“But do you really want to be a nurse?” Grace pressed on. “What was your dream when you were a little girl?”
“Iwanted to be a princess, and then last year I wanted to be famous,” Audrey piped up, and then downed half the milk. “Both of those seem kind of silly right now.”
“Nursing wasn’t my first choice,” Raelene admitted. “I just wanted to be smart, and my Granny told me that it didn’t matter what other people thought of me, or what they said, or how I dressed. She said it didn’t take money or beauty to use my brain.”
Grace might not have believed in fate before, but she sure did at that moment. What else could explain everything that had happened in the past few weeks?
“How about you, Audrey? When you got past being a princess and being famous, what’s been your dream?” Grace asked.
“Why are you so interested in all this? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?” Macy asked.
“I do,” Grace replied with a nod, “but first, I want to hear what Audrey has to say.” She turned to face her daughter. “You’ve got two more years before you go to college and try to figure out what you want to do—but if you had to decide today, what would that be?”
Audrey fidgeted on the barstool. “I don’t want to hurt y’all’s feelings, but I would not want to run a doughnut shop. I want a job where I...” She hesitated.
“Where you what?” Grace pressured.
“Speak up, child,” Beezy said. “You’re not going to hurt our feelings. The shop has had a good, long run, and everything has an expiration date at some time. Maybe not this year or even this generation, but nothing on this earth lasts forever.”
“Dinosaur bones seem to,” Audrey argued. “But I want a job where I go to work at nine, get off at five, wear pretty shoes, and have an office of my own.” She paused again before adding, “With a view. Now, why are you asking all these questions, Mama?”
Fate or opportunity or the universe has surely come knocking on our door,Grace thought. She inhaled deeply, finished the last bite of her sausage biscuit, and took a drink of orange juice.
“Delores hires one intern each summer to help her in the office at Travis’s company, and he hires one intern each year to work with a team that he calls his ‘think tank kids.’ He asked about you girls, and I told him it was up to you. You would get paid minimum wage for the summer, a bonus at the end of the year. If you work out, Raelene, in that particular job for Travis, then you would have a scholarship to whatevercollege you want to go to, and you can study whatever you really want to study. The catch is that he would want you to come back to Butler Enterprises and work for him in the think tank, depending on what your master’s or doctorate direction turns out to be,” Grace explained.
Tears streamed down Raelene’s face, dripped off her jaw, and left wet spots on her Perfect Pig T-shirt. “Yes,” she whispered, “but are you serious? I could go to school at the University of Texas right there in San Antonio and live at home?”
“Halle-damn-lujah!” Beezy pumped her fist. “Hilda would be so proud of you.”
“This is a dream.” Raelene reached for a tissue on the bar and wiped her eyes.
Audrey let out a squeal and pumped her own fist. “You won’t have to leave and go all the way up into Oklahoma if you get that internship. This is the best news ever. Take that, Crystal and Kelsey!”
Grace pointed to Audrey. “And you might have a chance to be that intern with Delores, the person that Travis swears knows more about his company than he does. You’ll both have driver’s licenses by then, so you can take my car and go to work each day. But, girl, you will have to take orders and learn what Delores has to teach you from the ground up.”
Audrey sucked in air and let it out slowly. “I would count paper clips or file papers all day to get a job like that. Would I get a scholarship, too?”
“Yes, you would,” Grace answered.
“I’ll start concurrent classes in business as soon as I can,” Audrey whispered.
“Can you believe that we would be working in the same building?” Raelene asked.
“This is the perfect ending to our vacation.” Audrey slid off her barstool and hugged Raelene.
“No, it’s not,” Beezy said. “The ending won’t be until we watch the sunrise one more time. We’ll tell the beach goodbye and promise tocome back at Christmas for a few days. But right now, we need to go buy suitcases for all five of you. And then we’re going to lunch. After that, we’ll get all packed up and ready to leave by seven in the morning because we board our plane at ten. One more thing, we’ve all got to be at the church at seven thirty tomorrow night to vote on whether to hire the new preacher or not.”
“How are you going to vote?” Macy asked.
“I listened to his Sunday sermon on the phone earlier this week,” Beezy said, “and my sister snuck a picture of him so I could see what he looks like. He’s thirty-five and never been married. He’s not a big man, but...” She pulled her phone from her shirt pocket and hit a few icons. “Take a look—but remember, we’re not hiring him based on his looks. If we were, I wouldn’t vote for him. He’s kind of generic looking. But let me tell you, when he presented that sermon, I was on the edge of my seat. So I’ll be voting for him.”
Macy took the phone from her. “What’s his name?”
“James O’Malley. That red hair and green eyes say he’s Irish as much as his name does,” Beezy said.
“If he can stir your spirit that much,” Grace said, “then he’s got my vote.”
“Yep,” Sarah agreed with a nod.
