Chapter Fifteen
C onnor’s deep country drawl singing the Alan Jackson song “Little Bitty” floated out across the yard when I left Jasper’s house. I stopped at the back door and peeked inside to see him using a whisk for a microphone. I tapped my foot in time with the music and smiled when he traded the whisk for an imaginary guitar. Not a one of my previous boyfriends had liked country music, and the two serious ones had been so stiff that I couldn’t imagine them ever belting any song out like Connor was doing. The lyrics sank deep into my soul and lay there like a warm blanket when the words said that it was all right to live in a little bitty town.
“Amen,” I whispered as I eased the door open and slipped into the kitchen.
The song ended, and Travis Tritt started singing “It’s a Great Day to be Alive.” Connor turned around and grabbed me around the waist and two-stepped with me all around the room. My heart pounded so hard that I thought it would fly out of my chest and land on the linoleum. When the song ended, he flipped me back in true Hollywood fashion and brushed a soft kiss across my lips. The thumping of my heart got even harder, and my chest tightened. Lord have mercy! There was no way I could slam on the emotional brakes when it came to Connor Thurman.
“Thank you for the dance,” I said when I could catch my breath.
“My pleasure,” he said. “Mind if I leave the music on while we make supper?”
“Not one bit.” I realized that the music and the energy made the empty house feel alive again. Was that the reason Aunt Gracie kept a radio going most of the time? Did she feel alone in this big place without some noise? I couldn’t remember very many days in either this place or Mama’s house when music wasn’t playing—sometimes turned up to full volume, other times softly in the background, with Mama or Aunt Gracie humming along to whatever was on the radio.
“I’m willin’ to make the omelets if you’ll stir up the pancakes,” Connor offered. “I make a mean open-face omelet or a really good frittata, but I’d have to buy a license to keep my pancakes in the house.”
“Why?” I felt my brow furrow when I frowned.
“They could be used as deadly weapons if thrown at another human being,” he chuckled. “What all do you want to put into the omelet?”
I took down a mixing bowl and headed to the pantry for all the ingredients. “Make a gotta go one.”
“And that is?”
“Kind of like a meat lovers pizza. If you can find it in the fridge, then it’s gotta go. Peppers, onions, ham, bacon, sausage, mushrooms ... whatever bits and pieces you find in there. And of course, cheese on the top.”
“Where did you come up with that gotta go phrase?” he asked.
I left the pantry carrying flour, baking powder, and cooking oil. “I didn’t. Aunt Gracie did. We made gotta go soup, goulash, and omelets pretty often. She didn’t believe in wasting anything.”
“Neither did my granny, and my grandfather is the same way,” he said as he opened a cabinet door and took out a bowl.
“How did you know where things—”
“Granny set up her cabinets for convenience. Glasses to the left of the sink. Plates and bowls to the right. She said that it made for an easy job when it was time to get them down or put them away. I figured that Miz Gracie might have done the same.”
“Looks like you were right.” I reached for the baking powder and bumped into Connor.
He bent over to get a skillet, and his hip touched my thigh.
“We need a bigger kitchen,” I muttered.
“Why?” He raised up and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m rather enjoying this, and like that line in Alan’s song, a little bitty house—or kitchen, for that matter—is all right.”
“That all depends,” I argued.
“On what?”
I thought of one of Jasper’s lines and used it. “That’s an explanation for another day.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Because it makes for sparks?”
I stopped what I was doing and locked eyes with him. “So you felt them, too?”
“Yes, I did.” He held my gaze. “From the first time I met you in that Dolly Parton shirt, there were sparks. If you felt them, then we need to decide what to do about them.”
“Maybe it’s only a passing thing and ...”
“What if it is?” He finally blinked and poured eggs into the skillet on the stove.
“We’ll get over it,” I answered.
“How?”
“The same way I got over chicken pox when I was a little girl,” I told him. “You weather through it.”
“What if it doesn’t go away?” he pressured.
“Then we can see if it’s real or only a flash in the pan,” I suggested.
“I think it’s real,” he said.
All this talk was making me as jittery as a wild turkey on Thanksgiving, and I almost burned the first four pancakes. “We are friends. We are neighbors. What about the consequences if it’s not and we ruin what we already have?”
“Anything worth having is worth taking a risk,” he assured me.
I set a platter of pancakes in the middle of the table. “I have commitment issues.”
Connor brought over the skillet and set it on a hot pad beside the pancakes. “So do I.” He poured melted butter and hot maple syrup on a stack of pancakes, took a bite, and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “You are right! These are the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten. What’s the secret?”
“Whipping the egg whites and then folding them into the batter,” I told him. “For your first try at a gotta go omelet, you did a mighty fine job.”
“Maybe we should turn our backs on Ditto and put in a restaurant somewhere,” he suggested.
“No, thank you! Running a café of any kind is at the top of my list of things that I do not want to do.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw firsthand how much my mama’s feet and back hurt when she came home from a shift. Standing on concrete for eight hours every day for a whole week does not appeal to me.”
“I didn’t think of the work, just the good food. I could enjoy your pancakes often,” he said.
“I can make that happen without having to open up a café at five in the morning,” I said. “You simply have to ask, and I will make pancakes. But I do not like to cook. I enjoy baking, mostly around the holidays, but making real food, like roasts and all that, it’s not me.”
He chuckled. “Well, darlin’, I don’t like you for your ability to make a roast.”
“For a relationship to last past the ...” I paused and thought about what I was about to say. “I was going to say past the lust stage, but I’m not sure we even had that. Which is really the reason my former relationships didn’t last. There was no magic. In the end we were more like roommates instead of a couple. The breakups were actually kind of boring.” I thought about Aunt Gracie’s diary entry when she wondered if she could die of a broken heart.
“I hear you,” Connor said with a nod. “Pretty much the story of my life, too. Do you know anyone who can honestly say that they have experienced the magic?”
“Mama did, even if my father didn’t. I think Aunt Gracie did when she was very young, but whoever it was with ended up breaking her heart, and she never really got over it,” I answered.
“How will you know if you find it?”
“I figure that once I’ve known that kind of love, then the mere thought of not having it will shatter my soul.” I figured that he would make an excuse and never come back. This was some heavy conversation, but hey, if he wanted to run, the door wasn’t locked. “If I don’t feel like that, then there is no magic.”
He finished off the last bite of pancakes and shifted two more from the platter in the middle of the table onto his plate. “I like that idea.”
I laid it out there. “This is pretty heavy conversation for friends. But then, we did have one kiss, so maybe that gives us the right to talk about our feelings.”
“I guess it does.” He grinned.
The smell of coffee filled the whole downstairs the next morning. I made Jasper a stack of pancakes and fried several slices of bacon and carried a plate out to him, along with his morning medicine. He was sitting on the porch while Sassy chased a bee around the yard. The sun peeked over the treetops and threw a yellow glow on Jasper’s face that morning.
“Did you make breakfast for Connor?” he asked.
“No, I did not. Old women are supposed to be the gossips, not old men,” I scolded him. “Are you eating out here or in the house?”
He stood up and started inside. “Did he cook for you this morning?”
“No, but he’s bringing me muffins.”
Sassy ran up onto the porch and looked up at me with begging eyes. I picked up one piece of bacon and dropped it. She caught it before it hit the porch.
“Hey, now!” Jasper barked. “I was planning on saving back one bite for her.”
“There’s plenty enough that you can still feed her another piece.” I set the plate on the table and poured him a cup of coffee. “Want water to take your pills with?”
“I can use the coffee. Let’s do the breathing thing first. Pancakes look good.”
I handed him the inhaler and waited to give him the pills until he was finished. Then I sat down at the table with him to be sure that he ate and didn’t set the plate on the floor for Sassy to clean up.
“You don’t have to stick around,” Jasper said as he took the first bite. “This is just like Gracie used to make for us.”
“Did y’all eat together every day?” I asked.
“Yep, three times a day, mostly after she retired. You should remember that,” he said in between bites, then threw back the pills and washed them down with coffee. “It’s tough to cook for two, but trying to fix for one is even harder.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that? I could have been bringing you food all this time.”
“You got enough on your plate without trying to take care of me.”
“Not anymore,” I reminded him. “Right now I don’t have a job, and other than getting the house and yard in shape, nothing else to do. I do remember that you ate with us when I was at her house. When I was little I thought you were my grandfather.”
“I was,” he said. “Don’t take blood to make a family, and I was the only grandfather you knew.” He took a couple of bites and then changed the subject. “Come January, you could have a strawberry farm to run.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m an accountant, not a farmer.”
“You ain’t stupid, Lila. You can learn anything, but it was probably a dumb idea.”
“I’m going back to the house, and at noon, I’ll bring you some lunch and more pills.” The idea wasn’t dumb. I owned the property, and the lease was up in January. Between now and then, I would have several months to learn what all was involved and even to get some hands-on experience. That would help me stay occupied while I figured out what to do with the rest of my life.
I was so busy thinking about strawberries that I forgot Connor was coming. I raced into the downstairs bathroom, brushed my hair one more time, and was busy applying a little lipstick when he knocked on the back door and poked his head inside. “The muffin man is here.”
“Coffee is ready. Come on in. I’m on my way!” I yelled and checked my reflection in the downstairs-bathroom mirror one more time. I saw a tall red-haired woman who had to bend slightly even to see herself, and wondered why he had said I was beautiful the night before. Did he mean it, or was that one of his pickup lines?
The box of muffins was on the table, and he was filling two mugs with coffee when I made it into the kitchen. He looked up, smiled, and handed me my second cup of the morning. “You look lovely—but then, you always do. I smell bacon. Did you already have a first breakfast? Is this your second one?”
“No, I made Jasper some pancakes and bacon, but I haven’t eaten yet. I was waiting for the muffins. Thank you for the compliment,” I said and took a sip of the coffee. “And for the muffins. What are you doing today?”
He pulled out a chair for me. “I can only stay a little while. Grandpa wants me to work with the crew coming to work the strawberry plants. From fancy oil-executive meetings to farmer. Got to admit, none of it is bad work.”
I sat down, more than a little envious and a lot disappointed. Connor seemed to have his life on track while I was still struggling, trying to get out of the thick woods. Talking to him had seemed to help me in my efforts to find a path, but there would be none of that today.
“So, what’s on your agenda today?” he asked.
I opened the box and took out a muffin. “Gina Lou is moving in, but I’m not sure when. I may spend a little time in the room she’ll be using—cleaning out the closets and dresser drawers, that kind of thing.”
He sat down across the table from me. “Be careful. Today is March 15.”
“Beware the Ides of March,” I said in my best eerie voice. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have her move in today.”
“Only if you are superstitious.” He peeled the paper from a muffin and took a bite.
“My mama is. She doesn’t even like to come in this house. Says that she feels ghosts in here.” Saying that out loud to Connor didn’t make me uncomfortable.
“I am pretty sure that any place that is still standing after a hundred years has a few skeletons hiding in the closets,” he said.
“With that in mind, I should probably listen carefully for rattling bones or eerie sounds when I clean out the closet in Gina Lou’s room,” I teased.
“If you get scared, just call me, and I’ll come running,” Connor offered in a flirting tone.
“Keep your phone on,” I told him.
“Always.” He pushed his chair back, picked up his coffee mug, dropped a kiss on my forehead as he passed by, and headed out the back door.
I ate another muffin, had two more cups of coffee, and had started across the foyer when the house phone rang. I jogged back to the kitchen, picked up the receiver, and looked at the thing while it rang again before I realized there wouldn’t be a name displayed.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Lila, this is Gina Lou. My car broke down last night. Just up and died and quit running when I was about a block from my trailer. Daddy says it’s not worth fixing because the transmission is blown. I hate to ask, but can you come help me? My friend that was going to give me a ride had to take her grandmother to the hospital. Looks like she’ll be there all day because they’re admitting her granny.” Her voice sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “I have to be out by noon because another person is moving in, and my dad is on his way to his job, and he can’t be late ...” She finally stopped for a breath.
“Slow down, girl. Of course I’ll come help you. Just give me an address, and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Thank you so, so much. The address is ...” She rattled off a place I didn’t recognize.
“Hold on just a minute. Now, repeat that address.” I plugged it into the map app on my phone. “I’ve got it now, and we’ll get you moved out long before noon. Looks like I can get there in ten minutes.”
“I’m all packed and ready to go,” she said. “I’ll be waiting on the steps.”
I picked up my purse, went out to Jasper’s place, and told him where I was going, then got into my SUV. “Looks like the Ides of March is in full swing. WWAGD?”
What in the devil is that? the pesky voice in my head asked.
“What Would Aunt Gracie Do?” I said out loud, and then the answer came to me. She would let Gina Lou drive the SUV when she needed it. I could always drive the Ford in the garage.
“Whether I like it or not,” I said as I made the turn toward Poteet.
Everything happens for a reason. Her voice was as clear as if she’d been sitting right beside me.
“I miss you so much,” I whispered. “Sometimes the memories and the voices in my head aren’t enough. I want to hug you, and sit at the table for breakfast with you, and make Christmas cookies with you.”
Aunt Gracie had painted a vivid picture for me when she told me about the evening she went to bring Mama to Ditto. That memory went through my mind when I saw Gina Lou sitting on her porch with garbage bags all around her. She was moving to Ditto in about the same shape as my mother had been when Aunt Gracie rescued her. The difference was that Mama didn’t stay in Gracie’s house very long. She went to her own place the very next day and made a home for me in the little four-room place.
I popped open the hatch and got out. “Is this all of it?”
“Every single bit, and I left the place clean, so I should get my deposit back.”
“Where’s your car?” I slid a box as far back as I possibly could.
“Daddy dragged it out to my folks’ house last night with his vehicle. It’s toast, but since I’ll be living with you, I won’t need it except ...”
“Except when?” I asked.
“Annie’s closes at three on Sunday, and I try to go to church with my folks that evening. Daddy picks up all the overtime he can, so they don’t often get to go on Sunday morning,” she answered. “It takes both of our vehicles to get us all to church, and now I don’t have one.”
“You can take my car anytime you need it,” I told her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Lord, girl, I thought you had only been out of high school a year or two.”
“Nope,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been working for Annie since I was sixteen, and probably would be until I retire if she hadn’t sold the café. I saved my money and bought my car when I was seventeen. That reminds me—I should drop the insurance on Monday. I can give that money to Mama to help with what my sister Stephanie needs for her high school graduation.”
I’d never had to think about those kinds of things when I was her age. Aunt Gracie bought me a good used car when I was sixteen and paid the insurance until six months after I’d finished my education. I felt like I had entered the adult world when I traded that vehicle in for the SUV that I was still driving.
I didn’t realize I had been woolgathering until it was time to turn down the lane to Aunt Gracie’s house. Someday maybe I would be able to think of it as mine, but it had been hers my whole life and probably would be for a few more years.
“Do you have a list of things you want me to do when we get unloaded?” Gina Lou asked.
I parked in my usual spot and flung open the door. “Like I told you before, you’ve got the weekend to get settled in, and then we’ll start to work on Monday.”
“What are you going to do today?” she asked.
“First, I’m going to help you get all your stuff hauled upstairs. Then I’m going out to the strawberry fields.” That was another impulsive thing, but maybe Jasper had been right. I could learn the business by January and then make up my mind if I wanted to stay with it.
“What’s going on out there?” she asked as she got out of the SUV and grabbed two bags from the back.
I stacked one box on top of the other and picked them both up. “I have no idea, but I’m going to learn.”
“Why?”
“If I don’t figure out what I want to do with my life by January, then I’ll be a strawberry farmer. To be one of those, I need to know everything about the business.”
“Kind of like going to college, right?” she said as she followed me into the house.
“That’s right. Who knows? I might love strawberry work.” I started up the stairs with her right behind me.
“This place is even bigger than it looks from the outside,” she whispered as she tried to take everything in with one glance.
“Yes, it is, and that’s why I need help getting it put into shape,” I told her.
“My mama loves the vintage look. Maybe someday I could bring her here for a tour?”
“Anytime,” I said when we reached the top of the stairs, and nodded to the left. “That is Gracie’s room. I was using the next one for an office. This one”—I turned my head to the right—“is my room, and the next one will be yours. Linen closet and bathroom are at the end of the hallway.”
“When you own something like this, why would you want to be a farmer?” she asked.
“I have to have something to do. I need to feel like I am being productive.”
Was I grasping at something—anything—to give my life purpose? Or was I just making an excuse to spend the day with Connor?
“If you need to go see what’s going on in the fields, I can finish unloading. Just show me my room,” she said.
“Sounds good to me.” I opened the door and dropped the boxes on the floor. “This room probably hasn’t been cleaned or used in thirty or more years. If there’s anything in the closet or the drawers, just put it all in garbage bags. You’ll find clean sheets and bedding in the hall closets if you need them. That bed probably needs to be remade.”
“That thing”—she pointed toward the four-poster king bed—“looks like it covers ten acres.”
“Not quite, but you will have plenty of room to stretch out.” I opened a closet door to find it totally empty; same with all the dresser drawers. “I’d planned to have this closet cleared out for you, but it looks like you won’t have to deal with musty old clothing.”
Gina Lou dropped her bags and rushed over to wrap me up in a fierce bear hug. “Has anyone ever told you that you are an angel?”
I hugged her back and said, “No, they have not. I’ve been called a lot of things in my lifetime, but no one ever thought I had wings or a halo. I’m not even sure angels have red hair.”
“In my book, they do,” Gina Lou said with a sigh. “Where are the cleaning supplies and the washing machine?”
“Both are in the utility room. Cleaning stuff, broom, and vacuum are in the closet to the right of the washer,” I replied. “I can show you when we go downstairs.”
“You need to get out there to your Strawberry 101 class. Professor Connor might dock you a letter grade if you are late,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be fine. No, that’s not right. I’ll be great right here. While you are learning to grow the berries, you might think about making strawberry wine as a side job. Mama and Daddy have a little patch at the end of our garden, and she gathers them for making jelly to sell to folks at the festival each year. She also makes a few bottles of wine every year for us to toast with on New Year’s Day and for other special occasions. The little kids get strawberry juice mixed with lemon-lime soda to give it a little fizz.”
Blessings come in strange places.
That was another of Aunt Gracie’s sayings. The memory of Jasper telling that story about him and Davis and Gracie making wine came to my mind. He’d mentioned that there was a cookbook somewhere in the house with a recipe. Then I thought of the wine that Connor had brought. Thinking of Aunt Gracie put a smile on my face. The feeling I had when Connor had fed me filled me with warmth.
“Good luck finding a cookbook in all this mess,” I muttered, shaking away the thoughts.
“What was that?” Gina Lou asked.
“I was just thinking out loud. Working at home with no one else around for months on end makes a person do that.”
“I hear you,” she said. “During those horrible months when we had to close the dining room in the restaurant and just do home deliveries, I missed the folks coming in and visiting with us. But I did have my family and thank goodness the whole bunch of us stayed healthy through it all.”
“Amen to that.” I followed her down the stairs. That’s when the door to the basement caught my eye. In the past, I had only been brave enough to walk down those creaky steps if Aunt Gracie was with me. I figured that if ghosts were really in the house, they hid out behind all the boxes of stuff that were stored down there, and the place still had a strange smell to it.
One time, I asked Aunt Gracie what was in the boxes, and she told me that the past was down there and packed away where it all belonged. According to her, you couldn’t ever get rid of the past, but you didn’t have to drag it out and let it ruin the future.
The door squeaked loudly when I pushed it open, testifying that it had been a while—probably not since the last time the exterminator sprayed the house—since anyone had forced it open. I groped blindly until my hand found a wooden thread spool attached to the end of a string and pulled hard, turning on a bare bulb that was so dusty it only threw off a dim excuse for light. Shelves on one wall held jars and jars of canned food, but the rest of the place had not changed in the past decades. A shiver chased down my spine when I thought of going through all the boxes that were stacked up higher than my head. I would have to clean out the whole place if I was going to store my first batch of strawberry wine next spring.