Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) (4 page)

“Don’t know,
“Morton said. “Just know it’s a bunch of muddy water, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It
trickles in and out of most of the land around here.”

“What would you
do if a gator did come on shore?” I asked.

Yancey smiled
and spoke with a note of condescension in his voice. “Now, don’t you worry
about that. You’re not one of those crazy brides like I’ve been seeing on TV,
are you?”

“I’ll make you a
deal,” I said. “My bridezilla side won’t come out as long as nothing comes out
of the bayou.”

Yancey plastered
on a smile, showing a glittering gold bicuspid. “Shall we discuss payment
options?”

******

Cal Carter, a
baker approved by Mr. Andre, slid out two plates with several tiny pieces of
cake on them.

“Just try these,
folks. I can guarantee you’re going to have a hard time choosing which one to
use for your wedding day.”

“Mmm,
delicious,” I said as a mouth watering white mango cake melted in my mouth.
Both boys took a bite of the cake and rolled their eyes in delight.

“Oooh, try this
one,” Leo said, spooning some dark chocolate into my mouth. Gulping down the
previous cake, I tried to clear my palate enough to taste the chocolate. It
didn’t take long until the cocoa hit my taste buds. Zach and Tyler followed
suit. Leo had switched over to the white mango.

“I had no idea
getting married could be so fun,” he said, licking his lips.

“And I thought
cake meant chocolate or vanilla.” Tyler said, a bit of chocolate icing still on
the corner of his mouth.

“Folks, if you
keep eating all my samples I’ll have to charge you for a whole cake,” Cal said.
“Now I can always do the wedding cake in white and groom’s cake in chocolate.”

“Groom’s cake?”
said Leo.

“Sure, it’s a
wedding tradition to have a groom’s cake at the reception.”

“For double the
price,” Leo said as Cal smiled.

“The groom’s
cake has a lot less work to it. We only charge half.”

Looking at the
prices in Cal’s cake book, half could still make a person gag enough to need a
glass of milk to wash it down.

“It all seems
delicious to me. Leo, you decide.” I said.

“Okay,” he said,
sure of himself when it came to cake. “Mango on the wedding cake, dark
chocolate on the groom’s cake.”

“Are you sure?”

“Most
definitely.”

“That was easy,”
I said.

“Wonderful,” Cal
said, taking out an order form from behind the counter. “We’ll be happy to set
you up. What day is your wedding?”

“February 14th,”
I replied.

“As in
Valentine’s Day, February 14th?”

“That’s the
one.”

Cal took out his
order pad and started figuring. “That is one of our busiest days of the year
here. I already have several special orders in place. I’m afraid I’ll have to
hire some extra help to get your wedding cake out.”

Leo and I looked
at each other as we could hear the cash register ringing in the baker’s head.
“I’m going to have to add an additional fifty dollars for holiday pay.”

“Holiday pay?
Last time I checked, Valentine’s Day is not really a big cake-eating holiday,”
I said.

“Are you kidding
me? We make cookies, truffles, cupcakes. Not everybody likes flowers and candy
you know,” he said. “Fifty more.” Cal, who had seemed so nice when we came in,
wasn’t budging.

Leo and I
searched each other’s eyes for agreement as he cut in again. “We take credit
cards.”

“This is much
tougher than we ever thought it would be,” I said.

“You’re not the
first bride to say that. Just take your time and think about who is going to be
at your wedding. This cake needs to be for you, but it also needs to be for
your guests. Think of your wedding cake the same way you thought of your
bouquets of flowers for your bridesmaids. You wouldn’t pick a bouquet of
flowers that you knew a bridesmaid was allergic to, right?”

“Don’t confuse
us. The flower guy is another exciting Saturday for us,” Leo said.

Cal laughed as
he removed the cake plate from the counter.

“Have you done
any new weddings with Lenny Stokes?” I asked. “He’s got a bit of a reputation
for being hard to work with, but he has some beautiful flowers.”

“Lenny Stokes?”
said Cal. “I’m probably not the right man to be asking about Mr. Stokes.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, let’s
just say Lenny and I don’t always get along, and it’s not just at weddings that
we find ourselves disagreeing,” he said. “Lenny and I both belong to the same
shooting range. I go down every Monday night sure as clockwork to do some
target practice. For years I arrived there at 6 o’clock to use the first shooting
lane. I like that one because there’s only noise on one side. Then, last year I
would get there at six and Lenny would be there already shooting in the first
lane. Lenny figured out my schedule and he was getting there at 5:45. So I
started coming at 5:30, but darn it if next week if he didn’t show up at 5:15.
I think he didn’t care as much about shooting as getting the hell in front of
me. When I confronted him, you know what he said?”

“What?” I asked.

“This is my
lane. Move on, dough boy.”

I wondered if
using Lenny Stokes was just asking for trouble. I opened my planning notebook
and made a note: “Find Baskets of Bluebonnets phone number.”

As we exited the
bakery feeling slightly fleeced, we drove back into Pecan Bayou to get a cup of
coffee to wash down all the cake we’d consumed. The boys were bouncing off the
backseat from their combined sugar highs. We would soon become a family of
four, and I wondered if Leo felt as overwhelmed as I did at the prospect.

As I stirred my
latte I looked over at Leo. He drummed at the table with his fingers and looked
out the window at the chilly winter day, lost in thought. We had so many
decisions to finalize in the next few weeks, one of which was where the four of
us would live. I just assumed that Leo would move here to Pecan Bayou with my
family and into my house.

I had my family
here, a family that had held me together for the last ten years. Leo picked up
the edge of his napkin with his fingers and played with it, then he turned his
gaze to me and cleared his throat.

“Betsy,” he
reached into his coat pocket. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to share
with you.” I felt a slight panic chill the warmth the coffee had produced. Was
this his long-concealed criminal record? That couldn’t be right – my dad had
done a background check on Leo the first month he knew him. Could it be a
confidential medical record? Was he dying, or worse, was he in debt? He pulled
a piece of folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his black suede jacket
and flattened it out on the table in front of me.

“This,” he said,
“is a house I’ve found for us.” I looked at a picture of a beautiful two-story
tan brick home with cathedral ceilings and plenty of square feet. It was enough
room for all of us to live in style.

“My God, Leo.
It’s beautiful,” I said, reading the particulars of the listing. My eye glanced
at the price. “Can we afford this?”

“Well, we won’t
be buying it outright,” he said, “but yes, I did some figuring on my salary,
and it’s in our price range.”

“How much do you
make?”

“I love it that
you’re just getting around to asking me that. I make enough so that if you
didn’t want to work, you wouldn’t have to.”

I felt a little
panic hit. “You do want me to work, don’t you? You aren’t someone who feels a
woman’s place is in the home?”

“I do feel the
woman’s place is in the home, if that’s what she wants. If she wants to go out
and knock over the Dallas market with her incredibly useful column on Helpful
Hints, then I’ll support her in that as well.”

I sipped at my
coffee and looked at the house. Zach put his head on my shoulder as he perused
the brochure.

“Cool, Mom. It
has a pool,” he said.

It was twice as
big as my house. Leo had picked out a family home. The kind of place we could
settle into and raise a family, our boys and maybe more to come. Who could turn
down a beautiful house like this one?

“What about my
family here in Pecan Bayou?”

Leo took hold of
my hand and rubbed his thumb along the back of it. “I know your family is very
important to you and Zach. That’s been the hardest part of all of this. I love
you both and I want you to be happy. I also want to be able to provide for you,
and to do that, I need to work in a large urban area.”

Leo worked as a
private meteorologist for the Dallas airport. Before that, he had spent some time
working for the local television station, mostly as scientific support.
Occasionally he still appeared as one of the many people TV news loved to plop
in front of a rising storm. On one level I understood that we couldn’t mess
with his job and that my job was portable. But on another level, I felt the
need to cling to the people I had always loved the most.

“What about my
dad and Aunt Maggie? How do you think Danny would take it?”

Leo continued to
hold my hand. “Not well, I suppose. But they could come and visit us any time,
and it’s only a few hours from Pecan Bayou to Dallas. Believe me, I know,
because I’ve been burning up the road for the past few years. I love you so
much, Betsy, and I need you to understand I’m doing the best I can to make our
lives work.”

“And that dream
didn’t include a slightly quirky small town on the edge of the Hill Country?”

Leo tapped at
the picture of the house. “Just take a look at this, Betsy, and try to consider
it. We can’t say “I do” and then not know where to go after the honeymoon.”

He was right. I
knew he was right, but I just couldn’t find myself compromising. I knew I had
compromised way too much in my first marriage. One thing I had learned was that
I needed to make sure we had an equal share in the decision-making.

This, though,
felt like a done deal.

A week later, I
carefully placed each and every wedding invitation in the mailbox outside the
supermarket. We were at six weeks before the big day, which was a little under
the deadline for sending them out, but Mr. Andre pushed the printer to do a
rush job. I had struggled with the idea of inviting my mother even after my
discussion with Leo.

She had missed
so much in my life. Maybe my invitation would be a way of showing her I’d grown
into someone who understands family and the connections that need to be
respected and reinforced. Her invitation was on the bottom of the stack, and I
wasn’t even sure why I had brought it with me to the mailbox.

“Mom? Are you
praying to the mailbox?”

Zach had been waiting
in the backseat of the car but had scrambled out of his seatbelt. He stuck his
head out the window, reminding me of Butch, our ever-excited Weimaraner.

“Nope,” I
responded. “Well, maybe.”

“Pretty strange.
Is this a bridezilla thing?” Zach had overheard Leo calling me his new pet
name. So far, I had been a pretty reasonable bride. At least I thought so.

“No, this isn’t
a bridezilla thing,” I insisted. I found myself holding my breath as I dumped
the stack into the blue metal mailbox. It wasn’t until after I released the
invitations from my grip that I realized what I had done. I had mailed my
mother’s invitation. I opened the slot and tried to see if maybe it was resting
on the top. No such luck. It was done.

Thirty minutes
later I was checking out the tomatoes in the produce section of the grocery
store when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a woman
holding a home-sewn grocery bag. Her gray hair was piled up on her head in a
bun.

“Excuse me,
aren’t you Betsy Livingston?” she asked. This was probably someone who read my
helpful hints column.

Rocky Whitson,
the editor of the Pecan Bayou Gazette, had insisted we put my picture at the
top of my weekly sharing of household wisdom. He said it made it more
personable for the reader. I found it a little embarrassing, and I was pretty
sure it hadn’t done anything to raise the subscription rates at the paper.
Sometimes people would recognize me and want to talk about things like stains
and better ways to clean their garbage disposals. I remembered talking about
wood rot at a funeral once – truly awkward.

“Yes, ma’am,” I
answered.

“I thought so.”
She clasped her hands together and smiled. “I’m Martha Stokes, Lenny Stokes’s
wife?”

She was the wife
of the flower guy I was supposed to have called.

“I’m so glad I
ran into you like this,” she said. “I was going to call you this week anyway,
but this just saves me trying to track down your phone number. You know how us
older folks forget where we put things.”

“Well … great,”
I said, wishing she had called. It would have been one less job for me to do.

“We were so
happy you decided to use our flowers on your wedding day. We have a lovely crop
that will be in bloom just in time for your big day. I think that’s so sweet
getting married on Valentine’s Day. I’m surprised you’re the only bride who
asked us for floral arrangements.”

I remembered all
of the horror stories I had been hearing about her husband. If I could try to
confine my dealings to her, maybe it wouldn’t be a complete fiasco.

“Yes, well, Mrs.
Stokes …”

“Martha, dear,
call me Martha,” she said.

“Martha, I need
to tell you we’ve hired a wedding planner. Have you ever worked with Mr.
Andre?” I asked.

“No, I think I
would remember a name like that.” She tugged at the long sleeve of her coat,
pulling it over her wrist.

“Well, he wants
to come out and look over your operation and put you on his approved vendors
list.”