Then I go to bed, already nervous about tomorrow’s dinner, already wondering what new mistakes I’ll make and what lessons I’ll learn. But for the first time since arriving, the nervousness feels a little less like dread and more like anticipation.
Maybe that’s progress.
CHAPTER 8
The memory of Dolly’s dinner still warms me three days later when I think about it.
I had arrived at the yellow house with the wind chimes at exactly six o’clock because punctuality is one habit I can’t break. I clutched a bottle of wine I’d driven forty-five minutes to find because the Copper Creek grocery store selection consisted entirely of something called Arbor Mist and a suspicious-looking Merlot with a screw cap.
Dolly had taken one look at my expensive Cabernet and laughed.
“Honey, we’re having sweet tea and fried chicken, but I appreciate the effort.”
The house was small but immaculate, every surface covered with photographs and knick-knacks and the accumulated treasures of a life well lived. The dining room was set for six: Dolly, me, Presley, Boone, and, to my surprise, Wyatt with his grandmother, Meredith.
Meredith was a tiny woman with silver hair and the exact same eyes in the exact same shade of blue as her grandson’s. She studied me with frank curiosity when we were introduced, her handshake firm despite the fact that she had obvious arthritis.
“Oh, so you’re the one who’s got my Wyatt all tied up in knots,” she’d said.
My face felt like it was on fire, and Wyatt made a strangled sound of protest.
“Grandma!”
“Hush. I’m old. I’m allowed to say what I see.” She patted my hand. “Don’t worry, dear. He needed some knots. He’s been too settled for too long.”
I didn’t know what she meant by any of that. Wyatt wasn’t interested in me. I’m the woman who drives him crazy, picking apart menu grammar and insulting pudding all over town. Why was I tying him up in knots? I decide that Meredith is mistaken and just ribbing her grandson at my expense.
The dinner itself had been a revelation. Not the food, although Dolly’s fried chicken was transcendent. The conversation. The easy flow of it. The way everyone talked over each other, laughed at inside jokes, and included me without making me feel like an outsider.
Presley told a story about a customer who tried to pay his tab with a live chicken.
“He was completely serious,” she said. “Said it was worth at least forty dollars. And that chicken was as ugly as homemade sin, I’m telling ya!”
Boone shared, in his quiet way, that he’d finally finished the rocking chair he’d been building for months.
Meredith regaled us with tales of teaching elementary school for forty years.
“Oh, the children never change,” she said. “The parents just get worse every generation.”
And Wyatt watched me across the table with an expression I couldn’t quite read. He jumped in to explain references I didn’t understand, made sure my sweet tea glass stayed full, and caught my eye during funny moments to check if I was enjoying myself.
And I was.
That was the strangest part. I was genuinely, uncomplicatedly enjoying myself.
At one point, Dolly brought out a photo album with pictures of The Rusty Spur through the years, of Mavis at different ages, of the staff and regulars who had become family. I found myself leaning in, hungry for glimpses of the aunt I never knew. Dolly narrated each image with the kind of love that made my throat tight.
“Now this one was her sixtieth birthday. We surprised her with a mariachi band. I don’t even know where Wyatt found them, but they drove three hours to get here. Mavis cried for twenty minutes straight and then made them teach her to play the trumpet.”
“Did she actually learn?”
“Oh Lord, no. She was as tone deaf as a post, but she had fun trying.”
By the time I left that night, I felt something I hadn’t in years, maybe ever.
I felt like I belonged somewhere.
Now it is Tuesday night, and The Rusty Spur is hosting what the hand-painted sign outside calls the “Two-Step Tuesday - Line Dancing for Everyone.”
