Chapter 17:

Meadows’
Grocery Store

August 14, 1969

BevAnn Meadows looked out the window of her dad’s grocery store towards the gas station across the street. Pete Andrews was having his Corvette gassed up and the oil checked. He was getting ready to leave town after all. She was beyond hurt. Nothing that she said or did had convinced him to stay.

“Please stay,” BevAnn asked him last night by a deserted cabin that sat in his uncle’s field along the old logging road. Fireflies danced in the trees as well as on the ground all night until the summer sun dawned, and once again, she asked him not to go.

“I have to, but I hate to leave you.”

“Someone else?” Pete didn’t answer.

“Will you be back?”

“From time to time, maybe, but, BevAnn, I can’t promise you anything. And I’m sorry.”

If she had meant so little to him, he could go. She’d been hardened by Joshua’s rejection anyway. He had been the love of her life, and when he came home from New York married to Maggie, it was the shock of her life. She, along with everyone else in Hope Springs, always assumed they would marry someday. Having grown up together, they were inseparable until he joined the military. Then, there was the crash in Vietnam that took his life… She was numb now and indifferent. For a while, she thought she might even love Pete. He was little more than a stranger to her at the beginning of summer when he first came to Farmwell Valley.

“You’re beautiful! And I hear you teach piano,” Pete told her the first time they met in the grocery store. He looked at her over the top of his sunglasses. “I play some—a little—piano.”

“Thank you, and yes, I do teach piano.”

“I was a studio musician for some rock bands before Nam.” He smiled. His long, curly blonde hair looked good on him. “And I sing a little. We should get together sometime. You sing?”

“A little.”

“When?”

“When what?”

“Can we get together?”

She hesitated for a while, but once she did agree to meet him, a summer romance blossomed between the young, sophisticated music teacher and the rock musician with the bell-bottom jeans and sleeveless leather vest. She was intrigued by his bad-boy image and multiple tattoos on his heavily muscled biceps. There was also something mysterious and sad about him she thought she might fix.

“I’m so glad I didn’t tell anybody about us,” BevAnn whispered to herself. “Nobody knows. Thank God, nobody ever will. There’s probably somebody else. Oh, gosh, how could I have been so stupid?”

“What did you say, Bevvie?”

“Nothing, Dad. Never mind. It’s nothing.” As she stood by the cash register, she found it hard to take her eyes off of Pete.

“Look at that long-haired hippie over at the gas station. Who is he? Do you know, BevAnn?” Claudia, one of BevAnn’s friends, asked her as she came into the store.

“No, Claudia, I don’t.”

“Wow. Look at that guy! Who is he? Did you say you knew him? You know everybody, BevAnn. He’s kinda cute. Or tuff, they say nowadays. He’s definitely tuff,” Linda chirped.

“I don’t know him, I said,” BevAnn snapped. She didn’t want to admit that her heart was hurting and she wanted to cry.

“Well, look there. Isn’t that Maggie, Joshua’s wife? I mean, widow? Poor thing! She really is a beautiful woman,” Claudia announced as she saw Maggie step from seemingly out of nowhere off the highway and approach Pete.

BevAnn took a longer look, more curious than ever, as Maggie got closer to talk to him.

“Hum, looks like she knows him.” Linda was staring at them. “Look how close they are.”

All eyes in Meadows’ Grocery were fixed on the couple across the street.

Pete opened the passenger’s door for Maggie.

“Well, I’d never believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Claudia said with surprise.

From the window of Meadows’ Grocery BevAnn’s friends and BevAnn were shocked as they watched Maggie ride away with Pete.

BevAnn was no longer numb. Anger rose up in her like a fiery dragon.