David looked at the man’s ankle above his shoe top. It didn’t look swollen today, but it was early. “Leg doing okay?”
“It’s holding me up.”
“I’ll have to be honest. That’s more than I thought it would ever do again when I pulled that limb off you last summer.”
“You prayed me through. You and Jo.” Wes gave him a hard look. “You’re looking like somebody might need to pray you through something. Did you forget to go shopping for Miss Leigh or something?”
“No, the problem is, I did go shopping.”
“How’s that a problem?”
David felt the box in his pocket again and looked at the pressroom door. Zella was out at her desk in the front office. He could hear her typewriter. But she generally stayed clear of the pressroom except when she had to help fold papers. David pulled the box out and flipped it open to show Wes.
Wes lit up like a Christmas tree. “I didn’t think you had it in you, son.”
“I’m not sure I do. I’ve been carrying this thing around for over a week. I can’t seem to get it out of my pocket when Leigh’s around.”
“You got cold feet?” Wes said. His smile faded.
“No, nothing like that. I want to give it to her, but I’m not sure I should.”
“You should,” Wes said.
“I’m old for her.”
“Not that old.”
“I’m a preacher. Preachers’ wives have a hard job.”
“Miss Leigh’s up to it. If ever I saw a girl up to it, it’s her. And she wants the job.”
“Do you think so?” David stared down at the ring.
“I don’t have the first doubt about that. The girl’s been after you for months, and once she got you to notice her, she’s bloomed like a flower. Oh yeah, she wants the job.”
David wished he could be half as sure of that as Wes sounded. “But sometimes we want things that aren’t good for us.”
Wes frowned over at him. “Are you trying to shoot down this blessing? That ain’t like you, David.”
“I don’t have a very good track record with love and marriage.” David closed the ring box and slipped it back in his pocket.
“You’ve never had love and marriage. I don’t know what you had with Adrienne, but it wasn’t that.”
David was quiet as he stared at the press across the room. Wes was right. David had tried to manufacture love between him and Adrienne. He’d tried to pray up love between them, but it had never happened. Passion on his side. Then when that faded, responsibility and duty. But never love. And who knew what on Adrienne’s side? Nothing, as far as David had ever been able to tell.
“Do you love the girl?” Wes interrupted his thoughts to ask.
“I do.”
“Then give her the ring and tell her so.”
David looked back at Wes. “I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” Wes had his frown back.
“I wanted to do something special. She deserves something special. What did you do when you asked your wife to marry you?” Asking that surely showed how desperate David was. Wes didn’t talk about his past. Had never mentioned his wife and family to David but the one time when Wes had told him about the wreck. About living when his wife and daughter died.
Now Wes turned his eyes to stare at the press, and for a minute David thought the gloom of the memory was going to swallow him. David reached over and touched his arm. “I’m sorry, Wes. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No, maybe you should have,” Wes said with a little shake of his head. “You know, for years I’ve blocked out all the memories because I just wanted to forget, so losing her and Lydia wouldn’t hurt so bad, but that wasn’t right. Isn’t right. We had some good times, Rosa and me. But I wasn’t no Don Juan. We were so young. I was barely twenty and she was eighteen. I didn’t have money for a ring, so I just asked her. We were in the swing on the front porch at her house. It was spring and I can still hear the way the birds were singing in the trees and how I couldn’t breathe until she whispered yes.” Wes leaned forward and fixed David with his eyes. “It’s Christmas Eve. You’ve got a gift for the girl you love. Give it to her. Trust me. It’ll be that easy.”
“Except for not being able to breathe until she says yes.”
Wes sat back in his chair and smiled at David. “Yeah, except for that.”
In the front the bell jangled as somebody came into the office and the sound of voices drifted back to them. David frowned as he stood up. “That sounds like Jocie. She’s supposed to be at Leigh’s.”
Jocie looked up at him as he came out into the front office. “Leigh’s sick.”
“Sick?” David said.
“Don’t look so worried. Just a cold, but she’s sneezing all over. Tawking like dis. I told her I never caught stuff, but she wouldn’t let me come in.”
“Oh, dear.” Zella snatched a tissue out of the box on her desk. “We had lunch together yesterday. I’ll catch it for sure.” She held the tissue up to her nose as if to be ready.
“You want me to go get you another box of tissues?” Jocie said as she rolled her eyes at Zella. “You might run out.”
“Jocie!” David called her down. The last thing he needed was Zella on a rampage about Jocie’s lack of respect for her elders, namely Zella.
“Sorry, Zella. I really will run get you some tissues if you need them.” Jocie ducked her head a moment before she looked back at David. “Dad, you ought to call Leigh. She was feeling blue about not getting to come out to the house tomorrow. Just talking about it made her cry. I told her Stephen Lee was bound to catch a cold sooner or later. I mean, Christmastime is special. You can’t just stay home by yourself. You don’t, do you, Zella? You go to your cousin’s house or something, don’t you?”
“I have family to celebrate with.” Zella’s voice was a little huffy. “And so does Leigh. Her parents in Grundy.”
“Yeah, but she’s supposed to come to our house first in the morning. Wes too same as always. We’re going to have a crowd.” Jocie looked satisfied that everybody was taken care of for Christmas. “I told her she might feel better by morning. But she said you guys had planned to do something special tonight and that she couldn’t get better that fast. That made her cry too.”
“I’ll call her,” David said. At least now it wouldn’t matter that no restaurants were open. He’d have to come up with a new plan.
“But the roses should have cheered her up,” Jocie said.
“Roses?” Zella’s head jerked up. “What roses?”
“Mrs. Baker brought them as I was leaving. They were those deep velvety red kind people put on casket tops when somebody dies. Of course these were in a vase. Probably a dozen of them.”
“A dozen roses?” David couldn’t even guess how much that might cost.
“Yeah, at least. Maybe more. Did you send them, Dad?” Jocie looked at him. “I told Leigh you didn’t. I mean, you would have signed your name, wouldn’t you? And the card on these just read Your Secret Admirer. But who else would that be?”
“I don’t know,” David said. He had a funny sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had theorized that Leigh could do better than hook up with him, but he hadn’t thought there was actual competition on the scene. “But it wasn’t me.”
Zella gasped, and they all looked at her.
“You didn’t send them, did you, Zella?” Jocie asked.
“Of course not. Don’t be silly. But I know who did.” She paused for effect.
“Well, don’t just sit there. Tell us,” Jocie said.
“Edwin Hammond. He was flirting with Leigh yesterday at the Grill.”
“Mr. Hammond?” Jocie almost squawked. “The teacher from you know where.”
“Pittsburgh, I think he said,” David said with a stern look at Jocie even though at that moment he was agreeing with her all the way. He’d met Edwin Hammond. He was good-looking in a bookish way. And young. Young like Leigh. David’s heart sank into that sick feeling.
“Now wait a minute.” Wes stepped up to put his hand on David’s shoulder. “No need in everybody going over the edge here. This mystery admirer might or might not be the teacher from Neptune. We don’t know since whoever it was didn’t have nerve enough to sign his name. But even if it turns out to be him, Zell here says he was flirting with Miss Leigh, not the other way around. We know who Miss Leigh’s wanting to flirt with, cold or no cold.”
“True.” Zella sounded relieved. “Leigh didn’t seem particularly impressed with the man’s attentions.”
“I hope she breathed germs all over him,” Jocie growled. Then she looked at David. “And she really didn’t look all that glad to get the roses either.”
“But he’s so young,” David said.
“For mercy sakes, David. You don’t exactly have a foot in the grave or anything,” Zella said.
“And faint heart never won fair maiden,” Wes said.
“Dad doesn’t have a faint heart.” Jocie looked from Wes to David. “Do you, Dad?”
A
t first Leigh set the roses on her kitchen table. Then she moved them to the kitchen sink. She needed the table cleared off so she could wrap presents. Just in case she had a miraculous recovery before morning.
Miracles did happen. Somebody had just sent her a dozen roses. The funny thing was, she wanted to pitch them in the garbage can. She stared at the roses sticking up out of the old white sink with its chipped enamel. Hardly the proper place for such beautiful roses, but she didn’t put down her teacup to go move them to a more worthy spot.
Edwin Hammond. She’d known he sent them as soon as she saw the card. She just didn’t know why. Maybe he did simply admire her the way the card said. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t believe that? What was wrong with him that she didn’t want him to admire her?
She sneezed and grabbed another tissue out of the box she’d been carrying around with her all morning. She was beginning to feel like Zella with a tissue constantly under her nose. At least Leigh’s weren’t pink. The way she was sneezing and blowing, she was going to run out of tissues. Then what? She didn’t feel like going to the store. No problem. She could always carry around a roll of toilet paper. Tissue was tissue. And besides, she already felt like her day was going down the toilet. Maybe she’d try that menthol salve the way Jocie had suggested.
What a rotten time to catch a cold. She went to the bathroom to look in the medicine cabinet for the salve and something to take for her head. It was throbbing, and she couldn’t breathe through her nose.
James Robertson. He was the one. He’d come into the office last week looking just the way she felt and had proceeded to sneeze all over the twenty-dollar bill he’d handed her to pay for transferring some old truck he’d sold. He could have waited another day, but no, he had to come in and shower them all with cold germs. She had half a mind to call him up and tell him how he’d ruined her Christmas.
Maybe she was wrong about Edwin Hammond. Maybe James was her secret admirer. Leigh almost giggled at the thought. James was sixty-five if he was a day, and since he’d lost his wife to cancer a couple of years ago, he seemed to have forgotten why people bought soap. That gave him a certain distinctive air, but it didn’t keep him from making eyes at anybody in a skirt. He always had a thick roll of bills in his pocket, so he had the money to buy the roses. But he wouldn’t.
That was the thing. There probably weren’t five men in all of Holly County who would spend that kind of money on roses. Not as long as their wives were still breathing anyway. That’s why it had to be Edwin Hammond. He wasn’t from Hollyhill. He had practically waylaid her in the Grill. He’d tried to poke holes right through her with his eyes. He’d sent the roses.
Leigh got the aspirin out of the medicine chest and shut the door. She stared at her reflection and almost laughed. Her nose was red. Her hair was flat. Her eyes were watering and bloodshot. She looked horrible. If Edwin Hammond could see her now, he might change his mind about that secret admiration thing.
She didn’t care what Edwin Hammond thought about her. She did care what David Brooke thought. Desperately. And she’d been so sure that this night, this first Christmas they were celebrating as a couple, was going to be something wonderful, and now she was going to be home sneezing alone.
She’d already talked to David. He’d called after Jocie got to the
Banner
to see how she was feeling. She told him she couldn’t go anywhere that night barring a miracle and nobody would want to waste a miracle on a cold that would go away in a few days. She hadn’t called her mother yet. She’d wait till tomorrow morning for that. She hadn’t planned to drive to Grundy till late Christmas Day anyway. And then David was going to drive up for dinner with her parents on the day after Christmas.
She’d had plans. All kinds of plans that were going down the drain. She yanked off a piece of toilet tissue and blew her nose with a loud honk. She rubbed that horrible smelling salve all over her chest, took two aspirins, and crawled under the covers on her bed. The Christmas presents would just have to wait.
She lay there feeling extra miserable for a long time before she dozed off. Then she dreamed she was running. She had to keep running. Somebody was chasing her. She wasn’t really afraid. More worried that whoever it was might catch up with her. She kept looking over her shoulder, but she couldn’t see anybody. She knew somebody was there, though. Knew somebody was coming after her.
She turned her eyes back to the dim path in front of her, and there in the distance was David, smiling and holding his hand out toward her. Relief exploded inside her. It was going to be okay. David was waiting for her. But then roses started raining down around her, landing on her shoulders and in her hair. David stopped smiling and dropped his hand. She tried to run faster to get to him, but she slipped on the rose petals. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t get to him. He looked so sad as he began turning away. She yelled his name, but he didn’t hear her. The roses piled up around her feet and behind her someone was reaching for her. She screamed.
Leigh jerked awake, not sure whether she’d actually screamed out loud or not. She was soaking wet. Her fever must have broken. She lay still while her heart slowed its gallop as she pulled herself out of the molasses of the dream. She surely must be the only woman in the universe who could have a nightmare about getting roses.