Julia 03 - Miss Julia Throws a Wedding (2 page)

Lord, I’d miss that boy, and him not a lick of kin to me, except for being my husband’s child by way of Hazel Marie before I knew anything about it. Took nine years and Wesley Lloyd’s demise for me to hear the first word of what he’d been up to. But that was all water over the dam or under the bridge or wherever it went.

I raised my head when I heard the screen door in the kitchen squeak as Little Lloyd came in, and Lillian’s welcome and his laugh. Get hold of yourself, Julia Springer, I told myself, straightening my shoulders and tightening my mouth. Then I marched down the back hall to Hazel Marie’s room, determined to give it one more try. Well, one more try today.

“Hazel Marie,” I said, brought to a halt in the doorway at the sight of dresses piled on the bed, suitcases standing already filled, and shopping bags full of personal paraphernalia, like hair rollers and dryers and one pair of shoes after another. I recalled the night she’d shown up at my door, battered and
bruised after a run-in with Brother Vernon Puckett’s minions, without a stitch to her name except what she had on. And that was torn and mud-spattered and not fit to wear. Things had changed for her once Sam Murdoch, my onetime lawyer before he retired, and Binkie Enloe, my present-day lawyer, had straightened out Wesley Lloyd’s two wills, so that now Little Lloyd and I shared and shared alike. Although his half was in a trust fund, which Hazel Marie and he benefited from, and mine was where I could get my hands on it anytime I wanted to.

“Oh, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said, looking up from her packing, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling. “I didn’t know I had so much. J.D.’s going to send me back home.” And she laughed like that was the least likely possibility in the world.

“Hazel Marie,” I said again, trying to keep myself together, although it was all I could do to keep from pitching a fit like I’d done a time or two before. “I wish you’d reconsider. What you’re doing is just not right. What kind of example are you setting for Little Lloyd? To say nothing of what you’re doing to yourself. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Mr. Pickens didn’t think the less of you for not making him marry you.”

We heard the telephone ring in the kitchen, and we both stopped to listen for Lillian to call one of us. When she didn’t, Hazel Marie turned away, hanging her head—from shame, I like to think—so that her regularly touched-up blond hair hid her face.

“Miss Julia,” she whispered, “you know how stubborn he is when he gets an idea in his head. And he’s got this idea that everybody will think he’s just after Little Lloyd’s inheritance if we get married. He says we can have a good life together without bringing in all the legalities.”

“Well, of course he would say that. What man wouldn’t if
he could get away with it? And you know that neither he nor anybody else can get at that inheritance. Binkie and Sam have it tied up tighter than Dick’s hatband.”

“I know.” She nodded. “But I get a nice income from it to take care of Little Lloyd, and J.D.’s got his pride.”

“Pride!” I threw up my hands. “If that’s not just like a man! What does he want you to do, pauperize yourself so you’ll be dependent on him? Hazel Marie, you are asking for trouble.”

She looked away and refolded a dress that she’d already folded three times. “I know you think I haven’t given it enough thought, but I really have. For one thing, Little Lloyd needs a masculine role model, all the books say so, and you couldn’t find anybody more masculine than J.D. is.”

I rolled my eyes at that. I knew what masculine meant to Hazel Marie. Well, and to me, too, at times. However. She had a point about the boy needing a man to look up to, since his own father hadn’t exactly been an ideal for any child to emulate. Thursday night visits with the child and his mother hardly qualified as quality time, in my book. But, for the sake of my argument, I wasn’t about to concede a blessed thing.

“Well, it just seems to me that if you’re bound and determined to do this, the least he could do is make it legal.” But I knew as well as she did how hardheaded the man could be.

Except for that one flaw in his character, Mr. Pickens was a good and decent man. Well, except for the fact that he was constitutionally unable to keep himself from flirting with every woman he met. And except for the fact that he’d never set the world on fire, financially speaking. I mean, how much can you make chasing down missing persons and investigating insurance fraud and the like? I’d told Hazel Marie that it looked like a woman had to make a choice between a good man and a rich one. The two didn’t go together in my experience, limited though it was.

Well, then there was Sam, but he was another one who
couldn’t be counted on. I’d come to that conclusion after I realized how scarce he’d been making himself lately.

I sighed then, because she’d heard all my arguments more than once, and they hadn’t done any good. But, I thought, Mr. Pickens hadn’t heard them, and I determined then and there to give him a piece of my mind the next time I saw him. Turning away from the packing frenzy, I said, “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Then, shocking me speechless, she ran over and hugged me, a demonstrative gesture I rarely, if ever, encouraged. “Oh, thank you, Miss Julia, thank you,” she said, as the Joy perfume Mr. Pickens had given her nearly made my head swim. “I’ve wanted your blessing ever so much.”

Blessing was not what I’d had in mind; resignation was more like it, but before I could disengage myself and answer, we heard Lillian’s shoes flapping down the hall toward us.

“Miss Hazel Marie,” Lillian said. She stopped in the door, holding a dish towel in her hands. “Mr. Pickens, he jus’ call an’ say to tell you he can’t come pick you up today. He’ll let you know when he can move you out, but for now, he want you to stay here with us.”

“Oh!” Hazel Marie moaned in disappointment. She plopped down on a chair, then shot straight up again. Her sewing box had gotten there first. Rubbing her backside, she said, “He didn’t want to speak to me?”

“No’m, he say he in a hurry. An’, Miss Julia, you better take off that long face you been wearin’ all day. You got comp’ny in yonder, an’ they not gonna be happy seein’ you mopin’ ’round like you jus’ lost your best friend.”

That was exactly what I had lost, or was about to lose. Two or three of them, in fact, but I refrained from pointing that out to her.

“Who is it, Lillian?” I asked, turning away from Hazel Marie to face my duty. Lord, I didn’t feel like entertaining
company, but when you’re known for your hospitality, you pull yourself together and do what you have to do, regardless of how you feel.

“Coleman and Miss Binkie, that’s who. An’ they say they got a ’nnouncement to make.”

Chapter 2

“Married?” I couldn’t get my mind around what they were telling me. When you’ve waited and hoped and prayed for something for so long, it’s hard to believe that it’s finally at hand.

Lillian, however, didn’t have that problem. Standing by the dining room door, she let out a whoop that startled me so that I almost levitated from my chair. “It come to pass at last!”

Hazel Marie bounced in her chair. “Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you!” She all but clapped her hands. Little Lloyd stood beside the Victorian chair where she was seated, taking it all in. He was never far away when Coleman was around, and I intended to remind Hazel Marie that if she was so concerned about role models, the boy already had one.

Binkie was sitting on my Duncan Phyfe sofa under the crook of Coleman’s arm, both of them with smiles that kept breaking out into grins. Coleman, broad-shouldered and professional in his deputy’s uniform which he filled so admirably, could hardly keep his eyes off her. And she, with that curly hair springing up all over her head, could hardly sit still. She kept glancing up at him and then at each of us, as they made their announcement to legalize what they’d been engaged in for ever so long.

“You’re getting married?” I repeated.

“I finally got her to say yes,” Coleman said, looking down
on her. He’d make about two of her, she was such a little thing. “Took me forever to do it, too.”

Such a handsome young man, I thought as I had many times before. And Binkie, that tiny ball of fire who could hold a jury spellbound and bend an Internal Revenue agent to her will, was transformed by the glow of happiness. It was a wonder to me why they’d waited so long, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Well, it’s not a moment too soon, I must say. And nobody’s happier about it than I am.”

“I’m real happy about it,” Little Lloyd said, his eyes rarely leaving Coleman. “But I thought y’all were already married.”

“Things’re not always as they seem, Little Lloyd,” I said, glaring at Hazel Marie over his head. But her attention was fixed on the happy couple and she didn’t notice. Which was just as well, since she already knew where I stood as far as her own less-than-acceptable situation was concerned.

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell J.D.,” she said. “He’ll be thrilled.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said. “And let’s hope that he takes a lesson from their example. Now, you two,” I went on, turning to Binkie and Coleman, “what are your plans?”

“Quick and easy,” Binkie said. “We just wanted you to be the first to know, Miss Julia. Coleman and I met the first time right here in your living room, remember?”

Of course, I remembered. She’d come in out of a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin, and Coleman’d been lost as soon as he set eyes on her.

“When is it?” Hazel Marie asked. “Have you set a date?”

“Next Friday, at the courthouse,” Binkie said. “And we want you all to be there.”

“Oh, no,” I said, gasping with dismay at such an unseemly plan. “You can’t do that! Binkie, what’re you thinking of? Your folks won’t stand for it, even if they have retired to Florida. There’re too many things to do to get ready for a wedding—
ordering and addressing invitations, picking out your dress, reserving the church, planning the reception, selecting your china pattern and I-don’t-know-what-all.”

Binkie waved her hand, dismissing the best part of any young woman’s wedding. “We aren’t going to worry with all that, Miss Julia. My folks’re not in good health, and they’re not able to travel. So we’re going to do it without all the trimmings. Just cut to the chase, huh, Coleman?” She gave him a friendly nudge with her elbow.

Lillian grinned. “Sound like to me the chase already over.”

“It better be,” Coleman said, giving Binkie a squeeze. “I’ve been after this woman so long, I thought I’d never catch her. It can’t come too soon for me.”

“Well, Coleman,” I said, “the groom should be eager; that’s only right and proper. But, Binkie, a bride deserves a big church wedding, a dress with a long train and bridesmaids and flowers and all your friends celebrating with you. Queen for a day. Well, for longer than that with all the weeks of planning you’ll need. You just can’t have it at the courthouse in a week’s time. Why, you wouldn’t have any memories, much less any wedding pictures.”

“Well, I know, Miss Julia,” Binkie said, looking down at her lap and then up at Coleman. “But we’re both busy, and my workload is just so heavy. I can’t take the time. . . .”

“I have to take her when I can get her,” Coleman broke in with a smile. “And besides, we’ve been, well, keeping company so long, as you keep reminding me, Miss Julia, that we don’t think it’d look right to have a big church wedding.”

I certainly appreciated Coleman’s sensitivity to my feelings on the subject, and his careful wording of what everybody in town knew, namely, that they’d jumped the gun some time ago. In such cases, though, the best thing to do is just ignore the facts and go ahead and do what has to be done. Although I’d draw the line if Binkie wanted to wear white.

Still, I was dismayed at the thought of a hastily arranged and hurriedly accomplished civil ceremony without benefit of clergy, so I said, “I can’t believe you’d want to do it at the courthouse; you need a minister at the very least. And you can keep it small. An intimate wedding would be lovely and perfectly suitable. You wouldn’t need to use the sanctuary; you could have it in the chapel. It’s perfect for a small wedding. Oh, Binkie, I just can’t stand the thought of you two taking a few minutes between making a will and making an arrest to run down to the courthouse to get married.”

“I don’t know, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie chimed in. “It sounds real romantic to me.”

Of course, in her situation I guessed it would, since any sort of ceremony would be better than what she was getting. And if she could’ve gotten Mr. Pickens as far as the courthouse, even I would’ve been willing to forgo the blessings of the church.