Ruby pushed her walker toward the back door. “We’ll see y’all when you get up and around. Don’t worry about me. The boss lady that can’t wait to get into her shop has a plan.”
“And that is?” Taryn asked.
“She’s going to set up a card table for me. I can turn this walker around and sit on it, and ...” She lowered her voice. “We canspill the tea, as you girls call a good old gossip session these days.”
“Promise you won’t try to sit on a barstool?” Taryn asked.
“I already signed an affidavit in blood for Irene that I wouldn’t try to use my new hip to pop up on a barstool and that I will behave myself and let y’all bring me materials to work with,” Ruby declared.
Taryn opened the door for her and stood to the side. “Okay, then, can I see the paperwork?”
Ruby let go of one handle of the walker and air-slapped Taryn on the arm. “Don’t you get sassy with me. If I have to stay in that house another day, I’m going to start drinking—a lot!”
Irene already had set up the small table and motioned for Ruby to bring her walker over to it. “You turn that Cadillac around and sit down right here.”
“She’s so bossy that even the angels couldn’t live with her,” Ruby grumbled. “I thought I could get some payback when she had her knees done, but now she’s decided that she’s not going to do that.”
“After seeing what you went through with one hip, there’s no way I’m getting my knees done. When I get to heaven, I won’t need them anyway, and I can get around in the shop on them just the way they are,” Irene told her. “Taryn, go get dressed, and wake up your cousins. If y’all get out here in the next few minutes, we can gossip for a good hour before we have to unlock the front door.”
“We know Jorja’s story, but you and Anna Rose never got around to telling us yours,” Ruby said. “Irene, put on a pot of coffee so it will be ready for the girls, and get that box of doughnuts out of the car.”
“Now who’s being bossy?” Irene asked.
Taryn whipped around, went out the door, and jogged to the trailer.
When Taryn returned with Anna Rose and Jorja, Irene and Ruby were sitting across from each other at the card table. Three plants were on the end of the big worktable and one in front of each of them.
“Neither of us feel like getting up and down off those stools, so this is where we’ll work,” Irene explained.
“Until our new lower worktable arrives,” Ruby said.
“Where’s the doughnuts?” Taryn asked. Ruby probably thought the sly wink she gave Irene was quick enough that no one saw it, but Taryn did, and she wondered what inside joke they had about something as simple as worktables.
“If Irene didn’t eat the whole dozen, they’re over there by the coffeepot,” Ruby answered. “We got a dozen and a half, so hopefully, there’s one left for each of you. Clinton is bringing the baby down, isn’t he?”
Jorja went straight to the doughnut box, put two on a paper plate, and poured herself a cup of coffee. “He’s supposed to call Taryn as soon as she wakes up. I’m surprised that my dear cousin didn’t move in with Clinton last night just so she could be near Zoe.”
“I thought about it, but it would have been moving in with Zoe, not Clinton.” Taryn helped herself to a couple of doughnuts with chocolate icing.
“At what point would that change?” Anna Rose asked. “Don’t give me the old stink eye, girl. I see the way you two look at each other. The time is coming, but my second question is: Are you ready to trust him?”
Irene laid aside the arrangement she was working on. “Why wouldn’t she trust Clinton? He’s one of the finest young men I’ve ever known. How many guys would help vets like he does, and how many would adopt a baby to keep her out of foster care?”
“Tell them,” Anna Rose said.
Taryn bit a chunk of doughnut to give herself time to think about how to begin. She chewed slowly, then took a sip of coffee. “I kind of fell in love with a married man. I thought he was serious about me, but ...”
Jorja came to her defense. “And she didn’t know he was married until he was getting out of the service and going home.”
“How on earth did you not know?” Irene asked.
“We worked on different bases and only saw each other a couple of times a week. He had told me he had a surprise for me, and I just knew he was going to propose,” Taryn answered. “When he arrived, he informed me that he was getting out and going home, and I thought he was about to ask me to join him when I finished my enlistment. That’s when he told me the relationship that we’d had had been fun, and he would never forget me—but he had a wife and a couple of kids.”
“What did you do?” Ruby asked.
“I threw a fit and used words that would blister the paint on the walls,” Taryn said. “And then he told me that his other girlfriend at the base where he was stationed didn’t act like a banshee, and he left.”
“Good God!” Irene said.
