“I’ll start with those,” Rosalie promised.
“Ada Lou won’t let us pay for the stuff she picks up, so Rosalie gives her cookies or muffins,” Scarlett explained when Ada Lou had paid for her meal and left.
Rosalie stood and picked up her half-full coffee mug. “Friendship makes for happiness.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
“There’s nothing better than friends and family.” She didn’t look back at me, but I thought I heard a sniff.
“Maybe someday we’ll have a confession night,” Scarlett said with a smile, as if to distract me.
I really wanted to know what on earth either of them—especially Rosalie—had to confess about. In the short time I had been at the Tumbleweed, I already liked them better than I had anyone since my mother passed away.
Are you willing to spill all of your deeply hidden secrets that you’ve never shared with anyone in return?the voice in my head asked.
I didn’t even try to answer that question.
Chapter Eight
Iwasn’t sure whether Ada Lou had taken me under her wing because she was lonely or because she wanted to broaden my list of friends so it would be difficult for me to leave when there was enough money in the bank for me to go back to my old ways. Whatever the reason, it was a little spooky, but I still found myself driving up the road toward the RV park. When she came into the café that morning for her daily brunch, she had asked—no, shetoldme—to be at her house for an afternoon game of Scrabble as soon as we closed and got the cleanup done. I didn’t even know what that was, but I didn’t like to be alone in the empty trailer, so I didn’t argue with her. I asked Rosalie about it when she was walking out the door to do something at her church again. She turned around just long enough to tell me that it was Ada Lou’s favorite board game.
“It has nothing to do with poker, so don’t be disappointed when you get there,” she said.
If it didn’t involve a deck of cards, neither Frank nor I was interested. By some standards, that would most likely constitute a dysfunctional family dynamic. In my previous world it simply meant a different lifestyle. I’d seen and even played a few internet games, but they usually bored me after five minutes. If it didn’t involve practicing for my next round of poker, it wasn’t worth wasting my time on.
You are never too old to learn new tricks,the voice in my head whispered.
“Are you calling me old?” I growled as I parked beside Ada Lou’s truck.
Ada Lou must have heard my vehicle on the gravel driveway, because she opened the door before I even knocked. “Come on in out of the cold. The hot chocolate is ready.”
I stepped inside and removed my jacket. “I’ve never played board games before, so I’ll require some teaching.” That’s when I noticed another woman sitting at the table.
“You’ll catch on quick,” Ada Lou said. “The game is more fun with more than two players, so I invited Nancy to come over.”
“Pleased to meet you, Carla,” Nancy said with a smile that deepened the wrinkles around her crystal clear blue eyes. “I’m the one that’s too sentimental to leave during the winter months. The rest of the folks—other than the new guy who moved into space number two—are only here during the spring and summer months. I hear he’s planning to stay for a while.”
“She and her husband parked here the same year I did and planned to spend only a few days,” Ada Lou explained as she poured a mug full of hot chocolate and set it down on the card table. “We play games when it’s too cold to take long walks. That keeps our minds from going stale. Sit down and we’ll explain the game as we go.”
“My husband, Lonnie, died last year,” Nancy said with a sigh. “All my favorite memories are right here in this place with him. After he retired, we bought a trailer and took off on a road trip.”
“Just like me,” Ada Lou added. “And just like me, they put down roots right here.”
“Exactly. And besides, all the friends I had back home in Tennessee have either passed on or else they are in nursing homes. When Lonnie died, I had the mortuary put his ashes in a companion vase, so they’re sitting on a shelf in my bedroom closet. When I die, I’ve instructed my son to cremate me, put my ashes with his dad’s, and then scatter them out at the base of the mountain. This is where we spent our happiest years.”
That was a lot of information to tell a total stranger—but then, maybe board game players shared more than poker players did.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Thank you.” Nancy tucked both sides of her short, gray hair behind her ears. “Now, let’s get serious about this game. While we play, you can tell me a little about yourself. Ada Lou is stingy with her information. She won’t even tell me what she knows about our new sexy neighbor. I see him leave early in the morning and come home sometime after five.”
I knew exactly who Nancy meant, and agreed that their new neighbor was indeed sexy.
Ada Lou sat down in the only other empty chair and cut her eyes over at Nancy. “How can you see that from your trailer?”
Nancy tilted her chin up in a defiant gesture. “I stand on a step stool under the window in my bedroom and get on tiptoe, because I’m too short to drool over all that testosterone without a little help.”
“You might be nosy enough to know all the gossip around these parts, but you would never do that. We’ve both forgotten so much about what to do with men in the bedroom that we would have to buy a how-to book,” Ada Lou argued.
