Bed of Roses

CHAPTER TWELVE BREAKING DISHES

CHAPTER TWELVE

brEAKING DISHES

L oretta fanned at her face and sank down into a kitchen chair. “Lord, it’s hotter than a barbed wire fence in hell out there. I vote that we watch the fireworks in air-conditioned comfort from my bedroom window and take our usual bottle of champagne up there to celebrate, Katty.”

Sam brought three tall glasses of sweet tea to the table and took a sip from one before setting it at her regular place. “Enjoy the AC for me. Noah is picking me up after we’re done snacking, and he’s taking me to the football stands to watch the show.”

Kathleen set a charcuterie tray in the middle of the table. “I hope you kids have fun. There’s been a new light about you recently, Samantha. I’m glad to see that trip to Louisiana for Mother’s Day did your heart so much good.”

“Okay, spill it. What really happened on that trip? Did y’all screw?” Loretta layered tiny cold cuts, cheese, and crackers on her saucer with gusto.

Sam giggled at the old woman’s frankness. “No, Loretta! I told you everything already. He soared through the weekend with flying colors. My family fell in love with him. My sisters and my niece could eat him with a spoon, and they have already reminded me dozens of times how wonderful he is. Anna’s and Kate’s husbands and Daddy also thought he had just hung the moon between his car collection and obsessive amount of random World War II knowledge.” She stopped and took a sip of tea.

“I’m jealous that he got to meet them all before me and Retta did,” Kathleen said, “but go on and tell us again.”

“And even better, I think Noah enjoyed it as much as they did. Daddy kept on saying that Pawpaw would have loved him, and I agreed. He just meshed, like he had been part of our family all along. It was a happy, perfect, but slightly angsty weekend because he hinted at wanting to be my boyfriend, but every time he got close to spilling, someone interrupted us.”

“And he didn’t kiss you?” Kathleen asked.

Good Lord! At my age, I shouldn’t blush at the mention of that kiss.

“Not until we parked back at Rose Garden. And thank you very much for staying inside,” she admitted for the first time.

Loretta raised both hands toward the ceiling. “Well, praise the Lord!”

“I knew it!” Kathleen beamed. “Was it a good kiss?”

“It made my knees weak,” Sam answered.

“I need to tell him why I didn’t tell you that he called and came by, I suppose.” Kathleen sighed. “I just didn’t feel like you needed any more on you at that time. And Noah needed to figure out just what he wanted after Laura left. I always liked the idea of y’all together, but timing is key in good love stories.”

Sam topped another Club cracker with a thick slice of pepper jack. “You were right. And I’m sure that Noah will forgive you too.”

Loretta had brought her knitting to the table and held it in her lap. She was making something from thick white, fuzzy yarn that could possibly be a blanket. She wore a crooked smile and didn’t even look up as she worked on whatever it was. “I’m proud of you for closing the door to your past, Sam. That took courage and a lot of guts to confront Liza Beth and forgive her and Chase for what they did to you.”

“It felt good once I got over the initial fear of running into Liza Beth. And she didn’t look knocked up when we saw each other, so that might just be rumors. I didn’t really look at her that well. I had tunnel vision at the time,” Sam said.

“God answers prayers when you pray together.” Loretta winked at Sam and then beamed at Kathleen.

“Y’all have been praying for me?” Sam looked from Kathleen to Loretta for the answer.

“Ever since you got here,” Kathleen answered as she reached over and patted Sam’s hand. “We knew you needed a place to heal from something. Prayers were just part of the package of free room and board.”

Sam’s eyes burned with unshed tears. “I can’t thank either of you enough for all that you’ve done for me. I didn’t always listen, and you still loved me. I was hardheaded, but you let me figure things out on my own. And then you caught me when I fell and needed you so badly. I don’t deserve either of you.”

Kathleen shook her head and pinched Sam’s cheek softly. “You deserve the world, kid, and don’t you ever think otherwise.”

“You are ours now,” Loretta spoke up. “We claim you as ours. We haven’t done anything special, baby girl. We’ve just loved ya.”

Overcome, Sam reached across the table to snag Loretta’s hand and bumped into the white and pink antique vase on the table between them. The thing toppled, and Sam tried to catch it but missed. It fell in slow motion all the way to the floor and shattered into a million jagged pieces. Sam jumped up so fast that it made her dizzy. She tried to gather the flowers in one hand and mop up the water with her other, but couldn’t seem to get anything done.

“Hey, Katty, it ain’t dark out just yet, but I think Sam just went ahead and started the celebrations early,” Loretta said as she raised her charger plate over her head and started to cackle. She pushed her little tea saucer of snacks to a safe spot in front of her and began to swing the china charger to and fro above her head.

Kathleen nodded and raised a matching charger over her head too. “One, two, three …”

A bash as loud as a shotgun’s blast sounded as the two women tossed their plates down at the same time and let out peals of laughter.

“Good riddance,” Loretta muttered as she dusted her hands off and grabbed another cracker.

Sam was as confused as Nibbler seemed to be when he came bounding up to the closed French doors leading from the dining room into the living area. He pawed and sniffed on the other side and yapped a warning.

“He’s letting us know that he doesn’t like our ritual and he’s going to take over supervising our holiday.” Kathleen giggled.

“Ritual?” Sam gawked at the shattered pieces scattered across the heart pine floors of the room. “Darlin’ girl,” Kathleen said, “you just stumbled into the oddest yearly ceremony that Loretta and I celebrate here at Rose Garden. It ain’t nothing to fret about. That vase was doomed from the time we sat down at the table. I promise it makes sense if you know the whole story.”

“This is the wackiest Fourth of July tradition I’ve ever heard of. I’m gonna want the whole story from the top, please.”

Loretta nodded toward Kathleen. “I reckon it’s time to bring her in, Kathleen. The whole breaking of the vase proves it. But it ain’t my story to tell, it’s yours.”

“It’s both our stories, Rhett. But I’ll start.” Kathleen took a heavy breath and leaned one elbow on the table and looked Sam right in the eyes.

“I was fourteen when my daddy said I could go out with Thurman the first time,” Kathleen said. “I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world, that the best-looking boy in Homestead had asked me to the Valentine’s Day dance at the school. Mama made me a pretty pink dress, fixed my hair, even got me new shoes earlier that winter. Thurman was a handsome cut of a man, and he knew how to act the perfect gentleman when he wanted to. He was lean and had his suits tailored down in Avinger by this old Italian man who used to make suits for the mob. He was sharp. He was a bit older than me too, I remember he brought me a corsage of white carnations that night. He won my parents over and then me too. We got married two months before my eighteenth birthday, and my parents gave us that little cabin out on the front end of the property.”

“The hunting cabin? That place is pretty small. Where did Loretta stay?” Sam asked.

“Oh, honey, that was more than twenty years before I moved into the Rose Garden,” Loretta said with an amused expression. “I was off making a mess of my own life before that. I didn’t come to live here until we were both sixty years old.”

“She didn’t show up until I had wasted forty-three years,” Kathleen said with a long sigh. “Time’s just lost if you’re living under the thumb of an abusive bastard.”

“Thurman hit you?” Sam was shocked, not believing that Kathleen would ever put up with that kind of thing.

The dismissive way that Kathleen shrugged in response made her stomach clench. So, Thurman and Jack really were cut from the same cloth.

Loretta butted in before Kathleen could say another word. “Baby, there’s more ways to abuse a woman than with fists. Thurman preferred throwing things. He was real good at lying and manipulating her. Hell, he gaslit me a few times, and I was living in the same house. The son of a bitch knew Kathleen’s mama would have his ass if Kathleen showed any bruises, so he was particular about how and when he’d hurt her when Mama Scott was alive.”

Kathleen picked up from there. “He liked mental games the most. He’d only get physical if he had drunk too much. That’s why holidays that centered around drinking were always the more hellish ones. He liked to show me and his buddies he was the man of the house, even if I owned it and the land it sat on. His drinking picked up a few years into our marriage, and everything went to hell. My wedding vows said that I would obey him. He never let me forget it.”

Sam made a mental note to herself: Do not make that promise even if it is traditional.

“November 29, 1965. That was the day I threw it back in his face and reminded him that he had vowed the same damn thing to me before my parents, the preacher, and even God. He had promised he would love and cherish me, and I told him I wanted a divorce on the grounds of adultery. Andrew was at his aunt Maude’s house that night.”

“And?” Sam asked.

“He broke all of the plates from our wedding dishes,” Kathleen answered. “A few weeks later, I found out for absolute sure that he had been cheating on me for years. I broke the rest of the wedding set that had survived. He’d get angry and leave town for a few days, then come back chipper again and find some way to make me take him back. And the boys would be so happy when their daddy came back, I couldn’t be angry for long, at least not in front of them. But then something would set Thurman off, and he’d go into another rage. I never knew which Thurman I got that day until it was too late.”

Sam shivered, not just physically, but all the way into her soul.

“Were you still living at the cabin?”

“No, my mama had died and left the house to me, so we had moved into this house by then. Daddy moved to Georgia to be near his sisters and got married again to a woman from there. That all happened while I was pregnant with Bubba. Thurman was the golden child in my father’s eyes, and he knew to hide his temper ’til Daddy moved away. After that, there was no one checking in on us that could really talk sense into Thurman when he got in one of his moods and it got bad. I spent more time sweeping up broken dishes than I spent washing them. I remember thinking that he could have at least thrown the dirty ones. But oh, no! He pulled them from the china cabinet, not the sink.”

“Why did you stay? I mean, how in the world did you manage it?” Sam asked.

“I had nowhere to go. Daddy thought I was lying when I called to tell him what Thurman was doing. Thurman called all our friends and my own daddy and told them all I had postpartum and was going crazy. Anything I told anyone, including my pastor, my father, my friends, all went up in smoke because I had been deemed mentally unwell since Bubba’s birth. The boys were too young to really understand what was happening in the house when everything was at its peak. I went to a lawyer after one bad bout, determined to divorce him. He said Thurman would be entitled to half of everything we had accumulated since marriage, meaning this house. I hated him too much to let him have what had been in my family for generations …” She paused long enough to eat a fistful of blueberries. “But I already told you that part.”

“That was the year that she made this place into a bed-and-breakfast, and then the year after that, I moved in,” Loretta added.

“Loretta helped me manage the bed-and-breakfast. She ran it while I tried to manipulate things so Thurman wouldn’t sleep with my clientele. I barely kept myself together through that time.”

“I learned how to fix Sheetrock pretty good,” Loretta went on with the story.

She reminded Sam of a sticky-faced child who was thrilled to show an adult a new dance move or a poor bug in a jar.

“The bastard threw a toaster at me once. That toaster still worked afterward, but it took me two weeks to figure out how to fix that hole in the wall. He didn’t like it that Kathleen started sassing back more after I moved in, and said I was the bad influence.” Loretta rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Maybe I was. But he was an old rabid dog that needed to be put down. After what I saw and heard him do to Kathleen, I knew there wasn’t any way out of it. Thurman’s brother was the sheriff at the time, and he just …”

Kathleen laughed at the mention of her dead husband’s brother. “Ah yes, the grand poohbah of the Good Ole Boys’ Club of Homestead. Loretta and some of our mutual church friends had already called the cops on Thurman, but no report was officially filed by anyone in the sheriff’s office.”

“Did the sheriff not believe you, or did he just not want it to be true?” Sam asked.

The dismal answer to her question was foreshadowed by the slumping shift in Kathleen’s shoulders. “He knew Thurman as well as I did. That was what tasted so bitter so many years afterward. He knew what I was up against, but”—she shrugged—“he was Thurman’s brother and drinking buddy. Having a relative accused of domestic violence, rape, and a handful of other felonies doesn’t look too good when you got a reelection coming up in a few months. So, I was alone in it. I ain’t proud of my actions back then, but I did what any wounded animal with its back in the corner does. I bared all my teeth and went berserk. I threatened to kill him if he touched me again. My hissy fit worked for a while. I threatened to burn the whole house down. He started taking women down to the hunting lodge and stopped bringing women to a bedroom here at the B&B.”

Sam frowned. “The fact that the hunting lodge was his hook-up shack makes Jack taking me there even grosser.”

“So gross.” Loretta shuddered.

Kathleen shivered at the same time. “One day when the boys were still little and in school, I was in the attic hiding out till Thurman finished his tirade and headed to the bar. While I was stuck up there, I went through a corner of the attic where my mother had left some chests and leather suitcases. I opened a hope chest full of quilts and petticoats and such. There were pillowcases and quilts and all sorts of things that men don’t care to go through once a woman is dead. I even found a long black velvet overcoat that I remembered her wearing to funerals in the wintertime. I pulled it out and held it up to me, but it hung crooked, like it had a weight on one side. I felt all along and found her diary sewn into the pocket.”

Sam hung on every word and when Kathleen paused, she asked, “Did you read it?”

“Yes, I did. It was an omen that I found it when I did. I sat in her old rocking chair that had a busted rung in the back and read until the boys came home from school. Every time I got a free minute, I stole a few hours and read more—mostly when the boys were in school or when Thurman and the kids were sleeping. I found out that my daddy and Thurman had been cut from the same cloth. Mama hid the uglier bits from me, just like I had done with the boys. I think a lot of women did that back then because image was everything for the family’s reputation. And being a divorced woman was too big of a scandal to pass to your kids. So, she had stuck it out. Daddy was the pot. No wonder he always vouched for the kettle.” Kathleen’s pained expression said more than her words.

“I need a beer.” Kathleen stood and walked to the fridge unceremoniously as Loretta continued rambling for her.

“Thurman died the next summer on July Fourth, so we celebrate the old devil passing on by breaking dishes we have chipped in the year past. We start anew and call it our own New Year’s Day. You just helped us bring in another Rose Garden New Year by breaking that vase, honey. I thought it was hideous anyhow.”

“Rhett, you said you liked it when I bought it!” Kathleen protested.

“I lied.” Loretta’s face lit up in a gleeful grin. “Sam, you probably need to get ready. The eager dog that Noah is, there’s no doubt that he will get here early to pick you up.”

Kathleen shooed Sam with a flick of her wrist. “Speaking of eager dogs, make sure to bring Nibbler to your room. Rhett and I will clean up the festivities a little later. I have a few more I may wanna add to the floor gallery before I finish this beer. I’ll snuggle Nibbler when the real fireworks start, so don’t worry.”

“Wear that little red cotton dress you have in the closet. It will keep you cool and still be festive. Oh! And pair it with your brown flats!” Loretta said.

Sam had never—from day one—seen Kathleen and Loretta the way that Jack had described them when he told her about them. Eccentric was a word Sam heard often in town. But her description of the two was bold, independent, self-sufficient, encouraging, and hilarious. Certainly not eccentric. But in moments like this, when Kathleen, wearing her signature overalls, chucked a teacup on the ground like a football after a winning touchdown and took another swig of Corona, Sam mentally added maybe a smidgen of eccentric to the list of reasons why she loved these women. And then Loretta hiked a hip and perched like a bird, knocking a chipped martini glass from the edge of the table as Kathleen tossed a bowl next. Oh, yes, Sam could finally see how the word “eccentric” could fit into an apt description of them.

They’re perfect for you , Inez whispered with an almost audible giggle.

I agree, Inez , Sam said silently.

Kathleen pointed at Sam. “Go on, get a move on, missy, or Loretta is gonna come up there and dress you. I can’t hold her back forever.”

It had been a very long time since someone had tried to dress Sam for an event. Maybe the second set of mothers that Madam Fate gave her didn’t realize she was thirty years old. They had only had her for a few months, so she was still a baby to them.

Even though the night was still with no breeze and the heat was almost unbearable, Sam sat close to Noah in the football stands. The first bursts of red, white, and blue sparkles brought thoughts of childhood to mind for her, the faded grass field stretched out ahead of them in a dark silent blob as the fireworks shot and screamed above the tree line.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Noah gazed at her. “You’re beautiful.”

She met his eyes and leaned closer to him. “Thank you.”

He softly pressed his lips to hers as the fireworks continued to pop off in the distance. His hand rested softly over her ear and muffled the loud sounds. After a few minutes, it moved to her neck to pull her closer. They stayed like that, and the whole world spun around them. Sam felt like she was a pin on the globe and a drunk giant had just slapped that globe into motion. It was all she could do to hold on to Noah and not get shot off into space as the world spun around her. Her body hummed with a feminine ache she hadn’t felt with such ferocity in a long time. When he kissed her again, she gripped the bleacher below her and tried to remember to breathe.

When the last big display of the grand finale had sputtered out, Noah draped his arm back around Sam’s shoulders, and tingles danced down her spine. Their one agreement in moving forward was to take things slow. Noah said he wanted to do this right , but Sam had wanted to rip his clothes off by the end of June. She understood their situation called for a slow burn, but every one of his touches and kisses were so hot that it took every bit of her self-control to not rush things.

Sam was living a romance novel currently, so there was little need to read about other folks’ happily ever afters. One night over wine and chocolate cake, he finally admitted that he had read all the books she had raved about, backing his claim up as she gawked at him. “I just needed to know what it was that you wanted in your love story,” he said.

That admission sent her hormones into overdrive, but then she thought about all the raunchier Harlequin romances that she raved on about that had blisteringly scandalous sex scenes in between their covers.

If he had read them, well then, he’ll be very well trained on what you like . Inez was in her head as quick as a whip. Sam felt her whole body fused and warm to the color of her dress as they started walking back to Noah’s car May.

“Hey, y’all!” Kara’s drawl was thick as she hollered from the gate. “Look what I got for my birthday. I found myself a real cowboy.”

Kara made her way over to them with her arm looped in the arm of a blue-eyed cowboy with the Carhartt jacket, hat, and boots to prove it. “This is Danny. Danny, this here is Samantha and this is Noah.”

The blond-haired guy shook both of their hands and murmured hellos as Kara continued, “We met when I was on a girls’ trip to Linden in between trips to see my mama, and we two-stepped all night and went on a date the next night. He’s a rancher from up north and just sold his last group of steers, so he’s visiting me and meeting everybody. I wanted to show him our old high school with all the fireworks, but I guess we’re too late!”

Sam had never seen Kara smile so big before. The girl positively beamed at the man beside her, and there was no doubt the fireworks were the last thing she cared about.

“Y’all look cute together.” Sam smiled. “I’m glad you found each other. And it’s good to officially meet you, Danny. Welcome to Homestead!”

Danny tipped his hat as Kara carried on for him.

“Me too, it’s a dream come true. We both want a farm and our own cattle one day. He says he wants six kids, but I told him I’d start with two, and we could go from there.” Kara laughed and waved over her shoulder as she and the cowboy headed out of the hometown stadium.

Sam stared at Noah. “How many kids do you want, Noah?”

“How many kids do you want?”

“Three, I think. Maybe just two.”

“Three is a great number. It’s my favorite number, actually.”

“Are you just saying that?”

“No, I mean it.”

“What if I had said I wanted fifteen children?”

“Well that would have been crazy, because fifteen is my second favorite number.” His smile continued to grow. “If that’s really what you want, we’d have to start working on that pretty soon though.”

“They say practice makes perfect,” Sam whispered.

Noah’s eyes glowed amber at the cheeky response from Sam, and he looked like he might just pounce on her right then.

“Would you want a five-bedroom house one day, like your parents have?” Noah asked.

That question seemed to come out of left field, but Sam shook her head. “I don’t know. I want space to have family and friends over. I want a place to call my own and raise my kids, somewhere they’ll always have to come back home to. It doesn’t matter how many bedrooms. The important thing to me is that my family can be together under one roof. That’s what I want. And a garden! I want a garden out back of the kitchen.”

“I think that sounds like the perfect home,” Noah whispered.

“Should I ask what you’re thinking about?”

“It’ll be better as a surprise,” he assured her. “For tonight though, do you wanna go back to the Rose Garden, the speakeasy, or my trailer?”

“Trailer please. I want some raspberry tea, and I left it at your place the other day. Also, I’d like for us to hang out for a bit before I need to head back to Rose Garden.”

She noticed that Noah drove fifteen miles over the speed limit all the way through town.