The Happy Hour Choir (26 page)

Something crashed to the ground out of Carl's line of sight, and he picked up the pistol and pulled the hammer back. I looked behind me to see Luke in the living room with the phone in his hand. “Knocked over some books. That's all.”

I nodded slightly before I turned back to Carl. I gauged the distance between him and me then between me and the closet where the shotgun sat, fully loaded and ready.

“It's time to come home.” He took another drag of his cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke in Ginger's smoke-free house.

Tiffany couldn't speak.

“She is home, Carl.” Ginger's voice came out clear as a bell. “Now, you need to go.”

He narrowed his eyes at Ginger, and I stepped between the two of them. “You heard the lady. You're in violation of our restraining order as well as having broken and entered—”

“Just entered. I ain't broke nothing. Yet.” Carl pointed the gun at me. His finger curled around the trigger.

“Is that a threat?” Luke stepped in front of me. He was stalling, but he was also ready to take a bullet if he needed to. “Four witnesses. I'd leave if I were you.”

Carl stood. “Well, you aren't me, now, are you, pretty boy? I ain't gonna let you or anyone else take what's mine.”

“I'm not your property.”

We all turned to Tiffany. Her knuckles shone white against the newel ball. She lost her balance, and it came off in her hand. Carl swung the gun to face her, and Luke backed me out of the way. Carl took one step toward Tiffany, but she took the newel ball and wound her arm in a flash of movement to give a quick, hard, underhanded pitch. The ball whizzed past me and smacked into Carl's forehead. As he fell backward, he hit the back of his skull on the table with a sickening thud before crumpling to the floor. His glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling, his mouth agape in an eerie way.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Tiffany grabbed her side and sat down on the stairs and cried.

 

The police report later said that no one else—well, maybe Roger Clemens—could have thrown that newel ball with the same amount of force. The ball to the forehead felled him, but the blow to the back of the head on the table killed him. In the official report, Len left out the part where I described Tiffany's pitch as a thing of beauty, but she had hurled that newel ball with ferocious grace. One would expect no less from a highly ranked fast-pitch softball prospect even if she was eight months pregnant.

While Declan Anderson put the body on a gurney and took Carl off to a more respectful burial than he deserved, Tiffany spilled her entire story to them, and I held her hand as she did. Luke, Ginger, and I also gave our statements. In the end, they decided Tiffany had acted in self-defense—especially since Carl had brought a gun. I bit my tongue to keep from saying I only wished she could have acted in self-defense a lot sooner.

Tiffany was officially cleared of all wrongdoing not long before Thanksgiving, so we were all looking forward to the holidays. Luke and Sam were going to join us, and Ginger joked about finding a man who liked women with really short Brillo pad hair so she could have a date, too.

She tried to pretend she was fine, but I had a lot of time to watch over her that November, since I only worked at the church on Sundays and picked up just enough weddings and funerals to keep us afloat. She wouldn't do anything when she knew I was looking, but I came home from the grocery store early one day to see Declan Anderson in the living room going over funeral arrangements with her yet again. The man had the patience of Job.

Another day I caught Ginger with more masking tape, putting little stickers on the backs of books, dishes, even pieces of furniture. I asked her if I could help, but she smiled and said, “No, thank you.” No explanation, no nothing.

And then there were the letters each morning. She would write as long as her arthritis allowed her. Her handwriting bobbled all over the place, and she stuck her tongue out a little as she wrote, reminding me of a second grader learning to write in cursive.

“So,” I finally said one day. “When are you going to let me read this letter you've been working so hard on?”

She looked up from the letter, her nonexistent eyebrow raised. “When are you going to get a full-time job?”

We both knew the answer to that question, but neither of us wanted to say it, so we kept up our game of her hiding things and me spying on her all the way to Thanksgiving. Of course, if I'd known then what was in her letter, I might not have waited so long to read it.

Might have saved us all a lot of trouble.

Chapter 31

T
he first person at the door on Thanksgiving morning was Luke. He took one step into the house, dipped me like Fred dipped Ginger, and kissed me the way Rhett kissed Scarlett.

“Well, I know what I'm thankful for today,” I said once I was back in an upright position.

“You two really need to get a room,” Tiffany groused on her way to the kitchen. I wanted to shout after her that she was just jealous, but I held my tongue. Then I marveled at how I had held my tongue. Then Luke decided to occupy my tongue a little while longer.

“Seriously,” added Ginger, who was leaning on a walker but moving around like a pro. “Can a gal get some coffee first?”

“Someone's jealous,” I whispered to Luke.

“As a minister, I know I'm supposed to feel sympathy for them,” he whispered back. “But I don't.”

“You know who you should feel sorry for?”

His eyes narrowed with concern. “Who?”

“The turkey.” I grabbed his hand and led him into the kitchen. I had started getting the bird ready at six in the morning, but I still needed to check on him from time to time. Luke stood to the side as I opened the oven, inspected my handiwork, and decided to use the baster to add more moisture.

“How is ol' Bill?” Ginger took a dainty sip of her coffee.

Luke looked at her in confusion. “Bill?”

“Yeah, Bill ended up with two turkeys
somehow,
” Tiffany said with a pointed look at me. “And he gave one to Beulah so she named the turkey after him.”

“That was nice of him,” Luke said. “Well, Bill the man, that is.”

As I used the baster to suck up butter and turkey juice then squeeze it over Bill the turkey, I hoped Bill the man wasn't feeling the effects in some odd voodoo sort of way.

The toaster oven dinged, and I retrieved the previously canned cinnamon rolls. Luke looked at me as he slid Bill back into the oven.

“Yup, this is the sort of great cooking you could look forward to with me,” I said as I spread the glaze over the hot rolls. I had meant it as a joke, but Luke's gaze grew intense.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

He shook it off. “Why is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade not on? Unacceptable!”

He jogged to the living room to turn on the television then to open the door when the doorbell rang to announce Sam's arrival. Tiffany ran to Sam, but she had to hold an arm under her massively pregnant belly to do so. She leaned up for a kiss like mine but only got a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Go ahead and kiss her good,” Ginger yelled from the table. “Luke and Beulah were making out in the foyer.”

“We were not!” I narrowed my eyes at Ginger. I still loved her despite the effects of her brain tumor—in some ways I could only love her more. Sure, her uninhibited speech was at the bottom of the list, but at least I had a companion for my nightcap.

“Yeah, you were,” Tiffany said over her shoulder before she turned and pulled Sam down for a kiss that gave us a run for our money. He blushed a new and exciting shade of red, one of the deepest shades of red I'd ever seen on a human being.

Tiffany took him by the hand and led him into the living room to watch the parade. They snuggled up to each other on the couch.

“You should make her get in here and help,” Ginger grumbled under her breath.

I topped off her coffee. “She's going to have her hands full in a month or so. Let her rest while she can.” I looked over my shoulder to yell, “Tiffany, get your feet up on that coffee table before they swell up!”

Ginger smiled and took my hand. “I always think I couldn't be any prouder of you, but you keep on surprising me.”

Tears stung my eyes. What could I say to that? Not a damn thing, so I stood there in the kitchen and held her hand as long as she would let me.

“I love you, Beulah Lou.” She squeezed my hand.

“I love you, too, Ginger.” I choked out the words. “I love you so much more than you will ever know.”

She squeezed my hand again and winked. “I think I have a pretty good idea. Now, I think I'm going to go into the living room and ignore those skinny-ass, knob-kneed Rockettes long enough to take a nap.”

I pulled her walker in front of her. “But what about the dressing?”

“I think it's time for you to take over the dressing,” she said with a yawn. My heart hammered against my chest. She was going to die during her nap; that's why she was being so sappy and was finally ready to give over the secret dressing recipe. “But, Ginger—”

“Oh, calm the heck down.” She and the walker moved rhythmically across the kitchen floor toward the living room. “The recipe is in the pantry under the jar of pickles. Good luck deciphering it.”

Under the pickles.
There was a place Ginger knew I'd never look because I hated pickles almost as much as she did. I fished to the back of the pantry and picked up the lone dusty jar of most likely expired pickles. Sure enough, a ragged index card sat underneath. I took the card and scanned it.

“How am I supposed to make heads or tails out of this?”

She lay back in the recliner, her eyes already closed. “Sometimes you have to feel for what's right.”

I took a deep breath. If I had known I was going to have to wing the Thanksgiving Day dressing, I would have practiced a week ago. I couldn't do this. I couldn't come up with the perfect combination on the very first try.

I muttered the ingredients to myself, a Southern woman's incantation: “cornbread, biscuits, eggs, chicken broth, diced onion, sage, Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, cream of chicken, celery. Celery? I am
not
putting that in there.”

The index card was full of notes on the side like,
Use cream of chicken to add more flavor
or
Some yuppies add thin slices of apple to add moisture
. The amount of eggs was five, which was marked out and a four added. Then the four was crossed out, and a three stood to the side next to a glob of something that looked suspiciously like cream of chicken.

I could do this. I could figure this out. I had the cornbread sitting on the stove from the night before. I had leftover biscuits in the freezer. I could do it. I would figure it out.

“Whatcha so tense about, Beulah?” Luke's voice caused me to jump.

“Oh, sorry.” My hand traveled to my throat. “Ginger has informed me I will be making the dressing.”

“And?”

“I've never made the dressing before.”

“And?”

“It's the second most important part of Thanksgiving after the turkey!” I hissed. “No, I like the dressing better than the turkey. If I don't get the dressing right, I'll ruin Thanksgiving!”

He kissed me on the forehead. “No, the most important part of Thanksgiving is giving thanks. That would put the dressing at least second on the list. And you're going to do great.”

“But what if I ruin it?” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets to keep from wringing them.

Luke took me by the shoulders. “Do you like to eat dressing?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Then you can make dressing. You just have to have a little faith.”

I chewed on my lip. “We're not talking about dressing anymore, are we?”

He kissed me on the lips. Gently. “Nope.”

He went to check on Bill—the bird, not the man—and I thought about every time I'd watched Ginger make dressing. I got out the biggest bowl we had and started crumbling cornbread and biscuits then added what seemed to be the right amount of stuffing mix. I decided to leave out the onions as well as the celery. I left out the sage because the stuffing mix already had some in it. I added salt and pepper, four eggs instead of three, and kept adding chicken broth and cream of chicken soup until it looked right.

It looked about as sloppy as it did when Ginger poured it into the pan. It smelled right. I guessed it couldn't hurt to say a little prayer that it came out edible for everyone, then I poured the soupy concoction into the pan. I slid the pan into the oven, careful not to spill any over the sides.

Every now and then I would look into the living room to see what balloon was passing by or, later, to see if the Detroit Lions were going to pull out an unlikely victory. For the most part, however, I stayed in the kitchen, checking on green beans, peeling potatoes, and putting them on to cook. I made a corn soufflé and a sweet potato casserole. Then I had Luke put the marshmallows on top.

“Stop eating them! And put them closer together,” I commanded.

He popped another marshmallow into his mouth while looking me dead in the eye, and I slugged him on the arm.

“Ow! You're going to be a tough momma. Tough, but fair!”

He turned back to the task at hand, and I wondered if I would ever get to be a momma. If Hunter had lived he would have been ten, going on eleven. I tried to picture an energetic boy jumping on the couch cushions in the living room while watching the parade with his aunt Tiffany and uncle Sam, but the picture wasn't there.

My Hunter would always be a baby to me, a sweet, sweet baby with intense blue eyes. He would always be a newborn who never got a chance to smile or to sit up. Luke slid up behind me and kissed me on the top of the head. “I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean to make you think about what might have been.”

“How do you do it?” I wheeled around on him.

“How do I do what?”

“How do you always know what I'm thinking? What I've been through? Are you psychic?”

“Beulah, you wear your heart on your sleeve. I don't know where you got the idea you were some kind of tough guy, because your emotions are always out there for anyone to read. It's one of the reasons I love you.”

His eyes widened. He hadn't meant to say that, to put himself out there quite yet. My heart was a jackhammer on a particularly stubborn piece of concrete. What could I say?

“Luke Daniels, I have loved you from the moment you walked into The Fountain looking like a khaki fish out of water, even if I did try really hard not to at first.”

“Hmm. Maybe I'm an acquired taste, too.”

He kissed me again just in time for Tiffany to waddle into the kitchen in search of a snack. “Geez, would the two of you get a room? For real.”

 

We sat down at the table, and Luke blessed the food. As we ate, we had to tell at least one thing we were thankful for—a Ginger Belmont house rule.

“I'm thankful I got transferred here to Ellery and that I met all of you,” Luke said with a grin as he looked straight at me.

“I'm thankful I got to quit being a waitress even if I had to get pregnant to get out of it. And I'm really glad I met you, Sam.” Tiffany took out a scoop of corn soufflé and passed him the casserole.

“Your turn,” Ginger said to him.

He cleared his throat and loosened his already unbuttoned collar. “I think I'd like to go last,” he said.

“Fine.” Ginger shrugged. “Beulah, it's your turn.”

I was sampling the dressing because I hadn't expected it to be my turn already. It was divine. “I am thankful for Luke, and for you, and for having Tiffany come into our lives. And I'm thankful the dressing came out right. And for you, too, Sam.”

“Glad to see the dressing rates higher than me,” he muttered. Then he took a bite of the dressing and nodded in my direction. “Okay, the dressing does rate better than me.”

Tiffany slapped him lightly on the arm.

“I'm thankful for so many things,” Ginger said. “I'm thankful for a long life and good friends. I'm thankful the good Lord sent me Beulah, even if I didn't like the way He did it. I'm thankful Tiffany's safe and sound and that we have two strapping young boys to improve the scenery around here. Most of all, I'm thankful to have made it this far, and I'm looking forward to seeing Tiffany's baby.”

“Here, here,” I said as I raised my glass of sweet tea. We all clinked our glasses around the table.

“Sam,” Ginger said, “your turn.”

I frowned. Maybe Sam was a little shy about such things; I knew I was when I first moved in with Ginger. Maybe—

“It's true I'm thankful for all of you,” Sam said. “And I'm so happy I was singing in the Piggly Wiggly that day and that I got up the courage to go to Bible study at the bar and join the choir when Beulah asked me because if I hadn't then I would have never met you.”

Then that tall, lanky boy dropped down to one knee. “Tiffany Davis, will you do me the honor of becoming this poor farmer's wife?”

Too much, too soon?
I bit my tongue. They'd figure it out if it was.

Something bumped under the table, and we all gasped that Tiffany had hit her belly. “Yes, yes, a million times yes!”

She scanned our faces looking for happiness, then our concern over the bump registered. “It was my knee, y'all.”

“Thank goodness,” Ginger muttered, and we all clapped and cheered. Even better, Tiffany finally got her PG-13 kiss.

 

We ate happily until we could do nothing more but lay on the couch, chair, and floor like a group of beached whales. Tiffany held out her hand and watched her modest diamond twinkle while Sam dozed with a protective arm around her shoulders. Ginger snored softly in her recliner, holding her breath before each one in a way we'd all learned to live with. I cheered for the Cowboys, while everyone else napped. At halftime I looked up to see Luke's seat empty.

When I entered the kitchen, there he stood with his sleeves rolled up, rhythmically washing dishes.