A Match Made in Dry Creek (3 page)

“I'm sure she does,” Curt said as he took the platter that Ben passed his way and looked up at the clock. “You're going to have to get ready for the bus soon.”

“I've got time,” Ben muttered. “I'd even have time to eat French toast for breakfast if we ever had it.”

“Well, Mrs. Hargrove has offered to cook us dinner when we help her with those Mother's Day baskets,” Charley said from the other side of the table. “If we wanted to make it French toast, I'm sure that would be fine.”

“We don't want to waste one of Mrs. Hargrove's din
ners on something I can make myself with a few pointers,” Curt said as he cut into the pancake on his plate. “I still remember the lasagna she used to make.”

Curt wasn't sure exactly when he had agreed to help Mrs. Hargrove plant her pansies, but he wasn't sorry that he was doing it as long as he could do it without having to spend too much time in her presence. He had plowed the plot for her six weeks ago and covered the whole thing with a heavy plastic that kept the warmth inside.

Mrs. Hargrove had some solar lights out there and the whole thing made a low-lying greenhouse. He'd been skeptical that it would work until he remembered that Mrs. Hargrove had found a way to grow her pansies years ago in the old days when she didn't even have the solar lights.

“She'd have to drive into Billings to find the ingredients for her lasagna,” Charley said. “And you know her car's been having some trouble so she's not driving it that far these days.”

“Well, I could drive her into Billings.”

Charley looked down at his pancake. Things were working out better than he had hoped. “Wouldn't hurt to make the trip count twice. Someone needs to pick Doris June up this evening.”

“Doris June's coming?”

Charley nodded.

“Here?”

Charley nodded.

Curt told himself he should have seen this coming. He knew Doris June didn't usually come home for Mother's Day, but this was a special Mother's Day for Mrs. Hargrove if those pansies were anything to go by. He supposed Doris June would want to spend the day with her mother. He couldn't begrudge her that.

“I'll be happy to lend my pickup to Mrs. Hargrove,” Curt said. “No point in two people making the trip to Billings.”

Charley nodded. “I'm sure the two of you can work something out.”

Curt looked over at his father. The man was innocently eating a second pancake and looking as if he hadn't been anywhere around when the noose had been thrown around Curt's neck.

“Linda from the café might be able to drive Mrs. Hargrove to Billings—she can use my pickup,” Curt added. He'd be willing to pay Linda a prime wage to do just that. Doris June liked Linda. She'd be happy to have a ride back to Dry Creek with the young woman. Curt knew Doris June wouldn't like to see him meeting her at the airport. In fact, she might stay on the plane rather than get in a pickup that he was driving.

When Curt moved back to Dry Creek four years ago, he had assumed he would see Doris June again. He had even hoped they might have a nice, quiet conversation about what had happened all those years ago. He knew a hole had been burned through his world the day their
elopement fell apart, and he couldn't believe it hadn't affected Doris June as well. There was no ignoring that hole, but maybe if they talked about what had happened, they could become friends again.

At the very least, Curt would like to apologize. He'd been impatient back then when he had pressed Doris June to elope with him. He'd been wrong to pressure her and then wrong to run off and join the army when everything fell apart. He'd started to write her a letter many times, but he never found words that said how very sorry he was if he had hurt her.

He knew he'd hurt himself with his hot-tempered actions. He'd lost the best friend he'd ever had in his life.

Curt knew better than to hope that someday they could be more than friends. He was a man who believed in the power of prayer to heal things, but even he couldn't believe Doris June would forgive him to that extent. He knew Doris June. She was a very organized woman, and if she had moved him to the “undesirable” section in her mind, she wouldn't likely budge from it later. She had been furious with him when they parted twenty-five years ago, and her silence since then told him all he needed to know about how she felt.

Of course, it hadn't all been his fault. Curt often wondered if Mrs. Hargrove ever told her daughter how many times he had asked for Doris June's address in Alaska and been refused. When he thought about it much later, he couldn't believe that Doris June had for
bidden her mother to give him the address, so he laid the blame squarely at Mrs. Hargrove's feet.

And the older woman was still at it. The fact that Doris June went out of her way to avoid seeing him when she came to Dry Creek was not lost on Curt. When she came to visit her mother, Doris June always seemed to know where he was—at least, he assumed she must know where he was because she was never at the same place as he was and, in a town the size of Dry Creek, that could only be intentional. Even if Doris June had not asked her mother back then to refuse to give him her address, she was certainly asking her mother to help her avoid him these days.

It was too bad, Curt told himself as he pushed his chair back from the table and stood up to go get the rest of the pancakes that were in the warm oven. It was definitely too bad. There had been many times over the past twenty-five years when he could have used a friend like Doris June. He liked to believe that she missed his friendship as well. Even if she could never love him again, he wished she could forgive him enough to sit down with him and ask him how his life was going.

Of course, for her to do that she would have to talk to him again and that didn't seem likely. Once Doris June made up her mind about something, it stayed made up. She was one stubborn woman. Just like her mother.

D
oris June waited for the airplane to come to a complete stop at the Billings airport before she unfastened her seat belt. It was dark outside except for the lights on the runway. Other passengers had started to reach for their overhead luggage, but Doris June was content to live by the rules and stay seated. She had a bag of puzzles in the overhead compartment and she'd wait for the line of people to pass before she pulled it down. She'd gotten to the airport at six o'clock this morning anyway and she was tired.

She could also use the few extra minutes to go over in her mind what she intended to say to her mother about the quite understandable possibility that her mother's mental agility was compromised and that her mother might want to be open to receiving some help. Help that Doris June fully intended to give even if she
had to pretend to take a series of short vacations to Dry Creek, Montana, to give it.

In her checked luggage, Doris June had a whole packet of information about how to deal with what she had decided to call “senior confusion.” She hoped that “confusion” was a friendly, befuddled term that would not hurt her mother's dignity. The one thing that stood out every time she read one of those brochures was that Doris June, being the primary caregiver in the event of anything, should realize her mother needed help and that it should be given as naturally as it would be if her mother had a physical limitation that meant she couldn't walk or see or hear anymore.

There was no cause for shame because a person faced a change in mental ability and Doris June intended to see that that message got through to her mother. Her mother was a proud woman and deserved to keep her pride.

Doris June knew that she was limited in how much help she could give her mother from a distance and she was perfectly willing to spend more time with her mother if that was what was needed. Doris June's job was going smoothly, and she could afford to take a week off every three months or so. She had already mentioned the idea to her boss, and she had his full support. He knew Doris June was all her mother had and he understood the importance of family obligations.

There was nothing to prevent Doris June from flying
back to Dry Creek regularly to help her mother with odds and ends—things like filling out the form for the state tourism board or maybe doing her taxes. Even if all she did was make pots of soup for her mother to freeze, Doris June would be happy to do it.

She was even prepared to make the big move and leave her job in Anchorage so she could relocate to Dry Creek. She had thought about doing that anyway before
he
moved back—not that she was exactly staying away because Curt Nelson was back, but she sure didn't want it to look like she was moving back home because he was there all single and available.

If Doris June did move back to Dry Creek, she would want it clearly understood that she was moving back there to do her duty to her mother and for no other reason. The people of Dry Creek had a tendency to gossip about their own and Doris June didn't want to have any speculation that she was coming back to ignite a love that had died decades ago.

She'd had enough pity stares over the years to last her a lifetime. She didn't know why the people of Dry Creek had been so interested in the breakup between her and Curt. People broke up all the time even in a small town in southern Montana.

Besides, Curt had married that woman from Chicago. What was her name?

Not that it mattered, Doris June decided. The only thing important about that wedding was that it should
have put a complete end to any speculation about her and Curt. She certainly would never have chased a married man. And, not only because she knew God would be appalled if she did, she also knew that she'd be so mad at a cheating man that she wouldn't be able to respect him much less love him even if she did snag his interest.

Doris June picked her purse up from under the seat in front of her.

The real problem was that even though the speculation had died down, the pity hadn't gone away. During the year or so after Curt announced his marriage, the people of Dry Creek treated Doris June as if she was a recent widow. The more sympathy people gave her though the more irritated she got. Her life hadn't turned out the way she'd thought it would, but she didn't need a crowd of people around her reminding her of the fact. She could remember it very well on her own.

She would have stopped going to church when she visited Dry Creek those first years after Curt got married, except she refused to give people there anything else to say about her. She did stop going when she was at home in Anchorage, however. At first, she told herself that she was too tired on Sunday morning and she just needed a break until the busy times at work let up. Finally, when the pace at work slowed and she still didn't want to go though, she faced the truth of it. She was mad at God. He had let her down and she didn't know what to do about it.

She knew she couldn't stop believing in Him; that would be like refusing to acknowledge that her mother was alive. She knew God existed; she had felt Him in her soul and there was no undoing that. She even continued to believe that He had some sort of a plan for her life. What she couldn't believe any longer, however, was that He placed any value on her heart.

She felt betrayed. She had lived her life by His rules. She had honored the wishes of her parents when it came to leaving Curt. Honor thy father and thy mother, the Bible said, and she had done it. She had trusted that God would fix things if she kept her part of the bargain. After all, she knew her parents followed God's ways as best as they could. They all prayed. They all believed. She'd had faith that God would work things out. She had been patient. And then—boom—Curt had married someone else. That's when she knew she shouldn't have listened to her parents or to God. They had all let her down.

Her heart was broken and it was because she had obeyed someone else's rules.

Of course, she could not live her life with her face turned away from her parents any more than she could renounce God. She wished she could say she'd had an epiphany of understanding somewhere along the line and that she had forgiven God and her parents; but it wasn't like that. Life had just inched up on her.

Her father had his first heart attack and Doris June had to stay in close contact with her parents, even if she
wasn't talking to God. Finally, she became tired of avoiding God, too. There was no undoing what had been done and she was the only one suffering. She missed going to church and talking to God in prayer, especially when she was worried about her father. She had no real choice but to return to God. It was a bitter decision, however, and the dryness never really left her heart.

Her struggle with God had been very private though. She didn't want others to know how hard it had been for her. It was humiliating that she had cared so much about a man who had not cared enough about her to wait.

She might not have been able to live without talking to her parents and to God, but she could live without talking to Curt again.

Although, it wasn't easy to keep anything from the people in Dry Creek. Many of them mourned with her over Curt and she knew it. Dry Creek was small enough that the loss of one was the loss of all, whether it was a house that burned down or a crop that was lost due to hail.

All the pity for her lost love became awkward, however.

Doris June wished there was a no-sympathy-needed card she could send to others to say that she was fine now and that, while she appreciated their sentiment, she didn't need special treatment. Unfortunately, there was no such card. There also didn't seem to be any time limit on the sympathy. People still treated her as if she had reason to be upset at any mention of Chicago or brides or weddings.

In fact, Doris June usually didn't get a wedding invitation in the mail like everyone else. Instead, it would be delivered by hand to her mother with instructions to only give it to her if her mother thought she could handle it.

If there was any justice anywhere in the world, the people of Dry Creek would forget all about the day she and Curt had started to elope only to end up in the sheriff's office with a bent fender on the Nelsons' old field pickup and a swirl of angry parents buzzing around them.

Curt hadn't even been going fast when he hit the signpost. Neither one of them knew there was a signpost there. They found out later that the highway maintenance crew had just come into Dry Creek the day before to put up the sign as a precaution.

Fortunately, the sheriff who had helped them that night had retired years ago, moving to Florida. He had been the only one to witness the tears she had cried when Curt, angry with his parents for what he saw as their interference, had stomped off and left her at the sheriff's office alone to face the remaining questions about the accident. She didn't want to ride back home with her parents and had asked a classmate to come and get her. That classmate had proved a poor choice and within days the story of how Curt had left Doris June sitting at the sheriff's office was all over the school.

Doris June hoped the gossip about that day was dead and buried. Twenty-five years seemed long enough to make it a forgotten subject.

Besides, by now everyone in Dry Creek probably expected her to move back to help take care of her mother. They knew Doris June took her duties in life seriously and they would assume she would fulfill this one when the time came. Hopefully, she was old enough that people would no longer think she was interested in marriage.

Of course, Doris June didn't exactly know what she would do with all her time if she did move back to Dry Creek. She had her master's degree in business and was accustomed to the pace of a multimillion-dollar sales department; she could hardly spend her days doing nothing more than dicing vegetables and making soup.

Maybe she could start a small business helping people do their taxes or something. There were enough ranchers in the area to bring in a fair amount of that kind of business and Doris June thought she'd enjoy it. She'd grown up on a small ranch and would enjoy helping ranchers with their books. Maybe she could even offer them some suggestions to improve their operations.

The airplane was completely stopped and people were moving down the aisle to the exit by the time Doris June smoothed back her hair and stood up. She had looked in a mirror in Seattle so she knew she looked competent in her white blouse and navy pantsuit.

Doris June had never been able to get away with the breezy flyaway-hair look that was so popular. On other women, the style made them look like they were having
spontaneous fun; on her it just made her look a little startled or a little sick or both.

It was a pity really, Doris June thought as she watched a young woman with that style look up to share a smile with the man beside her. Smiles like that never seemed to come to competent-looking women in suits.

Of course, Doris June reminded herself, she had had her wild romantic adventure when she was seventeen and look how it had turned out. It was a disaster. She wondered if that man smiling down at the young woman had any more staying power in him than Curt had had years ago.

The aisle was almost cleared by the time Doris June reached up and got her bag of puzzles from the overhead bin and then started walking toward the exit.

“Excuse me, miss,” someone said when she was halfway down the aisle.

Doris June looked down and saw a frail-looking older woman. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if your airline will give me my full frequent flyer miles since I started in Seattle.”

“I'm sorry, but I'm not a flight attendant,” Doris June said as she looked down at her clothes. Maybe navy and white wasn't the best thing to wear today. “There's a flight attendant by the door as we leave though.”

Doris June offered a hand to the older woman to help her stand.

“Why, thank you, dear,” the woman said as she stood. “You'd make a lovely flight attendant, you know.”

Doris June smiled. There was nothing wrong with being seen as someone who helped others. She hoped her mother would be as grateful for a little assistance as this other older woman was.

Doris June knew where the luggage-claim area was and she knew the area outside the terminal doors where she always met her mother. Her mother had promised she would have someone come with her to the airport. Billings was too far away from Dry Creek for Doris June to feel comfortable with her mother making the trip alone, especially at night. With her possible confusion, she might take a wrong turn and get lost.

Not that Doris June would mind waiting for her mother, but she knew her mother would be distressed if she wasn't at the airport when she had said she would be. Her mother liked to be very precise about things like that.

Doris June was surprised when her mother had quickly agreed to have someone come with her to the airport. It showed how fragile her mother had become. Usually, her mother insisted on doing everything herself.

Doris June stacked her two suitcases on a rolling cart and had them with her when she spotted her mother outside the terminal door. She walked through the wide door and hugged her mother.

Doris June tried to keep the anxiety out of her eyes as she gave her mother a once over. To her relief, her mother didn't look like she'd lost weight and her eyes were clear of the confused look Doris June had feared
she'd see. Maybe all of her worrying had been unnecessary, Doris June hoped.

“We're parked in the lot over there.” Her mother pointed vaguely to the right as she seemed to develop a sudden fascination with Doris June's suitcases. “That green's a nice color. Easy to spot on the luggage carousel. They look heavy, but that won't be a problem. Curt said he'd keep an eye out for us and bring the pickup around front when he sees you've come out of the airport.”

Doris June froze. Her mother knew that Curt was the last person Doris June ever wanted to see again. Her mother couldn't have forgotten what had happened, could she?