“Don’t let him fool you. Six hundred and forty acres!” Luke chuckled. His eyes changed when he laughed. The veil lifted and they were downright dreamy.
Kim studied him in her peripheral vision. He was so handsome when he smiled that she was amazed that the clouds didn’t part and a big booming voice didn’t float out of heaven saying something wonderful. But when he looked at her again the veil was right back over his eyes.
“Really?” Karen exclaimed.
Surely they didn’t have a garden that big, and if they did, 99 percent of it was about to wither up and die.
John laughed out loud. “No, he’s trying to scare you ladies. Norma was a stickler about her garden. Part of it is strawberries, but they’ve already been harvested this year. She froze most of them, so you can play at making jam all you want to.” He looked at Karen.
“Everything else is going strong. Matter of fact, the beans and zucchini need to be picked again, though. And there’s yellow crookneck squash and cucumbers that’ll go to waste if you don’t bring them in,” John explained.
“What did she do with zucchini?” Karen asked.
“Sold it in the stand, mostly. Some of it she made into pickles and sold. House smelled like sweet vinegar when she did that,” John said.
“I’d love to try that,” Karen said.
“Recipes for everything she made are under the bar. She said one time that they were passed down from her granny to her momma and then to her,” John said. “Guess I’d better tell you the peaches will be ready pretty soon. She got enough to make a cobbler for us last Friday night, but when they start coming off you can hardly take care of them.”
“What’d she use them for? Jams?” Karen asked.
“Jam, or she had this way of cannin’ them so they was pretty in the jars, and she sold a whole bunch in the fruit stand,” Luke said.
“I want to try my hand at making all of those things,” Karen said.
John could have shouted. These women weren’t such city slickers after all. He’d worried all week about whether they’d sweep in, take one look at the place, and put it on the market to sell. Miss Norma had painted a pretty picture of them all through the years, but he’d feared that she’d seen them through the rose-colored glasses of a teenaged girl.
“Then I guess we’ll make pickles tomorrow. Does the zucchini just produce one time or does it produce all summer? We’re not too smart when it comes to gardening, but we’re fast learners,” Sue asked.
“Oh, you’ll be sick of it by the time fall comes,” Luke said. “Norma said she saw the green squash in her sleep at night and the vines tried to strangle her, but she never wasted a single one of them.”
He’d admit it when he was wrong. But before he admitted anything, he had to be absolutely sure he’d been wrong!
Women interested in making pretty jelly and jams and pickles didn’t make him wrong. He’d hold his judgment until they broke their backs picking tomatoes and zucchini. And when one of them endured that hot fruit stand for hours and days on end.
CHAPTER SIX
Karen slipped into a white cotton sundress with spaghetti straps and a huge hand-painted rose on the circular skirt. She added a red bolero jacket and a pair of Italian leather sandals. She was the first one in the kitchen that Sunday morning, so she made coffee, and then made cinnamon toast from the rest of a loaf of bread Sue had baked the day before.
Hannah was ready long before Karen, but she spent a few extra minutes in Norma’s room. Norma’s spirit hadn’t left the house yet. It wasn’t a bad thing, and Hannah had an idea after the talk around the table during supper and the Scrabble game about why. She just had to wrap her thinking around the concept that Norma had had a forewarning about her death and got things ready for them in her own way.
“What is it you want me to do?” She whispered.
A quiet voice in her heart said simply, Not one thing. You’ve already done it.
Hannah smiled, understanding a little more. “Guess we both kept at least one secret, didn’t we, Norma? It could work. I could push the idea a little if worse comes to worst.”
Kim finished dressing in a long broomstick skirt, each tier a shade of brown with turquoise sequins dotting it here and there, and a sleeveless ecru-colored cotton sweater. She picked up her shoes, nothing more than straps across her arch and behind her heel, with laces that crisscrossed halfway to her knees. Securing her long hair into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, she hoped the preacher didn’t sermonize about keeping secrets before God and feeling guilty about it.
For the first time the Brewer women were bonding, and she could not destroy the fragile cord. Maybe by the time she could say the word pregnant aloud again and tell them the story about Marshall, the news wouldn’t snap the thin rope.
Sue wore a bright orange linen sheath that barely touched her knees and a pair of high-heeled sandals. She barely took time to check her makeup. Her thoughts went to the dozen quarts of zucchini pickles she’d helped Karen make the day before for the fruit stand. She’d have to share the recipe with her teacher friend when they all returned to West Virginia in the fall.
A feeling that she didn’t like hit her, and she sat down with a thud on the white wrought-iron vanity bench.
“Nanna isn’t going home. She’s staying here. What went on that summer to draw her back to this place? I’m crazy. Of course she’s going home. This place is nothing but dirt and sky and hard work, and I know that after only one day in the garden.”
Kim opened the door and peeked inside. “Momma, you ready? Who are you talking to? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I think I did, but I’ve been wrong before,” Sue said. “Let’s go to church. I can’t remember a time when we all went together.”
“It’s because it never happened. Nanna watched services on television because she couldn’t leave the hotel. I don’t think Grandma has been in a church since she got married,” Kim said.
“Oh, yes, she has. She drug me to Sunday morning services my whole life. At least until that summer when she went to Italy. Something changed her, because we didn’t go after that. Not that I minded back then,” Sue said honestly.
The doorbell sent them to the front of the house to find John and Luke in the foyer. Hannah and Karen were picking up their purses and heading for the door.
Sue’s breath caught in her chest. John was dressed in a shirt with white pearl snaps, black creased western-cut slacks that hugged his muscular thighs, and black eel cowboy boots.
“We’re used to coming by to pick up Norma,” John explained. “We hadn’t talked about whether you’d be attending this morning or not, but we could show you the way. Don’t have room in the truck to haul everyone, or we could all go together, but we’ll be glad to show you where our pew is. It’s our first Sunday without her.”
“We’ll follow you,” Hannah said.
Kim was speechless. Luke looked like he’d just walked out of a commercial for cowboy boots. He held a black Stetson hat in his hands; his blond hair was feathered back perfectly. His slacks fit like they’d been tailored just for him and a tooled belt with an engraved silver belt buckle was laced through the wide loops. His black cowboy boots were polished to a shine so high that she could see the reflection of her skirt tail in them.
John offered his arm to Hannah, who looped hers through it and allowed him to lead her out to the van. He opened the passenger door and helped her inside.
“You ladies look lovely today,” he said.
“Thank you,” Sue said. “You two don’t look so shabby yourselves.”
John chuckled. “That sounds like Norma. Last Sunday she said we cleaned up fairly well for two old Okie farmers.”
The church parking lot was full with less than a dozen cars lined up right in front of the front door. John pulled into the lot for the Milburn Family Clinic, right across the street to the south, and Sue nosed her van in beside him. The men were out and opening the doors for them before Sue could put the keys in her purse.
“Thank you.” Hannah smiled.
“Usually it’s not so full, but since Norma didn’t want a funeral, I expect the congregation is expecting the preacher to make up for it today. And these folks don’t mind if we use their lot on days when the church is full.” John offered his arm to Hannah again. Karen and Sue fell in behind them, with Luke and Kim bringing up the rear.
“Oh, dear. We aren’t dressed for a memorial service,” Sue whispered to Hannah.
“Norma would have told you that you are all beautiful and she would have been right,” John told her.
They entered the church and the whole congregation stood as if it were a funeral. John and Hannah led the tiny procession to the front, where John stepped back to let Hannah go to the far end of the pew with Karen right behind her. Sue followed her and John stepped ahead of Luke and went in to sit beside Sue, leaving Luke to sit beside Kim.
The preacher made a motion with his arms and there was a shuffling as everyone sat back down and reached for the hymnals on the backs of the pews.
“Our friend Norma left our presence last Monday. The letter she left for me said there was to be no funeral and she was to be cremated, but that the first Sunday after Hannah and her girls arrived we could have a memorial service. Today we will have a celebration of life for our dear friend and a pillar in our society. Our pianist is sick with the flu today, but we understand Kim DeHaven, the great-granddaughter of Miss Norma’s relative, Hannah Brewer, can play, so we’re going to ask her to help us out as we sing some of Miss Norma’s favorite hymns.”