The Party Line

Chapter Two

M y old bones will hurt tonight, but they feel pretty good right now.” Jasper eased into the front seat of my SUV after the Sunday-morning service, but he seemed to have a little more spring in his step than he had had earlier.

I closed the door for him, rounded the back end of the vehicle, and slid in behind the steering wheel. “That was a really uplifting service, but why do you expect your bones to feel bad tonight?”

“I smell rain in the air. Good for the earth. Good for the strawberries. Bad for the old bones,” he answered.

“That sounds like something Aunt Gracie used to say.”

“Yep, it does,” he grinned. “She always loved spring. Declared that it took ten years off her age.”

The mention of her name brought back so many memories of spring when I was a little girl. How we would sit on the porch swing and she would tell me stories. I could feel my brow drawing down. In all those wonderful days, why hadn’t she ever told me a single thing about the secret?

“Do you know what Gracie’s big secret is that folks have talked about all these years?” I blurted out. He’d know.

“Your aunt would have told you if she’d wanted you to know,” he declared and cut his eyes around at me. Foiled again! “Let’s go get a hamburger and maybe a slice of chocolate cream pie if there’s some left at the café. It goes fast on Sundays. It’s a big treat for me to get to go to the café. Gracie wouldn’t let me renew my license because I had trouble getting my foot from the gas over to the brake ...”

I shook my finger at him. “You are changing the subject.”

“Yes, ma’am, I surely am, and I will every time you ask me that question about the secret,” he said with a curt nod. “Someday that’s not even going to be something that folks remember to tell their kids about, and it will die.”

The café parking lot was full, so I let Jasper off right in front of the place. I made a couple of rounds and finally snagged a spot between two pickup trucks. Big white fluffy clouds floating lazily in the sky sent my thoughts back to a time when Aunt Gracie and I lay flat on our backs in the yard. We would take turns telling each other what kind of animal the clouds were shaped like. Mine were always puppies or kittens. Hers were teddy bears, church steeples, and sometimes even cowboy hats.

I stepped inside expecting to find Jasper waiting to be seated, but he waved from a booth back in the corner. I made a beeline toward it, grateful he hadn’t had to stand for a long time. A couple of times I noticed folks whispering behind their hands, as usual with Aunt Gracie. I was halfway across the floor when an elderly lady reached out and touched my arm.

“You are Sarah Evans’s daughter and Gracie Evans’s kin, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I said with a nod. “Were you a friend of hers?”

“Not really, but my grandmother knew her, and when I was a teenager, we picked strawberries on her place a few times. Poor old darlin’ was such a recluse after she sold her dress shop, but she seemed to enjoy folks coming out to Ditto to gather berries,” she replied.

I stuck out my hand and tried to control my anger. This woman was fishing for gossip—and how dare she call Aunt Gracie old . “I’m Lila Matthews, and yes, I’m kin to her.”

“Edith Johnson,” the woman said as she shook my hand. “Glad to meet you. I saw you and Jasper in church this morning.”

“It was a very good service.” I dropped her hand and hurried back to join Jasper at the booth.

“If you lie down with dogs, you might get up with fleas,” he said under his breath.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“There’s some folks who like to spread rumors.” He pulled the one-page menu out from between the napkin dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers, and shifted his eyes toward the table where Edith and her friends were whispering.

“Are you talking about ...” I slid a sly glance their way, and felt I’d been right in my judgment of the woman.

He nodded. “Did you see any of them at the graveside service or bringing food to the house?”

“I understand, but her wishes were that only me and you and Mama attend the service.” I kept my voice low. “Now, what’s good in here these days besides their burgers?”

“Everything ... But they still could have brought a covered dish to the house for you and Sarah.” Jasper frowned, but his expression quickly changed to a more pleasant one. “All me and Granny could afford was the hamburgers back in the day, so I’ll be ordering one of those, with french fries and a big old glass of sweet tea. And then some chocolate pie. I see a whole one up there under the dome on the counter, so I’m in luck.”

I didn’t even look at the second menu. “Then that’s what I’ll have, too, and dinner is on me today.”

“I invited you to go to church and Sunday dinner, so I should pay,” he argued.

I laid my hand on his and shook my head. “Let’s just say that Aunt Gracie is paying for it. She left me well fixed, and she would love to know that we are having Sunday dinner together.”

“In that case, I won’t argue,” Jasper agreed. “Reckon that we could make it a weekly thing?”

“I would love that.”

“Then it’s a done deal. I miss her the most on Sundays,” he said with a long sigh. “Listen ...” He cocked his head to one side.

“What?” I whispered and strained my ears to hear whatever it was that had gotten his attention.

“That’s the sound of rain on the metal roof of this place. Our old house—the one where I grew up—had this kind of roof, and a good rain was like a lullaby that put me to sleep at night,” he said.

I was surprised when I looked out the window to see that dark clouds had pushed their way past the pretty white ones.

“Mama’s house has a metal roof, and I loved the sound of rain, too,” I told him.

“Hello, Jasper,” the waitress said. “Been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Yep, it sure has. You’ll remember Annie, Lila. She’s the great-granddaughter of the folks who built this place.”

“Of course I do,” I said. “She’s Mama’s friend.”

She was about Mama’s height but had a stockier frame and build. Her brown hair had a few gray hairs starting to show, but her smile was genuine and reached her hazel eyes.

“You haven’t changed since you were in high school.” She pulled out an order pad.

“I can’t believe you talked Jasper into actually coming into the café. He and Gracie usually order takeout,” Annie said.

“It was my idea,” Jasper admitted.

“Well, good for you,” Annie said, then turned to me. “While y’all are eating, you should get him to tell you all about what’s happened in Poteet and Ditto since you’ve been gone.”

“He’s pretty stingy with his stories,” I said.

Annie air-slapped him on his thin shoulder. “Shame on you.”

“Ouch!” He grabbed his shoulder. “I’m old and fragile.”

“That’s a load of BS.” Annie chuckled and pointed at him with her pencil. “What’ll it be today?”

“Burger with everything on it, fries, and a large sweet tea,” Jasper answered.

“The special today is chicken and dressing and all the trimmings,” she suggested.

“I’ll take two of those to go,” Jasper told her, “but today I want a big old greasy burger and fries.”

“I’ll have the same as Jasper, and I’ll take a couple of those specials to go also,” I told her.

“I’ll put this order in and get it out to you real soon,” Annie said. Her expression became serious as she turned to go. “I was real sorry to hear about Miz Gracie. I would have come to the funeral, but Sarah told me that Gracie left orders to only have y’all there.”

“So will she tell me more stories?” I whispered when she had disappeared through swinging doors into the kitchen.

“Nope. Annie is rock solid. She probably hears a lot of gossip in this place, but she don’t spread it,” Jasper said out of the corner of his mouth.

Argh. “Good to know. I’m glad you thought to order some takeout for tomorrow. I’ll take a dinner to Mama and keep one.”

Annie brought out our glasses of tea and set them on the table, then hurried over to wait on another group that had come in out of the rain.

“The chicken and dressin’ won’t be as good as Granny’s, but it will be my supper for a couple or three days,” Jasper said. “We only had it on Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was a little kid. Granny made it for parties that Miz Betty and Clarence had up near the holidays. ’Course we always had plenty to eat because the missus did not eat leftovers.”

“Why?” I wondered out loud.

“She had her own ways about things, but it was a good thing for us,” Jasper replied.

The rain came down harder, and a flash of lightning zipped through the sky. Some folks hurried out of the café, but the smarter ones ordered dessert and stayed inside, probably hoping the storm would pass quickly.

Jasper tilted his head toward the window. “Looks like we got lucky.”

“Because we got here before the rain started?” If he had tried to shuffle his way from the café to my vehicle, he would have been soaked to the skin.

“No, because it didn’t hail. The strawberries will be fine with a good rain. Hail would have destroyed the crop.”

“I would have whined until Christmas if I didn’t get at least one strawberry shortcake,” I told him.

“I’m putting those on the menu next Sunday,” Annie said as she set a red plastic basket in front of each of us.

“We’ll be here, good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” Jasper chuckled.

“People are going to say that you’re datin’ a woman young enough to be your granddaughter,” Annie teased in a low voice.

“Hmmph ...” Jasper almost snorted. “Try young enough to be my great-great-granddaughter. And me and Lila don’t pay no attention to rumors.” He winked across the table at me. “Do we?”

“No, sir, we do not!” I exclaimed. “And we’ll look forward to that shortcake next Sunday.”

“If it gets low, I’ll save back enough to make y’all each one,” Annie said. “I’ll have those to-go boxes ready by the time you leave.”

“Thank you,” Jasper said as he unwrapped the paper from his burger and took a bite.

“Just like you remembered?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said with a smile. “You reckon we might go by the cemetery and see Gracie after we eat? If it’s rainin’, we wouldn’t have to get out. She just needs to know that I ain’t forgot her.”

“We can do that,” I agreed. “How about we go see her after Sunday dinner each week?”

His green eyes glazed over, and his chin quivered. “I’d like that very much.”

Texans often tell folks that if they don’t like the weather to stick around thirty minutes and watch it change. That’s what happened that Sunday morning. One second, it was raining cats and dogs and baby elephants. The next, the sun was shining brightly, and a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky.

The cemetery wasn’t far from the café, but then Poteet only boasted a population of a little over three thousand people. Driving in a small town was nothing like going from one side of Austin to the other. I hated those years when the pandemic hit and I’d had to stay home, but I was more than glad to not have that hour-long commute to work every day. When things settled down, the folks decided that I could do my job from home permanently. That made it easy for me to move back to Ditto and set up an office in Aunt Gracie’s house.

I drove slowly through the cemetery, and when I braked and pulled off to the side of the narrow road, Jasper threw the door open and grabbed his cane. He shuffled over to the tombstone with M ARY G RACE E VANS engraved on it.

He pulled a bag from his pocket, removed a huge strawberry from it, and laid it on top of the stone. “This and the rainbow in the sky is for you. I’m right sorry I haven’t been out here before now, but Lila says she’ll bring me every Sunday from now on.” He placed his hand on the top of the gray granite and didn’t even try to hold back the tears. “Tell Davis hello for me,” he said between sobs, “and y’all keep a watch on the gates. I’ll be knockin’ on them before too long.”

His words brought tears to my eyes, and soon they were streaming down my cheeks and dripping onto my shirt. The memories of all the good times my aunt and I had during my growing-up years flooded my mind. He patted the stone, straightened his back, and walked on a few yards farther. A small headstone marked R ITA P OTEET was next to one engraved D AVIS P OTEET . Jasper dropped to his knees right there in the wet grass and laid both hands on his old friend’s name.

“She’s with you now,” he whispered. “I don’t know why the good Lord ain’t come for me. I know there’s one more job I have to do, but I’m not sure I can handle it all by myself. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, my friend. I want to run through heaven with y’all like we did when we had races to the old barn and back, but ...” He paused and glanced over his shoulder at me and clamped his mouth shut.

He started to rise but stumbled. I grabbed him and hugged him close until he could get his balance. He wiped his eyes and chuckled. “Darlin’, if folks see us like this, there will be rumors.”

I took a step back. “I don’t really care what people think or say. I’m not going to let you fall and hit your head on those tombstones.”

He chuckled again. “Might be a good way to check out of this world,” he said. “I’m ready to go home now.”

“Which one?” I asked.

He straightened up to his full height and dried his eyes on a white handkerchief he pulled out of the pocket of his khaki dress pants. “I only got one home on this earth, and God ain’t ready for me yet.”

“Don’t you usually use a red or blue bandanna?” I asked.

“This is my Sunday britches and hankie, and we need to get our takeout stuff put away. Be a shame for it to go bad after Gracie paid good money for it.”

“She didn’t like to waste anything, especially food,” I agreed and remembered all the times that Gracie and I had made gotta go , which was simply getting all the leftovers out of the fridge and heating them up.

He nodded off a couple of times on the trip home, but when I pulled into the driveway, he awoke. “It’s been a good day, Lila. I look forward to next Sunday.”

“Me too,” I told him. “I’ll take your food to your house for you. Was your friend Davis related to the Poteets that the town was named for?”

“Most likely, but Rita’s daddy was the black sheep of the family, and she kind of followed in his footsteps. Thank you for everything today, Lila. I’m needin’ my Sunday-afternoon nap for sure.” He covered a yawn with his hand.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“What do you mean about Rita following in her daddy’s footsteps?”

“Her daddy was the town drunk. Her poor mama had to scrape by doing ironing for other folks so she could feed their six kids. And then Rita wasn’t married when she had Davis. You got to remember, that was almost a hundred years ago, and things were different then.”

I picked up the bag with his food in it and followed him around the house and into the backyard. “I would have liked to have known them.”

“They were good people. I’m glad I got to talk to Gracie and Davis. Me and Gracie went once a week to see Davis ever since he was brought home to be buried. I bet he didn’t even know I missed a few weeks, since he’s got his Gracie up there with him now. He’s waited for her for a long, long time. Her daddy didn’t like us going to the cemetery, but she never was one to take orders from him, not after ... That’s a story for later.”

That was another little tidbit of information I filed away in my mind. Aunt Gracie seldom mentioned her father to me—or her mother, either, for that matter. Come to think of it, there were few pictures in the house of either of them. I couldn’t imagine them not being good people, since Gracie was such a sweetheart to me and my mama. Gracie had no time for my biological grandmother—her cousin, twice removed—because she kicked her daughter, Sarah, out of the house when she got pregnant with me. That was when Aunt Gracie gave Mama the little house down the road, just plumb signed the deed over to her and told her cousin she wasn’t welcome in her house anymore.

“Where is your mind, Lila?” Jasper asked.

His voice jerked me out of the past and into the present really fast, and I was surprised to see that we were standing on his porch. “Woolgathering,” I said honestly. “What did you say?”

“I said that I could take my food from here,” he told me. “I’d invite you in, but you need to get one of them boxes down to your mama.”

“I really do.” I refused to let the tears damming up behind my eyelids fall. Good memories seemed to pop up and hit me at the strangest times, like making gotta go soup or gotta go omelets with Aunt Gracie. “See you tomorrow sometime.”

“I hope so,” he said and slid a wink my way. “If I ain’t out on the porch at dawn, just kick the door in and call the undertaker.”

“Oh, no!” I shook my finger at him. “You’ve got more stories to tell me before we make that phone call.”

“Gracie said you would keep me on my toes,” he replied with a chuckle. “Tell Sarah hello for me, and to not be a stranger.”

“I will,” I agreed and headed back around the big house to my vehicle. A strong scent of chicken and dressing filled the SUV, making me really glad I’d brought home a for-later dinner for myself.

Just as I slid under the wheel, my phone rang. I tapped the front of the screen to answer my mother’s FaceTime call, and her picture popped right up. “Hello, Mama. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, I am. You know how allergic I am to cats? Well, a stray one left hair all over my porch swing. I didn’t even notice it when I spent at least an hour out there last night. I’ve sprayed it down real good, and I’ve had some ginger tea and taken my allergy pill.”

“That’s great because I’m on the way to your house right now. We ate at Annie’s Café today, and I’m bringing you a chicken-and-dressing dinner.”

“That would be wonderful.” Her voice sounded strained, but I attributed it to the allergy attack. “I was about to heat up chicken noodle soup from a can. Can you stay awhile? I’ve got some peach cobbler in the fridge, too, and there’s always a beer if you want one.”

“Of course—and, Mama, you don’t have to entice me with pie and beer to get me to come spend time with you.”

“Be aware that I’m weepy today,” she said and then the screen went dark.

I started the engine and drove out of the circular driveway. I parked in the gravel driveway behind her ten-year-old pickup truck, grabbed the food from the back, and hurried inside the small house. I had only seen my mother cry a handful of times in my life—when she left me in the kindergarten room the first day, when I graduated from high school, and the day we buried Aunt Gracie came to mind. But she was sitting at the kitchen table with tears streaming down her face that afternoon.

I set the food on the counter and rushed over to wrap her up in my arms. “What’s happened, Mama?”

“Thirty years of happening all hit me at once this morning,” she said between sobs.

Evidently, she had been crying for hours, because an empty box of tissues was still in the middle of the table and the floor was covered with fluffy white wads.

I pulled one from a full box and gently wiped her tears away from her cheeks. “Talk to me and explain what has hit you. You are the strongest woman I know, and I can’t stand to see you cry like this.”

She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and blew her nose. “Enough of this. I need to heat up the dinner you’ve brought me. Aunt Gracie always said that food heals a broken heart.”

“It might not heal it, but it’ll sure put a Band-Aid on it, and we both know the healing power of a Band-Aid and a kiss on the forehead.” There was no way I could slap a Disney princess Band-Aid on her heart, but I could give her a kiss on the forehead, and I did. “Now, you sit right there while I warm up your food. Beer or sweet tea?”

“Tea for me.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry that you are seeing me like this.”

“Hey, I remember lots of times in the past when you helped me through a crying jag. And you also know that I never let anyone cry alone.” I let the dammed-up tears stream down my cheeks. “What brought all this on, anyway?”

“Madge is selling the café. She called me today and offered it to me. I could use the money Gracie left me to put a down payment on it and borrow the rest from the bank, but ...” She paused, took a deep breath, and finally went on. “I got to thinking back over all my past mistakes and how the consequences of them got me to this point in my life. I’m looking fifty right in the eye, and I’m still a waitress and cook at the same place where I went to work at sixteen. The same place where I met your father, and you know where that led. I’m not sure I’m capable of running a café. Madge is selling out because keeping help has become a major problem. I’d be inheriting that problem, plus having to learn about keeping books and all that.”

I put her food on a plate and stuck it in the microwave. “You never talked about my father except to tell me that he took off when he learned you were pregnant, and—”

“I found him on the internet this week,” she blurted out. “They say that bad news comes in threes, and I believe it. Aunt Gracie died suddenly. My job is in jeopardy. Your biological father died after a long bout with lung cancer six months ago. He was only fifty-one years old.”

My mind went into overdrive so fast that I didn’t hear the microwave ding. Did I have half siblings? Did I look like them? What was my father’s name?

“I know you have questions,” she finally said with a long sigh. “His name was Billy Grady. I was attracted to the bad boys, and he was the poster boy for that type.”

“Do I have siblings?” I whispered.

“None were listed.”

“Do I look like him?”

Mama shook her head. “Nope. You look like my grandmother. She was a tall redhead. Billy wasn’t much taller than me and had dark hair and brown eyes. Anything else?”

“Not tonight,” I answered, feeling a bit deflated. In my mind he had been a hero of some kind. A fireman who’d died rescuing a child from a burning building, a policeman who’d been killed by a fleeing bank robber, or even a movie star—and sometimes, in my dreams, he was George Strait.

“Good, because other than a few personal memories, that’s all I know. His obituary was really sparse,” Mama said.

“Let’s talk about that café,” I said when I finally got my mind to hop off the roller coaster and think about something else. “Do you want to own it? You don’t have to go to the bank for a loan. You and I can buy the place for you with my inheritance, or you can retire and grow even more beautiful roses like the ones in the front yard.”

Mama shook her head. “That money is yours, not mine.”

I put her food on the table and sat down beside her. “No, Mama, it is not just mine. You sacrificed for me all those years and would have borrowed money for my college if Aunt Gracie hadn’t insisted on paying. So if you want that café, we will buy it. If you want to retire, I’ll put you on the estate payroll. Think about it a few days.”

Mama raised an eyebrow. “She left me money, too, you know.”

“I know, and neither of us ever need to work another day in our lives.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I happen to like my job, and I’d go bananas if I didn’t work. But after more than thirty years of waiting on people, I really think you should retire. Maybe you could do some traveling or upgrade your truck.”

“Sweet Lord!” she said with a wave of her hand. “It’s too much to think about today—but thank you, Lila, for giving me the gift of a choice.”

I covered her free hand with mine. “I love you, Mama, and I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me.”