Talk of the Town (31 page)
I checked the number on the phone. “Butch . . . hello?” Static obscured the line, and I moved away from the house to see if it would improve. “Butch, are you there? Did you find Amber? Butch?”
“Hey . . . Ms. Florentino? This connection’s not . . . ery good.” Butch’s voice was a thin ribbon of sound, a tiny ray of hope. I grabbed it like a lifeline.
“Butch, have you found Amber?”
Static, and then “. . . thing yet. I just went by Amber’s house, and there’s photographers camped out front, but I’ve . . .”—Butch faded into the ether again—“. . . more places to look. Is Rodney there with the crew yet?”
“No, no one’s here yet. Butch, you have to find Amber,” I hollered into the phone, as if that would make the connection more viable. “Butch? Butch?” He was gone again. The line didn’t disconnect, so I waited. “Butch?”
“. . . ere’s a car out here.” Snatches of Butch’s voice floated through the static. “. . . see anybody . . . climb over and walk . . . believe this place. Oh man, there’s . . .”
Butch was gone. I hollered his name into the phone, even after the line disconnected. My stomach twirled and clenched, and I pressed a hand over it. The reality of the situation, the one I had been trying to avoid all morning, seeped through me like a gallon of ice water. Everything here was beyond my control. There was nothing I could do to make it turn out all right. I was as helpless as a little leaf-and-twig sailboat, drifting at the mercy of currents and the wind.
I looked at Carter, busy investigating the old tractor, and the full understanding of what he’d said in the mail wagon poured over me with an intensity that raised gooseflesh on my skin.
“Quit fighting the sails and let the wind move the boat—drift on faith for a while.”
It’s hard to drift on something you don’t acknowledge. Over the years of my adulthood, I’d strayed so far from a childlike confidence in God’s ability to guide the tide of human events that there was nothing left to buoy me when the storms blew in. I’d treaded water to the point of exhaustion, and now I could either sink below the surface or stop swimming, let go, and allow the current to carry me along.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and abandoned myself to the belief that there were no accidents. Everything that had happened, from my being put in charge of Amber’s segment, to Amber’s disappearing with Justin Shay, to Carter’s being in the hotel room next to mine, had happened for a reason. I was here for a reason. Just because I didn’t create the plan didn’t mean a plan didn’t exist.
The idea wrapped around me like a warm, soft blanket—something old and well used, pulled from the abandoned storage spaces of childhood, a little too small to cover me now, but a good start. I remembered how it felt to put my trust in something larger than myself. I wanted to feel that way again.
“Doesn’t look like there’s anybody here,” the postman said, startling me from my reverie as he came down the steps. “I reckon they went on over to the neighbor’s to see about the horse trailer. I better git back down the road before Doyle blocks it off with the gravel truck. Gotta finish my route. Y’all just make yourselves to home. I’m sure they’ll all be here directly.” He climbed into his truck as I thanked him for the ride.
“Well, that was purely my pleasure, ma’am.” Sticking an arm out the window, he shook my hand. “I’ll call later and apologize to Imagene about the kitten. I reckon he’s probably made hisself at home under there already.” He nodded toward the house. “She needed a little somethin’ around here to keep her company anyhow.” Firing up the engine, he put the jeep in gear, waved out the window while making a loop in the yard, then careened down the driveway.
Carter watched the jeep disappear as he walked back from the tractor. “Guess we’re on our own.”
“Guess so.”
We wandered toward the house and sat down on the steps next to a freshly planted flower bed. The air was heavy with the honey-sweet scent of flowers. A gentle breeze stirred the freshly mowed grass and combed the leaves of the live oaks, causing the shadows to shift and dance. All around, there was a sense of spring, of old things giving way to new beginnings. Anything seemed possible today.
“It’s nice here,” I said.
“That it is,” Carter agreed. “Kind of makes you realize a day that didn’t start out looking too good can still turn out all right. It looked like it might rain first thing this morning.”
“It did?” How could I have slept through an oncoming storm, on top of everything else?
Chuckling, Carter braced his long legs on the steps, rested his elbows on his knees, and sat twirling a purple wild flower he’d picked somewhere. “The clouds put on a pretty convincing show earlier. Sent the reporters running for cover, and the fry cook in the café was worried the rodeo might be a washout.”
I groaned under my breath. “Good thing I slept through it. I don’t think I could have handled one more unexpected contingency today.”
“Nah, don’t worry.” He watched the flower petals move. “Donetta foretold a perfect day for the rodeo. She
sees
things in the beauty shop window, you know. Visions.” Glancing sideways at me, he raised an eyebrow with an exaggerated air of mystery.
His expression made me laugh. “Did she happen to tell you how Amber’s location shoot would turn out?” Even though I was joking, a little voice inside me whispered,
The last time you got mixed up with the soothsaying shop owner, Mandalay, it did not go well. Leave this one alone
.
“Didn’t say,” Carter admitted. “She told me I shouldn’t pack up and go so soon.”
Actually, maybe Donetta’s prognostications weren’t so bad after all. “Why were you leaving?”
Glancing sideways, Carter studied me for a moment, then said noncommittally, “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Why?”
He turned his attention back to the flower. “Hanging around flirting with someone else’s fiancée probably isn’t the best use of time, for one thing. Last night when I didn’t see you around the hotel, I figured you were, well . . . pointing that out, in a nice way. I’d finished what I came here to do, so I thought I’d do the gentlemanly thing—pack up and leave you to your work.” He grinned and held the flower out to me, his eyes catching a dash of passing sunlight. “The guy on the phone is an idiot, by the way.”
“The . . . guy . . . ?” I stammered, dumbfounded as he slipped the flower into my fingers. “What . . .”
“The guy on the phone this morning,” he said again. “The online Romeo.”
Suddenly, everything was humiliatingly clear. I wanted to sink into the steps and disappear, hide somewhere underneath the house with the cat. “You heard that? You . . . you heard me talking to David?”
He shrugged apologetically. “The walls in that old place aren’t very well insulated. I think they probably heard it downstairs in the café.” At my look of utter mortification, he softened and added, “Just kidding, but yes, I heard it. For what it’s worth, the guy’s a fool.” Our gazes caught and held, and I was suddenly aware of the smallest things—the shallow breath in my lungs, the slow, steady beat of my heart, the heat of a blush in my cheeks, the color of his eyes, sky blue, but darker near the centers, his fingers touching mine, the velvety leaf of the flower brushing my wrist, the realization that he was going to kiss me, and I wanted him to, and then he did.
Every other thought turned to mist in my mind. There was only an awareness of him, of us, an explosion of sensations like nothing I’d ever felt before.
Skyrockets.
The last thing I expected to see when we drove up to the house was Amanda-Lee and Carter kissing on the porch steps. It must have been some kiss, because they didn’t even notice my car pulling in. It wasn’t until my neighbor’s old truck and trailer rattled through the barnyard that the two of them broke away, and then they looked a little dazed, like they couldn’t figure out where they were or what’d happened.
I waited a minute to leave the car, pretending to be busy gathering my purse. Avery opened the door and popped out of the back seat, then ran to the barnyard to open the gate for the horse trailer. It’d been against my good judgment to let Andy drive the truck over from the neighbor’s place, since he only had his learner’s permit, but he’d promised he could do it just fine. I’d finally said maybe it’d be all right, if they went slow across the tractor lane through the pasture.
Verl, pickled as he was, had offered to drive, but I’d told him not a chance. He did turn out to be a help with getting old Magnolia loaded in the trailer, though.
“Here, let me try,” he said after the boys and I had all tried and Magnolia wouldn’t go anywhere near the trailer.
Being frustrated and in a hurry to get back to the house before Brother Harve and O.C. came back with my potatoes and bagged ice from town, I wasn’t in the best humor. “Verl Anderson, what in the world do you know about horses?”
He had the nerve to look offended. “Mrs. Doll, for fifteen years I was a cowboy on the Four Corners Ranch out in the panhandle.” The food and coffee had started to clear up Verl’s speech, finally. “But I broke my back, and we moved here because I couldn’t ride no more.” Taking the lead rope from my hands, he stroked Magnolia’s muzzle. “I may not be good for much, but I still know how to get on with a horse.” Verl talked to that old mare, and darned if she didn’t put her head right in Verl’s chest. The two of them just stood there for a minute, like they belonged together.
That was exactly the way Carter and Amanda-Lee looked on my porch—like they’d just found a powerful connection and were more than a little surprised by it. It was nice to know my ability to spot a good match hadn’t gone south along with my memory and my figure. Amanda-Lee had the glow of a woman who’d just seen fireworks go off in broad daylight. I knew that feeling. I had it the first time Jack kissed me.
Amanda-Lee blushed and got embarrassed when she saw me walking up, probably because she was supposed to be engaged and all. When we got a minute alone, I’d have to tell her the story about Jack and me, and then she’d see that some things are meant to be.
“Well, we got the trailer here,” I said, just to start a conversation. Neither of them came back down to earth and answered me, so I tried again. “Carter, are you our driver?” I knew he was because Donetta’d already called and told me so, but I thought I’d give Carter a question that would be easy to answer, since he looked a little dazed.
“Yeah,” he said finally, and blinked twice. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s real fine.” I patted him on the shoulder and sort of pointed him toward the barnyard. “Why don’t you go on and help Verl and the boys unload the horse and put her in the corral until we’re ready to head to the fairgrounds after lunch? One of the trailer tires is pretty soft. I think it needs some air.”
“All right,” he said and wandered off, looking like he didn’t know which way was up. It sure was cute.
Amanda-Lee gazed after him as he went. She finally caught me watching her, turned the other way, and blushed even deeper red. “The crew’s . . . ummm . . . not here yet.”
I couldn’t tell whether that was a fact or a question, so I said, “No, hon, I guess not, but I’m sure they will be soon. Long as they don’t miss the exit off the interstate, they really can’t get lost, coming here from Austin. They just follow Bee Hollow Road, then take a right at the four-way like the directions said, and they’ll get here.”
“Rodney’s good with directions,” she muttered absent-like, and stole another glance toward the barn. “I hope Butch finds Amber.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I slipped my arm in hers and guided her toward the door. “Come on inside, hon. I got a roast in the oven and some crust ready for apple pies. O.C. and Brother Harve went after some potatoes and ice in town. After that drive from Austin, I figure your people will show up hungry.”
Amanda-Lee followed me into the house, and we walked slowly through the entry hall, past the staircase toward the living room and the kitchen in back. She looked up at the high old ceiling my mama complained about after those low-roofed houses came in style. My daddy would have no talk of remodeling it. He valued things with some history to them.
“Now, there’s plenty of light in here,” I told Amanda-Lee as she stopped to look back at the staircase. “It ought to be fine for filming. I’m sorry the place is a mess. I don’t keep house as good as I used to now that it’s only me living here.” Of course, I’d been housekeeping all morning and the place looked all right, but it’s always good to apologize for the condition of your house so folks will think it normally looks better.
“It’s beautiful.” Amanda-Lee’s voice was wistful and dreamy. With the state she was in, probably everything had a little halo around it. My house isn’t beautiful. It’s old and homey and wellused, which is fine with me.
“Well, y’all just make yourselves to home when your crew gets here,” I said. “Now, I mean that. You go in any of the rooms, move things, do whatever you want to do. You need anything, just ask me. Don’t open any of the closets, though. That’d be taking your life in your hands. The Anderson boys and I cleaned in a hurry this morning.”