Small Town Girl (12 page)

Kate stood up with everyone else and joined the line going down to speak to Carl. What else could she do? She reminded herself once more that she wasn’t a coward. But her heart was beating too hard even before she stepped up in front of Mrs. Noland. With a scowl on her face, the woman yanked her hand back when Kate reached toward her. Kate kept her hand suspended in the air, not sure what to do next. Her mother put an arm around her and scooted her on over in front of Carl.

A sudden silence fell over the church. Everybody knew Kate had thrown Carl over.

Mama kept her arm firmly around Kate’s waist as she reached out and grasped Carl’s hand with her free hand. She filled the void. “We’re proud of you, Carl, for stepping up to serve your country. We’ll keep you in our prayers.”

Kate looked straight at Carl. She hated being the reason for the hurt anger in his eyes. She wanted to forget how he’d shoved her against the tree and forced a kiss on her. She wanted to go back to when they were wading in the creek catching frogs. To any time before last Sunday. She managed to smile and whisper, “We will.”

She was turning away when he grabbed her arm. For a minute she thought he might be going to apologize for the way he’d acted, but instead he said, “I’ll send you a card from Hawaii.”

“Is that where you’re going?” Kate kept her voice even.

“Maybe. After training.”

“I’ve read it’s beautiful there.”

“One thing sure, it’s far from Rosey Corner and some place you’ll never go.” The corners of his lips turned up in what was closer to a grimace than a smile. “You could have, but you passed up your chance. You passed up your chance for a lot of good things.”

Kate’s mother began to ease her away from Carl. Kate hesitated. A week ago she could have hugged Carl, kissed his cheek, and wished him all the best, but not now. So she merely touched his hand on her arm lightly and said, “Goodbye, Carl.”

Her words carried a sad echo of the angry goodbye she’d told him a week ago. Some things couldn’t be changed.

J
ay didn’t go forward to shake Carl’s hand. He was tempted to, but there were times when even somebody like him had to exercise good sense. The farm boy had packed quite a punch, and Jay didn’t need another black eye. He did want to be able to watch the movie that afternoon, or at least watch the girl with him at the movie.

He’d been watching her all morning. Blatantly, before Mike went to preaching. Covertly during the sermon. He listened with half an ear to what Mike was saying. He figured he was pushing the Scripture words right at him, but no way was Jay expecting any Damascus Road turnarounds in his life. Maybe if the Lord did speak out loud to him, blind him with light, he’d be like Saul and ready to pay attention. But Jay had doubts the Lord was all that worried about converting him. Saul was a different matter. The man got a new name and went on to write half the New Testament.

Jay had spent plenty of hours in church with his aunt and uncle. He’d heard hundreds of sermons and seen all those pictures of the good Lord knocking on doors and wanting to come in. Jay figured his heart door was too thick for him to hear any knocking. That was okay. A person needed a tough heart. He’d found that out soon enough after his mother died.

But his heart was feeling some softer every time he looked at Kate. She hadn’t looked back toward him but once, and that time she’d flipped her head back around and brushed her hand through her hair as though to knock his eyes off her. That wasn’t about to happen. In fact, his eyes were so ready to settle on her that he was beginning to think maybe he should pack up his things and hit the road. She had him feeling like he might be tiptoeing around quicksand.

When Mike called for everybody to go up and pray for the hayseed, Jay stepped to the back of the church. Graham shrugged his shoulders a little and joined the queue going forward. Kate stepped out into the line too, her step a little hesitant, but her mother and the kid sister pushed her along with them. The tension was palpable in the church when she stepped up to the hayseed’s mother. No forgiveness on that woman’s face. Then Carl grabbed Kate’s arm to keep her from turning away from him.

For a second, Jay wondered if they were going to hear an impassioned proposal right there at the church altar to try to force Kate’s acceptance. An uneasy silence fell over the church. About halfway down the aisle, Graham’s shoulders stiffened and his head came up like his old dog catching a scent of trouble in the air. Across the church, Kate’s father turned away from the man beside him to stare down toward the front of the church too. Jay leaned back against the wall behind the back pew and tried to look relaxed. There wouldn’t be any need for him to rush down to Kate’s aid with both Graham and Mr. Merritt ready to do battle for her.

The farm boy’s voice was too loud, his words harsh. He wasn’t about to let Kate off easy, letting her know, letting the whole church know, she’d lost her chances with him. Jay couldn’t hear her words back to Carl. They were too soft, but the whispered echo of regret wasn’t hard to hear. That was the trouble with being well loved the way Kate was. The
way Mike was. People like them struggled when somebody was mean-spirited. The same kind of things rolled right off Jay. He didn’t have to be liked.

He did tighten his hand into a fist and think about how he owed the hayseed a punch in the nose. But not in Mike’s church. Not when the man was up there collecting prayers before going off to the Navy. Jay stretched his fingers out and shook them a little. The best thing for him to do was step outside. Let whatever happened happen. It was none of his business.

But he couldn’t keep from smiling a little as he heard Kate telling the man goodbye. There was a final sound to it. A sound Jay liked. A sound that seemed to release the church people to start talking again. At the door, Mike began to shake the hands of the people who’d already talked to the hayseed and his mother and were headed out.

Jay waited his turn. Mike grasped his hand and gave him his preacher talk. “So glad to see you here this morning, Jay.”

“Couldn’t pass up the chance to hear my buddy preach.”

“Did I do it right?”

“You’re asking me?” Jay laughed and pulled his hand free. “You better ask the man upstairs that question.”

“But it’s the men down here who have to hear.” Mike’s eyes probed Jay’s face. “That’s why the Bible stories are there for us. So his Word won’t come back void.”

“I’m sure your words reached those they were supposed to reach,” Jay said easily. He’d survived a lot of one-on-one sermons from Mike. He didn’t mind. It was proof his friend cared about him. That didn’t mean Jay had to rush down a church aisle and pretend something that hadn’t happened.

Mike pressed his lips together for a second before he said, “Someday you may come face-to-face with the Lord the way Paul did and be unable to shut him away.”

“Who knows, Reverend? You could be right.”

“No could be about it. I am right about that. Be assured the Lord will never give up on you and neither will I.” Mike gave Jay a hard look, but then his smile was popping out again for the person next in line. Jay had had his handshake and word with the preacher.

That was fine with Jay. He was ready to be out in the sunshine, but once out there he didn’t hang around to wait for Graham or to see if he might wangle an invite to the Merritts’ Sunday dinner. He didn’t belong there in the churchyard among all the families clustered in groups, planning their times together. He didn’t belong anywhere except maybe in his car out on the open road.

But he did keep his promises and he’d promised Birdie a movie.

They were on the porch waiting when he showed up at their house a couple of hours later. As soon as he killed the motor, Birdie ran down the porch steps toward his car, excitement practically exploding out of her eyes. Kate didn’t show the same eagerness, but she was smiling. She didn’t appear to be hanging on to any lasting effects from the hayseed doing his best to humiliate her in church.

It was a half hour’s drive to Edgeville. Kate made sure to put the kid between them on the car seat and then at the movies. She was keeping him at arm’s length.

Birdie didn’t notice. She was full of chatter in the car that covered up any awkwardness between Jay and Kate and then entranced by the movie. Jay was entranced too. Not by the movie. He barely noticed the actors moving across the screen. The girl two seats over was the one grabbing his eyes. He watched her face in the flickering light from the screen and had the feeling she knew he was watching her instead of the movie, but she kept her eyes on the screen. Very casually, he draped his arm over the back of the kid’s seat and let his fingers graze against Kate’s shoulder on the other side of Birdie.

She didn’t shift in her seat away from him. A good sign. But a sign of what? That she liked his touch or that she was so engrossed in the movie she didn’t even notice? The kid squealed and covered her eyes as one of the actors on the screen almost got shot. Kate leaned over to whisper something to her, and her hair brushed against his hand. A tingle shot through his arm straight to his heart.

He jerked his hand back almost like he’d been burned. And he was playing with fire. He’d done that as a kid. Experimented with what he could feed into a fire to make the flames flash up brightest. He wasn’t a firebug. He’d never wanted to set any buildings on fire or anything like that. Not even old haystacks that a lot of the other boys had thought were simply waiting for their matches. He just wanted to know what would make the fire burn hottest or what would make the blackest smoke. He’d lost his eyebrows once to the idiotic idea of pitching a pint jar of gasoline on a fire, but he’d learned. He’d always had to see things for himself, learn it on his own. No matter the cost.

But some lessons in life carried too big a price. Could be he should just keep hands off. Could be he should take these two girls home after the movie and keep riding on down the road. He could feel Kate looking at him, wondering about him. He rubbed his arm as if he’d had a muscle spasm. And maybe he had. Some teacher once told him that the heart was a muscle.

She leaned toward him behind Birdie, who had scooted forward in her seat to make sure she didn’t miss a minute of the scene. “Are you all right, Jay?” she asked.

He thought it might be the first time she’d used his first name without hesitation, and he felt another jolt of unfamiliar feeling slam through him. “I’m fine.” He kept rubbing his arm. “Just had a twitch in my arm. All that painting, I guess.”

Birdie looked around to fiercely silence them. “Shh!”

Kate put her fingers over her lips to hide a smile that even
in the darkened theater set her eyes to sparkling. She looked back to the screen, but he didn’t. Nothing on that flickering screen could be anywhere close to as fascinating as her. Somehow, before he drove away from Rosey Corner, he was going to get that kiss she’d wanted to give him after the wedding. All he needed was to get her by herself without the kid being a buffer.

It almost happened on the drive home. Not getting the kid from in between them. Kate had made sure Birdie scooted into the middle again, but the kid had started nodding off before they were two miles down the road.

Kate put her arm around the girl and let her lean back against her. She smoothed the dark curls out of the kid’s face as she said, “She didn’t sleep much last night. Too excited about everything that was happening. Evie and Mike being there. You taking her to the movies. Sleeping on the floor. We let Tori have the couch since Lorena thought sleeping on the floor would be fun. She found out the floor didn’t have much give, even though we put down every blanket we could find for a pad.” Kate looked over at Jay. Her hair was blowing back from her face. “Evie and Mike had our bedroom.”

Her cheeks pinked a little, and she looked down at her hands as if she thought she shouldn’t have mentioned the bedroom. Not when talking about the newly married couple. He pretended not to notice.

“So how does your sister like being married to my friend, Preacher Mike?”

She looked up at him with a little frown. “Is that what you call him?”

“Sure, why not? He’s earned the title, and you folks here in Rosey Corner seem happy to hear him preach.”

Jay smiled over at her. He wished they were parked somewhere in the shade. He wished Birdie was asleep in the backseat. He wished Kate was scooted over beside him where
he could put his arm around her and breathe in her scent. Most of all, he wished he hadn’t made her think of Mike. He wanted her to be thinking about him, not Mike. He hadn’t forgotten that look he’d seen on her face during the wedding.

“Evie’s wanting him to look for a bigger church.”

“Women. Ready to start changing a man as soon as they say ‘I do.’”

“Well, nobody expects Mike to stay in Rosey Corner forever. Not like my grandfather Reece did.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not stay in Rosey Corner?” Jay glanced over at her.

“Our church is too small to pay a preacher enough to keep him going. At least not one with a family. Evie wants to have a house, new furniture, children someday.”

“Sounds like Mike better get busy.”

“Evie’s got a job. A good job. She went to business school, so she’s not depending on Mike to do it all, but Evie’s not a small town girl. Even if she did grow up here. She’s always wanted to get away from Rosey Corner to somewhere bigger. Somewhere where the action is.”

“Sometimes the action’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Jay said.

“But aren’t you planning to go to Chicago?” She peered over at him.

He kept his eyes on the road. “I was thinking about it before I got a better offer painting houses.”

She laughed. It was a good sound. An easy sound. “Is Graham even paying you?”

Jay laughed along with her. “Sure he is. We made a business deal.”

“He’s been painting that house since August.”

“I like a man who takes pride in his work.” Jay saw a place to pull off next to a stand of trees and eased his car over into
it. Birdie stayed slumped against Kate and showed no sign of rousing when he killed the motor.

Kate looked around. “Why are we stopping?”

“The car gets hot. Needs to cool off.”

She leveled her gaze on his face. “Do you always lie so easily?”

He turned his ear toward the motor. “You don’t hear it steaming out there? The thing’s liable to blow up.”

She called his bluff. “Then maybe we’d better get out.”

“Okay. The car’s not hot. I just wanted to be able to look at you while we’re talking. I like looking at you.” He slid his arm along the back of the car seat toward Kate, but stayed his hand before he touched her. He wanted to, but she wasn’t putting out any of the welcoming vibes he’d felt in the movie theater.

“I’m not pretty. Not like Evie or Tori or even Lorena.” She looked down at the sleeping girl and gently touched her hair. “She is so beautiful. Me, my hair won’t curl and my eyes don’t even know what color they want to be. First green, then sort of blue.”

“And sparkling like sunlight on water.” Now Jay did touch her cheek with his other hand to turn her face toward him. “I like your eyes. I like looking at you,” he repeated. “I like talking to you.”