Bossy Bridegroom (12 page)

“No! It’s too late.”

The silence returned as if Emily was trying to read the truth behind Jeanie’s words.

“What you really need to do is tell Michael all of this. I think he’s really trying, but if he doesn’t know when his words hurt you, he can’t change.”

“But he’s so busy.”

“Too busy to be kind? Can anyone ever be that busy?”

“Things will let up after the Fourth of July.”

“Don’t wait until then to talk to him. Go talk to him now.”

“He’s doing book work.”

“Whack his keyboard with your bat.”

Jeanie pictured it then started to laugh. Just talking to Emily, speaking of her fears aloud, helped ease them. She’d be able to sleep now. “Maybe I will.”

“If you’re afraid to talk to Michael, that ought to tell you something.”

“Yeah, it ought to. I’ll be more honest with him.”

“Don’t twist what I’ve said into a criticism of your honesty, Jeanie.”

“I’m not. I’m sorry.”

Again there was silence. At last Emily said, “I’m going to be watching Michael. I’ll give you until after the Fourth to deal with him, and then I might just show up with a
real
bat. And I promise I won’t be taking my swings at you.”

Jeanie laughed again. “Thanks, Em. It really helped to talk.”

She didn’t go talk to Michael that night. She heard him heading for bed just as she was going and decided to wait until he wasn’t so tired.

Complaining always made her feel so guilty. What business did she have complaining when she was so far from perfect herself? She was lucky a man like Michael wanted her. Lucky
any
man would want her after what she’d done.

Settling into sleep, Jeanie asked God to forgive her for all her worrying when she’d made this mess out of her life. She was finally, really, fully able to love her husband.

Dear God, thank You so much for loving me. And thank You that Michael loves me
.

It occurred to her to ask God to help her love herself, but she just couldn’t. It was too selfish.

Michael was obviously thrilled with the turnout for the Independence Day weekend.

Jeanie could see that the rest of the town was stunned. Not her, though. She’d expected Michael to make a huge success out of anything he tried.

He’d had his back slapped and his hand shaken a hundred times since the first car pulled up Friday morning.

The parade had been huge and flashy and stirring. Tourists lined the streets. The fireworks had been spectacular—Michael had seen to that. There was a hustle and bustle on Cold Creek’s Main Street that added up to financial success for everyone in town.

By the time it was over, the cabins were rented for the rest of the summer and for a lot of weekends next year. A hunting and fishing magazine had sent a crew and were clearly excited about this untapped area for fall and spring outdoor sports.

The buffalo were a smash. Jeanie had seen her sister looking jubilant, because keeping the buffalo ranch financially sound was always tricky.

As the last car pulled out of Cold Creek midafternoon on Monday, the town leaders congregated in the Buffalo Café. Jeanie served coffee and donuts. Things were badly picked over thanks to hungry tourists.

Michael went from table to table, full of plans for the future. The whole café buzzed with excitement.

Jeanie brought coffee around and accepted kind words from her neighbors, too, though none of this was her doing.

“Jeanie, have we stripped all the cupboards bare in this place?” Michael smiled at her and slung an arm around her shoulder.

“I’m down to crackers and unopened cans of chili. Not exactly coffee break food.”

Michael kissed her soundly.

She loved him so much when he was happy. If only she could keep him happy.

He reached for her hair and ran a gentle hand over it, tucking it behind her ears.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been running all day. I must be a mess.” Jeanie reached up to smooth her hair, wondering what it looked like. The pleasure of the day faded as she worried about shaming Michael. She saw that her nails were chipped. Her makeup must have melted off hours ago.

“You’re fine. Stop worrying. Just go check in the mirror. Your mascara’s a little smeared.” Michael looked closer. “Or maybe you’ve got circles under your eyes. What an exhausting weekend for you.”

“You, too.”

“Yeah, but it’s like caffeine in my blood. Being around people energizes me. You’re happier when it’s quiet.”

“I’ve been happy this weekend. I’ve loved the activity.”

Michael relaxed his hold. “Go check in the mirror, okay?”

Jeanie nodded and practically ran out of the room. There was a small restroom in the kitchen for the help. She went there and fussed with her appearance, dallying, wishing everyone outside would go away before she had to come out. She’d forgotten how much she hated crowds. When she’d been in the restroom for half an hour, she peeked out the door and saw that things had calmed down. She swung the door open and was surprised to see Buffy waiting in the kitchen, her arms crossed. Beside her stood Emily Hanson, with Logan, just a couple of weeks old, held close against her chest.

“We heard that.” Buffy scowled and studied Jeanie’s face as if she were a bug under a microscope.

“H–heard what?”

“What he said to you.” Emily patted Logan’s back. Emily had straight brown hair and sun-browned skin like Buffy. But Emily was taller. She was still rounded from having her baby. And Emily’s eyes were kind, whereas Buffy glared with anger.

“Who?”

Buffy snorted. “How long did it take him to put you back in your place? He’d been here, what—two weeks, maybe a month?—before you quit all your jobs and started wearing too much makeup, trying to be good enough for that worthless Michael Davidson.”

“He’s not worthless. He’s done so much for this town.” Jeanie looked past Buffy’s shoulders into the dining room, terrified Michael would overhear.

“He’s gone. Relax. He won’t
catch you
having an opinion. He hasn’t done half for this town of what you did.”

“Are you kidding? He built these cabins.”

“He closed the senior center.”

“They eat here now for the same price. And he brought tourists to your buffalo ranch.”

“He’s cut the hours the library is open.”

“I didn’t know about that.” Jeanie rested one hand on her chest, surprised to learn of it. Keeping the library open as many hours as possible had been important to this town.

“Julia can’t handle the extra hours, so she’s just closing it for the evening hours.”

“That’s not Michael’s fault.” Jeanie needed to phone Julia. If there was no other way, Jeanie could go back to work. Except Michael wouldn’t like it.

“The Russos are putting the mini-mart up for sale,” Buffy added.

“They are?”

“Tim thinks it’s too hard on their kids to work such long hours. He’s hoping with the tourist rush he can unload the place on someone.”

“Has he tried hiring teenagers? They usually need some spending money.”

“There are three new patients at the nursing home that need hospice care. Someone is driving over from Hot Springs to take care of them.”

Emily nudged Buffy, and the two of them exchanged another glance. Buffy rubbed her mouth as if she had to physically restrain the words.

Jeanie bristled. “I’m not the only person in this town who could be a hospice volunteer. Michael needs me.”

Buffy’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak.

Jeanie looked to Emily for support. Instead, she saw pity.

“Didn’t you hear what he said to you, Jeanie?” Emily asked. “He’s unkind.”

“He told me I looked tired.”

Buffy shook her head, her jaw tense. “Another way of criticizing you.”

“No, a way of protecting me. He’s taking care of me.”

“It’s not just that. I’ve watched him.” Emily reached out and rested a hand on Jeanie’s arm. “He puts one of his little barbs into you, and you start trying to fix it, make him happy. You’ve changed since he came back, Jeanie. You’re not happy anymore.”

“I wasn’t happy before.” Jeanie balled her fists. There was truth in what they said. And yes, Buffy had an old ax to grind, but Emily had no history with Michael.

“When you phoned me the other night, you said you’d deal with this after the holiday rush,” Emily said. “Well, it’s after.”

Emily and Buffy exchanged a long look. Jeanie ached inside for being on the outside of whatever passed between these two. They were her best friends.

Then Buffy smiled. But the sadness in her eyes overruled the smile. “I want you to be happy, Jeanie.” Buffy rested one of her work-roughened hands on Jeanie’s arm.

Jeanie remembered all the times she’d sneered at Buffy for the hard, dirty work of wrangling buffalo. Jeanie patted Buffy’s hand. “You know, don’t you, that all those times I was such a brat to you when we were kids and after Michael left me came from jealousy?”

Buffy’s forehead wrinkled. “Jealousy? You were the one who was cool. You had so many friends. You were popular.”

“I was a C student, and you were a genius. I was superficial, and you had real depth.”

“I was a geek, two years younger than anyone in my class. I walked the halls alone and ran out of school to work because I had no one to talk to.”

“Not even me.” Jeanie frowned. “Especially not me.”

“I loved you, Jeanie. I understood how having your dorky, sullen, brainiac sister in class was embarrassing.”

Jeanie looked at Emily. “Has she ever told you about when we first went to high school?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Buffy squeezed Jeanie’s arm and shook her head as if to warn her not to go on. “That’s ancient history.”

“We’d moved that summer. We moved around a lot.”

“Don’t talk about this, please.” Buffy begged with her eyes as well as her words.

“I’ve never talked to you about it. Never apologized.”

“I knew what you were going through.”

Jeanie hugged Buffy. “That’s perfect, trying to stop me from telling this. Just like back then. You’ve always tried to protect me. Even then you got it that I needed protection more—more than you did.”

Jeanie’s voice broke, but she steadied herself and went on, focusing on Emily. “We moved to Chicago. Dad worked for a manufacturing company that moved him around a lot. He claimed it was a promotion every time, but it wasn’t. He was an accountant, but they’d transfer him from place to place because, I think, no one wanted to work with him for long.”

“He’d been there long enough that they couldn’t outright fire him, but I think they wanted him to quit,” Buffy added.

“So we showed up at school and went our separate ways—Buffy to the gifted program, me to remedial classes.”

“They weren’t remedial. They were just normal courses.”

“Maybe. It might have just felt remedial compared to you.” Jeanie shifted away from her friends and went into the now-deserted café seating area, talking as she went. “I was, of course, immediately popular. I just knew all the moves, how to laugh, how to cozy up to the right crowd, how to dress and flirt and draw attention to myself for all the shallowest reasons.”

“You were beautiful then, just like you are now.” Buffy followed her.

Jeanie started wiping off the tables, and Buffy grabbed a rag while Emily bounced her sweet baby.

“So, I never acknowledged Buffy. No one knew I even had a little sister.”

“And I hadn’t talked to you either. We didn’t run in the same circles.”

“We were in the lunchroom one day. I saw her sitting by herself.”

“Not even at the brainiac table. I was always antisocial.” Buffy smiled at Emily. “I did homework during lunch, because after school I hung around at a wild animal park in Chicago so I could be near buffalo. I was one of those people who, if I’d snapped and done something crazy, everyone who knew me would have said, ‘Yeah, we knew she was a troubled, crazed loner. Yeah, she kept to herself, too quiet.’”

Jeanie laughed. “They would not have.”

“I thought you were from Oklahoma,” Emily said.

Buffy shrugged. “We were from everywhere and nowhere. We came to Cold Creek from Oklahoma.”

Logan started fussing. Emily settled on a chair near the center of the room as the sisters cleaned, straightened chairs, and talked.

“So this day at lunch, one of the
real
crazed loners at the school came up to the table where Buffy was sitting and started hassling her. ‘You’re in my seat. Beat it shrimp.’ Stuff like that, shoving her.”

“I
was
a shrimp. Small for my age, plus two years ahead of my grade level. I was twelve in the middle of a bunch of fourteen-year-olds, and smart as I was, I had a gift for making sure people around me knew I was smarter than they were. I was obnoxious. I didn’t fit in at all. I never should have skipped those grades. It made everything harder.”

“Buffy got up to move, but the guy knocked her tray as she stood, and it splattered all down her front. Milk and some kind of pudding and some gravy or something, really messy. And the whole place started to laugh.”

“That guy got in big trouble. I got even.”

“And she looked up, her clothes ruined, people laughing at her, and she looked right into my eyes, even though I was across the room.”

“Jeanie, it’s okay. It’s over.”

“And she needed me.” Jeanie’s voice broke. She breathed slowly, regaining control before she went on. “She needed help. There I sat at that table full of cheerleaders and jocks. If I’d had the guts to go to her, to bring my friends along, we could have protected her.”

“You were afraid. I understood.”

“You understood that you were completely alone.” Jeanie stopped wiping her tears with her hand and fished a tissue out of her apron pocket to wipe her eyes. Then she tucked it away and braced both her hands flat on the table and looked squarely at Buffy. “On your own. Dad wouldn’t stop hassling you for being so different.”

“He hassled you, too.”

“Mom wouldn’t stand up for anyone against him.”

“You included.”

“The school kids picked on you.”

“I got good at avoiding them. I always had a healthy knack for self-preservation.”