the fact was, she’d never been overly fond of Alice Wilcher. The girl was only a little older than Tori, but half the time she acted as if she didn’t have good sense. Now thinking she was going to catch the eye of Jay Tanner was proving that triple.

But then, maybe it was Kate who was fooling herself. Maybe Jay did like Alice or at least was leading her on enough to make her one of the brokenhearted girls he would leave behind in Rosey Corner.

“Very funny.” Alice gave Kate a look before going on airily. “What a girl knows is when a man is interested in her. She can sense it.”

“So you and Jay been doing things together?” Kate kept her voice neutral as she straightened the candy bars next to the cash register. A last-second temptation for their customers. The penny candy and bubblegum were on the other end of the counter.

“I see him every day after school.” Alice fluffed up her hair.

“I guess you’ve been going by Mrs. Harrelson’s then. Do you think Graham will ever get that poor woman’s house painted?” Kate tried to change the subject. Let Alice have her fantasies. What difference did that make to Kate? She had plenty of her own, none any truer than Alice’s.

“Oh, I’m sure they will, now that Jay’s there doing most
of the work. He’s always up on the ladder painting the hard-to-reach places while that crazy old Graham watches more times than not.”

“Graham’s not as young as he used to be.”

“He’s not the only one.” Alice gave her a pointed look as she waited for Kate to ring up the bread. Kate’s mother was in the back of the store helping old Mrs. Jenkins gather up the groceries she needed. Lorena was playing jacks in the back room. If Kate stopped to listen, she could hear the jack ball bouncing against the floor.

“Are you talking about me?” Kate managed a laugh as she took Alice’s money.

“Well, you have to admit that most of the girls your age here in Rosey Corner are married. And look at Ruth Ann Wilson with one baby already and another on the way.”

“Ruth Ann told us she was expecting again the last time she was in the store.” Kate picked Alice’s change out of the cash register drawer. She took her time while silently repeating her mother’s rule to always be nice to the customers, whether they deserved niceness or not. “Her little girl is cute as can be. Ruth Ann lets me hold her while she gets her groceries.”

“I didn’t figure you liked babies.”

“Oh?” She handed Alice her change and put the bread in a sack. “Why in the world would you think that?”

“The way you spurned poor Carl and after the two of you had been a couple since forever.”

“We were friends. Never a couple.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was sorry she’d wasted her breath on Alice.

“You must have forgotten to tell Carl that.” Alice dropped her change down into her coin purse.

“Maybe I did.” Kate gripped the edge of the counter. She needed to keep her hands occupied before she grabbed an
onion or something to throw at Alice’s head. “But some things you just think people should know.”

“Are you saying you never led Carl on? Made him think you were going to marry him?”

Kate relaxed her grip on the counter. She brushed her hands over the smooth wood as though clearing spilled flour from its surface. “What I’m saying is that I never thought we were a couple. You’ll have to ask Carl what he thought.”

“Well, now, that won’t be too easy, will it? Although I did promise to write to him. Several of us at school did, since we figured you wouldn’t be writing him and the poor boy, going off to the service and all.”

“That’s really nice of you, and I’m sure Carl will find a girl to make him happy.” Kate kept her smile steady as she fixed her eyes on Alice’s face. She’d never noticed before how there was something slightly off center about the girl’s nose. Maybe from poking it in everybody else’s business. She might have kindly advised Alice of that fact, except her mother and Mrs. Jenkins were coming toward them. So instead she said, “Maybe even you, after you write him all those letters.”

Alice laughed a little as she picked up her sack. “I’d rather have my boyfriends closer to home than . . .” She hesitated. “Where did he say he might go?”

“Hawaii,” Kate supplied.

“Right here in Rosey Corner suits me better.” Alice’s lips turned up in a smirk. “Where Jay Tanner just happens to be.”

Kate’s mother gave Kate a warning look as she set Mrs. Jenkins’s basket of groceries on the counter.

Mrs. Jenkins, who couldn’t hear thunder, peered toward Alice and said, “A tanker blew up? Here in Rosey Corner? I knew putting gasoline in tanks was a bad idea.”

Kate bit her lip to keep from smiling as she turned away from Alice and began ringing up the old lady’s groceries. Mrs. Jenkins was a sweet little woman, but conversations
with her could fly off into some weird directions. Kate let her mother handle this one.

She patted Mrs. Jenkins’s hand. “No, no, Stella. Nothing’s blown up. Yet.” Kate’s mother sent another look Kate’s way, before smiling over at Alice. “How’s your mother, dear? I haven’t seen her out for a while.”

Alice answered with as few words as possible as she hurried out the door. Maybe worrying about those gas tanks out in front of the store blowing up.

Kate picked up the groceries to carry them home for Mrs. Jenkins. There was no way the little woman with her shoulders humped over from her many years could carry them herself. Lorena deserted her jacks game and caught up with them out on the road. She liked Mrs. Jenkins.

Mrs. Jenkins put her hand on Lorena’s head and asked, “Where were you hiding? I didn’t see you at the store.”

“I was in the back room,” Lorena said.

“You were on the moon?” The old lady leaned her whole body to the side to peer up at the sky. “How was it up there?”

Lorena giggled and then shouted toward Mrs. Jenkins’s good ear. “Very bright. All aglow like a million lightning bugs.”

“Bugs. Crawly old things. I never was one to question the good Lord’s design, but if I was, I’d wonder why he gave bugs so many legs.”

“That’s a good question,” Kate said.

“Squash ’em. Yes, that’s what I do.” The old lady banged her cane down on the road.

After they got Mrs. Jenkins and her groceries home, Lorena tugged Kate in the opposite direction from the store. “Come on. Mrs. Harrelson’s house is right down the road.”

“Mama might need us back at the store,” Kate said.

She’d managed to avoid Jay Tanner all week while Mike’s warning echoed in her head. A warning underlined by her
mother.
Be careful. Don’t be charmed. Avoid heartbreak.
Excellent advice that she was ready to follow. She had no intention of continuing to trip up on the path of love the way she already had with her impossible yearning after Mike. That had been a childish feeling she’d allowed to stick around in her heart way too long. So now she was doing some inner housecleaning, stripping away every wrong thought that might give her trouble. She wasn’t about to move equally hopeless and foolish feelings into her heart to take their place.

But Lorena didn’t know any of that. She just knew the sun was shining and they were three houses away from Mrs. Harrelson’s. “I’ve got Graham’s favorite hard candy. Tanner likes it too.”

“Well, go on and take it. I’ll see you back at the store.”

Lorena clung to Kate’s arm. “Graham’s been asking where you’ve disappeared to. Says he hasn’t seen you in a gazillion days.” Lorena grinned. She liked talking like Graham. Then she looked on down the road and her smile faded as her voice took on a pleading tone. “Please go with me, Kate. You know I don’t like going past that house.”

Lorena slid her eyes toward Ella Baxter’s house where she’d spent several very unhappy weeks years ago.

“You don’t have anything to worry about with Mrs. Baxter now. Nobody will ever take you away from us again.” Kate put her arm around Lorena and hugged her close against her side.

“I know, but I still don’t like walking past that house by myself.”

“But you do all the time, don’t you?”

Lorena shook her head a little. “Uh-uh. Not unless Graham’s with me. Or Fern or you. Please! Mama said we could.”

“Oh, all right.”

Kate gave in. Her mother would be closing the store before long anyway, and she did miss Graham. Nobody had said
to avoid Jay completely. Just to be careful. It would surely be easy to be careful with the sun shining bright and Lorena and Graham right there beside them. Could be Alice Wilcher would be there too, making plans for her and Jay.

Kate started to smile at the thought, but then a funny feeling jabbed her. A poke of jealousy. If Lorena hadn’t been clutching her hand so tightly as they hurried past the Baxter house, Kate would have turned and gone the other way. Any way but toward Jay Tanner.

Lorena let out a relieved breath when they got to the other side of the Baxters’ yard and then started pulling on Kate’s hand until they were both almost running. The way they had from the church to Grandfather Merritt’s house after the wedding. Laughing. With Jay.

“Well, look here. If it isn’t my two favoritest girls in Rosey Corner come to help us do some painting.” Graham was holding the ladder while Jay was painting the top planks. He looked up at Jay. “Come on down and take a break. We’ve got company.”

“We keep taking breaks, the snow’s gonna fly before you get this house done,” Jay said, even as he unhooked his paint can from a rung of the ladder to do as Graham said.

“Snow’s white. Mrs. Harrelson won’t notice a bit of difference.” Graham winked at Lorena and then looked at Kate. “Where you been, girl? I had about decided you’d left the country.”

“Lorena and I have been up on the moon,” Kate said with a laugh. Behind Graham, the ladder wobbled precariously as Jay began climbing down. “Don’t you think you should steady the ladder a little?”

Graham waved his hand in dismissal. “The boy’s nimble. He could jump from there and land on his feet like a cat.”

“But he might spill the paint.” Kate shot a worried look up at the paint can. “On us.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time some paint got spilt,” Jay called down to her. “Could be you should back up a little.”

Kate reached to pull Lorena away from the ladder, but she had already taken off toward where Poe was stretched out over in the shade. Graham shuffled after her just as Jay skipped the last couple of rungs on the ladder and landed right in front of Kate. By design, if the smile in his eyes was any indication. His face was speckled with paint and white streaked the black hair sticking out below his cap. She breathed in the mingled scent of sweat, paint, and the outdoors. A different odor, but one that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. She thought she should step back, but her feet seemed stuck to the ground.

“Hello, Miss Merritt.”

Her heart did a funny bounce something like the ladder had a minute before. “Tanner,” she said.

His smile slipped down from his eyes and curled up his lips. “I’m glad you didn’t stay up on the moon. You and Birdie.”

“Right. Lorena. I better see where she went.” Kate started to look around, but Jay reached up with his free hand and put his finger under her chin to turn her face back toward him.

“She’s busy scratching Poe’s ears. Can’t you hear his tail flapping against the ground?”

“No.” All she could hear was her heart pounding up in her ears. But this was crazy. Absolutely as crazy as talking to Mrs. Jenkins and wondering where the conversation was going to shoot off to next.