Chapter 11
Tertia knocked gently on her mother’s office door and then peeked inside to see Mary Jane in her recliner with a notebook in her hands. “Mama, you got a minute?”
Mary Jane laid the notebook aside and motioned toward a second recliner. “Always.”
Sunlight flowed through the open window, and a slight breeze fluttered the sheer curtains. A jar candle threw off the aroma of vanilla, her mother’s favorite scent, and blended with fresh air and the smell of the rosebushes in the backyard. Since she had been a little girl, Tertia could always depend on her mother to give her good solid advice.
She eased down into the chair and popped the footrest up. “Noah called and wants me to meet him at his folks’ house across the street to give him some ideas about the café he’s going to build right here in Spanish Fort.”
“Go,” Mary Jane said.
“But…”
Mary Jane popped the footrest down and laid a hand on Tertia’s knee. “I’ll tell you exactly the same thing I’ve told all seven of you sisters for your entire lives. Follow your heart. Do you want to go talk with Noah about a café?”
Tertia nodded. “But I don’t want to fight with Aunt Bernie. She has her heart set on me not having a thing to do with Noah. She’s really adamant about the issue. What if I cause her to have a heart attack or a stroke?”
“You can’t follow her heart,” Mary Jane said. “You have to pay attention to yours. Meeting with him, even working with him eventually, does not mean you are going to fall in love with him and marry him next week, does it? And besides you were just kids when you had that fight at school. You’ve both grown up and are in a far different place in your lives than you were then.”
“How does a woman get to be as wise as you are?” Tertia asked.
Mary Jane pointed at the messy bun on top of her head. “These gray hairs that sprout up daily are marks of wisdom.”
Tertia rose up out of the chair, took a couple of steps, and bent to give her mother a hug. “Thanks, Mama.”
“Anytime,” Mary Jane said. “Is this why Endora is taking over supper duties?”
“Yes, ma’am, but I’ll help her when I don’t have to be away in the afternoons,” Tertia answered.
“Do all of your sisters know about that?”
Tertia nodded. “All but Rae and Bo.”
“I’m proud of you girls for sticking together,” Mary Jane said. “Now go on and meet with Noah. Who knows? Your generation could knock our little community right off the almost-a-ghost-town register. And one more thing before you go, honey. Don’t worry about Aunt Bernie’s heart. She’s strong as an ox and will probably outlive every one of us.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And if a miracle occurred and you and Noah did get into a relationship, she would declare that it was her reverse psychology that caused it and take full credit.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, but none of you have anything to worry about in that area,” Tertia said as she left the room and closed the door behind her.
Sassy and Misty were sitting beside Mary Jane’s office door, so Tertia had to slip out quickly to keep them from sneaking inside. She sat down on one of the ladder-back chairs to put her shoes on, and both cats rubbed around her legs, purring the whole time. Then Pepper came from the living room with Poppy right behind him. Evidently, the kittens were choosing sides that morning. One with Poppa Pepper, and one with Mama Sassy. But if Pepper was in the house, that meant Aunt Bernie was probably in the kitchen or on the screened porch.
Tertia wondered if this was a sign. She had never seen Poppy and Misty more than a couple of feet away from each other, but then Luna and Endora had always had that twin thing too. Did this mean that there were two sides to everything, like Tertia’s mama had preached to the girls while they were growing up? She scolded herself for trying to find a sign in everything, one that would convince her that she was doing the right thing. Her mother had just told her to follow her heart. What half-grown cats and a Chihuahua did or didn’t do had no bearing on what Tertia’s heart was telling her to do.
Poppy went to the front door and meowed loudly. “You have to stay in the house or else you will try to follow me. Endora would never forgive me if you followed me and got hit on the road.”
Tertia slipped outside and hurried down the lane until she came to the end. Turning left would take her to the old store and, if she went on around the corner, to Luna and Shane’s house. Right would take her to the school and in the direction of Nocona. Walking across the road would take her down a short lane to the house where Noah grew up.
His father worked in Nocona, so he took him to school every morning, and his mother picked him up in the afternoon, so he never rode the bus with her and her sisters.
Memories surfaced of when she and her sisters caught the bus right where she stood.
“That was probably a good thing,” she muttered as she crossed the road and walked up the short lane to a brick house. Noah’s truck was sitting in the circular driveway, and the front door was open. A grown gray and white cat lounged on the porch steps, and a cage with a cockatiel inside hung from a chain between two white porch posts.
“Hey!” Noah opened the door and waved. “I’ve been keeping a watch out for you. Come on in. I’ve got things spread out on the dining room table. The contractor needs a general idea of how big I want to make this café before the end of the week, so he can work up an estimate, and something don’t seem quite right. I’m so glad you came over. I need help.”
The cat didn’t even open an eye when Tertia walked up onto the porch, but the bird gave out a wolf whistle that caused the cat to sit up and growl. “Evidently, they aren’t best friends.”
“Nope.” Noah chuckled. “The cat was my dad’s pet, and the bird was Mama’s. The place where they moved doesn’t allow pets, so they are part of the inheritance deal on this place. The cat’s name is Higgins because Dad loved the old Magnum P.I. series, and the bird is Rocky. Mama inherited him from my grandmother when she passed away, and Granny liked The Rockford Files. Higgins would eat Rocky if he got a chance. Rocky would gladly peck the cat’s eyeballs out.”
“Sounds like Pepper the Chihuahua and Sassy the cat over at the Paradise, except when Endora’s kittens are around. They seem to get along in front of the children.” She stopped in the living room and scanned the place. Lawn furniture was scattered in front of a small television sitting on a wooden apple crate. Through the archway she could see a long table with eight chairs around it and a crystal chandelier hanging above it.
“There’s as much contrast in my house as there is between a cat and a bird.” Noah chuckled. “Mama could take her living room furniture to the new place, but the dining room stuff wouldn’t fit, so I inherited it with the house—like the smart-ass bird and the lazy cat. Got to admit they are growing on me, though, and they are company.”
Tertia walked to the table and looked at the big sheet of butcher paper. “Kind of like my Aunt Bernie. At first all of us sisters wondered what Mama was thinking, letting her move her travel trailer onto the Paradise property with Pepper. But now we don’t know what we’d do without her most days.”
Noah joined her at the table. “Most days?”
“Aunt Bernie thinks she has a hotline to the Universe and spends a lot of her time meddling in our lives, and now she is determined to extend her expertise out further by playing matchmaker like those places on the internet,” Tertia admitted. “She’s practicing on me these days.”
“I believe that some folks really do have a hotline that lets them see into the future. I should have listened to my grandmother.” Noah chuckled again. “She told me not to marry Wanette. According to her, I should have gotten one of them nose rings to make it easy for Wanette to lead me around. She came to the wedding, which surprised me, and even had her picture taken with us. As soon as the divorce papers were signed, she burned it.”
Noah, bless his heart, didn’t know he was digging his own grave. If Tertia listened to Aunt Bernie, she wouldn’t even be looking at his rough drawings on white paper. “Aunt Bernie would have had a bonfire and danced around it, singing to the top of her lungs, if she’d been in your granny’s shoes. Now, tell me more about this drawing. What am I looking at?”
“It’s a very rough draft of the old store, but when I got to figuring out the size of tables for four and maybe booths along this wall”—he pointed—“it would only seat about thirty people tops. I think we should enlarge it to accommodate at least fifty.”
“I agree, and maybe lengthen it out a little,” Tertia suggested. “What do you think about putting a small store in this part where the guests pay out. Maybe sell some locally made jelly and relishes, and T-shirts with the café logo?”
Noah nodded more with every word. “That’s a great idea. I was in a little place like that up in northern Oklahoma. I bought pickled okra and some plum jam. It would only take a few more feet and involve putting some shelving along the walls. We might even have some key chains with our logo on them, and maybe some mugs or glasses for sale. The promotion would be great.”
“You could give away a key chain if the bill came to more than like fifty dollars,” Tertia said. “That would encourage folks to bring their friends and family to the café.”
“Wonderful idea. I like it a lot.” He picked up a metal square and added a few feet to the length and to the width of what he had drawn, then erased two lines. “Now, should the kitchen be across the back or down the side?”
“Definitely across the back,” Tertia answered without hesitation. “And remember to add in two restrooms somewhere.”
“Ahh,” his mouth twitched, “I thought we’d just throw up a couple of outhouses in the backyard.”
“That will be fine if they will pass inspection,” she shot back at him. “You should have the builders cut a quarter moon on the guys’ door, and a star on the ladies’. But think about whether or not your customers want to go outside in the rain or snow to use the facilities.”
“I can see that you are still just as funny as you were back when we were in school,” Noah said. “But you might have an idea there. We could make the bathrooms rustic-looking with what looks like outhouse doors on the stalls and old galvanized basins for the sinks.”
“So, it’s going to be kind of rustic instead of crystal-chandelier fancy?” Tertia asked, amazed that he remembered her for anything other than a black eye.
“That was my idea,” he answered and then added another few feet to what would be the front of the building. “I’m glad you remembered bathrooms, and it would be best if they weren’t near the kitchen, so we’ll put them up here near the checkout counter.”
“Will the customers pay at the counter or at the table?” Tertia asked.
Noah combed his blond hair back with his fingertips. “Food at the table, and retail items at the counter.”
“What’s this?” Tertia picked up a square of red construction paper.
“Those are tables, and the yellow ones are chairs.”
She laid twelve of the red ones out and then started putting the yellow ones around them. “That’s forty-eight, and you’ve got plenty of room for someone to push back chairs from this table and this one without causing a problem. I like that arrangement.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that either,” Noah said. “Man, I’m glad you agreed to come help me out today.”
“You are welcome,” Tertia said. “What are you naming the place?”
“Either the Old Store Café or the Red River Café,” he answered. “Which one do you like best?”
“That should be your decision,” Tertia told him.
“What sounds catchier to you?” Noah pressured.
“Old Store Café,” she answered without hesitation. “Shane and Luna are tossing around ideas for their new store, and one of them is the Red River Place. I told them to just call it the Beer, Bait, and Bologna Store, since it will have convenience store items, bait to fish with, and a place to buy beer and wine.”
“Don’t forget fishing licenses,” Noah reminded her.
“Bait covers that,” Tertia told him.
“Beer,” Noah groaned. “I’m a terrible host. I was so excited that you came over that I didn’t even offer you anything to drink. I’ve got beer, sweet tea, and several kinds of soda.”
“I would love a beer,” she answered without looking up from the drawing. She was missing something—she could feel it in her bones.
He left and returned in a minute with two longneck bottles of icy-cold beer, twisted the top off one, and handed it to her. “You are studying that awfully hard. What’s the matter?”
She took a long drink of her beer and then set it down on the table. “I feel like we are missing something important, so I’m going over the rough notes you have written on the side here.”
Noah removed the cap from his beer and took a sip. “I see it now. We’ve got to have a food prep center. If we add four feet to this side, we could slip a prep counter into the kitchen.”
“That’s why the kitchen didn’t look right,” Tertia agreed. “What are you going to put on the outside? Siding? Rough cedar?”
“Distressed red brick so it will look like the old store,” Noah answered and pointed to the front. “A couple of park benches on the porch, and a handicap ramp on one end. We’ll start off with a gravel parking lot, and if things go well, we’ll pave it in another year or two.”
“Looks like my work here is done, then,” Tertia said.
“Not until you finish your beer,” Noah told her. “Come on into my fancy living room and sit a spell on one of my lawn chairs.”
Tertia remembered Bernie pitching a hissy fit when she caught Endora about to pour out half a bottle of wine after the Paradise Christmas party. According to her, it was an unforgivable sin to pour out any kind of booze—be it beer, wine, liquor, or even moonshine—so, Bernie couldn’t complain if Tertia visited with Noah long enough to finish her bottle of beer, now could she?
She followed him from the dining room table to the living room and sat down in one of the chairs. She had taken a small sip when Higgins—no, that wasn’t right; the bird was Rocky—squawked out something that sounded like, “Put on your britches. We got company.”
“Dad used to yell that to Mama when someone pulled up in the yard. That will be my contractor. You might remember Justin Davis, who went to school with us. Henry is his father, and he’s the one who is going to build the café,” Bernie said.
“What happened to Justin?” Tertia asked.
“He developed a software program, sold it, and retired to an island last year. I heard that he actually bought the whole island and is developing it into a fancy retreat,” Noah answered as he headed for the door. “Just goes to show there’s more money to be made in being a nerd than in teaching and/or coaching.”
She held up her beer. “Amen to that.”
“Come on in, Henry. I think we might be ready to show you our plans,” Noah said and led the tall, lanky man back to the dining room table. “Tertia, will you join us?”
She set her bottle on a plastic end table and stood up.
“So, this is the we you were talking about,” Henry said. “You are one of the Simmons girls, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Tertia answered. “I’m Tertia. I was in the class with your son, Justin.”
“I remember you very well,” Henry said. “Justin had a bit of a crush on you back then.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yep, but he was too shy to say anything, and then he went to that fancy science school for his junior and senior year and met Iris, the girl he eventually married. They’re out on an island now.”
“Tell him I said hello next time you talk to him,” Tertia said.
“I sure will,” Henry said with a nod. “Now show me what y’all have come up with.”
Tertia stood back and let Noah explain what he wanted. Henry nodded with each idea and only made a couple of suggestions. One was that Noah add a few more feet all around to give the kitchen more room, and the other was that the porch should be the same size as the one on the old store building.
Noah made a few notes on the bottom of the butcher paper, rolled it up, put a rubber band around it, and handed it off to Henry. “I think we are ready to go to the next step.”
“I’ll take these to the guy who draws up the drafts for me and get back to you in a week. If you’re in agreement, we can start construction right after that. Do you want a wooden porch like the old store had in the beginning, or a concrete one?” Henry asked.
“Wooden,” Tertia said so quickly that she wondered if she’d even said the words out loud. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I just see it with a wide wooden porch and the park benches out front for folks.”
“You didn’t overstep, and I agree,” Noah said, “and I plan on putting a sign up above the porch like what’s over at the old store now.”
“Still thinkin’ about covering the building with old-lookin’ red brick on the outside?” Henry asked.
“Yes, sir,” Noah answered. “Now that we got that settled, could I get you a beer or a glass of sweet tea?”
“No, I better be getting on back. I’ve got an appointment with some folks that I’ll be contracting things out to, like plumbing and electrical, but thanks for the offer,” Henry said. “Tertia, tell Bernie that my wife, Frannie, sure does enjoy getting together with her and Dolly and the other girls in their Sunday school class every week.”
“I will,” Tertia said with a smile, even though she wanted to groan. Any notion that she could keep her meeting with Noah a secret was nothing more than a whim. Bernie would have her soapbox out and polished up to crawl up on it and fuss at Tertia as soon as Henry got home that evening. He would tell his wife, and she would call Bernie and Dolly. Before nightfall, rumor would have it that Tertia and Noah were dating.
Tertia glanced over at Noah. He would make a fine cover model for one of her mother’s romance books. Maybe one of those stories about enemies becoming friends and then lovers.
“What?” Noah asked. “Did you remember something else? I can always call Henry.”
“No, I’m just surprised that you want to be a chef,” she answered.
“Not a chef, a cook.” He grinned. “Chefs make dishes I can’t pronounce. I want to be a country cook. Which one do you want to be?”
“A cook if that’s the definition.” She smiled.
Enemies to friends—friends to lovers.
Maybe friends in time, but that third step wasn’t going to happen.