“Yes, when we were forty years younger,” Ruby threw back at her and adjusted Zoe to a better position on her lap. “I told you back in the spring when you contracted this huge event and agreed to do all this decorating that we’d have to hire extra help.”
“And I told you the girls would be here to lend a hand,” Irene argued.
“How did you know that?” Jorja asked.
“I figured I’d be the one laid up with knee surgery this summer,” Irene replied with a shrug. “But Ruby stepped ahead of me and broke her hip. I didn’t have a single doubt that if I needed y’all to run the shop, you would take on the job. I wasn’t wrong, was I? And just look at what the last month has produced in all three of your lives.”
“Some days I want to strangle Anna Rose,” Jorja grumbled.
“I understand. Sometimes I want to kick your grandmother in the hind end,” Ruby said with a grin. “I’m so glad to be back in my own house and not be smothered to death”—she pointed at Irene—“by this old woman. The way she’s made me eat these past weeks has probably put ten pounds on me. My britches are getting too tight, and I refuse to buy new clothes at my age.”
“Food makes fuel to heal a body,” Irene told her. “Now that you can get around with a cane and can fix your meals for yourself, you’ll lose what little weight you gained.”
“Yes, I will,” Ruby declared. “Come on over here and get this baby. She’s getting bored with me. The doctor says I can live by myself and do light duty at the shop. He didn’t say I could carry Zoe around the sanctuary.”
“If you’d eaten more, you could,” Irene grumbled as she took Zoe from Ruby. “Come on to your Nana Irene, baby girl. We’ll go look at all the pretty decorations for this wedding.”
Jorja folded the ladder and picked it up. “I’m taking this back to the fellowship hall.”
“We should be done in here in five minutes,” Anna Rose called out from the other side of the sanctuary.
“If Taryn is done, we’ll meet you back here in the sanctuary,” Jorja told her.
Sure enough, Taryn was tweaking the last of the centerpieces for the tables.
“Time has sure gone fast since we first got here, and so much has happened,” Jorja said as she carefully wove through the tables to the utility room.
“A lot has happened, for sure,” Taryn agreed. “Do you really think Nana Irene and Ruby are ready to take over on Monday without any of us being there?”
Jorja put the ladder back in the exact spot she’d found it and then pulled out a chair and sat down at one of the tables. “They think they are, and we don’t have a choice but to let them try.”
Taryn eased down in a chair right beside her cousin. “I suppose if they get into trouble, we’re only minutes away.”
“That’s right,” Jorja said, “and if Anna Rose is driving, you can cut that time in half.”
“How are y’all getting along, now that you’ve been in the same house for more than a week?” Taryn asked.
“I love her, but sometimes I don’t like her, and I’m sure she shares the same feeling,” Jorja answered. “How about you and Clinton?”
“We’re doing fine,” Taryn was glad to say. “We’ve only had one disagreement since we moved in, and we settled it pretty quickly.”
Jorja wiggled her eyebrows. “In whose bedroom?”
Taryn could feel her eyes getting wider and wider. “I can’t believe you said that. You really have changed a lot in this past month. You wouldn’t have asked that question before without blushing, and you aren’t even pink. Have you taken someone intoyourbedroom yet?”
“Nope, but the possibility might be there—someday,” Jorja said with a grin. “Right now, I’m ready to go home, have some supper, and sit on the porch with Forrest. He might be an introvert, but I do enjoy visiting with him.”
“That’s a good thing,” Taryn told her. “I’m proud of you for letting your hair down a little and trusting a man to be a friend.”
Jorja stood up and pushed the chair back in under the table. “They should be done with the sanctuary, and the shop is closed. Nana Irene says that Clinton has a vet—a woman—who needs a job, so Nana is going to let her go to work on Monday. I guess we’ve gone from weddings and funerals now to cotton and watermelons.”
“Which one do you like better?”
“The jury is still out, and this next week will be the first time we don’t work at the shop every day, but I think I’m going to like farming better. Is that strange?” Jorja asked.
“Kind of,” Taryn answered. “Three months ago, if someone had told you that you would be living in a house with Anna Rose on a watermelon and cotton farm, what would you have told them?”
“That one of the Ten Commandments says, ‘Thou shalt not lie,’” Jorja said. “How about you?”
