“Nanna, I think you’ve really lost your marbles.”
“For the first time in my life, I feel like I haven’t lost anything. Like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. Like everything is in place now. Look! That’s not a customer out there, disappointed that our fruit stand isn’t opened up today. That’s John!”
He leaned out the window. “Miz Hannah, what are you doing outside in the heat of the day? Need a ride back up to the house?”
Hannah said, “We’re just about to turn around and go back. This heat is more pressing than we’re used to in the mountains of West Virginia. You got supper plans?”
“I’m a gourmet cook.” John grinned. “I make the best bologna sandwiches in Johnston County.”
Hannah giggled. “Why don’t you come around about six thirty for supper? That roast Sue put in the oven looked like it would feed an army.”
“Thank you. I’d love to if it’s not too much trouble. Could I bring Luke?” John said without hesitation.
“Yes, and it’s no trouble. You’ll be doing us a favor, actually. We’ve spent four days in the van together with no outside company. Kim’s actually afraid her mother and grandmother might go at it with butcher knives while we’re out for a walk.”
“Then it’ll be my duty,” John said.
“We’ll look for you then at six thirty,” Kim said.
He drove away and Kim and Hannah turned and started back to the house.
“Did you plan that?” Kim asked. “Are you matchmaking?”
“Never been accused of such a thing. I figure women ought to do their own choosing, even if it’s dead wrong. But your mother could use a little prodding, don’t you think? And that John is a fairly handsome man. It’s not like she’s only interested in multimillionaires. She’s a self-proclaimed antimaterialistic woman, and John’s just a good old hardworking country boy.”
“Nanna! You are matchmaking. Is that why you came out here?”
“Not me. I’m just inviting two men to supper so we can have some dinner conversation about gardens.” Hannah winked.
CHAPTER FIVE
John and Luke arrived right on time. Sue opened the door to find them freshly shaven, wearing faded jeans and snowy white T-shirts, and holding their straw hats.
“Come right in,” she said.
John’s face was a study of angles ending with a square chin with just enough dimple in it to give him fits when he shaved. His green eyes were shot through with flecks of gold, and his salt-and-pepper hair had been combed straight back. His mouth was full and his smile honest.
“This is Luke, the rascal cowboy from south of you all. Luke, meet Hannah, Karen, Sue, and Kim,” John said.
Luke hung his hat on one of the hooks behind the door. “Glad to meet y’all. We’ve heard your names often. But somehow I thought Kim was just a little girl, the way Norma always talked.”
“Hardly,” Kim said. “I’ll be twenty this summer.”
“I see that.” His eyes started at her feet and traveled up to her dirty-blonde hair. He’d always been attracted to dark-haired girls. Blondes were far too delicate and ditzy for him.
She wanted to slap him for looking at her like she was trash. He didn’t even know that she was pregnant, and he had no right to be so insolent anyway. She was married the night she conceived the baby.
Hannah sat down at one end of the small dining room table and motioned for John to sit at the other. “We might as well visit over supper. Karen and Kim on this side. Luke, you sit across from Kim and Sue on the end to John’s left. That way she can get in and out to the kitchen easily to keep bowls refilled,” she explained.
“So which of you ladies made this scrumptious meal?” John asked.
“Sue did,” Hannah said. “Karen helped, but Sue is the cook. Karen has a full-time staff at her house. Sue does her own housework and cooking.”
Karen passed the platter of roast beef to her mother. “She doesn’t have to.”
“But I choose to. Did Norma play the piano?” Sue changed the subject.
“No, never touched it ’cept to dust it every week. Kept it all pretty and shiny. Used to have a pool table in that corner. She could whip everyone in the whole county, I’m telling you. Sunday afternoons was pool time. We’d put on some country music and chalk up the cue sticks. She liked Alan Jackson, George Strait, Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn. Conway Twitty was a favorite too. Sometimes I could talk her into a little bit of Brad Paisley or Blake Shelton. Then one Saturday night we saw a big delivery truck from Dallas backing into the driveway. She sent the pool table over to John’s. The piano went right there. Been about a year ago now,” John said between bites.
“Kim plays,” Hannah said.
Kim felt someone glaring at her and met Luke’s cold gaze when she looked up. She met it without blinking until he looked down at his plate.
“So what do you play? Classical?” John asked.
“I took lessons for a couple of years when I was a little girl, but they wanted me to play classical. It’s all right if you like it, but it didn’t appeal to me one bit.”
“What do you like?” Luke’s blue eyes gave off a freeze even colder than the wind off a fresh West Virginia snow.
“Country, mostly. Floyd Kramer is my idol. I also like old gospel. Not the new stuff like alternative or gospel rock, but the things in the old, old hymn books. Please pass those green beans, Momma. They look wonderful.” Kim avoided looking across the table again.
“At your age? You like country and gospel?” John asked.
“My dad’s influence. His mother played a mean Floyd Kramer piano and she loved gospel music. She died last year, but I have the most fantastic memory of her fingers moving all over that piano. She taught me to love the tinkling sound of old gospel and country music. You know what the Good Book says: ‘Raise up a child in the way he should go and he shall not depart from it.’ She did her job well. I’m hoping that I run into Blake Shelton while we are here,” Kim said.
“You might. I hear he goes to the Milburn bar every now and then and that he’s just a regular person in Tishomingo,” John told her.
Sue pushed her chair back and laid a plaid cloth napkin beside her plate. She picked up the tea pitcher and refilled John’s glass, then Karen’s and Hannah’s and realized that Kim had water in her glass.
“Why aren’t you having tea? You’ve always said a sit-down meal isn’t a real dinner without sweet tea.”
Kim held up a finger until she swallowed. “I’m on a new kick. No caffeine for a few weeks.”
“Why?” Luke asked.
“I do this occasionally. Go on a kick to cleanse my aura or such,” Kim answered. She knew she wasn’t supposed to drink, and she could easily do without even a glass of wine, but she wouldn’t know about caffeine until she had time to do some research. And that was not an easy feat with three older women around all the time.
“Sounds crazy to me. I’d die without tea, coffee, and Coke. When I’m a hundred years old and they do my autopsy, they’ll find my blood is ninety percent caffeine,” he said.
“What’ll the other ten percent be?” Kim locked eyes with him but that time she didn’t blink.
“Norma’s strawberry jelly,” John said. “He can eat a pint a week.”
“Did she have recipes stored away?” Karen asked.
Luke nodded. “Her recipes must be somewhere in those cabinets. Which reminds me, the donkeys need feeding. Did you all do that yet?”
“After dishes. You know the rules,” John told him.
“Yes, sir,” Luke said.
“What rules?” Hannah asked.
John inhaled deeply. “I don’t want you ladies to feel obligated but, when Norma was here…” He swallowed hard.
“Spit it out, son,” Hannah said.
John nodded. “Friday night when the work week was finished we always ate at her house. It’s kind of nice that you invited us since this is the first week without her, but we don’t want you to think you have to keep up the traditions she started. Norma cooked and we did the cleanup. That was the rule. After supper, we played Monopoly or gin rummy or whatever she wanted. There’s a Scrabble board here too. Then on Sunday, supper was at my place and we’d play pool. Rules say whoever cooks does not clean up. So we’ll do the dishes tonight,” John said.
“Then on Sunday you cook and we clean up?” Sue asked.
John blushed. “You wouldn’t have to. It’s just the way we did things when she was here.”
“I like the rule. Are we invited, then, for dinner at your place on Sunday after church? We’ll do the cleanup and I bet Kim can whip Luke at pool,” Hannah said.
“Nanna!” Kim exclaimed.
“How much?” Luke’s eyes narrowed.
She might be pretty, but he’d show her who was boss at the pool tables.
“Five bucks,” Hannah said.
“You are on,” Luke said.
“Now tell us about this garden business and the donkeys,” Sue said. “Is it very big? And donkeys? What do they do?”
“Two full acres of garden, but that includes the strawberries,” John said.