Long Memory (8 page)

“Where?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to me. Show me where I made a mistake.”

James glanced back at Nonie’s house. Nonie and Jean were sitting on the porch looking at the garden. That, according to Aunt Jean, was another one of Beth’s charms. She had created a beautiful garden for them to look at day after day. Just as beautiful in the winter as it was in the summer. James assumed Aunt Jean was relying on her memory of the garden because he doubted she could see much besides blurry shapes. “I can’t spread this stuff out on the grass. Aunt Jean’s is closer. I’ll show you there.”

Storming ahead of him to Jean’s house, Beth opened the back door. “Your mother will be so disappointed.”

“Can you lay off my mother already? Nobody knows her better than me so you’re just preaching to the choir.”

“Really? Then why did you come here?”

James set the box on Jean’s table. “You might have heard about that career setback I suffered a few weeks ago. I wanted to get out of the city.”

“So you came here.” Her voice softened.

James kept his face down, locating the offending return. He should have spread it out on the grass in the side yard. Much easier than standing in this dim kitchen being psychoanalyzed by a schoolteacher.

“Because this was the last place you were really happy,” Beth said.

“You can lay off me too,” James growled.

Beth took out her ponytail. She wrapped the elastic around her wrist before combing her fingers through her hair, keeping her eyes on his face the whole while. When she’d wrapped the elastic around her ponytail again she asked, “Did I hit too close to the mark?”

“We are here to analyze the numbers, not the accountant.”

“Yeah, numbers are nice. You never have to guess what a number thinks about you. They don’t carry any messy emotional baggage.”

James folded his arms before he tried to throttle her. “Fine. This is the game you want to play. Why are you here taking care of my grandmother? Maybe because you don’t have one of your own. You came from a family of drunken rednecks, and you need to prove yourself to this speck on the map.”

“That was low.”

“Maybe.”

Beth turned away. “That was really low.” She wrapped her arms around herself and her voice sounded tight.

James swallowed. His grandmother would have given him a sharp slap across the mouth for saying something like that if she were in her right mind. “Beth, I’m sorry. That was out of line.” He put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away. “Aunt Jean told me about your family last night. It sounds like a rough way to grow up.”

“Ha! You have no idea. The whole town expected me to get knocked up by Johnny McMannus or Tim Fitzroy before I turned fifteen.”

James wondered if Johnny McMannus was the guy who had the heart attack yesterday. If it was the same guy, that was downright creepy. He pushed the whole image out of his mind. “I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry you thought I came here to spy on you. I really did just come to visit.”

Beth sniffled. “Okay, just show me this so-called mistake.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Stop saying that.” Beth spun around. Her eyes were red rimmed but lit with more familiar anger. “It’s not nothing.”

“But it’s just a little mistake.”

“And getting Nonie up and dressed this morning. That’s not nothing either.”

“I was trying to help out. I thought I was doing a good thing.”

“It’s my responsibility.” She thumped her fist on her chest so hard it sounded like a drum.

“Hey, stop that. It hurts to hear.” James grabbed her hands. “Calm down. I’m not here to take your job or your place.”

Beth fell apart in a shower of hysterics. Her knees gave out, and James had to grab her before she hit the floor. Cradling her in his arms like he was about to carry her over a threshold, he looked around the room for a place to set her down. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a death grip, sobbing, before he could kick a chair out from the table and set her in it. In the living room, Aunt Jean had a recliner beside the window and a couch along the opposite wall. James opted for the couch. When he tried to lay her down, she clutched at his neck until he unwound her arms. Then he stepped back wondering if he should pat her on the shoulder and say “there, there.” Saying nothing seemed wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He sat on the floor in front of her, wallowing in guilt for having caused the outburst.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Beth hiccuped. She sat up wiping her eyes.

“You? I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m sorry I ever came here. I didn’t know you were going to get so upset that I got Nonie up this morning. Or that I found a mistake on Aunt Jean’s taxes.” James bit his lip. He knew he should think she was acting like a big ninny for weeping and wailing over a couple of transposed digits, but he didn’t.

“It’s stupid. I shouldn’t get upset about this stuff.” She turned to put her feet on the floor and straightened her back. “I need to get it together.”

“It’s okay.” James shifted to sit beside her. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“What?” She cocked her head looking at him. Her cheeks were still sticky with tears, but she’d stopped crying. Her Jekyll personality reasserted itself with lightning speed.

“Taking care of them. Making sure Nonie brushes her teeth every morning and keeping track of all their bills. Planning outings for them to keep them from moldering.” James looked at his hands. “I should have come back sooner. Visited at least. They’re my family.”

“All right. I’ve been to this pity party before.” Beth stood up. “I’ve spent a lot of nights sitting by myself listening to Nonie walk around over my head, thinking I should have done more or sooner or something, and now I’m going to lose the only people in the world who really care about me and I’m going to die alone and unloved. Yada yada yada.”

“Alone and unloved?” James stood beside her. She was a good height. Tall enough that he could put his arm around her shoulders comfortably. While this wasn’t the greatest yardstick to judge a potential partner by, in his experience it helped.

“The singles scene in Weaver’s Circle isn’t exactly hopping. There are precisely ten eligible bachelors in town and one of them is Zack Jarvis.” Beth shuddered. “On the other end of the scale we have George Kline, but he’s been infatuated with Lily since she moved here and won’t just own up to it.”

“What about outside of Weaver’s Circle?” James wondered what would happen if he put his arm around her shoulders to test the comfort of having her there. She would either deck him or let him kiss her. Even odds.

“I’m sort of tethered here and dating just isn’t my forte.” Beth shrugged. “You pays your nickel and you takes your chance.”

You pays your nickel and you takes your chance. Good motto. James draped his arm over her shoulders.

She frowned at him, but didn’t back away.

Leaning down, he slanted his lips across hers. She didn’t bend into his embrace, but she didn’t step back and deck him either. She held herself stiffly, but her hands closed around his forearms. He tried to pull her closer, but she resisted and he didn’t press his advantage. Heat radiated off her body in the cool, shady house. He drew her lower lip between his, and when she didn’t protest, slid his tongue into her mouth. She tasted warm and heady, like a really good wine.

But she still wasn’t leaning toward him. She kept daylight between them.

He broke the kiss and stepped back.

Her face was cool and aloof except for two bright spots of color on her cheeks. “Would you like to explain that?”

“What?” James glanced around the room, wondering if he’d walked onto the wrong set. She wasn’t reading the same script. Or maybe he wasn’t. He was still working with the script he’d used for every other woman he’d ever dated. She’d already demonstrated that she wasn’t every other woman. “Never mind.”

“Wait.” Beth grabbed his arm. “You just took me by surprise is all. I don’t respond well to surprises.”

Then she surprised him by rising up on her toes, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a full-contact, mind-bending kiss that nearly made him forget how to do arithmetic. Even after she released him, his body remembered the pressure of hers against him. Totally unlike every woman he’d ever encountered. So this was what she was really like? The feather brush of her hair on his cheeks alone could have reeled him in. Up the ante with those sweet, soft lips and that lush body and he was all in. Maybe even over his betting limit. “You don’t respond well to surprises, but you can certainly dish them out.”

Beth blushed and looked at the floor. “I’m a little out of practice dealing with the opposite sex.”

James reached out to draw her into his arms again. “Then by all means, let’s practice.”

“No.” She planted her hand in the middle of his chest. “We should get back. We’ve left them alone for a long time.”

“They’re big girls.”

“One of them with a short-term memory capacity of about thirty seconds and the other one with a burning desire to get me hitched to whatever available male she can find. You should have seen her when the new sheriff came to town a couple of years ago.” She started toward the door. “You better put that box back where you found it. Jean needs a place for everything and everything in its place with her eyesight.”

James listened to the door bang shut behind her. He needed to revise his earlier assessment of her as Jekyll and Hyde. She was more in line with Sybil. When she was bad, she was baffling and annoying and sometimes frightening.

But when she was good, she was cute and curvy and wonderful to be around. James put the box back where he’d found it the night before. He needed to figure out what turned her from good to bad and stop that from happening.

* * * *

Beth wandered around Nonie’s kitchen opening cupboards only half-listening to Laura Fuller ramble on about why she couldn’t come over this afternoon. Something about having to pick up someone who was coming in from out of town and after that Beth lost the rest of her words. She could still hear the voice going so she kept saying “yeah” and “really,” but the empty kitchen had her attention. James sat at the table monitoring Nonie’s lunch. He commanded a sliver of her attention, but not much. After lying awake half the night reminding herself that he was only visiting, she had a pretty good fix on his potential as companionship material.

“Well, I should get going. I want to be there when the plane lands,” Laura said.

“Of course,” Beth answered. She closed the cupboard and picked up the shopping list she’d made last night.

“Sorry I can’t help out today, but with John in the hospital and the festival coming, everything has sort of gone crazy.”

“No, I understand.” Beth opened the refrigerator. Nothing there either. Poor planning. She should have bought a little more last week, but last week she hadn’t known Nonie would have a guest who would eat her out of house and home. “I’ll figure something out. Be careful driving to the bus station.”

“Airport.”

“What?”

“I’m going to the airport.”

Beth pressed her hand to her forehead. Laura had had less of her attention than she’d thought. “Sorry, I misspoke. Be careful driving to the airport. Bye.” She closed her phone.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m supposed to go grocery shopping today.” Beth opened the cereal cupboard. James had just dumped out the last of one box. She picked up the remaining box and shook it. Less than half. Two days if they were lucky.

“And?”

She put the box down. “I’m supposed to go grocery shopping, and Laura can’t come sit with Nonie and Jean while I’m gone.”

“So?”

“So I can’t go and there’s no food in the house.”

“Why can’t you go?” James handed Nonie her pills and watched her take them.

“Because I can’t leave them alone for over an hour while I drive in, do the shopping and come back.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I get it, you’re here, but what if there’s an emergency? What if one of them falls or Nonie does something unexpected or Jean has a problem with her sugar?”

“I suppose I would deal with it.”

“It takes me over an hour.”

“You mentioned that.” James picked up Nonie’s cereal bowl and spoon and carried them to the sink. “I think I can handle it.”