Double Wedding Ring (12 page)

“No, but—”

“No reason she should, I suppose. I was just the neighbor boy. Your uncle's best friend. It isn't like I was real important to her, is it, Susan?”

Susan shook her head in the jerky movement she used when she was trying to clear her thoughts. “No. I...Tag...”

“Well, it was swell to see you, Susie. I've thought about you over the years a time or two. Hoped you were as happy as I've been.” He gave a short laugh that sounded anything but cheerful. Then he stalked past the three visitors and was gone.

Susan was still upset when she and Addy left, and Malorie had no idea how to calm her. No idea how to calm her boss, either, because she didn't know what was causing his bitterness. All she knew was that her idea of stirring up more hometown memories had backfired. Still shaking, Malorie realized that some memories might be better left buried.

Like the secret she and Susan shared.

* * *

S
USAN SAT AT THE DINNER
table that night eating what was set in front of her without tasting it, barely aware of moving her fork from the plate to her mouth.

So many things had happened. Some of them made sense now. Some of them didn't.

Like her wedding day. The incomplete memory still haunted her, the same way these encounters with the man named Tag haunted her. In both cases, something important was missing. Something everyone understood but her. So the memories wouldn't let her go.

Susan slipped away from the celebration, not an easy thing when you are the bride and therefore the one everyone wants to fawn over.

But smiling was exhausting her. She needed a break from trying to look radiant, so she ducked out of the stark little Fellowship Hall. She turned down one corridor, then another, where the lights were out and she could lean against the wall, close her eyes and drop the forced smile that was wearing her out.

Had she made a mistake? Was this all wrong? Or was this nothing more than the kind of jitters every bride felt?

With her thumb, she felt for the new ring on her third finger, left hand. She hadn't been able to take the other one off until that very morning, when she was leaving her little garage apartment for the Atlanta church. She hadn't wanted to be married in Sweetbranch, either. Hadn't wanted to see all the old gang. Hadn't wanted the reminders. It was time to leave the past behind.

So right before she'd left her apartment, she thought of the perfect place to keep the ring, a place where it would be safe. A place where she could always think of it as being close to her heart.

She knew she couldn't stay away long without people beginning to wonder. But as she squared her shoulders and prepared to go, she heard voices, and realized the Fellowship Hall kitchen was only two doors down.

One of the voices she heard belonged to her brother, Steve. “Are you saying you didn't even tell her?”

There was a moment of silence, then Betsy's voice replied, “It really didn't seem necessary.”

“Didn't seem— Mom, are you out of your mind?”

A rustling of fabric, the ugly green satin Betsy had chosen for her dress. “I don't have to listen to this from my own son.”

“The hell you don't! This is the meanest, most deceitful thing I've ever—”

“I've deceived no one.”

“You've deceived everyone! He's my best friend and you didn't even tell me because you knew I'd never have let her go through with this if I knew.”

Trembling more than she had been when she walked down the aisle, the words resting heavily in her stomach, Susan started toward the voices....

The memory ended there, as it always did, and Susan stared at the black-eyed peas on her plate. The memory made her sad, even a little angry. She looked up at Malorie, who'd been upset ever since Susan's visit to the store that afternoon. Without having to say so, they had both apparently decided not to tell Betsy about the incident.

Although maybe, Susan mused, Betsy was the only one who could explain all of it to them.

Susan remembered how good she'd felt this afternoon, going out with Addy when it was clearly something Betsy didn't want her to do. She remembered how good it had felt, bringing her memories out one by one to examine them with Addy's caring help.

She stared at Betsy, who was admonishing Cody to keep his peas in his spoon. Cody apparently enjoyed watching them roll around on his high chair tray.

Suddenly Susan knew the anger in her memory was for Betsy. And she was angry right now, as well, for the way she didn't like to let Cody be a baby.

“Why did you keep a secret from me?” she asked.

Betsy and Malorie both froze.

“Whatever do you mean?” Betsy asked.

“On my wedding day. You kept a secret from me.”

Betsy took her napkin from her lap and wiped her fingers, placing the napkin carefully on her half-full plate. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You kept a secret from me. And from Steve. Tell me now.”

Betsy stood and began clearing the table. “Malorie, I think your mother is finished.”

“But—”

“I am not finished!” Susan said. “I want to know. You have to tell me.”

Betsy continued clearing the table. Malorie stood and looked from one to the other uncertainly. “Grandmother, I think you should tell her.”

Betsy stood with her hands in the sink and didn't turn around. “She's upset and she's not in her right mind. I should think you would understand that by now, Malorie.”

The only sound in the kitchen for the next few moments was the sound of water running in the sink and Cody banging his spoon against his plate. Susan's shoulders sagged. She felt Malorie's hand on her shoulder and looked up into sympathetic eyes. Susan nodded and Malorie wheeled her toward the door.

“I'll remember soon,” Susan called out as they left the kitchen. “You can't do anything to keep me from remembering.”

T
WO DAYS PASSED
before Susan realized that the image haunting her was a quilt.

The revelation came to her while she threw the orange foam ball back to Sam. In a flush of excitement, she tossed the ball over his head and all the way into the hallway.

Sam looked delighted. “Wow! Whatever that was, let's do it again!”

“My quilt!” Susan gripped the back of the chair to keep from toppling over as her concentration fled. “I want the quilt!”

Looking bemused, Sam came over and helped her sit. “What quilt? You're not cold, are you?”

“No.” Susan shook her head. “I have to see it. The quilt.”

She had woken up in the early hours of the morning the day after confronting her mother, with tiny squares of pink and green and white spinning in her head. Soon, the little squares had settled into a pattern of circles. Then the circles joined together. And with each new configuration of the squares of color, Susan grew more confident, more peaceful inside.

On the coattails of that confidence, she had asked Malorie to call Sam so she could begin her therapy again.

But now that those shapes and colors in her head had become something she could label, the peacefulness was beginning to slip away. She felt agitated. And she felt certain she wouldn't be able to rest until she held the quilt, could touch its weathered fabric.

For there was something about the quilt. Something she couldn't quite remember. But she would. She knew it. And when she did, things would be okay again. Her world would be right side up again. She just knew it.

“Which quilt, Susan? Tell me what you're talking about and I'll get it for you.” Sam grinned at her. “Goodness knows, I'd get you a dozen of them if they give you that kind of strength.”

Susan laughed with him, buoyed by his promise that he could get the quilt for her.

“It's green and...” She fought to retrieve the word she wanted. “Rose-colored. It has circles all around it. That's the one I want.”

“Is it in your room?”

Susan was growing impatient with her inability to communicate. “No. I don't know. I just see it in my head.”

The enthusiasm on Sam's face faded.

“But it's real,” Susan added hastily, pleased with herself for picking up on Sam's expression and being able to interpret it. “I know it's real.”

“Is it something you and Addy are working on?”

Susan shook her head.

“Maybe I should ask Betsy.”

Susan shook her head again, this time more adamantly. “No! She doesn't know.”

But when she said it, the words felt like a lie. Her mother might know, said the voice inside her head, but she wouldn't tell. Just as she wouldn't tell other things. For Susan was convinced now that Betsy could fill all the holes in her memory, if she wanted to.

But her mother was hiding things. That made Susan angry.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Tell you what. You keep working, and put the quilt out of your mind. Just let your body take over and soon it'll pull that memory right out for you.”

Looking at him skeptically, Susan dragged herself back to a standing position. “Honestly?”

“I'm sure of it.” He went after the foam ball and tossed it toward her, resuming their routine. “The brain doesn't like to be pushed. But you can trick it. If it thinks you don't care, it'll try to tease you into caring by giving you a little more information.”

She caught the ball, fascinated by the idea of tricking her brain into cooperating. “Really? Even
my
brain?”

When he nodded, she threw the ball back. And tried not to worry about the quilt.

The next day, the quilt still occupied her mind, and her brain had not dished up another single fact about it. Growing slightly petulant, Susan once again badgered Sam about the quilt. Finally he called Addy, and she brought over every book of quilt patterns she had in the house.

“How about this one?” she would say, holding up a picture that Susan would reject.

Susan saw one or two that were almost like the one in her head. But none of them were quite right. They were different colors. Or the circles didn't fit together exactly as they had in her head. She was even beginning to see the tiny pattern of stitches, including the place near the center where a whole series of stitches had frayed and been replaced.

That was the quilt she wanted to find, not one from all these pictures.

“It's not any of these,” she insisted. “The one I want is
mine.
“

Addy and Sam exchanged perplexed looks. Then Addy opened one of her books one more time. “But does it look a little bit like this one?”

Grudgingly, Susan said, “Maybe. A little.”

Addy and Sam sighed.

“So it might be a—” Sam leaned over the book “—a Double Wedding Ring?”

“What is going on here?”

All three of them jumped at Betsy's accusatory voice.

“We're trying to find out about a quilt Susan remembers,” Sam said.

Betsy's perpetually displeased face looked perceptibly more displeased. “All this—” she waved at the piles of books scattered on the dining room floor “—all this over a quilt? Land's sakes! If Susan wants a quilt, all you have to do is say. I have plenty upstairs.”

Susan was already shaking her head, but Sam stood. “Let's bring ‘em down.”

“Fine,” Betsy said. “I'll go get one.”

“Not one,” Sam said, following her toward the stairs. “
All
of them.”

“All of them? Why, you must be—”

“I'll help, Mrs. Foster. Just show me where they are.”

Susan heard her mother protesting all the way up the stairs, then all the way back down again a few minutes later. Sam came into the dining room loaded down with quilts, which he dropped onto the floor at Susan's feet. Log Cabins in brown and yellow. A Texas Star in shades of blue. A Bicentennial sampler quilt in red, white and blue. A half-dozen quilts in all.

None of them was the one Susan wanted.

“She said it was one she made,” Addy pressed, looking up at Betsy. “In rose and green. Maybe a Double Wedding Ring. Does that ring a bell?”

Betsy sighed sharply. “Am I now expected to remember every single project she ever worked on? This is ridiculous. If you want a quilt, take one of these and let it rest.”

Frustrated, Susan said, “You could lie about this, too. I know you could.”

“You are behaving like a spoiled child,” Betsy snapped, then turned with rigid dignity and left the room.

Addy stayed after Sam left, clearing away the quilts and the books and wheeling Susan out to the side porch.

“Let's sit out here and watch the leaves fall while I tell you about Danny's big promotion,” Addy said. “How about that?”

Susan barely listened to Addy's news about her husband's promotion to production manager at the paper plant. But she was grateful for her friend's presence.

That night, before she went to bed, Malorie came in to say good-night. No one had told Malorie about the incident that afternoon, but Susan wanted to. She remembered how much she and her daughter once talked. She wanted that back, but she wasn't sure right now how to go about it.

All she could think to say was, “Am I a spoiled child?”

Malorie immediately sat on the edge of her bed. “Oh, Mother, why ever would you think that?”

“
Am
I?”

“Of course not. You're brave and strong, and I don't see how I could ever fight as hard as you have.”

“Then why doesn't anyone like me?” Betsy wasn't the only one who glared at her with that cold look in her eyes. Susan remembered the look in Tag's eyes, too.

“Oh, Mother, people love you. I love you. Cody loves you. And Grandmother loves you, too. I know she does.”

Even in the darkness, Susan could see the glimmer in her daughter's eyes. “Are you crying?”

“Maybe just a little.”

“I wish you were happy.”

“I'm happy.”

“You could be happy with Sam. Sam likes you.”

Malorie was silent and looked away for a moment. “Sam isn't... It wouldn't be a good idea for Sam to like me.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Mother? Do you...do you remember...when Cody was born?”

Susan sighed. “I don't think so. Was I very happy?”

Again, there was a long silence. When she spoke, Malorie's voice had a choked sound. “I...I think so. Of course you were. Very happy.”

* * *

M
ALORIE WORKED HARD
the next morning to get the four-pack trays of pansies lined up perfectly on the shelves in the front of the store. If the rest of her life was in chaos, the things under her control at Hutchins' Lawn & Garden would be in perfect order.

Some days she prayed that her mother would hurry up and remember. Everything. Because carrying the secret had been easier when she shared it with her mother. Then it had seemed to Malorie like a difficult but wise decision. Better for everyone involved.

Now it just seemed like an ugly lie, lurking in the darkness and growing uglier by the day. Waiting to burst into the light and destroy everyone it touched.

You watched too many soap operas while Mother was in the hospital,
she told herself, pulling down the torn sign below the bin of ornamental cabbages and taking it to the front to letter another one.

Other days, she prayed Susan never remembered. Because Susan was too unpredictable. If she remembered in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner just weeks from now, she'd likely blurt it right out there for everyone to scoop up with their sweet potato casserole and corn bread dressing.

Malorie's stomach was in a knot from worrying about it. But the person she'd always confided in, always trusted to know what to do, had been taken from her.

If there was anything she prayed for
every
day, it was Susan's recovery.
Is a twenty-one-year-old supposed to want her mother this badly?
she wondered.

She studied the sign. Buy One, Second Half-Price. Tag had been skeptical when she'd suggested trying a number of different special offers to see which one sparked the most sales. But he'd given her the go-ahead.

She'd tried, these past few days, not to be angry at her boss. But it wasn't easy after the way he'd treated her mother. He'd been almost mean, it had seemed to her. But then, she kept remembering the things he'd said, and the way he'd asked if Betsy Foster was still running the show. And the way Susan, in her confusion, had answered in the affirmative.

Something kept telling Susan to set him straight. But she was worried stirring things up would only hurt her mother. Might anger her grandmother or her boss. She was tired of having things stirred up.

She was tacking the new sign to the shelf when she heard the jingle of the bell over the front door. Grateful for the distraction, she dredged up her best store-manager smile and walked toward the front.

Sam stood beside the colorful display of gourds and pumpkins she'd spilled out onto a table, hoping to capture the fancy of anyone ready to decorate for Thanksgiving. Malorie's heart gave a leap. For a moment, she toyed with the coincidence that Sam had showed up just when she was wishing for someone to confide in. The crazy notion came into her head that his arrival in the store was no coincidence at all.

I could confide in Sam. He could be my friend.

Then he turned, saw her, and his face lit up with a smile that sent a tingle from the top of her head all the way to the tips of her toes. Her heart sank, for she knew right then that Sam could never be her friend. Other things, maybe, but never a friend. And she couldn't handle other things.

“Isn't it time to start closing up?” he asked, taking a step in her direction.

Malorie glanced over his shoulder at the old-fashioned clock. “In ten minutes.”

“So close up early. I carry a little weight with the owner.”

Malorie smiled. “I can't do that. What if someone is a block away right now, headed this way to spend a thousand dollars on gourds and pumpkins?”

Sam glanced at the display. “Then I think you're understocked.” He took another couple of steps in her direction. “I'm here on a mission.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Maxine called me today. Said she'd heard the Christmas trees were in.”

Malorie pointed toward the rear of the store, where the glass door opened onto the fenced back lot. “The live ones are in.”

“Good. Help me pick one out.” He took her by the hand and started toward the back. “For the church. We want the best tree you've got for our angel tree.”

With Sam's big hand closed around hers, Malorie could barely remember the discussion about the pink and blue paper angels that would be used to decorate the tree, each printed with information about a needy child in the county. Members of the congregation would be urged to select an angel—or several angels—and buy appropriate gifts to place under the tree. Being part of the project had excited Malorie. But not as much as being touched by Sam.

They stood in the back lot, where the sun had already dipped below the roof of the building, leaving them in dusky shadows. Sam had draped his arm around Malorie's shoulder. Casually.

She wondered if he felt casual. Or did he feel the way she felt? As if she'd been struck by a sudden power surge.

“Which one do you like best?” he asked.

Malorie wished she could trust her voice. She cleared her throat and said, “I'm always partial to the little scraggly ones. The ones with the bare spots and the lopsided tops.”

Even in the shadows, she could see the sparkle of interest in his eyes when he looked down at her. She wished he weren't so close. She wished she had the courage to move away herself.

“Now why is that, Malorie Hovis?”

“I figure they're the ones that need the decorations most.”