The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop (30 page)

“I was mad and I vowed I’d get even with Heather over that sign. With Agnes’s help I just might get the job done, and yes, Mama, I cried,” Stella said.

“She thought her new boyfriend would see that church sign and be offended by it,” Piper said softly.

Nancy hugged her again. “I’m so sorry I started all that by asking for prayers. I had no idea I was turning loose a monster.”

“Oh, she’s not turned loose yet, Mama,” Stella said. “Heather doesn’t have what it takes to step into Violet’s shoes. She’s started off too big and too quick. And Agnes has given her just enough chain to hang herself.”

Stella hoped that the wind carried that right back to Heather’s ears.

Trixie carried a tray of pecan tarts in one hand and a disposable pan of fried chicken in the other as she backed her way into the Yellow Rose. It was almost noon and the smell of still-hot chicken quickly filled the room.

“To what do we owe this wonderful visit?” Stella asked.

“I don’t care what you want, you can have it. I didn’t eat breakfast and I want a piece of that chicken,” Piper said.

Trixie took it to the table in the back room with the three hairdressers following behind her like beagle pups on the trail of a rabbit. “I need a favor, so this is a bribe.”

Charlotte reached for a pecan tart. “Up to a fourth of my kingdom is yours.”

Trixie sat down at the table and spread her hands out. “We have a problem. Agnes is doing very well in rehab, so well that they are going to let her out at the end of the week. The trouble is that she cannot do steps, so we wanted to put her in the assisted living place in Sherman.”

The other three pulled up chairs around the table and Trixie went on. “I know lots of folks come through here, so I was wondering if you’d ask around to see if there would be a small house we could rent for a couple of months. She swears she won’t go anywhere but home when she gets out of the rehab center. We’d take her in at any of our places, but they all have as many steps and stairs as her place, so that’s not a possibility. We need a house here in Cadillac that’s been built on a slab instead of pier and beam.”

“Sure we will,” Charlotte said. “I’d let her come to my place, but it’s got steps up to the porch.”

“My trailer is full and it’s sure not conducive to handicapped folks,” Piper said.

Trixie laughed. “Don’t say that word in front of her or she’ll scratch your eyes out.”

“She can come to my house,” Stella said. “Remember the McKays built it on a concrete foundation because Miz McKay’s knees had gotten so bad she couldn’t climb steps anymore, and they had the whole place fixed for her wheelchair. What day is Agnes blowing that joint?”

“Saturday morning,” Trixie said. “She swears that she’s coming to the ball that evening. Are you sure about this, Stella?”

“Couple of questions first. Can she live alone?”

“Sure. It won’t be a problem for you to leave her for work. We’ll check in on her through the day.”

“I mean as in all the time. As in if I’m not living there?” Stella asked.

Three sets of eyes immediately fixated on her. She straightened her back and stiffened her resolve to keep quiet a few more days, but it wasn’t easy.

“Where are you going to be?” Charlotte asked.

“I plead the Fifth, but Agnes can live in my house for a couple of months until she can climb steps again and go back to her place. It’s furnished and I’ll help y’all run in and out and check on her. I love that old fart,” Stella said.

Piper cupped Stella’s cheeks in her hands. “You aren’t leaving the shop for two months, are you? Promise me that you aren’t running away from us.”

“No, I am not. I’ll be here Tuesday morning to open up, but it is your week to clean the shop on Monday,” Stella said.

“I knew this was the place to come. I just knew it,” Trixie said. “I’m on my way up to take her some chocolate cake, so I’ll tell her the plan.”

“Tell her that I’ll have clean sheets on the bed, but she’s on her own for food unless she wants to cook,” Stella said. “I’ll get everything ready for her homecoming. We’ll be too busy at the shop to have a real party, but we’ll have the ball that night so it can be her homecoming party.”

“I’m telling her that you are moving out and I don’t know where or with whom. You might want to steer clear of the rehab center or she’ll pester the hell out of you until you tell her what she wants to know just to get her to shut up,” Trixie said.

Nancy came through the back door talking as she crossed the floor. “The countdown continues. Four days until all this shit is over. Oh, hello, Trixie. Is that fried chicken? It’s too early to order our lunch, so what’s going on in here?”

Piper spoke up with the newest story. “And Stella is pleading the Fifth and won’t tell us any more than that.”

Nancy laid a hand on Stella’s shoulder. “I expect that you are moving in with someone. I knew that giving a man a drawer in your bedroom was a step in that direction. And you’ve promised to bring him to your birthday party. Trixie, you and all the girls at Clawdy’s plus the Bless My Bloomers girls are invited to the party. So with that in mind, I think it is wonderful of you to let Agnes borrow your house. I’ll stop in and take her with me when I have to run up to Sherman so she doesn’t go stir-crazy.”

“You aren’t going to make her tell you anything more?” Piper asked.

Nancy shook her head. “It’s need to know. Right now I just need to know how many steaks to thaw out for her birthday.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
IX

E
very dryer was blowing hot air, the styling station chairs were full, two women on the sofa leafed through magazines, and two others sat at the table eating ice cream on a stick. The noise level wasn’t as loud as it had been when there was lots of gossip flying around, but it was a far cry from being quiet in the shop that Wednesday afternoon.

Then Gene plowed into the shop, slammed the door behind him, and yelled across the whole room at Piper, “What in the hell have you done?”

It took a few seconds, but every bit of conversation stopped. Not a single magazine page turned, and the lonesome cricket that Stella had tried to track down for two days stopped chirping.

Piper laid down the curling iron and met him halfway across the room, right in front of the yellow sofa. “This is my place of business. We will step outside or go to the back room, but this is not the place to yell at me,” she said softly.

He folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not going anywhere. You really did move in with Rhett Monroe, didn’t you? The stories are true.”

She looked him right in the eye without blinking or tiptoeing. “What I do or do not do is none of your business.”

“It is when it affects my sons, or are they my kids? Do I need to get a DNA test run to see if I really owe child support?” he asked coldly.

“I’ll take care of that for you next week,” she said. “Anything else?”

“I want to know where you live. It’s my right.”

“No, it is not. The divorce papers say if I move from the county with the boys, I have to let you know. If I take them out of the country for a vacation, I have to make you aware of when we leave and when we return if it interferes with your visitation dates, which are now on my calendar. Other than that, where I live is my business, and since I live in Grayson County, I don’t have to tell you jack shit, boy.”

One of the women started clapping and the others followed suit.

Gene tried to glare at all of them, but there were too many. “I’ll have you declared unfit and take the boys away from you,” he hissed.

“Tell me the court dates and I’ll be there to fight you, but since your hours have been cut at work, you might want to be aware that if you lose, you get to pay the court fees as well as all the lawyer fees,” she said.

“The house is empty,” he shouted.

“Yes, it is. The locks will be changed this week. I’m leasing it to a new teacher and his family. They will be moving in the first week of August, so you might not want to be breaking and entering or you’ll wind up in jail.”

“My mother will not be babysitting for you ever again. The boys can’t go with them this next weekend if you are going to be like this. I’ll have her call you,” he said.

“I can pay a sitter. I was just letting your mother have them because she asked. Now if that’s all, I’ve got to get back to work, and I’ll see you the weekend after next on Friday at six right here. And then you will bring them home to me Sunday at six right here.”

He stormed out without another word.

Piper took a deep breath and went back to her station. “Sorry about that. Some men are . . .”

“Just born stupid,” Carlene said from the sofa.

“You got that right,” Piper said.

Stella roamed through the house that had been her home for more than a year. It wouldn’t be difficult to leave it and move into the rambling old two-story white parsonage on the south side of the church. The ground floor was bigger than her entire little brick house, and there were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

The furnishings were old and worn and the whole place needed a coat of paint, inside and out. The hiring committee had told Jed that they wouldn’t be out money on the parsonage but it would be a good sign in their books if he invested some of his in renovating the place.

He might need a gold star in their books when they found out he’d married Stella Baxter, so she’d already picked out paint colors and had no doubt that all her friends would gather for something like an Amish barn raising if her mother and daddy offered to furnish the food.

She was eager to move and ease into her new role as Jed’s wife—more than ready to sit with him in a restaurant or on the front pew in church where the preacher’s wife sat while he delivered his sermons. She wasn’t ready for him to crawl out of her bed in another hour, put on his running clothes, and jog across the backyard to the next street over. And she damn sure wasn’t ready to dance with another man at that damn ball the next night out at Violet’s barn.

Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of Jed’s name being drawn out with another woman’s. She really should wait to pee on the stick in the bathroom until the whole thing was over. Knowing wouldn’t help and she damn sure couldn’t tell anyone if it was positive. If Jed knew that she was pregnant, he’d take the microphone out of Heather’s hand and announce it to the whole world so they wouldn’t have to be coupled with anyone else.

“Agnes would be disappointed if we don’t follow her instructions to the letter, and I really don’t look good in black hair.” She managed a smile through the tears. “Piper cried a lot when she was pregnant, so is that a sign?”

“Who are you talking to?” Jed asked from the dark hallway.

“Just mumbling, darlin’. Happy barbecue ball day. My bags are packed. I’ll put them in the car before Agnes gets here and I get to go home with my sexy husband tonight.”

He raked a hand through his blond curls. “Think I might sneak into the shop today for a haircut.”

“We don’t do men’s haircuts anymore, remember?”

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pressed her back to his chest. “Not even if I beg?”

She whipped around and kissed him passionately. “Run by anytime between twelve and one. We don’t usually book anyone for that time and I’ll take care of this lovely mop of curls. Do you realize that our children don’t have a snow cone’s chance in hell of having anything but curly hair?”

“I hope the girls are all red haired and pretty as their mama.” He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Now, I’m off to jog to the church. I’ll see you at noon and then tonight. Just one more day and that blasted sign comes down. It will say something totally different tomorrow morning, I promise.”

“ ‘Blessed are they that endure until the end’?” She quoted Scripture.

“I’m working on something better than that,” he whispered.

Piper and Charlotte arrived promptly at eight o’clock to help her load her suitcases and clothing and say good-bye to the house. It was crazy, but they’d done the same thing when they moved from the apartment complex where Charlotte and Stella had shared an apartment and where Piper, Gene, and the boys had lived a few units down.

Piper brought in two colored sheets done in little boys’ ideas of what the sky and dogs should look like and taped them to the front of the fridge.
Get well, Miz Agnes
was scribbled across the bottom of each. Charlotte put a chocolate cake from Clawdy’s inside the cake keeper on the bar and a gallon of milk in the refrigerator.

“I see you’ve put sweet tea and cans of root beer in here for her, too,” she said.

“I did, and the bed is made with fresh sheets. The bathroom is clean and I think she’ll be just fine here until she can go home. I gave Trixie my keys last night. Y’all want to put yours on the counter?”

Piper laid hers beside the cake. “Good-bye, house. You’ve been good to me, keeping all the ghosts at bay this past six months when I needed a place to stay.”

Charlotte wiped at a tear when she laid hers beside Piper’s. “So long, house. You’ve been a good friend and I’ll never forget the revelations I had in your bathroom.”

“It’s been fun, house, but it’s time for us to take a leap of faith into the future, where neither of my friends will have a key to my new house.” Stella smiled.

“Good God!” Piper threw the back of her hand over her forehead in a dramatic gesture. “We’ve done grown up.”

Piper and Charlotte left and Stella roamed through the rooms one more time. She found herself in the bathroom, making sure all her toiletries were packed, when she found the pregnancy tests hidden safely in an old shoe box full of sponge hair curlers. Taking a deep breath, she pulled one out and held it in her hand. It wasn’t much bigger than a pencil, and yet it held the answer to the question of that one morning’s nausea. She sat down on the potty and followed the instructions.

It was one of those new fancy ones that was supposed to say “negative” or “positive” and then give the approximate weeks of pregnancy. She laid it on the counter, washed her hands, and put the potty lid down.

She picked up the instructions again and reread them to see if it would say “negative” or “not pregnant” or “you are one lucky girl today.” It showed her the clear sign of what it would say and her breath caught in her chest.

Jed had said he hoped their daughters had red hair like hers. Her mama had said that preachers’ kids were hellions. She’d understood that years ago, when that preacher’s kid went to school and bragged about taking her virginity in the back of his truck—and Jed had told her he’d been like that boy when he was a teenager. Lord, what would she do with a son like that? Or with a red-haired, sassy daughter?

You will raise them up to love their mama like you love Nancy and their daddy and hope like hell they turn out right.
Agnes’s voice was back in her head.
And you will love them with your whole heart.

She shut her eyes tightly and fumbled for the stick, but then she couldn’t force herself to open them. She wanted Jed’s children, lots of them, and suddenly, she realized that she’d be disappointed as hell if she wasn’t pregnant. The nausea was a fluke and the missed period had to be because of all the stress but still, she touched her stomach and wanted a baby to be growing there.

She finally opened her eyes and reached for the phone, hit speed dial for Jed’s number, and said, “Where are you right now this minute? I need to see you.”

“Jogging about half a block from your house.”

“The back door is open and the house is empty.”

“Three minutes.” He chuckled.

“Run faster and get here in two,” she said.

She laid the stick on a paper towel on the kitchen cabinet and met him at the back door. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she rolled up on her toes and kissed him, long and lingering on the lips.

“If your neighbors saw me barrel into this house, there’ll be talk before the ball,” he said. “But I do like the gleam in your eye.”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. “I thought that one morning with nausea was something I ate and that the lack of my period was stress and the pill is supposed to be ninety-nine-point-whatever effective so I didn’t think I could possibly be pregnant but the test is over there and you can see for yourself . . .”

He picked her up and swung her around the kitchen floor until she was even more breathless than ever. “This is the best wedding present ever. I feel like I’m floating on air. I love you, Mrs. Tucker, and now we’ve got a double announcement to make.”

“I love you, Jed. Are you sure you’re not disappointed? We talked about waiting two years to start a family.”

“No, my darlin’, I’m so happy that my heart is about to explode.”

With her feet dangling off the floor, Stella felt as if she was floating on air for real. Gossip, scandal, malicious lies. None of it could touch her when she was in Jed’s arms.