stuff, will you?”
“Yep,” a voice answered from behind a stack of feed sacks.
“This way, ladies,” J.J. said, slipping his free hand under Mary Beth’s elbow as she hobbled along the sidewalk. “Wait, I forgot about your foot. Should I drive you over?”
“Heavens, no. It’s only half a block, and I’m tired of sitting. I need to stretch.”
As they walked, slowly because of the crutches, Katy chattered a mile a minute—about their bus ride, about her dolls, about her best friend Emily in Natchez, but not, thank goodness, about her daddy. It was bad enough that the homecoming queen had returned practically penniless, but Mary Beth wasn’t ready to announce to everyone in her old hometown that her ex-husband was in prison.
The pressure of J.J.’s hand was steady and secure. Steady. Secure. Rock solid. She could feel the staggering weight of two years of stress begin to ease.
Had it been two years? It seemed like a lifetime ago that the police had come for her husband and his name was plastered across the newspaper headlines. Shocked by Brad’s subsequent indictment for embezzlement, she’d been quickly hit with the fact that they were in debt up to their eyebrows. Brad had always insisted on handling the finances and, like a fool, she’d trusted him. And like a fool she’d never questioned how he supported their lavish lifestyle and his gambling habit. He’d gone to prison, and the mortgage company had foreclosed on their beautiful home. Most of their assets had gone for attorney fees and toward restitution. She’d been left only with her car, part of the furniture that was paid for and her personal possessions—what she hadn’t hocked to pay the utilities.
She and Katy had been left literally on the street. A friend had generously provided them a place to live, and after some of the bewilderment had worn off, Mary Beth had given herself a good talking-to. The time had come for her to stop acting like such a wuss and take control of her life. After searching want ads, asking around among the few friends still associating with her and going on endless interviews, she landed a job as an aerobics instructor. It wasn’t much, but the deal was better than anything else she could find—and she was a darned good instructor. They were managing to get back on their feet, when Mary Beth had her accident. With no income and no insurance, the situation was bleak. As her meager bank balance dwindled, panic had set in. She had a child to feed and clothe. She had wept and prayed and cursed Brad Parker and her own stupidity for marrying him.
Now walking down this street in Naconiche, she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t moved away with her parents the summer after she graduated from high school? What would her life have been like if she’d stayed here and married J.J. instead of the scoundrel she’d chosen?
Yet, without Brad Parker there would have been no Katy. And Katy was worth every humiliation she’d endured.
What was done, was done and she was back now, starting over in the place she’d been so eager to leave. The grass hadn’t been greener on the other side of the fence, but it had taken her a long time to discover that. And she’d also learned that she couldn’t trust a man—or anyone else—to provide for her or make her happy. She had to depend on herself, make it on her own. And, by damn, she was giving it her best shot.
Mary Beth took a deep breath and immersed herself in the sights and sounds of her old hometown.
Very little about Naconiche had changed. The familiar clicking of shuffling dominoes came from under the shade tree on the courthouse lawn, where old men met to play every day except Sunday. Roses still bloomed beside the bank, and the smell of sizzling meat and frying onions from the City Grill wafted by her.
As they stepped inside the Double Dip, the cold-sweet scents of chocolate and peppermint and strawberry took her back a dozen and more years. How many times had she sat on one of those red stools at the counter and eaten a banana split with extra pecans or a hot-fudge sundae with her friends? Her throat tightened and tears sprang to her eyes.
She was home.
“Mom,” J.J. said. “Look who I found. Mary Beth Beams. And this is her daughter Katy.”
“Mary Beth Parker, now.” She smiled at the gray-haired woman who had taught her in third grade. “It’s good to see you, Miss Nonie.”
“Mary Beth!” Her arms open wide, Nonie Outlaw hurried to the front of the store and enveloped her former student in a hug. “How wonderful to see you! And Katy, what a beautiful young lady you are. You look just like your mother when she was your age. We were so excited when Dwight Murdock told us you were coming to town. Welcome home.”
Another bit of tension gave way, and Mary Beth smiled. When she was seventeen, she could hardly wait to get away from the hick town where she’d grown up. Now that same town was her refuge.
Yes, she was finally home. Everything was going to be okay.
NONIE OUTLAW PLAYED with Katy, while J.J. and Mary Beth sat at one of the marble tables by the window. He felt himself grinning like an idiot as he watched Mary Beth dig into the banana split she’d ordered. She’d been a pretty girl the last time he saw her. Now she was a beautiful woman. He thought he’d forgotten her—but he hadn’t. All the old feelings came barreling down on him. It was like being blindsided by Shorty Badder’s log truck.
He’d been crazy about Mary Beth for as long as he could remember. He’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask her for a date when he was a senior in high school and she was a sophomore. From that moment on, they’d been a couple, even when he’d gone off to college in Huntsville the next year.
He thought of one of the last times he’d seen her. It was a week or two after she’d graduated from high school, and they had gone to a movie. He remembered her hiding her eyes against his shoulder during some of the scarier parts. Afterward, they had gone out to the overlook and parked.
He’d meant to propose to her that night—he had the ring in his pocket. But before he could ask her to marry him, she’d broken up with him. She told him that she and her family were moving to Dallas the next week—her father had gotten a sudden promotion—and besides, she’d be going off to college in the fall anyhow. She’d been accepted at some fancy school in Florida, one that he didn’t even know that she’d applied to. But then, Mary Beth had always had highfalutin ideas about getting out of Naconiche and seeing the world.
It had damned near broken his heart.
No, not damned near. It had broken his heart. Devastated him.
Instead of telling her he loved her and asking her to marry him the way he’d planned, pride had made him brush her off and turn his attention to Holly Winchell the very next night. Holly was a hot little number who worked as a waitress at the restaurant next to The Twilight Inn, the one that Mary Beth now owned. She’d been a sorry substitute for Mary Beth and the fling hadn’t lasted long. He couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant then—it had gone through several changes through the years—or what happened to Holly. In its heyday the old Twilight Inn had been a thriving business, but it had gone from bad to worse before it finally closed down about four or five years ago.
J.J. was afraid that Mary Beth was in for a disappointment if she was expecting much from that old property, but he didn’t want to be the one who let her down. He’d leave that up to Dwight Murdock.
His own strawberry sundae melted as he watched her eat, watched the dimple at the bottom corner of her mouth appear and disappear as she spooned ice cream between her lips. God, he’d spent many a night thinking about that dimple.
