“Well, I belong to a book club, and we’re reading Kristan Higgins.”
“Oh, I’m crazy about her stuff!”
“Want to join us? We’re meeting at my house next Tuesday.”
“I’d love to. Who comes?”
“Most of the ladies you met at the tree planting and a few others—including Jillian.”
“I felt so bad for her at the fete,” I said. “Have you seen her since?”
“Yeah. And she asked me if something was going on between you and Matt.”
I kind of held my breath. “What did you tell her?”
“That you two really liked each other and were hitting it off.” She leaned across the counter and lowered her voice. “She’d heard that Matt kissed you good night.”
“Oh, good grief.”
“She tried to act like it didn’t matter, but I could tell it bothered her. She said she’d thought Matt had invited you to the fete just to be neighborly.” Kirsten poured herself glass of water. “It’s kind of sad, how selective a person’s vision can be.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied ruefully. “My husband and my best friend were having an affair right under my nose, and I was the last to know.”
“I think there must be some self-protective mechanism that kicks in.”
“I think you have to have a lot emotionally invested to activate it.”
“Well, I think Jillian is pretty emotionally invested in Matt. She said that it’s good he’s showing interest in someone new, because it means he’s getting over Christine and is ready to move on.” Kirsten gave a wicked grin. “Then she said it’s too bad that you’re only in a town for a few more weeks, but she didn’t look like she thought it was bad at all.”
36
adelaide
You said you moved to Mississippi a few months before the baby was due,” Hope prompted.
I opened my eyes. Apparently I’d dozed off, or maybe my thoughts had just meandered. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
My granddaughter and I were in my bedroom. It was the next day—or maybe the day after, or the day after that. Time had become liquid, moving and spreading all around. I was sitting in my rocker, and Hope was holding three loose housedresses with sunflowers on them.
No. It was one housedress, the one I’d asked her to pull out of my closet.
She brought it over and laid it in my lap. The fabric was light, but touching it, I could almost feel the heaviness of the padding I’d worn under it that summer.
Unbidden thoughts.The phrase floated through my head. Maybe that wasn’t the word,unbidden—but then again, maybe it was. Unbidden, as in unexpected and unwanted and uncalled-for, leaving you all undone. One moment you’re doing something perfectly ordinary, and the next, you’re overrun by memories and feelings that leave you reeling and gasping.
I had a lot of those in the months that followed that Easterdinner where Charlie announced my so-called pregnancy. I closed my eyes and fell back into my story.
1948
We moved to a rental house in Jackson, a squalid little two-bedroom thing. Charlie had deliberately picked a place too small for either of our families to stay overnight.
The days ground on. Charlie was busy starting up the new store, and caring for the kids kept me hopping. He stopped drinking when we moved, and things eased between us. He finally told me a little about the other woman—about as much as I’d told him about Joe. She was someone he’d met at a roadside bar. He’d been lonely and she’d been a good listener. She’d just been dumped by someone she loved, and well, that was when he’d been eaten up with jealousy over Joe, and they’d gravitated toward each other because hurt attracts hurt. He said they hadn’t meant anything to each other in any way that really mattered.
As time went on, I actually began to look forward to the baby, to having a new life to care for. Maybe Charlie and I could build a new life together, as well—his, mine, and ours. Maybe, in some weird way, this really would even the score.
The first week in September, both sets of our parents drove up and picked up the children. They would care for them in Wedding Tree until the baby was born, freeing me to rest during the last weeks of my “pregnancy.”
At first I was lost without them, but then... well, Charlie and I fell into a new pattern when it was just the two of us. We’d play card games at night and take walks. He made me laugh with stories and impressions about the people working in the new store, and he’d ask my opinion about situations and dilemmas, and we even began to make love again.
