Taryn let go of Clinton’s hand and sat down. He had barely gotten inside when Elaine pulled up in her car and parked in front of the store. She got out, popped her hands on her hips, and glared at Taryn.
“I heard that you were ...” She seemed to be so angry that she couldn’t get her words out.
Clinton stopped at the door and gritted his teeth. Couldn’t he go anywhere without one of those women showing up? He went on outside in time to hear Elaine stammering. “You heard what?” he asked. “That Taryn and I have taken a walk, and I bought us ice cream and soft drinks? Do I need your permission to do that?”
“No, but you might have not led me on for the past weeks and months,” Elaine fumed.
“I have not done any such thing,” Clinton told her. “I told you right up front that I wasn’t interested in dating any of you.”
“You took our food and were sweet to us,” Elaine said, her voice turning into a whine.
Taryn stuck her root beer into the pocket of her baggy sweats and unwrapped her ice-cream sandwich. Elaine wasn’t worth letting good ice cream melt in her hands. She took a bite. Then she did her best to ignore the woman and her hateful, glaring eyes, but when that didn’t work, she envisioned her glittery wand from her sixth-birthday party in her hands. She waved it toward Elaine, and poof! Just like that, she disappeared.
Clinton eased down on the bench beside her. “That’s called good manners. When someone brings you something, I was taught to tell that person thank you with a smile on my face—even if I don’t like sauerkraut and hot links.”
“Why haven’t you brought that down to the trailer for supper?” Taryn asked. “That’s Jorja’s favorite dish.”
“Sorry, but I tossed it in the trash,” Clinton answered.
Elaine threw up her hands. “I’m done, and I hope you’re happy with the talk of the town sitting beside you.”
Clinton peeled the paper from his ice cream. “So far, so good. You have a nice day, Miz Ferguson.”
“Do you even know about Taryn’s reputation?” Elaine asked. “She’s bad news, and I hear she got kicked out of whatever military branch was crazy enough to take her. You’ll lose every bit of the respect you have built up when you’re seen walking down the street, holding hands with her like a couple of teenagers.”
“So what? I also know who ruined a few acres of Amos Landry’s watermelon fields. And who set the tires on fire on Main Street when y’all were teenagers.” He pointed at Elaine. “Or better yet, who wrote graffiti in the girls’ bathroom at school, and rather than be a rat, Taryn cleaned it all up herself and had to do in-school suspension for more than a week?” Clinton took a bite of his ice cream. “You have no right to look down your nose at her or to act like you’ve got wings and a halo. You should be glad that she wasn’t a snitch, or you’d be the one who had a bad reputation in town.”
Elaine opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. Finally, she snapped it shut, spun around in a blur, and popped the spike heel right off one of her fancy shoes. She looked somewhat like a drunk person with one foot on the curb and the other on the street as she hobbled to her car. She peeled out and had to have left at least five hundred miles of rubber off her tires as she squealed away.
“Where’s a cop when you need one?” Taryn asked. “And how did you know all that?”
“Ruby told me,” Clinton said with a shrug. “One down, two to go.”
“Are you sure that she was the one who brought the sauerkraut? Maybe if she wasn’t and she runs to the other two, one of them will get mad and pull out of the contest, too. Then it’ll be two down and only one to go,” Taryn told him.
“One can only hope and pray.”
“Good ice cream. Good company. Thanks for both and for taking up for me.” Taryn smiled up at him. There was no sense in beating the dead contest horse when, hopefully, Elaine was being truthful aboutgiving up her place in the contest and not getting the wedding of her dreams.
Clinton shot a sly wink toward her. “Anytime, darlin’!”
Taryn put a note on the door of the shop the next day, locked the doors, and then raced out to the trailer to get ready for Amos’s funeral. “What are y’all wearing?” she called out as she hurried down the hallway. “I don’t own a black dress.”
“I’ve got an extra one I’ll loan you,” Anna Rose answered. “I’m dressed, so I’ll bring it to your room. Have you got shoes?”
“Yes, I’ve got a pair of black flats.” Taryn peeled off her T-shirt and jeans and jerked the clip out of her red hair. She seldom bought anything black because it seemed to make every single freckle on her face pop out.
Anna Rose came into her room wearing a simple black wrap dress, a necklace with a single pearl in a gold shamrock, and shiny black high-heeled shoes. “I keep two dresses for book signings and switch them off.” She laid her extra dress on the bed and then sat down in a ladder-back chair at the end of the dresser.
Jorja knocked on the doorjamb, came into the room, and touched the necklace around her neck—the one that matched Anna Rose’s. “I hate funerals. I hate wearing black, even though according to my color chart, it’s one of my best colors. Do you think it’s because when I came to by myself that night, everything around me was dark?”
“Possibly,” Taryn answered as she slipped into the dress Anna Rose had brought. “I don’t know if it means anything, but the night I learned that my boyfriend wasn’t only married but had another girlfriend in addition to me, I was wearing black. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t like it, either.”
“Hey, you didn’t tell us the part about him having another girlfriend,” Anna Rose fussed at her.
Taryn slipped her feet into a pair of flat shoes and opened a small jewelry box on her dresser. “That seemed kind of minor compared to the existence of his wife.” She slipped a necklace that matched the one her cousins were wearing around her neck. “We might as well give everyone the subtle message that we stand together.”
“A pearl in the middle of a gold shamrock.” Jorja fidgeted with her pendant.
