Another wave of her hand. “Because the underlying lesson in the movie is that we don’t need to be looking at the grass on the other side of the fence, but rather listening to our hearts. I know I’ve repeated that phrase a lot, but sometimes we have to be taught a lesson many times before it begins to sink in.”
“No regrets,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said as she drove back through the small town and to the trailer park. “I believe the tree of life, like that one in the Garden of Eden, produces lemons as well as apples. Eve got an apple, but sometimes we pick a lemon. What we make with it is up to us.”
Chapter Six
If my poor little SUV had a mind, it would probably think that it had been abandoned. Not once since I’d bought it and driven it off the lot had it been parked for five whole days without being moved. It also had never looked as pitiful as it did that Monday afternoon, either. Dust had mixed with the spitting snow we’d had the day before, leaving splotches all over the vehicle.
“If I can find one in Sierra Blanca, I’ll run you through a car wash,” I promised as I started the engine.
Frank and I had driven from Kentucky to Florida and then to California after my mother passed away. I wasn’t impressed with the flat desert then any more than I was that morning. Miles and miles of monotonous land that all looked the same until I got into the area between the Guadeloupe Mountains and found a few hills and curves to drive through. Ada Lou had said that the place was pretty in the spring, but it looked awfully barren in January.
Kind of like your life right now,the annoying little imaginary creature on my shoulder said.But perhaps, like the land around you, everything will be better come spring.
To keep from arguing with the critter, I touched the button on the dash screen to turn on the music from my playlist. Ashley McBryde singing “Bonfire at Tina’s” filled the whole vehicle. I sang along with her even though I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. The song was aboutwomen who might not always see eye to eye, but if anybody—especially a man—wronged one of them, they banded together.
I played the video in my mind as I listened to the words and laughed a few times when all those women gathered around the bonfire. “Would Rosalie and Scarlett help me like that?” I muttered when the song ended.
Yep, they would. They didn’t have to warn me about men like Buddy, or trust me, but they did. And Scarlett even said that she and Ada Lou would help me bury that fool.
Are you going to take the money in the bank bag and run with it?the critter still on my shoulder asked.
I didn’t even bother to answer the ridiculous question, but the next song, “Keep It Between the Lines,” brought back memories of when Frank had taught me to drive on the straight, flat roads of the Texas Panhandle. I had to sit on a pillow to see over the steering wheel of the old Astro van we drove back then. When I got the hang of keeping the vehicle in the correct lane, he let me take a turn every day for a few hours. I loved it when he went to sleep, because I had control of the radio, and I didn’t have to pay attention to the speed limit sign.
Evidently, Miz Random on my playlist got stuck on Ashley McBryde, because the next song was “Martha Divine.” I smiled at the lyrics because the song always reminded me of Paula, especially when the words called her a jezebel from hell. Looking back, I could truly say that the devil had made me do it when I packed up my car and drove away from Kentucky.
Her next song was “Girl Goin’ Nowhere.” I felt the lyrics just like I did back when I’d first heard her sing. I remembered when the tall, skinny teacher in my English class handed back my test paper and asked me exactly what I intended to do with my life.
Not caring what she or the kids around me thought, I’d answered, “I will be a professional poker player.”
A few of the students snickered, but the boys who had been losing to me during the lunch break didn’t make a sound.
Miss Robbins, with her sharp nose and squinty eyes, gave me a short lecture about needing to get a high school diploma, or I wouldn’t goanywhere. I wanted to tell her that I had been doing very well without a piece of paper saying I had a formal education, and that I’d been to every one of the states except Hawaii. But I didn’t want to suffer the wrath of Paula if she got called to the school because the teacher had sent me to the office.
The lady with the tinny voice on GPS overrode the songs, so I turned off the music and followed her directions. The town didn’t seem to be all that different from Dell City, except it had a nice courthouse and a bank. I passed by two churches—a Catholic one, which would have made Rosalie happy, and a community church with a name I couldn’t pronounce.
My first stop was at the courthouse to file the deed. Viola, the lady who helped with the paperwork, sure was a talker and had no kind words for Larry, or else I would have been out of there in less than the thirty minutes that it took. The guy who set up accounts for the business at the bank and a personal one for me went on and on about how much he missed Matilda. I signed my weekly paycheck for five days’ work and groaned at how much had been deducted for taxes. Living off the grid all those years had not conditioned me for the real world. Staring at the piece of paper definitely did not make me feel much like a lucky wild card.
After all the transactions were done, I held my first-ever debit card in my hand. “As if I need it,” I said as I stared at the little rectangle of plastic on the way to my SUV. “I don’t have a thing to spend money on right now.”
I had settled into the driver’s seat and was about to start the engine when someone tapped on the window and startled me so badly that my soul left my body and floated around for a few seconds before it came back to me. I jerked my head to the side and saw Jackson Armstrong smiling at me and making a motion with his hand to roll the window down.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Same thing you are, probably. We keep our business local,” he answered. “There’s a small café not far from here. Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a glass of sweet tea?”
“No, but I would love a Diet Coke. I don’t know where it is. Shall I follow you?”
“Why don’t we just walk? The sun is shining, and the wind isn’t too bad. The café is nearby,” he suggested, and opened the door for me.
I hadn’t realized how tall he was until I walked beside him. I barely came up to his shoulder, and his legs were so long that he had to shorten his stride for me to keep up with him. Even then, I was almost out of breath when we arrived. He opened the café door for me and ushered me to a table with his hand on my back. Heat swept through the thickness of my jacket and shirt. I attributed it to the fact that I had not even had a one-night stand in several months. Plus, all that talk about families that Ada Lou had put out there had confused the hell out of me.
“Why doyoucome all the way out here to do your banking?” I asked on the way back to a table.
He pulled out a chair for me and helped me remove my jacket. “The headquarters for my folks’ oil business is in Dallas. In that area, one town runs into another. I was born and raised in McKinney, which is a few miles north of the actual city limits.”
“I am not fond of driving in Dallas. However, it beats New York City,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why you would be conducting business so far away.”
