Chapter Eight
Libby left the store and went straight to Minilee’s house, grumbling the whole way. She had hoped to have a lot more done before suppertime, but she’d spent the whole day getting only one drawer into shape.
“But that one is a beautiful thing,” she muttered as she walked up on the porch and knocked on the door.
“Come on in,” Minilee yelled. “You can wash up in the kitchen sink while me and Opal put the food on the table. How did your day go?”
Libby’s stomach growled when she got a whiff of bacon. “I smell bacon and onions. I thought we were having beans and summer goulash.”
“Got to fry up some bacon for the drippings to flavor the beans and make the goulash. I used fresh green onions in it this time,” Minilee told her as she brought a cast-iron skillet full of sizzling vegetables to the table and then another one of corn bread. Steam rose from the crock of beans already in the middle of the table.
“I can get the glasses ready for tea,” Libby offered.
“That would be nice,” Minilee said with a nod. “You’ll find them in the cabinet to the right of the sink, and the ice cubes are in a bowl in the freezer. This time of year, I empty them fast as they freeze so that we’ve always got some ready. Tell me what you did all afternoon up there at the store. Opal and I were going to come up, but we got all involved with freezing a bushel of okra.”
“Those filing cabinets are a nightmare!” Libby answered. “I only got one drawer cleaned and organized. There’s four more to go, and that will just cover the last five years of receipts we’re required to keep for tax purposes. It will take forever to get them all in shape.”
“I’m here with the peaches,” Opal yelled as she came through the back door. “What are y’all talking about?”
“Drawers,” Libby answered.
“Wearable or dresser type?” Opal asked as she set the bowl of peaches on the cabinet.
“File cabinet–style,” Libby said.
Opal took the glasses filled with ice to the table and poured the sweet tea. “Benny asked me to work on those files a year ago. I told him that I would retire permanently before I’d open one of those drawers. As long as it had been since anyone cleaned them out, there would be spiders in them.”
“Yep,” Libby said. “So far only a couple have been alive.”
“Dead or alive or anywhere in between is all the same to me.” Opal sat down and pointed to a chair on the other side of the small table. “You can sit there.”
Libby pulled out the chair and eased down into it with a sigh. Minilee brought a divided plate with carrots and pickled beets to the table and then took her place. “I cooked, so Opal will say grace.”
Libby bowed her head and was grateful they didn’t ask her to bless the food. She could talk out loud to herself with no problem, and she had prayed many times in her life—not for food, but for Victoria to win at the casino so she would be in a good mood. Back then, she didn’t pray out loud, but her prayers were earnest. Maybe she should practice saying a few lines, she thought, just in case, sometime in the future, she was ever asked to thank God for the summer goulash. She realized that Opal had finished talking, and she raised her head to see both elderly women staring at her.
“Amen!” Minilee said and passed the corn bread over to Libby.
“Y’all really should think about putting in a food wagon on weekends. You could make a fortune,” Libby said before taking the first bite of warm corn bread.
“Like I said before, we’re too old to get into a new venture,” Minilee said. “We like to garden and cook and make a little money a few hours a week at the store—but other than that, we want to be free to garden and watch our shows in the afternoons.”
“Changing the subject here ...” Opal said with a broad smile. “Tatum called and said that she and Benny talked again today, and she’s excited about their date.” She held up her hand and crossed her fingers. “Here’s hoping that this is just the beginning. It’s time for Benny to get married and start a family.”
“Why would he need to be married?” Libby asked.
Opal nodded and reached for a piece of corn bread. “If he don’t get on the ball soon, we won’t be around to rock the babies.”
“Walter had his fingers in lots of pies, and Benny is very rich, but what good will all that do him if he doesn’t have a child to inherit when he’s gone? The clock is ticking,” Minilee answered.
Libby drew her dark brows down in a frown. “Haven’t y’all heard? Thirty is the new twenty. Folks are getting married later in life these days.”
“Maybe so, but I want him to get married so me and Minilee can enjoy the babies,” Opal said.
“I’m surprised that every gold digger in the state of Texas and half of Oklahoma isn’t pounding on his trailer door,” Libby said.
“Are you thinking that my great-niece is a gold digger?” Opal’s tone was as cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss in a Siberian winter.
Libby was surprised that her next bite of summer goulash was even still hot. As a child, she had learned to read people, especially her grandmother. How the woman ever won a single dime at the poker table was a mystery. Maybe folks just couldn’t read her the way Libby could. If she was angry, her eyes showed it. Those were the days that Libby stayed far away from Victoria. If she was happy, the crow’s-feet around her eyes deepened, and her lower lip looked like it turned to stone. The change in the aura of this kitchen brought her right back to those moments.
“No, ma’am,” Libby answered after a pause. “I don’t know her well enough to know what her intentions are.”
“I would imagine that she’d be willing for one of them prenup things that rich people insist on.” Minilee’s tone was only a little warmer than Opal’s had been.
“If Benny loves her, he won’t insist on making her sign such a thing,” Opal fussed. “Neither one of us were ever asked to put our names on a prenup.”
“Look around you, woman,” Minilee said after a long sigh. “We don’t own anything other than some outdated furniture and a cellar full of canned goods. We’ve had a good life, but neither Floyd nor Ernest left us anything but the rights to their pensions.”
Libby’s thoughts went to what she had been left with when her grandmother died—a box with her name on it that still had duct tape wrapped around it. Everything else had been sold.
“Tell me again, what’s in this goulash stuff?” Libby asked, as much to distract herself as the older women. “It’s really good. What’s your secret?”
“In addition to the green onions, it’s got new potatoes, yellow squash, and okra in it, all fried up in bacon drippings,” Minilee answered, and finally smiled.
“You met Tatum. What was your first impression?” Evidently, Opal wasn’t finished defending her great-niece.
“That she is independent and maybe just a little bullheaded.” Libby glanced over at the bowl of peaches and wished she hadn’t been so honest until after dessert.
In an instant, Opal’s expression changed, and she giggled. “You called that one right. She’s just the kind of woman that Benny needs in his life.”
Libby inhaled deeply, let it out silently and very slowly, and made a mental note to never, ever mention Tatum in the future.
Face your fears.
Those three words looped around in Libby’s mind that evening as she took a shower and got ready for bed. She made up her mind as she pulled a faded nightshirt over her head: she would sleep in the dark that night.
Tatum wasn’t afraid of the dark—no doubt about that. That woman would probably face down a Texas wildfire with nothing more than a cup of water. If asked what her greatest fear was, she would likely say, “Not one thing scares me.”
You do not need to compare yourself to anyone, the voice in her head whispered.
“If you can convince me of that, you are one damn good therapist.” She crawled into bed and was just about to switch off the bedside lamp when her phone rang.
She saw Benny’s name on the screen and answered it on the third ring. “Hello, is everything all right?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Not really, but ...”
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“I like an independent woman,” he blurted out.
“Do I hear a but in there?” Libby asked.
“Have Opal and Minilee told you about Tatum?” he asked.
“They did,” she answered, “and I met her when we went grocery shopping.”
Benny chuckled.
“She tried to grill me for personal information about you,” Libby told him. “I told her that you were a hardworking man, but that’s all I knew.”
“Thank you for that,” he said after a sigh. “I realize we’ve only known each other a few days, but pretty often, someone looking in from the outside can see things clearer than those of us on the inside.”
So Libby was on the outside looking in, was she? She had certainly gotten that feeling when Tatum’s name had come up at supper that evening. “How long does it take to go from outside in the cold to inside, where your opinion matters?” she asked.
“You’ll have to ask someone else for that answer. From the time my grandpa died, I’ve been half-afraid of getting into a relationship with anyone for fear a woman would just be liking me for the money,” he admitted.
“So that’s your fear?” she asked.
“What?”
“Minilee is afraid of mice. That’s kind of funny when you think about it—Minilee Mouse. Opal is afraid of spiders. I’m afraid to go to sleep without a night-light. Your fear is a woman won’t fall in love with you for yourself,” she said. “A therapist would tell all of us to face our fears.”
He laughed. “I can’t even imagine Minilee emptying a mouse trap or Opal getting near a spider. I’m not sure about you and the night-light issue. Want to talk about it?”
“Not right now,” she answered, his sense of humor dispelling some of her tension.
“Okay, then, what would you do with so much money that it boggles the brain? Would you have trust issues?”
“My bank account is starving, so I don’t have that kind of problem, but I can truthfully say that if trust issues were dollars, I would probably have more money than you do,” she told him.
“How would you really know if the person was”—he paused—“marrying you and having a family with you for love or just for the money?”
“I guess you would also keep your eyes open to see the signs. And you should probably ask for a prenup.” Libby shifted her focus over to the window, where millions of stars peppered the sky, almost as if they’d been thrown against the glass. But there was only a tiny sliver of the moon sitting in among them. She wished for the natural light of a big full moon to help her through the darkness.
“Are you still there?” Benny asked.
“I am,” she answered. “I just noticed that there’s very little moon in the sky tonight.”
“There’s none where I’m staying. Elvis and I are listening to rain falling outside our motel room. Do you believe in signs?”
“You don’t?”
“Never did, but looking back at the way things have happened, maybe I should rethink that,” he said. “Thanks for talking to me. I guess we both need to get some rest. Oh, I got word today that there’s three estate sales going on in Jefferson next week. I plan on driving down there on Monday. Want to go with me?”
“I don’t know ... Are you in a hurry to get the file cabinets in order?” She hadn’t been back to that area in years. Maybe a return trip would help her face her own fears. Or would seeing the old store—and maybe even the house—give her even worse nightmares? She figured she wouldn’t ever know if she didn’t go.
“Those files have waited this long.” He yawned loudly. “A few more days isn’t going to matter. Sorry, didn’t mean to yawn in your ear.”
She let loose with a big yawn of her own. “I’ll excuse you if you do the same for me. Looks like we’ve both had a long day.” Suddenly, Libby felt a need to overcome all her fears: darkness, trust, the inability to forgive. Maybe when she did, she could find closure and look toward putting down roots somewhere. Maybe if she got away for a whole day, she could squelch the visions of that miserable box.
“I would love to go,” she said.