Chapter Seven

I washed up the cups and plates and put things away for Meemaw, who then blocked my way out of the kitchen, hands at her waist, a tough look on her pretty face.

“What in the name of heaven is going on between you and Hunter?” she demanded. “Why are you treatin’ the boy like that? And why’s he so cold to you?”

“Oh, Lord, Meemaw. There’s nothing wrong but in Hunter’s head. It was a man there last night. In the same field I’m in. Heard of me, he said, and asked me to dinner tonight. Guess Hunter didn’t take to him.”

“Did you?”

I had to stop and think. Sure, I was flattered. With Meemaw I knew better than to lie.

“Guess I liked him well enough. I don’t often get someone who understands what I’m trying to do, let alone be interested, even maybe wants to come in and take a look.”

She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

I frowned hard at her. A woman who preened when the press came to cover her store; who liked being called a “master baker” in the local paper—and her judging me? There was sin enough to go around for the both of us.

“Hmmm.” She turned away to start a new dough. “Think you two better settle what you feel about each other and decide if you’re right together or not. Sometimes people let it get away, thinking there is always time. Don’t let that happen to you, Lindy. I’ve seen plenty of mistakes in my day. Ethelred Tomroy being one of them. Turned her back on a man she didn’t think was good enough for her. Now you’re taking the same kind of chance, maybe losing somebody you really want in your life. You do that and you’ll end up being sorrier than about anything else you ever did. Won’t be like not having one of your trees turn out right or not getting one of your papers published in some scientific magazine. This will be real. Be awful. I just don’t understand why the both of you can’t be happy . . .”

All of this while she was banging drawers closed and plunking things down on a metal table, pretending the only thing on her mind was her next batch of Pecan Moon Cookies.

“It’s not that easy, Meemaw.”

“Nothing’s easy with you. Lindy. I’m still saying, there’s no reason why you and Hunter have to act like enemies.”

I pushed my way through the swinging doors to the store, turning back to say only, “And don’t compare me to Ethelred Tomroy. Bet it wasn’t her broke up whatever they had.”

*   *   *

So why was she the first person I ran into as I tried to get to the front door and out to my truck? And just after Meemaw compared me to her, probably hoping I’d develop a kinship with a lonely old woman who, like me, had turned away the only love she’d ever known in her life.

None of that worked. I took a long look at the tall, broad woman with a sour face and scraggly hair, and got ready to go after her. Say one word wrong to me, Ethelred. Just one word.

Her big hands were in the air, one finger crooked, peremptorily calling me over to where she stood in the pecan candy aisle, surrounded by an enthralled audience.

“Lindy, here, was at the party last night, same as me.” She nodded fast, until tendrils of steel gray hair were shooting up and weaving around like Medusa’s snakes. “She can tell you about that new wife. Shame. That’s what I called it.”

I nodded to Freda Cromwell, short and elderly, in a dress too long and too washed-out to do anything for her. Freda, who usually had the gossip market cornered in Riverville, was looking mightily put out now that Ethelred had the floor and was an insider on this particular story. The others were neighbors and town women.

“The whole thing was a scandal,” Miss Ethelred was saying to the circle around her.

“What’s a scandal, Ethelred?” I asked, smiling my “cat’s got you cornered” smile and vowing to lighten up whatever outrage she was spouting.

“You know very well, Lindy Blanchard.”

“Man’s death isn’t a scandal. That’s called a tragedy.”

Ethelred frowned hard at me and leaned in, ready for a fight. “You ask me, that man’s death was no accident, the way the sheriff’s saying. Just take a look at that new wife.”

“Jeannie? Seemed real nice, you ask me. Poor thing.”

“Nice! You must’ve had your eyes closed—all that flour on your face. Why, that woman was advertisin’ who she is, all night. You see that yellow dress? You tell me, Lindy, what famous person wore a yellow dress and was known for what she did with that General Santa Anna?”

“Yellow Rose of Texas. A true patriot. Kept Santa Anna busy in bed while Sam Houston was beating his soldiers in an eighteen-minute war.” I gave a self-satisfied nod to the listening circle the way people always do when they’re talking patriotism. “Why, Ethelred, all kinds of songs’ve been written about the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’ I remember, in school, we learned that even our men in the Civil War were singing about her.”

I looked at the others and broke into a lusty version of one of my favorite songs ever.

“She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew. Her eyes are bright as diamonds. They sparkle like the dew. You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosalee. But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me—”

“Now, Ethelred,” I said to the red-faced woman when I figured the listeners had enough. “What on earth’s wrong with that?”

“That’s not what Jeannie Wheatley was about. I asked her and she refused to answer. And why on earth didn’t Elizabeth know to stop her before she outraged so many of us? Pretends to be a historian, that woman. Don’t know much of anything about Texas, you ask me.” She nodded hard and fast, making some around her nod in return.

“Coming dressed as a woman who was no better than a . . . well . . . I’ll come right out and say it: no better than a prostitute. And to her own wedding party? She’s no Wheatley, I’ll tell you. That Jeannie. Flaunting who she is right in your face.”

“‘Who she is’?” I was getting a little red in the face myself. “What in the name of heaven is that supposed to mean?”

“Things been going around.”

“What things?”

“I’ll bet you know very well, Lindy. You heard about her mother coming to town. Terrible woman. Heard Eugene wouldn’t let her up to their house.”

“You sure hear a lot, Ethelred.”

“Well, she wasn’t invited to the party, was she? Yet she showed up anyway, right after Eugene died.” She leaned down to those closest around her. “She’s been hanging out at the Barking Coyote. Bragging who her daughter just married. Saying how she was going to be rich. Why, even Finula, who everybody knows is only as good as she needs to be, has been talking about it.”

Meemaw came up behind me and put a warning hand on my shoulder. I knew she was afraid I was getting too mad and about to blurt out what Hunter told us that morning, adding fuel to Ethelred’s fire.

“Think that’s about enough gossiping here in my store,” Meemaw said. “Poor woman just lost her husband. I’d say, let’s have a little respect and wait for the sheriff and Hunter to make their conclusions, what happened out there last night.”

I heard a deeply angry Meemaw in her pronouncement and felt it as her fingers dug into my shoulder.

There wasn’t another word spoken as the group, led by Ethelred Tomroy, turned and took their ugly talk out to the store porch, where they’d soon be sweating in their limp cotton dresses. Nothing like a good dose of Texas heat to fry out meanness.