Summer Breeze (21 page)

Blinking in astonishment, Patsy hadn’t even managed to take a bite of the cookie as she listened to Pete. “You mean … you didn’t push me into that chair to poke fun at me?”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Why would you start up a chain saw next to my tearoom?”

“Patsy, I might tease and pester you till kingdom come, but I will never, ever do anything to embarrass you. I would swear on my honor as a gentleman, but I don’t think I qualify.”

“Well—” she considered for a moment—“that’s not what I thought happened.”

“So here’s another thing I learned today. Christians sure are different from what I first believed about them when I moved to town and started going to church.”

Feeling about as low as she’d ever been, Patsy put the uneaten cookie back on the saucer. “I don’t know what you thought, but now it’s my turn to apologize. I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you lately, Pete. I shouldn’t have quit talking to you, and I wish you would come back to church so we could go out to Aunt Mamie’s Good Food for lunch on Sundays.”

“Are you sure it’s not so you can be a fisher of men and lure me into getting born again?”

“I won’t deny that I would be very happy for you to be born again, Pete. But I really have missed talking to you and sitting with you in church. I feel awful that I ruined your good opinion of Christians.”

“Well, you did. I used to think Christians were perfect—like you. You always look all gussied up, and you’re so nice to everyone, and even when you used to take offense at my chain saws, you were always a lady about it.”

“But I’m not perfect. I never was.”

“I see that. And now I understand that Christians are just like everyone else.”

Patsy started to worry that she might cry. She had marched into Rods-N-Ends as high and mighty as a queen determined to absolve a lowly peasant for his dishonorable deed. As it turned out, she was the one in the wrong, and she felt just awful. Worse than awful.

“Christians are flawed like everyone else,” Pete said. “Except for one difference. And here’s the third thing I learned today. Christians are different because they try harder than most folks. They read their Bible and go to church and pray and do their dead-level best to be as perfect as God wants them to be. And then when they mess up, they try to make right whatever they did wrong.”

“We do try, but we fail a lot. If you want a good example, you’d better look at Jesus and not at Christians. I love Him, but there’s a few of us I can barely tolerate.”

Pete chuckled. “I reckon you’re right on that one.”

“In this situation, you behaved better than I did, Pete. You gave me a china cup and saucer.”

“And you filled it with tea and brought it over here.”

Patsy smiled. “You’d better drink it before it gets cold.”

“You gonna sit with me in church next Sunday?”

“Only if you promise to take me to Aunt Mamie’s for chicken-fried steak afterward.”

“All right. You’ve got yourself a deal,” he said, holding out his hand.

Patsy reached out and gave it a firm shake. But before she could move away, he turned her hand over and kissed it. Beard, mustache, and warm lips brushed against her soft skin. The zing went right up Patsy’s arm and shot straight down to the tips of her toes. She gasped as Pete lifted his head and grinned.

“See you later, Patsy Pringle, the sweetest gal in eleventy-seven counties.”

Unable to speak a word, Patsy turned and fled straight back to the salon. Barely breathing, she threw open the door, stepped inside, and sank into a chair in the waiting area. This was a very bad situation for a woman who knew her mind and always spoke it. For once in her life, Patsy felt completely bamboozled.

“Did you talk to Pete?” Cody asked. He had a smudge of black paint on his cheek and a brush in his hand as he sat down beside her. “I hope you apologized for getting mad about the chair even though Pete thinks you’re as beautiful as an apple.”

“I forgave Pete, and he forgave me,” she said. “So it’s all okay now, Cody.”

“That’s good. Pete would never do anything to hurt you, because he loves you, Patsy. Everyone loves you. I think you’re the best person in the whole world … along with Brenda and Steve. And also Esther and Charlie. And Kim and Derek. And maybe some others.”

Patsy glanced across to where the young man had been working on the latest version of Jennifer Hansen. “What about that pretty girl you’ve been painting on the wall?” she asked. “That young lady must be very special to you.”

Cody studied his work. “That is a picture, Patsy,” he said. “Pictures can’t be special. They’re made out of paint, and that’s all there is to  it.”

Slightly more relaxed and able to breathe again, Patsy decided it was time to make her way to the TLC meeting. Wanting to make double sure her appointment book was still clear, she stood and crossed to the front desk.

“I realize what’s on the wall is only a picture,” she told Cody as he shuffled along behind her. “But whose picture did you paint? I think she must be someone awfully important to you, because you’ve painted her at least four times. In fact, I’m pretty sure I recognize her. That young lady comes in here to get her hair trimmed.”

Cody leaned across the desk. “Don’t tell,” he whispered.

“I won’t,” Patsy whispered back. “But you’re such a good painter that one day someone besides me is going to figure out who it is.”

“Okay,” Cody said. “That’s when I’ll tell her that I love her, and I want to get married with her.”

Patsy drew closer and whispered in his ear. “She’s going to be a missionary in Africa. Even if she likes you a lot, I don’t think she’ll want to live in Deepwater Cove.”

“I don’t have to worry about that,” Cody said. “God will figure it out.”

Patsy sighed as she shut the appointment book. Why couldn’t her own faith be as simple as Cody’s? Things were always so complicated, and she got herself into such tangles. Look at how much time and energy she had wasted being furious with Pete Roberts. And his opinion of Christianity had suffered as a result.

Disappointed in herself, Patsy tidied the pamphlets she kept by the cash register. All the religious tracts and Christian music and Scriptures painted on the salon’s walls didn’t amount to a hill of beans if a person was as hard-hearted and unkind as Patsy had been.

As she turned toward the tea area, she spotted the envelope Pete had enclosed with the teacup set he’d given her during their spat. At the time, she’d been too angry to read it. She had tossed the card onto an open shelf under the desk along with some stray curlers and a can of hair spray. But now Patsy knew she had no choice but to find out what Pete had written to her. This would certainly put the icing on the cake of her own humiliation and shame.

Patsy opened the envelope and slid out a greeting card she had seen in a turning wire rack in Pete’s store. It was a photograph of a fisherman holding up a bass as long as he was—one of those silly “fixed” pictures made to look real but clearly fake. She opened the card and read the inscription: “Just wishin’ we was fishin’! I MISS YOU.”

Down at the bottom, Pete had scrawled a message. “Dear Patsy, I’m sorry you think I humiliated you on purpose at the July 4 th BBQ. I didn’t mean for that chair to break, and I hope you didn’t think folks was laughing at you. Surely you know that everyone admires you, including me most of all. In fact, I think you are sweet and kind, and let me just go ahead and say that I very much admire your—”

Here Patsy had to turn the card over to continue reading.

“—ample figure. I looked it up in the dictionary, and
ample
means ‘generous, full, and abundant.’ To tell you the truth, in every way I think you are ample. Love, Pete Roberts.”

Patsy lifted her head and gazed into Cody Goss’s blue eyes.
“Ample,”
she said.

He nodded. “I told you before. That’s what Pete called you.”

“You said
apple
.”

“Yes, I did. And now I’ve decided to change my mind about tea. Let’s go have some.”

Solemnly taking her hand, Cody started across the room. Patsy began to chuckle. When she caught sight of herself in a mirror at a nearby station, she paused a moment, studied her generous bosom, slightly smaller waist, and abundant hips. She decided Pete was exactly right. She was ample. Or apple. Whichever.

By the time she and Cody had filled their teacups, Patsy was giggling as she settled into the empty chair between Kim Finley and her mother-in-law.

“Well, you certainly are in a good mood,” Miranda Finley observed. “Maybe it’s because you missed Esther’s recitation of ‘old business,’ which included the lawn chair incident at the Fourth of July barbecue.”

Kim reached out and laid her hand on Patsy’s. “Esther confessed that Charlie had hauled that chair and a couple of others out of their attic. She said those lawn chairs must have been at least twenty years old.”

Patsy smiled. “Well, it gave everyone a laugh, and we all need that now and then. Pete and I talked it over. There are no hard feelings between us.”

“I doubt that I could ever forgive a man who had made a fool of me,” Miranda said. “You were lucky Luke’s diabetic crisis came right on the heels of your calamity.”

Patsy drew down a breath for fortification. She could see what Kim was up against. A tongue like Miranda’s sure could spit barbs. No wonder Pete had felt compelled to come between the two women when he saw a fight about to break out.

“I wouldn’t call my son’s crisis
lucky
,” Kim was saying, her voice stilted. “Luke’s condition was very serious. That wasn’t
lucky
. I don’t see how you can even think such a thing, Miranda.”

“Oh, I don’t believe in luck,” Patsy spoke up, leaning between them to take a sip of tea. “I think the good Lord permits everything that happens to us—and even the bad things can turn out all right in the end if we use them for His glory. Luke made it through his problem, and we all learned a lesson about how to be more watchful. And as for Pete Roberts and me, well, I would call our friendship … ample.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

H
ere’s the tomato sauce,” Luke said, pushing the jar down the counter toward his grandmother. “Mr. Moore grows tarragon in his garden, and he gives us some every summer. We always put extra in our pizza sauce.”

“And we don’t buy the sauce with tomato chunks.” Lydia was unwrapping a package of pepperoni. “I hate tomato chunks.”

“We
know
,” Luke retorted.

“You won’t have to worry about that tonight,” Miranda told the twins. “My pizza doesn’t have tomato sauce.”

Kim turned from the refrigerator in surprise. She had been searching for the mozzarella cheese, but now she saw that Miranda had produced a shopping bag and was setting out ingredients she must have purchased earlier in the day.

Every Friday night, Kim and the twins baked homemade pizza. Since she’d been staying with them, Miranda had participated in the process of building the pizzas, and then she ate with the family. But this evening, Grandma Finley had asked to treat Kim and the twins to something special. She was going to teach them how to make Derek’s favorite meal—her unique
gourmet
pizza.

Miranda had spent most of the afternoon outside on the deck, meditating near the collection of items that she believed fostered spiritual enrichment—crystals, a small brass Buddha, a length of sandalwood beads, and a Native American dream catcher. When her stick of incense had burned down to ash, she came inside. Still smelling vaguely of patchouli, she wore an ankle-length turquoise cotton tunic and several silver bangles, which clanged as she began measuring ingredients into a saucepan on the stove.

“To make a good white sauce,” she was telling the twins, “you must have whole milk. And here we have cornstarch, salt, pepper, three cloves of garlic—”

“Wait a second,” Lydia cut in. “Did you say
white
sauce? Where do you put that?”

“Right onto the pizza crust.” Miranda waved her hand over the other ingredients, as if flourishing a magic wand. “Garlic salt, onion powder, oregano, and basil.”

“Where’s the tarragon?” Luke asked. Staring at the collection of containers on the counter, he was frowning. “I don’t get it. How can you have pizza without tomato sauce and tarragon?”

“This is not just any old pizza. This is my specialty—spinach-Parmesan pizza.”

“Spinach!” Lydia cried. “Huh-uh. No way. I’m not eating pizza with spinach. I hate that stuff.”

“I don’t like it either,” Luke said, looking at his mother with imploring eyes. “Can’t we have regular pizza, Mom? Grandma Finley can make her kind, but I want our usual.”

“You won’t even recognize the spinach,” Miranda informed him before Kim could answer. “It melds right in with the cheese.” She paused in stirring her sauce to unwrap a chunk of white cheese and hold it out before the twins. “Now take a whiff of this, kids. This is heaven itself.”

Luke sniffed, made a gagging noise, and grabbed his nose.

Lydia took three steps backward, then began flapping her hands in distress. “It smells like vomit!” she wailed. “I’m gonna puke! What is it?”

“This is true Parmesan cheese.” Miranda glared at the twins, who were now entertaining each other by pretending to throw up. Turning her focus on Kim, she stared in silence a moment before speaking. “Do your children always have to be so histrionic?”

“Well, they—”

“The production of real Parmesan cheese comes from a restricted area in Italy,” Miranda said loudly enough to cover the twins’ theatrics. “It’s really quite distinctive. The structure of the cheese is remarkable too. See? A true Parmesan will break into slivers. And I happen to love its delicate and fragrant aroma.”

“Fragrant aroma?” Lydia was holding her nose and fanning her face. “Puke-o-roma is what you mean!”

“Puke aroma!” Luke said, doubling over in laughter. “Get it, Lyd? Puke aroma!”

Kim stood by helplessly as Lydia joined in her brother’s amusement. The cheese really did smell awful, and she could hardly blame the kids for their dramatics. In fact, she was thinking of opening a window to let in some fresh air.

Clearly having decided to ignore the twins, Miranda had resumed her preparations. Between stirring the sauce, she began to coat the three circles of pizza dough with olive oil.