Double Wedding Ring (11 page)

Tag swallowed hard, opened his mouth. Even her voice was different. So uncertain, and softly slurred. Tag thought he'd been hurting for twenty-five years. Now he knew what real hurt was.

“You see, Eugene.” Betsy's exultant voice stopped the words in his throat. “You see how it is now?”

Then he felt a tug on his jeans and looked down into the bright blue eyes of the toddler Betsy had called Cody. “Don' scare my mommy. Her not feew good. Okay?”

Tag looked from the appeal in the little boy's eyes to Betsy's mocking gaze and back to Susan's eyes. All he saw was confusion. His fears had been right all along. Nothing remained of the Susie he used to know.

He wheeled and walked away.

* * *

S
USAN'S BREATH ROSE
and fell in tiny gulps, hurting her chest, hurting all the way to her temples, even, where something roared and pounded in her head.

She watched him walk away and wanted to do something to stop him. But her head was too full of the roaring and pounding to figure out what. What could she do? How could she make him turn back?

Even as he disappeared around the corner of the house, she tried to memorize him, so perhaps she could figure this out later. The shape of his broad shoulders burned into her memory, as did his long, tapering legs and the fists clenched at his sides. His dark hair was long, hiding the back of his neck. He wore jeans, but they didn't fit loose and baggy the way Buddy's did when he worked on cars under the shade tree in Atlanta.

Susan squeezed her eyes shut. Buddy? Who was Buddy? Why was this happening? She saw his face, kind and full-cheeked, eyes lost in a squint when he laughed. She felt happy about Buddy. And sad. The feelings were strong. But not as strong as the feelings she had when the man her mother hated stared at her through the porch screen.

She didn't even know what to call the feelings. She only knew they filled her, overpowered her, rendered her momentarily speechless.

Putting her head in her hands, Susan willed all these confusing things to go away, to stop. Buddy and the man with the dark mustache and the clenched fists and the boy named Tag—

“Oh!” Susan cried out, almost jumping from her chair.

Betsy, who stood at the bottom of the steps, urging Cody to play in the backyard, looked up as Susan did. “Whatever is it now?” she asked.

“Him,” Susan said. “Tag!”

Betsy looked displeased. She spoke sharply to Cody, who seemed to want to go back onto the porch with Susan. But Betsy gave him a light swat on the backside and he went on his way, head down.

“Whatever are you blathering about now?” Betsy said. “I vow, I can't understand half of what you say.”

Susan felt as if she'd been slapped. She said the name again, but her voice was drowned in the roar of an engine from the street. Betsy glanced in that direction, her expression more sour than ever. Susan took a deep breath, tried to marshal her thoughts while the sound of the engine faded.

“I know Tag,” she said slowly, as distinctly as she could. “I want to talk to Tag.”

Betsy squared her shoulders. “He's no good. That's what you need to keep in mind, girl. Don't even
think
about starting that up again.”

Susan started to protest, but Betsy trampled on her words. “Didn't you see how he reacted? He was revolted. Can't you see that? Didn't you see how he ran out of here when he got a good look at you?”

Tears sprang to Susan's eyes. Giving the wheels of her chair a vicious tug, she spun backward into her room. Her mother wouldn't see the tears. That much Susan could do. She kicked the door shut as tears spilled onto her cheeks.
Lies, lies, lies!
she thought as her mother's words continued to play in her already overloaded brain.

But the truth of the man's actions wouldn't let Susan find solace in that. For the truth was, he had run away.

Now she couldn't even find comfort by calling him forth from her memories.

Dragging herself across her bed, Susan cried until exhaustion allowed her to sleep.

* * *

B
ETSY WAS SHAKING
when she reached the garden, her stomach in knots. She thought she might take a seat on the little bench for just a moment and calm herself before she went at her hoeing.

The bench was taken. Bump Finley sat there, gnarled hands on his knees. The way he looked at her, she couldn't look back at him for long.

“That was a fine performance, Bet.”

“You nosy old goat,” she snapped, taking a whack at a yellowed row of corn that had long since played out. “You have no business lurking around my house eavesdropping.”

“If there's a nosy old goat in the vicinity, it ain't me.”

She gave the hoe such a thrust it stuck deep in the hard red clay. She struggled with it a moment, then turned on Bump.

Funny how an old fool's eyes could trick her sometimes. Just for a moment, her eyes told her Jacob Ebeneezer Finley hadn't changed that much. He sat on her bench, his auburn hair still thick and wavy, his eyes a sharp green giving her that same disapproving look he'd leveled at her the day she told him she'd accepted Reid Foster's proposal of marriage.

“He ain't right for you,” Jacob had said, tucking his big, broad hands into his suspenders. They had been yellow, she recalled, the loudest ones this town had ever seen. “Too soft. You'll walk all over him, Bet. And neither one of you'll be happy. You need a man with a little fire in him, to match your own.”

She had smiled at him, a part of her half hoping he would change her mind. “A man like you, I suppose.”

But he had stood and shaken his head. “Not this one. I don't reckon I need to play second fiddle.”

And he had walked away. At the time, Betsy had told herself she was glad he hadn't made a scene. Folks in Sweetbranch didn't call him Bump for no reason—Jacob was known for riding a pretty bumpy road through life. Betsy hadn't wanted that. She had wanted the stability—and the malleability—of a man like Reid Foster, who had sworn he would make his fortune selling automobiles.

But sometimes, over the years, Betsy had lain in bed at night and felt an empty longing. Maybe she
had
needed a man with fire.

Clutching the handle of her hoe to steady her nerves, Betsy glared at Bump. “I know what's right for my own family, Jacob.”

He shook his head and stood, the same way he had all those years ago. “Hell, Bet, you ain't never even known what was right for your own self.”

“You're an old fool,” she called as he walked away.

His chuckle drifted over his shoulder. Left alone in her garden, Betsy told herself the opinions of an old fool like Jacob Finley weren't worth a plugged nickel.

* * *

T
AG WAS HALFWAY ACROSS
Willow Creek Bridge on the way out of town when he remembered that Malorie needed his help. Angrily braking to a stop, Tag sat on the bridge and cursed aloud until his pain and rage dissipated enough that he could force himself to turn his bike around and ride back into town.

When he walked into the store, Malorie was flitting cheerfully from task to task. Ringing up a sale with the impish smile that tore at Tag's gut. Helping an elderly man find the exact bird feeder he wanted for his wife's birthday. Adjusting the display of clay flowerpots for precisely the effect she wanted. Tag never could tell the difference, but he had learned that whatever Malorie did would be better.

“Good morning, Mr. Hutchins!”

Her voice was an affront. Lilting and clear, it was so much like Susan's voice. The way Susan's voice used to be. But no more.

“That's one opinion,” he snapped, never slowing his step on the way to the back of the store, where he needed to clear a place for the afternoon delivery.

No matter how loudly he banged things around, Tag couldn't shut out the sound of her voice ringing through the store like a bright, clear bell as she greeted customers. It shredded his heart, reminding him of the voice that had haunted his dreams for so many years. A voice that no longer existed.

He had worked himself into a sweat and managed to accomplish a half-day's work by the time Malorie peeked out the back door ninety minutes later. Looking at her from the corner of his eye, his heart hurt. He had to look directly at her just so he could remember this was Malorie, and not his Susie.

“What?” he growled, tightening his grip on the pitchfork he'd been using.

“I was just wondering...”

“Well spit it out.”

She drew a long breath and he could tell from her uncertainty that he had managed to intimidate her. He felt like a snake.

“Well, you lived in Sweetbranch all your life, didn't you? I mean, until you were grown?”

Was she going to ask him about Susan? About the summer they fell in love and the night she promised to wait for him? His heart began to pound painfully. What would he tell her? He wasn't even sure what he believed about those days any longer.

“So?”

“Did you... I guess you knew my grandmother. Since you lived across the street from her and all.”

“So?”

“I just wondered, was she always so...bossy?”

He looked at her face, so solemn and expectant. For a moment, he was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to cry. Then it occurred to him that Malorie could as easily have been his daughter as another man's if things had been different. If only... Didn't it always come down to that?

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, she was,” he said, propping his chin on the pitchfork handle. “Why? She starting to get to you?”

“I suppose so. And I thought, well, everybody says you've always lived life on your terms. That you never let anybody push you around. And I...I wondered how you managed that.” She shrugged. “You know, where you found the courage?”

Granted, she wasn't his daughter, but some part of Tag felt as protective of her at this moment as he'd always felt of Sam.

He reminded himself he'd been a lousy role model for Sam, and he was certainly no better equipped for that part now. Giving somebody like Malorie advice would be the worst thing he could do for her. But as he was about to blow her off, he had a vision of her going home each evening to Betsy Foster and that rigid code of right and wrong. And he knew he owed Malorie something, even if it was born of his own bitterness toward her grandmother.

“The best thing I can tell you is never listen to people like Betsy Foster. They're poison.”

The irony, he thought, was that he'd never been able to figure out for himself how to take his own advice.

* * *

S
USAN BARELY HAD
the strength to grip the bar running the length of the wall in the dining room. She didn't want to walk, because she couldn't handle the anxiety that came from feeling so vulnerable, so alone.

“Don't want this today.” She didn't look at Sam, just dropped back into her chair.

“Okay. What do you want today?”

“Nothing.”

He was silent, and Susan hoped that meant he would give up and leave. Today, even having Sam see her this way seemed unbearable. She was startled when a foam rubber ball landed in her lap.

“Squeeze,” Sam ordered. “We'll work on your hands.”

She tossed the ball back at him. It landed two feet short.

Aching, frustrated, weak from crying and refusing to eat, Susan wondered why she kept denying what her mother so obviously knew to be true. This was hopeless. Pointless.

“Susan, what's wrong?”

“No more of this! It's stupid. Just go. Leave.”

“Tell me what happened?”

“I won't get better. Never. Don't pretend anymore.”

“Susan, that's not—”

“Leave! Don't lie anymore! Just leave!”

She turned away from him, but she could sense him rising from the floor and walking toward the door. Susan wasn't certain if she felt relief or despair. If he left, that must surely mean what she'd said to him was true. He
had
been lying. She wouldn't get better. Ever.

His voice came to her from across the room, but she didn't turn to look at him. “You don't have to be this way forever, Susan. But if you give up, if you send me away, you surely will.”

Then he was gone and Susan sat in her chair for a long time, feeling too weary and broken even to wheel herself back into her room, where she could at least hide in the dark and the solitude.

S
USAN LEANED ACROSS
the round wrought-iron table and whispered, “I remembered something important.”

Addy stopped drinking her milkshake and grinned. “You did? That's wonderful!”

What was wonderful, Susan thought as she gathered her thoughts, was this idea she had resisted so stubbornly when Addy first suggested it that morning. The idea of an outing.

“Why not?” Addy had badgered her. “There is no good reason on earth why you have to stay cooped up in this house day after day.”

Susan had looked at her hands, knotted together in her lap. “But...”

“But what?”

“Won't people...I mean...the way I look...it's...”

Addy had dropped into a chair, a bewildered expression on her face. “The way you look! There's nothing wrong with the way you look! Where on earth did you get such a silly idea?”

Susan had shrugged, and Addy had gone hunting for a mirror. She finally found a small one in an unused compact of blusher. Wheeling Susan to the window, where the morning sun streamed in, she put the mirror in Susan's hand and said, “Look.”

Susan frowned, but she looked. She shrugged.

“You're adorable! Don't you know that?”

“Adorable?”

“Those platinum curls. Those smoky blue eyes. My gosh, you're Jean Harlow with freckles.”

“Who?”

Addy had laughed. “She was a sex symbol. A hot number.”

Still, Susan had remained unconvinced. “But I have this scar.”

“Just a little pink line across your forehead. No biggy. A little concealer and it'll barely show. A year from now, nobody will notice.”

“Concealer?”

Addy shook her head and navigated Susan's chair back to the dresser, where she started rummaging through a vinyl bag of jars and tubes Malorie had brought from their little house in Atlanta. “Honey, I can see I have a lot to teach you besides sewing, don't I?”

After Addy had finished with her, Susan felt a little more confident about going out in public—although she was still haunted by the memory of Tag running away from her and how her mother had explained it. But what really convinced Susan that an outing was the right idea was the look on her mother's face when Addy suggested it.

Betsy Foster disapproved. And that was reason enough for Susan to do it.

So here they sat in the Dairee Dreme on Main Street, sipping milkshakes through straws. They had already been to The Picture Perfect, where everyone laughed in such a friendly way when the woman named Rose said Susan was to blame because she'd never fulfilled her lifelong dream of being homecoming queen. Susan had felt close to Rose right away, from the scraps of memory she was recovering about their childhood friendship. Rose had trimmed Susan's hair, shaping it around her ears and fixing it just so, and suddenly most of the ugly scar didn't show at all.

All in all, Susan felt almost like a normal person again. Even in this wheelchair, which nobody seemed to mind at all. She thought maybe when Malorie got home she would ask her daughter to dial Sam's phone number so she could apologize and ask if he would come back and help her.

“Well, don't keep me in suspense,” Addy prodded. “Tell me what you remembered.”

“I remembered Buddy.”

And she had. Sometime in the middle of the night, after that awful day when Betsy got angry at Tag and Susan had gotten angry at Sam, Susan woke up with puzzle pieces of her memory falling into place in her mind.

That, too, had made her feel almost like a normal person. Maybe she
could
get better if she kept trying. Maybe her mother didn't know everything, after all.

“Your husband? You remember Buddy?”

Susan smiled. “Isn't that wonderful?”

Addy's smile was hesitant. “Do you remember...what happened to Buddy?”

Even that couldn't dampen Susan's joy in simply being able to recall, even when those recollections weren't always pleasurable.

“Malorie told me. He got sick. For a long time. Then he...passed away.”

She didn't remember that part, exactly. But she felt a kind of cloud of mixed emotions that always seemed to precede real memories. So she felt confident that that memory, too, would return someday soon.

“But I remember lots of other stuff about him, too. From a long time ago.”

Addy smiled and squeezed Susan's hand. “I'd like to hear what you remember, Susan.”

Susan smiled, feeling shy about sharing now that she had her young friend's attention. “I guess it's not that important.”

“Everybody's love story is important, Susan. Why, I'll bet there's nothing more important.”

“Tell me yours, then.”

Addy paused to spoon a chunk of cherry nut out of her milkshake. “Danny and I were high school sweethearts, and I worked in the grocery store in Auburn while he went to school, and we came home to live happily ever after.” She chuckled. “Well, sometimes Danny says it's more like living in a nursery rhyme than it is a fairy tale. You know, the one about the woman in the shoe with all the children.”

Susan didn't remember the nursery rhyme, but she did remember how much mayhem Addy's brood created when they came over to play with Cody. Sometimes the noise made it hard for her to think, but it was a happy noise that cheered her heart.

“But my fairy tale isn't nearly as important as yours right now,” Addy said, stuffing her napkin into her empty paper cup and sitting back. “I'm waiting.”

Susan drew a deep breath and wondered where to start. She wasn't even sure, sometimes, what order her memories belonged in—it was like sorting through a box of photos and being unsure which one had been taken the summer you were ten and which one the Christmas before that.

“Buddy was real sweet,” she said, remembering again that plump, ruddy face with its warm smile. “He helped me when I was...confused. I...I can't remember everything, but I know when I first met him, lots of things were making me sad. And Buddy was a friend.”

She remembered the garage apartment she had rented from Buddy Hovis the year she moved to Atlanta to begin college. The two tiny rooms over the garage where Buddy operated his auto repair business were clean and neat and plain. They were a place where Susan could hide away, and she remembered wanting to hide from something.

“But Buddy wouldn't let me,” she said. “He made me come out and talk. He told me I'd lose my freckles if I stayed inside too long.”

She hadn't remembered that until this very moment, and it made her laugh, as it had more than twenty years earlier.

Eventually, she recalled, Buddy had coaxed her out of her shell. Although something had happened that made her quit college and almost give up on everything in her life, Buddy wouldn't let her. He showed her how he'd made a go of his own small business, and soon she was taking in sewing—clothes, drapery, slipcovers, anything. She even started doing costumes for a local dance company, although she had lost the heart for her own dancing.

“Later, though, the dance instructor told me I could use the studio after hours if I wanted to. So I did. And it made me better, somehow.”

“Better?”

“You know, healed me. From...whatever it was that made me hurt so much.” She looked up and frowned. “It's so hard. Sometimes I think if I don't find all the missing pieces, I'll just...explode.”

Addy squeezed her hand again and Susan realized how grateful she was to have someone to talk to. Someone who didn't get so upset with all the blank spots in her past, the way Malorie did. Or someone who didn't tell her that she shouldn't even be trying to get well, the way her mother did. She remembered, then, about her mother and Buddy.

“I did it because of Mother, you know.”

“Did what?”

“Married Buddy.” She felt sad, now, remembering her wedding day. She had stood in the vestibule of the church, feeling shaken, torn. She had always known she wasn't passionately in love with Buddy, but he did love her so. And her mother had convinced Susan she was doing the right thing. A steady man, Betsy had said. Someone you can rely on, like your father.

So, because she didn't have the spirit to fight her mother, Susan had walked down the aisle in a champagne-colored lace suit that she'd made herself. She did remember fighting with Betsy about the suit. Susan had wanted pink, but Betsy had insisted on white. Neither of them won that round; neither of them felt happy about the champagne lace. But Susan didn't tell Addy that part. She told her friend only the happy things.

And there was the other thing Susan had remembered. The thing that had happened right after the wedding, in the little Fellowship Hall where they'd had the cake and the toast to the happy couple. Susan remembered most of that, now, too, but she didn't want to tell Addy about that, either. She wanted to worry that awhile, like a sore tooth, until she remembered all of it.

And when she did...

“I've got an idea,” Addy said as they cleared their trash and went back out onto Main Street. “Isn't Malorie working down at the Lawn & Garden? Why don't we go surprise her?”

* * *

M
ALORIE WAS RESTOCKING
birdseed when she heard the bell jingle over the front door.

“Good morning!” she called out over the aisles. “I'll be with you in just a sec.”

Birdseed, Malorie figured, would be a big seller during the winter months, so she had placed a large order. She hoped she'd guessed right, and thought about setting up an eye-catching display on the sidewalk with some of those new bent-willow birdhouses and cedar feeders. Mr. Hutchins didn't seem to mind what she did, although he had seemed awfully distant these past few days.

Maybe she shouldn't have asked him about her grandmother.

Maybe she should ask Sam, instead. Except that Sam hadn't been to the house for a couple of days and her grandmother had told her to let it lie.

“Your mother is a grown woman and deserves to make her own decisions,” Betsy said.

Once again, Malorie hadn't had the gumption to remind her grandmother that it was Betsy herself who was always harping on the fact that Susan still wasn't capable of thinking for herself. Malorie wished she knew which was right.

Maybe she should ask Sam that, too.

And maybe you'd better get Sam Roberts right out of your mind and get up front to see if your customer needs help,
she chastised herself.
Maybe you'd better admit that advice is not really what you want from Sam Roberts, anyway.

But no, maybe she was better off not admitting anything. Maybe she was better off just trying to put it all out of her mind. Mr. Hutchins and her grandmother and her sad, discouraged mother, and especially Sam Roberts.

“Oh, there you are.”

Malorie turned at the sound of Addy Mayfield's voice, wondering if that meant her mother had “fired” their neighbor, too. What she saw next startled her, then filled her with quiet joy.

“Mother!” She knelt, clasping both Susan's hands in hers. “Oh, Mother, what a nice surprise!”

“We're on an outing. Addy's idea.”

Susan looked so pleased with herself, there was so much sparkle in her eyes this morning, that Malorie wanted to hug Addy Mayfield. “What a wonderful idea. Why, it looks to me as if you've made a stop at the beauty shop.”

“That's right.” Susan turned her head, giving Malorie a better view of the soft new style. “And we had milkshakes.”

“Oh, I'm jealous. I'll bet the Dairee Dreme makes great milkshakes.”

Susan's eyes lit up again, this time with surprise. “I used to work there.”

Malorie felt her throat tighten. Every moment like this one gave her hope and seemed to fill her heart to bursting. “You did?”

“Yes. A long time ago. Before you were born, I think.”

At that moment, realizing the memories had been triggered by a visit to a familiar place, Malorie had what was surely a stroke of genius. “Come on. I know something else that may jog your memory.”

And she pushed Susan's chair down the cluttered aisles of the store, pointing out a few of the things she'd done to spruce up the place. When she arrived at the office door, she knocked.

After all, whether or not Betsy Foster approved of Mr. Hutchins really wasn't Malorie's concern, was it?

Malorie heard the gravelly rumble that was Tag's invitation to enter the office and she opened the door. Tag sat, scuffed boots on the desk, head against the wall. He barely moved, didn't even glance at her.

Sometimes Malorie would have given anything to know what dark secrets her boss brooded over when she caught him at times like this. She fancied it was a broken heart that made him so crusty, but figured maybe she'd been watching too many movies.

“Mr. Hutchins, I wanted you to meet my mother, Susan. Mother, this is—”

“Tag.”

For the second time in moments, Malorie was filled with delight. It had worked, just as she'd hoped it would. She looked down at her mother, and her delight fizzled at the troubled expression on Susan's face. Susan's pink cheeks had gone pale, her eyes dark. Her hands clutched the arms of her chair.

Malorie jumped as Tag's front chair legs hit the floor with a crack. Her eyes darted to him. He stood over the desk, glaring directly at her mother. Bewildered, Malorie looked at the only other person in the room. Addy, too, looked startled.

“So you do remember me?” Tag Hutchins said coldly.

Susan nodded. “Yes. Tag.”

“Then I guess that means you're letting Betsy call the shots these days.”

Susan hesitated. Malorie could tell how agitated her mother was, knew how confused and upset she could get when she felt things were beyond her control. “Yes, but—”

“No need to explain, Susie.”

“Mr. Hutchins, I—”

“I'm glad you brought your mother in, Malorie. She and I go way back. But you didn't know that, did you? She never mentioned me to you, did she?”