Chapter 59
After handing out candy in the early evening to a parade of little ghosts, goblins, and fairy princesses, DeeAnn, Jacob, and Tracy headed over to the fire hall where the community gathering was being held. DeeAnn’s new pills seemed to be doing the trick and since Tracy and Karen hadn’t taken away the second prescription of pills she’d gotten, she was able to take as many as she wanted.
Usually DeeAnn would walk to the fire hall, but she didn’t want to overexert herself, for fear of stopping whatever healing had already taken place so they’d driven. Her friends had saved a space for her at a table. Jacob gravitated toward the men in the corner, all looking a bit out of place. Tracy sat next to her.
Long card tables were set end to end, making rows of tables extending from one end of the room to the next. Orange and black paper covered the tables. A centerpiece stood in the middle of each—pumpkins with fall flowers, orange, yellow, gold, and crimson. Black and orange streamers were strewn across the room, with orange and black balloons in each of the four corners. It was Halloween, all right, and the Cumberland Creek fire hall was decorated to the hilt.
Spider-Man sauntered up next to DeeAnn.
“Well, hello there, Sam,” she said.
“How did you know it was me?” asked Annie’s son, who evidently at the last minute had decided he wasn’t too cool or too old to celebrate Halloween.
“It was a good guess,” DeeAnn said, looking over at the little boy next to him who was dressed as an old man. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“Mozart, of course,” Ben said.
“Mozart?” Who ever heard of a Mozart costume? “Well, I guess you know what you’re doing,” she said. “I wouldn’t know him if I tripped over him.”
“But he’s already dead,” Ben said, deadpan.
“I know that,” DeeAnn laughed. “I meant, if he were alive, I still wouldn’t know who he was. Or what he’d look like. Are you certain he looked like you, with the fancy hair, and such?”
Annie grinned. “Oh yes. He researched it.”
“Very nice,” Tracy said. “Maybe you’ll win the contest tonight.”
A large man dressed as a clown walked by the table and Sheila gasped. “I just find them so creepy!”
Annie did a double take and a questioning look came over her face, but then she appeared to shrug it off.
“Clowns?” DeeAnn asked.
“Yes, and that one is so big! A grown man dressed as a clown!” said Sheila.
“A lot of people here are dressed up,” Paige said. “I wish Randy were here to see it. I bet him that there would be some adults in costumes. But he had to work tonight. He’s trying out some new recipes.”
“Yeah, so did Karen,” DeeAnn said. “Halloween can be a nightmare in the ER.”
Beatrice chortled. “Sound likes a title for one of those campy horror movies.”
Jon was sitting next to Bea with Elizabeth on his lap. She was dressed as a giraffe—a costume her grandmother had made for her.
“It’s time for the contest, young lady,” Jon said, guiding her out of his lap.
The children began to line up for the costume competition and then so did the teenagers, and then finally the adults—the few of them that were participating. The clown was nowhere in sight, much to Sheila’s contentment.
Elizabeth ended up winning the competition in her age group for most original costume.
“Beatrice, you are such a talented seamstress,” DeeAnn said after Elizabeth came back to the table with her trophy.
“Well, now don’t make a big deal of it. I’ve been making costumes for many years. When I was growing up we all learned to sew. I’m not sure what the kids are learning these days.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to know, Mama,” Vera said. “I don’t think I do, either.”
Detective Bryant paraded by the table. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, off duty. DeeAnn wanted to grab him, shake him, and tell him to back off her daughter. Instead, she smiled and nodded politely . . . but it was killing her.
“Don’t look now,” Paige said. “He’s heading toward your husband.”
DeeAnn’s heart lurched in her chest. “Ohmigoodness!” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t look,” she said as the others around her laughed. “What’s happening?”
“He shook Jacob’s hand and is smiling at him,” Paige said in a low voice. “Jacob is not smiling back.”
“Oh Lordy, what should I do?” DeeAnn’s eyes were still closed, her face hot, pulse racing.
“Oh c’mon,” Bea said. “They’re polite adults. It’s going to be fine.”
“They are going outside,” Paige whispered in a horrified tone.
“Okay. I take that polite adults thing back,” Bea said.
“Let me go and check out the situation,” Jon said, rising from his chair.
“What? No, it’s none of your business,” Bea said. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I’m a man. This is man’s business,” he said and left.
DeeAnn opened her eyes and noted that other men around the room were also moving toward the door. Poor Bryant, she thought.
“This is the biggest bunch of crap I’ve ever seen,” Tracy said and got up from the table. “I’m going to put a stop to this. Karen is a grown woman. It’s nobody’s business what she’s doing with Adam. I don’t like it, either; he’s so old. But it’s none of our business. Dad just needs to back off.”
DeeAnn sat back in her chair. She felt frozen and couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
“You stay put,” Vera said to DeeAnn. “You don’t need to hurt yourself over this. I’m sure it will be fine.”
But DeeAnn was not so sure. Tracy was right. On the one hand, it was nobody’s business. But on the other hand, what Tracy didn’t understand was that both she and her sister would always be their parents’ business. And in a small community like Cumberland Creek, dating a man like Adam Bryant—no matter what age you were—was going to set tongues wagging. That’s just the way it was.
Oh yes, many folks in Cumberland Creek had come a long way. The murmurs about a Jewish family living in town had faded—or at least gone behind closed doors, and one of their own had come back to live here as an openly gay man. That never would have happened ten years ago.
But DeeAnn knew that if you scratched beneath the surface, all of the prejudices were lurking beyond the picket fences and the neatly trimmed lawns. Paige and Earl had yet to be welcomed back into their church community. Annie and her family were always running up against bumps and ignorance. Her own twenty-five-year-old daughter dating a local detective who was almost twice her age? Well, people were talking. The more DeeAnn thought about it, the more it pissed her off. The more she wanted to tell people to back off. But she couldn’t, because she didn’t like it, either. So she sucked in her breath. Karen was old enough to know actions led to consequences. It was her life, not DeeAnn’s.
The door flung open and one of the men hightailed it into the fire hall kitchen and quickly came back out with some ice. If DeeAnn’s intuition was correct, a man was down.
Jon slinked back into the room and came to their table in a midst of a crowd of middle schoolers roaming around. “Well, that’s that.”
DeeAnn couldn’t speak. Had Bryant hurt her husband?
“What happened?” Bea asked.
“Bryant is bleeding a bit. I think he’s going to have a black eye,” Jon said.
“What?”
All of the women at the table turned to look at him.
“It’s all over now. I think he went home. It was only one punch, but Jacob made it a good one.” Jon grinned.