The Wedding Gift (17 page)

The thing was, though, if I
were to call up George at work and make him call in Father Moray,
the priest who had married us, then it would be a big deal and
people would find out about it. I did not want more gossip than I
already had after my horrible wedding reception (all that blood).
Why pretty soon, at this rate, people would say I was cursed or
something and feel sorry for me … me, the prettiest girl in Dalton,
a girl who lived in a mansion. I know it’s awful small and petty,
but I hated the idea of being pitied.

I knew that Jessie had some
ghost busting books and stuff, so I decided that I needed to find
out if Robina was an ordinary garden variety ghost - one who
wandered around wringing her hands and not much else - or if she
was an evil human killing ghost; then I would have to bring in the
big guns of the Catholic Church. And since there was only one way
to find out, short of letting Robina kill me first and ask
questions later, I knew I had to talk to Donny Readle.

Anyone reading that
sentence, why they might think that I would have looked for any
excuse on God’s earth to look up Donny, but it just wasn’t so. When
he married Carlene, he hurt me all the way down to my soul. Him not
knowing he had hurt me did not make it any better … in fact it made
it worse. It was like he just left me standing there with all my
love in my hands, and what was I supposed to do with it? Donny
didn’t know I loved him, he didn’t even sense it, and how would
that have been possible if he had cared one tinker’s damn for me?
When Jess told me about how he had carried me to the ambulance at
the reception, my heart lifted straight up into heaven for a minute
until I thought about it and realized that Donny was just being a
good guy like always.

I was Charlie’s baby
sister, and he loved our whole family so, by extension, he loved me
like his own baby sister and that didn’t make me grateful, it just
made me mad, and hurt. Oh yeah, Donny Readle could hurt me, and he
didn’t even have to try hard. All he had to do was go on with his
life without me.

But this was a matter of
life and death (mine) so I had to talk to him and I needed to do it
soon, so I could stop these thoughts in my head.

I knew his schedule for
driving inside out, having memorized it years ago. I knew that he
would be pulling into Dalton tomorrow morning, and that he would
eat breakfast at Scrugg’s Café at about ten a.m., same as he did
every Saturday he was home. I hoped Carlene wouldn’t be there and I
knew I couldn’t take Jess for moral support because Donny was a
real private man. I figured if he hadn’t told his story in all
these years, he wasn’t going to start in front of
Jessie.

I knew, though, that I
could get him to talk because I was a little sister to him, and he
wouldn’t want me to worry about being murdered by the ghost of
Robina if there was no need, and, if there was a need, well, shoot,
I wasn’t going to head down that path again right then.

By the time I had worked
all this out in my head, I was a wrinkled mess from being in the
water so long and, to be strictly honest, I was a little bit
worried about my hair too.

Though I am a natural
blond, I have been keeping it real silver, with a little help, for
a couple years now … my hair having started to get kind of dark
blond around my sixteenth birthday. No one knew about this, not my
mama or Jessie either. Real discreet like, I would pick up a box of
L’Oreal light blond at the Piggly once a month when no one likely
to talk was working the register. So, given my color situation, I
was hoping that I hadn’t just turned my crowning glory light green
from the chlorine.

Normally I would have put
on an ugly old bathing cap in a pool, but I had been just a little
distracted, what with Robina and all, and had forgotten. If my hair
had turned green, then Robina could go on and kill me as Donny
Readle was not going to see me like that before I could fix
it.

Well, when I got a look at
myself, I could see it surely had. It was a real nice bright green;
I looked like a horrible clown. I was standing there in the
downstairs powder room looking at myself and crying. I say
‘downstairs’ because, even though I was embarrassed, I did not want
to be upstairs alone.

Maria heard me crying and
came in and stared at me in shock. “
Oh
Mees Leeann, your pretty hair, it ees green. What you do that
for?
”

Well, if anyone had to know
my secret, I figured Maria was as safe as it got, so I told her.
Maria, she was great, it made her laugh, and that made me laugh,
and then she said she would just run on down to the pharmacy and
pick me up a box of hair color.

I felt that this having a
maid business could really grow on me. I decided to wait outside
for Maria to get back. I wasn’t really scared of Robina showing
back up as Jessie had told me that it took a lot of energy for a
ghost to ‘manifest’ and I figured today’s performance had probably
shot her load, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
Besides, my hair needed to be dry before I could dye it back to the
blond I was born to be.

So I was just sitting
outside minding my own business, pretty much blending in nicely
with the grass around me when I saw to my total horror a big black
Chevy truck with those special mud flaps on the wheels, the kind
that only Donny Readle had.

Chapter
23

Shoot, shit, and every word
that Jessie could think of and, believe me, that’s a
lot!

He wasn’t supposed to be in
town till tomorrow. Donny had never come by just to visit me in all
the years I lived at home and now he was doing it when my hair was
green! How could this be happening to me? I wondered for a second
if I was just imagining him because of how I had been thinking
about him all day, and how I was planning to go see him
tomorrow.

But he was real enough. His
truck had an exhaust leak, and I didn’t think in a girl’s fantasies
she would be choking on exhaust with green hair.

He got out and, oh, he was
so fine … six foot two, and not one wasted inch. His hair was all
gold in the sun (obviously he did not need L’Oreal light blond
help), and he was as tan as a walnut tree. He started ambling
toward me, and I wanted to get up and run into the house for a
towel to put over my head, but I couldn’t; I just had to sit there
and look at him.

Donny had this real
concerned look on his perfect beautiful face when he first got out
of the pickup, but when he got an eyeful of my hair; he just threw
his head back and laughed. Laughing, though, well that just made
his narrow green eyes narrower, and showed off the whitest teeth in
Oklahoma. Oh there ain’t one man on this earth who has anything on
Donny. He should have been mine.

He ambled over to me and
grinning down at me, he said “
Hey, Leeann,
you look real good like this – colorful. I like it on
you
.”

I was busted, so I just
rolled with it. “
Hey yourself, Donny …
Yeah, I needed a change, and me and Jessie had been up to OKC and
saw that play ‘Wicked’ last month, so I thought, what the hell, I’m
going for it
.”

He laughed again and said
how he thought I must have stayed in the pool too long. He told me
that this same thing happened to his aunt Lucy a couple of times.
He said he figured I could fix it but that I didn’t need to do it
on his account because I was still “
too
damn beautiful to look at straight anyways
.”

Hearing his words made me
have trouble catching my breath. Donny had never talked to me like
that before. He had always teased me and called me fat, and spotty,
and such, the way a big brother would. I didn’t know what to say to
him then, so I just looked down at my feet, wishing I had a
pedicure, and asked him if he wanted to come inside for a beer or
some iced tea.

He said no, that he
wouldn’t come inside, but that a beer out here would be real nice
if I didn’t mind. Obviously I did not mind as I would have walked
barefoot to OKC to get him water if he had told me he wanted me to.
So I sauntered on inside, shaking my booty just as feisty as any
girl with green hair should be. I got one for myself too, though I
don’t really like beer, unless it has tomato juice in
it.

When I got back outside he
was laying there, sprawled out on the grass with his eyes closed
like he owned the place. I just stood there looking at him, my
heart hurting for a minute.

He opened up one green eye
and squinted at up me. “
Well hell, Leeann,
you ain’t ever going to make much of a waitress; hand me my beer
before you get it all hot just standing there
.”

I blushed and gave it to
him, setting it down beside him. I said “
Donny, what are you doing here? I don’t mean here - you know
you’re always welcome - I mean in Dalton. Don’t you usually get
back on Saturdays?
”

He grinned real wide when I
said that. “
You know my schedule real
good, huh, Leeann?
”

Shoot, I was too stupid to
live. Jessie was right; I was dumb as a box of hair. I didn’t know
what to say. It had been a real long day, and I don’t know, maybe I
just felt like to hell with it after all these years. So I just
looked straight at his perfect face, into his beautiful eyes, and
said “
Yeah, Donny, I guess I do know your
schedule real good. Why do you think that might
be?
”

He sighed and laid his head
back down. He looked up, but at the sky not me.
“
I think I know, girl
.” He laughed a little. “
You maybe
ain’t as good at hiding your feelings as you thought you were. But
fuck, Leeann, what could I do about it? I’m old, and for a long
time you were like my own baby sister
.”

I started feeling like
maybe all the world was opening up for me. I know I was married and
all, but you go on and hear words like that from the only man you
ever wanted and then you go ahead and judge me for what I did. I
just said real soft to him “
For a long
time, Donny - what about now?
”

In a quick move, fast as a
snake on a mouse, Donny reached out one long muscled arm and pulled
me down on top of him. He didn’t pause. When I was laying sprawled
on him, he just looked at me and said “
Well what do you think?
”

That was good enough for
me. I did it. I went for it. I leaned right down into his face and
stuck my tongue so far inside his mouth I should have choked him,
but he mastered me, oh God yes, he did.

He had me on my back
underneath him and my bikini bottoms down and himself inside me
before I could say “
God, yes, Donny, you
have me anyway you want me,
” as I sure as
hell would have never said anything else to him.

But I didn’t want to talk,
and I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. This was different, so
different than the stupid drunk sex with Billy, and the pretend it
isn’t happening sex with George. This was Donny, the only man I
ever wanted and, hot as my imagination had been, it wasn’t nothing
compared to the real thing.

God, he was big and rock
hard, and he was pumping in and out of me without breaking stride
or breaking even one drop of sweat. I wrapped my legs around his
waist and screamed out my thanks to God and anyone else who was
listening. I imagine I was loud enough to wake the dead. If Maria
had driven up right then I wouldn’t have stopped; hell all of
Dalton could have come and taken a picture for all I cared. He
grinned down at me when I screamed, but he never broke his motions
until I had come again, and then he did, and then, for a long time,
nothing else in the world mattered, and I’ll tell you this right
here, ain’t nothing ever going to matter as much to me as he
does.

Oh shoot, of course I hope
I live to be a real old lady and have me a whole mess of kids and
that they have kids too. And I know I’ll love them, and I’ll keep
on loving my family and Jessie right up until the day I die, but
the way I feel about Donny, well that’s the way a person feels
about just one thing … and that’s what he is to me; it’s what he
always has been … that one thing that makes it possible for you to
believe in other good things; believe in good things and be able to
take all the bad things that come along too. You get someone in
your life who you feel that way about, well you shouldn’t ask for
much more and I won’t. I can hope for other stuff, but I won’t ask
for nothing else long as I got him.

Chapter
24

Afterwards we were laying
there in that sweet grass; Donny had pulled his jeans back up but
kept his chest bare so as I could lay on it and smell him, and
maybe lick him a little too. He lifted his beer to his mouth,
looked at me, and said “
Shoot, Leeann,
that sure as hell wasn’t what I came here for, but I can’t say I’m
sorry about it because I’m not
.”

I felt like I would never
be sorry about anything again as long as I lived, so I just grinned
back at him.

“
Yeah, Donny, you going to
try to tell me that you came here on business or something? Well I
must say, Mr. Readle, I do purely enjoy how you ask a girl
questions. Shoot, is there anything else you wanted to say to me
while we’re on the subject? I’m all ears
.”