Outlaw Mountain (27 page)

“I’ll be right over to get her,” a repentant Joanna Brady whispered into the phone. “Tell my daughter I’ll be right there.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jenny said as she climbed into the Blazer. “I know you don’t like me fighting, but I couldn’t help it. They made me so mad!”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Joanna returned. “I should have told you that Butch had asked me to marry him, Jenny. I never should have left you hanging like that. You should have heard it from me, and not through some second-hand newspaper story. I meant to tell you about it last night. That’s why I wanted just the two of us to go out for pizza—so we could talk. Then the call came in. Rather than make a bad job—a rushed job—of telling you, I decided to wait until a better time.”

“You mean it is true then?” Jenny demanded.

Joanna nodded. “It’s true.”

“You and Butch really are getting married?”

“Yes. But Marliss had no business putting it in the paper before we were ready to make an official announcement.”

“Why did you tell Marliss before you told me?” Jenny asked.

“I didn’t tell her, and neither did Butch.”

“How did she find out then?”

Jenny’s pointed questions made Joanna feel as though she were in the hands of some trained interrogator. Jennifer Ann Brady would make a hell of a detective someday if that was what she chose to do.

“Grandma Lathrop told her,” Joanna explained. “She found out because she rode over on her broom yesterday morning and put the question to Butch. She wanted to know if his intentions were honorable.”

“What does that mean?”

“Whether or not he planned to marry me.”

“Why?” Jenny asked. “Because he slept over?”

Joanna was taken aback by the perceptiveness behind the question. Once again a well-thought-out talk with her daughter wasn’t going at all the way Joanna had intended, but she wasn’t prepared to tell any more half-truths, either. “Yes,” she said.

“It’s my fault then,” Jenny said. “I’m the one who told Grandma that Butch was there the other day when she called—the other morning. I didn’t mean to. As soon as I did, I could tell it made her mad. Now Grandma thinks Butch has to marry you?”

“Well, yes. Grandma’s a little old-fashioned that way.”

“But do you want to marry him?” Jenny asked. “I mean, really, really want to?”

Another direct question that deserved an equally direct answer—one that came from the heart. “Yes,” Joanna said. “I really do.”

Jenny sighed. “All right then, as long as you want to. Just don’t do it because Grandma says. She can be pretty bossy, you know.”

Joanna laughed outright at that. “I know,” she said. “And so can a few other people I could mention.”

“You’re not mad at me then?” Jenny asked.

“No. I’m not.”

“You won’t mind if. I tell you a secret, then?”

“What’s that?”

“I asked Butch if he’d go with me to the Father and Daughter Banquet next week. You know the one. For Scouts. You don’t mind, do you?”

In Bisbee the Girl Scouts’ annual Father and Daughter Banquet was a traditional affair. After the death of Joanna’s father, she and her mother had gone to war over the next scheduled banquet. Eleanor had insisted that Joanna attend alone, and had gone so far as to drive her to the high school and drop her off. Instead of going into the cafeteria, Joanna had bugged out on the festivities, walked for hours in the cold November wind and rain, and had ended up with a case of pneumonia for her pains. Jenny, it seemed, had taken charge of a similar situation in her own fashion.

“No,” Joanna replied. “I don’t mind at all. Of course not. Why would you think I would?”

“You know,” Jenny said. “Because of Daddy. I was afraid it was too soon. That you’d think I was forgetting him. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

Joanna reached over and patted Jenny’s leg. “My feelings aren’t hurt,” she said. “I’m thrilled. You must like Butch almost as much as I do. But that doesn’t mean we’re forgetting Daddy. Or being unfair to him. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jenny said. And then, after a pause, “Where are we going?”

“Well, since you’re out of school an hour and a half earlier than anyone else will be and earlier than Butch is expecting you, I thought we’d go uptown and see what Marianna is doing. And Ruth, too, if she isn’t spending the afternoon at Jeff’s garage.”

“Don’t you have to go back to work now?”

“No,” Joanna replied. “It turns out I’m taking the day off, too.”

With temperatures in the fifties, the weather was cool and crisp. The sky overhead was a clear cobalt-blue. As Joanna drove up through Old Bisbee, she noticed that the red-and-gray hills, dotted with scrub oak, stood out in stark relief against the distant sky. The contrasts between earth and sky were so sharp that they reminded Joanna of the three-dimensional pictures she remembered from her father’s treasured old View Master.

When they pulled up to the parsonage, Joanna was relieved to see Marianne Maculyea’s old VW Bug parked out front. It was bad manners to show up unannounced like that, but most of what Joanna wanted to discuss with her friend wasn’t telephone-conversation material. In the past few days, telephones had intruded in her life far too much. She craved the comfort of human companionship, of looking someone in the eye and pouring out her heart.

“Run up and knock on the door,” Joanna told Jenny. “Ask Marianne if it’s all right for us to come in, or would it be better if we came back later?” Jenny clambered out of the Blazer, slamming the door behind her. “And if you can avoid it,” Joanna added, “don’t tell her what you’re doing out of school so early. I want to tell her myself.”

“She probably already knows about it, Mom. Doesn’t Marianne read the paper?”

Damn Marliss Shackleford anyway!

Jenny bounded up the steps and rang the doorbell. Marianne opened the door, and the two of them spoke briefly before Jenny turned and motioned for Joanna to follow. Then the child disappeared into the house while Marianne waited on the porch.

“Sorry I missed your speech at Kiwanis this morning,” Marianne said. “1 was feeling so rotten that I told Jeff to go on without me.”

“How are you doing now?”

“A little better,” Marianne said.

“But not much, from the looks of you,” Joanna observed. “Jeff tells me you haven’t seen a doctor yet, either.”

“Come on in,” Marianne said. “Is that all you came by for—to chew me out? Tommy’s been out of town on vacation for the last two weeks. He went home to visit his family back in Taiwan. He’s due back tomorrow. I have an appointment scheduled for Friday afternoon.”

Tommy was actually Dr. Thomas Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant doctor who had come to Bisbee’s Copper Queen Hospital as a way of paying off his medical-school loans. Once the loan obligation was repaid, he could easily have gone elsewhere. Instead, he had decided to make Bisbee his permanent home.

After Jeff and Marianne brought their adopted twins home from mainland China, Dr. Lee had become Esther’s primary physician. In the process of caring for the seriously ill child, he had become a close friend—an uncle almost—to the rest of the family. In order to help Ruth stay connected to her roots, he was teaching the family to speak two separate Chinese dialects. He was also helping turn Jeff Daniels into a passable expert in home-cooked Chinese cuisine.

“Well,” Joanna said, “that’s a relief. I’m surprised he didn’t insist on you seeing him long before this.”

“I didn’t tell him,” Marianne said, smiling wanly. “But I thought you’d be glad to hear that I was taking some of your advice, and not just about seeing the doctor, either
.
I was supposed to do housework today, but I’ve spent most of the morning working on the Thanksgiving sermon.”

The parsonage’s once pristine living room was a shambles. Toys, books, and papers were scattered everywhere. The couch was almost invisible beneath a mound of unfolded laundry. On the floor, smack in the middle of the debris field, lay Ruth and Jenny. Frowning in concentration, the two girls were building a structure out of a set of pre-school-sized Legos. Joanna and Marianne picked their way through the mess as far as the couch. There they took seats on opposite ends of the couch and heaped the clothing into an even higher mound between them. Once seated and without a word of discussion, they both began folding clothes.

“If you’re working on a Thanksgiving sermon,” Joanna said, “that must mean you plan to stick around long enough to deliver it. What’s the title?”

“‘Stop Digging’.”

“ ‘Stop Digging’,” Joanna repeated. “What does that mean?”

“You should know,” Marianne said. “You’re the one who told me to talk about the black hole. To stop digging is the first rule for getting out of holes.”

“You really are taking my advice.”

Marianne smiled. “I told you,” she said. Glancing at her watch, she frowned. “What’s Jenny doing out of school so early? She’s not sick, is she?”

“She’s been suspended,” Joanna replied matter-of-factly. “For fighting. Have you read today’s newspaper?”

“The
Bee?”
Marianne asked. “No. I just didn’t feel like it. Why? What’s in it?”

“Do you happen to have a copy?”

“It’s probably still in the box down by the street
.
I’ll go get it.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Let Jenny.”

Minutes later, Joanna unfolded the paper, opened it to the page containing Marliss Shackleford’s
“Bisbee
Buzzings” column, and began to read aloud:

A reliable but unnamed source tells us that Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady, a widow, will soon tie the knot with Bisbee newcomer Frederick W. Dixon. Dixon, a former tavern owner, is currently unemployed.

“That witch!” Joanna exclaimed, carefully choosing one word over another because of the listening children playing on the floor. “How dare she say he’s unemployed. Butch spends at least four hours every morning working on his book, and he looks after Jenny every afternoon after school. Not only that, he’s spent the better part of the last three days taking care of Junior.”

“Who’s Junior?” Marianne asked. “You didn’t adopt another dog or horse, did you?”

Briefly Joanna brought Marianne up-to-date on the Junior dilemma.

“And who’s the unnamed source?” Marianne asked, looking at the newspaper column again when Joanna had finished telling the Junior story. “Your mother, I presume?”

Marianne and Joanna’s friendship—a relationship that dated all the way back to junior high—held very few surprises for either of them.

“You guessed it,” Joanna said. “And that’s why Jenny got in a fight at school today. Some of the boys were teasing her about my getting married. She didn’t think it was true because I hadn’t gotten around to telling her.”

Marianne smiled a genuine smile then. “Naturally she beat them up. Given that kind of provocation, I probably would have, too. So it is true then? You and Butch really are getting married?”

“He asked me yesterday,” Joanna replied, “and I said yes.”

“That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. That’s one of the two things I came by to discuss you. If you’re going to quit the ministry, you can’t do it [t least after the wedding.”

“Which is when?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t had a chance to talk about that yet. I’ve been too busy.”

“And the other thing we need to discuss?” Marianne asked.

“Marliss Shackleford. How do I keep from killing her the next time I see her?”

Marianne glanced toward the children. Jenny and Ruth teemed totally engrossed in their building project, but Marianne knew better than to trust to appearances. “Maybe we’d better go into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee.”

An hour later, feeling as though an interior pressure valve had been released, Joanna packed up Jenny and headed home. “We’d better stop by Butch’s house and let him know you won’t be there after school today.”

But Butch Dixon wasn’t home. Parked in the Outback’s spot in his carport was a decrepit bronze Honda.

“Hey, look,” Jenny crowed in delight. “The Gs are here. Grandpa’s still in the car.”

The Gs were Jenny’s paternal grandparents, Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady. For two cents, once Joanna spotted the car, she would have kept right on driving. The possibility of her remarrying was something she had long avoided discussing with her former in-laws. Unfortunately, by the time Joanna saw the Honda, Jim Bob had seen the Blazer as well. He was already climbing out of his car.

“What’s the matter?” Jenny asked, glancing at her mother’s face. “Aren’t you glad to see Grandpa Jim Bob?”

“I’m glad all right,” Joanna said, but her voice didn’t sound the least bit convincing.

As soon as the Blazer stopped, Jenny shot out of the passenger seat. Jim Bob caught her, scooped her into his arms, and swung her high in the air.

“There’s my girl,” he said. “How’s tricks?”

“I got suspended from school,” Jenny replied at once. “For three whole days. I can’t go back clear until Wednesday.”

“Suspended, eh?” Jim Bob said. “Maybe you’d better come home with me tonight. That way you can tell Grandma and me all about it.”

“Can I go, Mom?” Jenny begged. “Can I, please?”

“May I,” Joanna corrected automatically. “And yes, I suppose you may.”

“And should I tell them about you-know-what?”

While Joanna sent her daughter a withering look, Jim Bob looked questioningly from Jenny to her mother. “Tell us what?” he asked.

“Butch and Mom are going to get married,” Jenny blurted. “Marliss Shackleford said so in the paper.”

Jim Bob Brady waved one hand as if swatting at a pesky fly. “Oh, that,” he said. “All I can say is, it’s high time.”

And that was all there was to it. Joanna had gone to great lengths to avoid telling Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady that there was a new man in her life, someone who wasn’t their son. And yet, here was Jim Bob accepting the news at face value and giving every indication that not only did he approve but also that he couldn’t see why it had taken Joanna so long to make up her mind. He seemed to accept her decision with the same kind of aplomb Jenny had.