“Yep, He is,” Ruby agreed, “and hopefully, that man has had an up-close-and-personal talk with the heavenly Father by now.”
“Does your daddy know about this?” Irene practically growled.
“He does,” Taryn answered, “but he was on a deployment when it happened. Mama and I talked him out of going AWOL and taking care of things in his own way. It all happened years ago, so don’t let it raise your blood pressure.” She was glad to finally get the whole story off her chest.
“Don’t matter when it happened. Men like him and Ford should be hanged, but I won’t say by what,” Irene muttered through clenched teeth.
“I agree,” Ruby said. “I’m going to pray hard every night that his wife has found out what kind of man she was married to. I hope she took him out into the woods and nailed his tally-whacker to a treestump. I will be nice, though, and pray that she would give him a butcher knife and tell him when he got ready to cut that thing off, he could come home and sign the divorce papers. I’m real sweet about giving a person a fighting chance. You should have told me when it happened so I could have been talking to God all this time.”
“Yes, ma’am, but it won’t ever happen again,” Taryn promised.
“That’s a sorry excuse for a husband,” Irene muttered. “His poor wife was sitting at home, raising kids and waiting for him like I did when your grandpa was off fighting in the war of that day. That man deceiving you and her both like that should have gotten him shot.”
“And that’s why we don’t trust men for long-term relationships,” Anna Rose said.
“What’s your story?” Ruby asked.
“Manipulation and abuse. I got involved with a guy who slowly took me away from my friends and then all of you, and when I disagreed with him about going out to dinner one evening, he started hitting me,” Anna Rose answered, and went on to tell them what had happened to her. “And yes, my folks know—but like Jorja and Taryn, I was too embarrassed to tell you, Nana Irene. I didn’t deserve your support after cutting you and my family out of my life for all those months just to make him happy.”
“You did right by not telling us,” Ruby said. “We would have both been spending our last days in prison if we’d known at the time. This walker’s real heavy, girls. I might still get to see what the inside of a cell looks like because Icanget to Ford Chambers.”
Irene pointed at her. “Not if I see him first.”
“Okay, now we’ve told you our deepest secrets”—Anna Rose took her place across from Irene—“I hear there’s some tea to be spilled.”
Irene got out of her chair and refilled her coffee cup. “Kaitlin had the locks changed on her house and threw everything that belonged to Ford out in the yard. His underwear was all tangled up in his golf clubs. Nettie called to tell us that if we wanted to see it all before he got home from work and weaseled his way back into the house, we’d better hurry.”
“So, we did,” Ruby went on. “We sat on Nettie’s porch and watched the circus when he got home: Kaitlin screaming like a fishwife—”
Irene butted in. “I always wondered what a screaming fishwife sounded like, and now I know.”
Ruby nodded and said, “It was a sight to behold, but he finally threw all the stuff into his car and drove away. I hear that Linda is hiding out in the cabin they bought up in Kansas and refuses to come home until the dust settles.”
“Where did Ford go?” Jorja asked.
“He moved in with Donald and Billy, his old buddies. They’re living over near Erick, Oklahoma, in Billy’s grandpa’s house out in the country,” Ruby replied. “A far cry from the fancy house he had here in Shamrock.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” Irene quipped.
“He’s also been relieved of any duties he had at the church with the young people, and he was laid off from his job at the bank,” Ruby went on, spilling a few more drops of tea. “They said it was because of the way things are today in the financial world, but we all know the real reason.”
“Oh, really?” Jorja asked. “He actually lost his home, his job,andhis family over this?”
“Yep, and it’s good enough for him,” Irene declared.
“I just wish those sorry suckers that did you other two wrong would meet the same end,” Ruby said.
“Miz Ruby, we should pray for our enemies,” Jorja scolded.
Ruby laid the bright green bow she was making to the side, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. “You are right, Jorja. Our most gracious Holy Father, please hear my prayer. If You could infect Billy’s house with roaches and rats, that would be good. And please, relocate a nest of rattlesnakes under the trailer, and if You have a mind to do some vengeance like You did in the Bible to those folks who had Your people enslaved, maybe a few boils on those parts of their body that was responsible for ruining young women’s lives—well, that would be an answer to an old woman’s prayers. And what I have asked for these men,I would pray that You would visit the same on the men who caused Anna Rose and Taryn such emotional pain. Amen.” She raised her head and went back to work.
“Good grief!” Jorja gasped.
“You told me to pray,” Ruby said with a shrug, “and I prayed.”
“But ...,” Jorja stammered.
“Not all prayers are as sweet as rainbows and unicorn farts,” Irene said. “David asked for his enemies to be abolished. Ruby used her sweeter side and didn’t ask God to strike them graveyard dead.”
