“I guess she doesn’t know, then.” Jake shrugged. “Look, there’s the glitch of her daughter Elizabeth coming back to town. That’s where the error probably occurred. Elizabeth’s lineage just kind of got forgotten because she left her family back in California; a family of which one daughter was named Ophelia, by the way.”
“Oh, no, Opie was named after one of Alicia Zavon’s granddaughters?” I said.
“Seems that way,” Jake said.
“But then she should know already.”
“Maybe not. Maybe her parents only knew that Ophelia was a family name, even if they didn’t quite grasp the entirety of the true story of their ancestors.”
“Ugh. If she doesn’t know about all of this, her world is going to be rocked, and then she’ll be beyond impossible to be around. She’ll want to be crowned queen of all Broken Rope legends.”
Jake shrugged again. “Oh, she won’t be any more bothersome to you than she already is. As for the rest of us, I suppose we’ll adjust.”
“I’ve never quite disliked her the way you have, Betts,” Gram said, “but, yes, she will want some sort of accolade. Maybe a parade.” Gram scooted off the stool. “But nevertheless, we’ve got to get this letter delivered. Right away would be better than later.” She glanced at her watch. We still had time, if our visit was brief.
I tried to come up with a good case for not going out to Opie’s house and telling her about a non-delivered letter that would surely be the highlight of her life, or at least her week, but I couldn’t formulate one solid excuse. Even the fact that she recently broke up with Teddy wasn’t good enough. Teddy broke up with lots of girls, and lots of girls broke up with him.
“Oh, criminy,” I said, using one of Gram’s favorite terms. “Let’s go get it over with. We need to get back for everything this evening.”
After Jake outlined the details, we left for Opie’s, and we made quite the group. I gave Gram a lift in the Nova, and Joe and the horse followed behind, trotting so quickly that the horse’s hooves would have stirred up dirt if they’d been attached to an animal that was alive and it was back when all roads were unpaved.
Ophelia Buford lived in a mansion—well, a mansion by Broken Rope standards—on the edge of town. She and I had grown up together, enemies since we were young, enemies squared when we were in high school and Cliff broke up with her and started dating me shortly thereafter. No matter how he’d tried to make her understand that he hadn’t broken up with her just so that he could date me, that his feelings for me had been a surprise, she had never forgiven me for luring him away from her. Our relationship had been quite antagonistic toward each other. She was openly rude to me and I was openly rude to her. However, when she was dating Teddy, we’d both tried to mellow our bad feelings for each other. We’d become more passive-aggressive than just plain aggressive.
I didn’t know the details behind their breakup, but when Teddy told me that Opie had ended the relationship, I hadn’t felt the pure glee I’d anticipated when daydreaming of the day the happy event would occur. Instead, I was sorry for my brother’s broken heart. I didn’t understand Teddy and his Lothario ways, but he was my brother, and he didn’t attempt to hide the pain he felt over losing Opie. I also didn’t understand Opie, but the fact that she dumped my kid brother—no matter how much he might have deserved it, and he just might have—my feelings for her fell comfortably back to irritated dislike. For years I’d called her my personal Nellie Oleson, and now as far as I was concerned, it was really on. No more passive with my aggressive.
“Just be nice,” Gram said as we pulled onto the long birch tree–lined driveway. “We don’t know what happened. Teddy . . . well, he doesn’t have a great track record, Betts. As much as we love him, maybe Opie was right to dump him, though it bothers me, too. Just remember who we’re dealing with and that neither of them is all that talented with personal relationships.”