The Liar

5

Somebody brought out her grandfather’s banjo, and in short order her uncle Grady’s wife, Rosalee, had a fiddle, her brother Clay his guitar. They wanted bluegrass, the music of the mountains. Those high bright notes, the close harmony of strings plucked and sawed stirred memories in her, lit a light inside her. A kind of birth.

Here were her beginnings, in the music and the mountains, in the green and the gatherings.

Family, friends, neighbors swarmed the picnic tables. She watched her cousins dancing on the lawn, her mother in her yellow heels swinging little Jackson to the rhythm. And there, her father with Callie in his lap having what appeared to be a very serious conversation while they ate potato salad and barbecued ribs.

Her grandmother’s laugh carried over the music as Viola sat cross-legged on the lawn, sipping champagne and grinning up at Gilly.

Her mother’s younger sister Wynonna kept a hawk eye on her youngest girl, who seemed joined at the hip with a skinny guy in torn-up jeans her aunt referred to as “that Hallister boy.”

As her cousin Lark was sixteen and as curvy as a mountain road, Shelby figured the hawk eye was warranted.

People kept pushing food on her, so she ate because she felt her mother’s own hawk eye on her. She drank champagne even though it made her think of Richard.

And she sang because her grandfather asked her to. “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and “Salty Dog,” “Lonesome Road Blues” and “Lost John.” The lyrics came back to her like yesterday, and the simple fun of it, singing out in the yard, letting the music rise toward the big sunstruck blue bowl of the sky, soothed her battered heart.

She’d let this go, she thought, let all of it go for a man she’d never really known and a life she knew had been false from the first to the last.

Wasn’t it a miracle that what was real and true was here waiting for her?

When she could get away, she slipped into the house, wandered upstairs. Her heart just flooded when she stepped into Callie’s room.

Petal-pink walls and fussy white curtains framing the window that looked out on the backyard, and the mountains beyond it. All the pretty white furniture, and the bed with its pink-and-white canopy all set up. They’d even arranged some of the dolls and toys and books on the white bookcase, tucked some of the stuffed animals on the bed.

Maybe the room was half the size of the one in the big house, but it looked just exactly right. She moved through the Jack and Jill bathroom—sparkling, as her mother would have it no other way—and into what had been her brother’s room. What was her room now.

Her old iron bed where she’d slept and dreamed through childhood faced the window, just as it had in the room down the hall. As she’d liked it best so she could wake to the mountains. A simple white duvet covered it now, but Ada Mae being Ada Mae had set pillows in lace-edged shams against the iron headboard, and more in shades of green and blue mounded with them. A throw—blues and greens again—crocheted by her great-grandmother, lay folded at the foot.

The walls were a warm smoky green, like the mountains. Two watercolors—her cousin Jesslyn’s work—graced them. Soft dreamy colors, a spring meadow, a greening forest at dawn. A vase of white tulips—her favorite—sat on her old dresser, along with the picture in its silver frame of her holding Callie at eight weeks.

They’d brought her suitcases up. She hadn’t asked—hadn’t had to. The boxes, well, they were probably already stacked in the garage waiting for her to figure out what to do with the things she’d felt obliged to keep from a life that no longer seemed her own.

Overcome, she sat on the side of the bed. She could hear the music, the voices through the window. That’s how she felt, just a step apart, behind the glass, sitting in a room of her childhood, wondering what to do with what she’d carried with her. All she had to do was open the window and she’d be a part instead of apart.

But . . .

Right now, today, everyone said welcome home, and left all the rest unsaid. But the questions murmuring under the welcome would come. Part of what she carried with her were answers and still more questions.

How much should she tell, and how should she tell it?

What good would it do to tell anyone that her husband had been a liar, and a cheat—and she feared he might’ve been worse. She feared down deep in her bones he’d been a swindler and a thief. And yet whatever he’d been—even if it turned out to be worse—he was still the father of her child.

Dead, he couldn’t defend or explain any of it.

And sitting here brooding about it wasn’t solving a thing. She was wasting that welcome, that sunstruck day, the rising music. So she’d go down again, she’d have some cake—though she already felt a little queasy. Even as she ordered herself to get up, go down, she heard footsteps coming down the hall.

She got to her feet, put an easy smile on her face.

Forrest, her brother, the only one who hadn’t been there to welcome her, stepped into the doorway.

He didn’t have Clay’s height, skimmed just shy of six feet, and with a more compact build. A brawler’s build, their granny claimed (with some pride), and he’d done his share. He had his daddy’s dark hair, but his eyes, like hers, were bold and blue. They held hers now. Coolly, she thought, and full of the questions no one asked.

Yet.

“Hey.” She tried to boost up her smile. “Mama said you had to work today.” As a deputy—her brother the cop—a job that seemed to suit him like his skin.

“That’s right.”

He had sharp cheekbones, like their father, and his mother’s eyes. And right now he sported a faint purple bruise on his jaw.

“Been fighting?”

He looked blank for a moment, then flicked his fingers over his jaw. “In the line. Arlo Kattery—you’d remember him—got a little . . . rambunctious last night down at Shady’s Bar. They’re looking for you outside. I figured you’d be up here.”

“Back a few steps from where I started.”

He leaned on the jamb, doing his cool study of her face. “Looks like.”

“Damn it, Forrest. Damn it.” No one in the family could twist her up, wring her out and smooth her down again like Forrest. “When are you going to stop being mad at me? It’s been four years. Almost five. You can’t stay mad at me forever.”

“I’m not mad at you. Was, but I’m more into the annoyed stage now.”

“When are you going to stop being annoyed with me?”

“Can’t say.”

“You want me to say I was wrong, that I made a terrible mistake, running off with Richard like I did?”

He seemed to consider it. “That’d be a start.”

“Well, I can’t. I can’t say that because—” She pointed to the picture on the dresser. “That makes Callie a mistake, and she’s not. She’s a gift and a glory, and the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You ran off with an asshole, Shelby.”

Every muscle in her body went hot and tight. “I didn’t think he was an asshole at the time or I wouldn’t have run off with him. What makes you so righteous, Deputy Pomeroy?”

“Not righteous, just right. It’s an annoyance to me that my sister took off with an asshole, and I’ve barely seen her or the niece who looks just like her in years.”

“I came when I could. I brought Callie when I could. I did the best I knew how. You want me to say Richard was an asshole? There I can oblige you, as it turns out he was. I had the bad judgment to marry an asshole. Is that better?”

“Some.” He kept his gaze level on hers. “Did he ever hit you?”

“No. God, no.” Stunned, she lifted her hands. “He never touched me that way. I swear.”

“You didn’t come back for funerals, for births, for weddings. Clay’s, you made Clay’s, but barely. How’d he keep you away?”

“It’s complicated, Forrest.”

“Simplify it.”

“He said no.” Temper began to simmer and burn inside her. “Is that simple enough?”

He stirred himself to lift his shoulders, let them fall. “You didn’t always take no for an answer so easy.”

“If you think it was easy, you’re wrong.”

“I need to know why you looked so tired, so thin, so beaten when you came home for what seemed like ten minutes at Christmas.”

“Maybe because I’d come to realize I’d married an asshole, and one who didn’t even like me very much.”

Temper hammered against guilt with guilt slapping against fatigue.

“Because I’d come to realize before I found myself a widow and my child without a father that I didn’t love him, not even a little. And didn’t like him much, either.”

Tears clogged her throat, threatening to burst through the dam she’d so laboriously built to hold them back.

“But you didn’t come home?”

“No, I didn’t come home. Maybe I married an asshole because I was an asshole myself. Maybe I couldn’t figure out how to pull myself and Callie out of the muddy mess I’d made. Can you leave it at that for now? Can that be enough for now? If I have to talk about all the rest of it now, I think I’ll break into pieces.”

He walked over, sat beside her. “Maybe I’ll move annoyed down to mildly irked.”

Tears swam and spilled; she couldn’t help it. “Mildly irked’s progress.” She turned, pressed her face to the side of his shoulder. “I missed you so much. Missed you like an arm or a leg or half my heart.”

“I know.” He draped an arm around her. “I missed you the same. It’s why it’s taken close to five years to get down to mildly irked. I got questions.”

“You always have questions.”

“Like why you drove down from Philadelphia in a minivan that’s older than Callie, and with a couple of suitcases and a bunch of packing boxes and what looks like a big-ass flat-screen TV.”

“That’s for Daddy.”

“Huh. Show-off. I got more questions yet, but I’ll wait on them. I’m hungry and I want a beer—I want a couple of beers. And if I don’t get you down there shortly, Mama’s bound to come looking, then she’ll skin my ass for making you cry.”

“I need some time to settle myself before the questions start. I need to breathe for a while.”

“This is a good place for it. Come on, let’s get down there.”

“Okay.” She got up with him. “I’m going to be mildly irked with you for being mildly irked with me.”

“That’s fair.”

“You can work some of that off getting Clay to help you bring in that TV, and then help figure out where it needs to go.”

“It needs to go in my apartment, but I’ll just come over here and watch it, and eat all Daddy’s food.”

“That’s fair, too,” she decided.

“I’m working on fair.” He kept an arm draped around her shoulders. “You know Emma Kate’s back.”

“What? She is? But I thought she was up in Baltimore.”

“She was up until about six months ago. I guess more like seven now. Her daddy had that accident last year, fell off Clyde Barrow’s roof, busted himself up pretty good.”

“I know about that. I thought he was doing okay.”

“Well, she came back to take care of him—you know how her mama is.”

“Helpless as a baby duck with no feet.”

“That’s the truth. She stayed a couple months. He was in and out of the hospital, in physical therapy, and her being a nurse, she could help more than most. The guy she’s hooked up with, he came down off and on. Nice guy. Shortening it up, the time off and budget cuts cost her her job at the Baltimore hospital—or made it hard for her to keep on. She and her guy, they moved on down as she got an offer to work at the clinic in the Ridge.”

“Daddy.”

“Yeah. He says she’s a damn good nurse. Matt—that’s her guy—he moved on down with her, started a business with his partner. Griff’s out of Baltimore, too. Construction-type business. They’re The Fix-It Guys.”

“I saw a truck with that name on it at Emma Kate’s house.”

“Matt and Griff are doing a new kitchen for Miz Bitsy. What I hear is she changes her mind every five minutes on what she wants, so it’s taking a while. Emma Kate and Matt got the apartment across from mine, and Griff’s got the old Tripplehorn place out on Five Possum Road.”

“That place was falling down when we were ten,” she remembered.

And she’d loved it.

“He’s fixing it up. Likely take him the rest of his life, but he’s got it going.”

“You’re stock full of news, Forrest.”

“That’s only because you haven’t been around to hear it. You should go see Emma Kate.”

“I wish she’d come today.”

“She’s working, and she’s likely still in the annoyed stage where you’re concerned. You might have to work some to bring that down.”

“It’s hard knowing how many people I hurt.”

“Then don’t do it again. If you decide to leave, say goodbye proper.”

She looked out the back door, saw Clay running around with his son on his shoulders, and her grandmother pushing Callie on the swings.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ve already been gone too long.”

• • •

SHE SLEPT IN HER childhood bed on a new mattress, and though the night was cool, kept the window open a crack so the night air could waft in. She woke to a quiet rain, snuggled right in with a smile on her face as the sound of it pattered so peacefully. She’d get up in just a minute, she told herself, check on Callie, fix her baby some breakfast.

She’d deal with the unpacking, and all the other chores that needed doing. In just five more minutes.

When she woke again, the rain had softened to a misty drizzle, a drip and plop from leaves and gutters. Around it she heard the birds singing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken to the song of birds.

Rolling over, she glanced at the pretty glass clock on the bedside table, then shot up like an arrow from a bow.

She scrambled up, dashed through the bath and into Callie’s room to find the bed empty.

What kind of a mother was she, sleeping till after nine o’clock and not having a clue where her daughter might be? Barefoot, a little panicked, she raced downstairs. A fire burned in the living room hearth. Callie sat on the floor, the old mutt Clancy curled beside her.

Stuffed animals sat in a line while Callie busily poked and prodded at the pink elephant lying trunk up on a kitchen towel.

“He’s very sick, Gamma.”

“Oh, I can see that, baby.” Curled in a chair, sipping coffee, Ada Mae smiled. “He’s looking peaked, no doubt about it. It’s lucky you’re such a good doctor.”

“He’s going to be all better soon. But he has to be brave ’cause he needs a shot.” Gently, she rolled him over, and used one of her fat crayons as a syringe. “Now we kiss it, kiss the hurt. Kisses make hurts feel better.”

“Kisses make everything feel better. Morning, Shelby.”

“I’m so sorry, Mama. I overslept.”

“It’s barely nine on a rainy morning,” Ada Mae began as Callie leaped up, ran to Shelby.

“We’re playing hospital, and all my animals are sick. I’m going to make them better. Come help, Mama.”

“Your mama needs her breakfast.”

“Oh, I’m fine, I’ll just—”

“Breakfast is important, isn’t it, Callie?”

“Uh-huh. Gamma made me breakfast after Granddaddy had to go help the sick person. I had slambled eggs and toast with jelly.”

“Scrambled eggs.” She lifted Callie for a kiss. “And you’re all dressed so nice. What time did she get up?”

“About seven. And don’t start. Why would you deny me a couple hours with my only granddaughter? Have we had fun, Callie Rose?”

“Lots and lots and lots of fun. I gave Clancy a dog cookie. He sat like a good boy, and he shook my hand, too. And Granddaddy gave me a piggyback ride all the way downstairs because I was quiet and didn’t wake you up. He had to go help the sick people. So I’m helping the sick animals.”

“Why don’t you bring your animals in the kitchen while I fix your mama some breakfast? She’s going to eat it all up like you did.”

“I don’t want you to have to feel you need to— Yes’m,” she finished, warned by the narrowed stare.

“You can have a Coke since you never did learn to be civilized and drink coffee. Callie, you can bring all the sick animals and fix them up right over there. You’re going to have eggs with ham and cheese—get some protein in there. I’ve got the whole day. I took off work until middle of the week. I’ve got a connection with the boss.”

“How will Granny run the place without you?”

“Oh, she’ll manage. Get your Coke, sit down there while I get this going. She’s fine, Shelby,” Ada Mae added in an undertone. “She’s busy and she’s happy. And your daddy and I enjoyed her company this morning. Now, I don’t have to ask how you slept. You look better already.”

“I slept ten hours.”

“New mattress.” Ada Mae chopped some ham. “And the rain. Makes you want to sleep all day. Haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

“Not especially.”

“Or eating much.”

“It’s been hard to work up an appetite.”

“A little pampering might make that easier.” She glanced over at Callie. “I’m going to tell you you’ve done a good job with that girl. Of course, some of it’s just disposition, but she’s well-mannered without being all prim about it—something that just makes my back itch in a child—and she’s happy.”

“She wakes up every day raring to go.”

“She wanted you first thing, but all I had to do was take her to your bedroom door, show her you were there sleeping, and she was fine. That’s a good thing, Shelby. A child who clings usually says more about the mother clinging. And I expect it’s been hard not to cling, on both sides these past months, when it’s just been the two of you.”

“I never saw any kids her age around the neighborhood up North. But then it was so awful cold, and it seemed it was snowing every five minutes. Still, I was going to look for a good preschool, just so she could socialize, but . . . I just didn’t after—you know. I didn’t know if it was the right thing for her after. And you and Daddy came for a while, and Granny came, and that was good. It helped us both having y’all there.”

“I hope it did. We all worried we’d left you alone too soon.” Ada Mae poured whisked eggs in the skillet over the ham chunks, grated cheese into the mix. “I don’t know if I could’ve left if you hadn’t said you’d come home as soon as you could.”

“I don’t know how I’d’ve got through if I hadn’t known I could come home. Mama, that’s enough eggs for two people.”

“You’ll eat what you want, then one bite more.” Over her shoulder she sent Shelby a narrow look. “They’re wrong when they say you can’t be too thin, because you are. We’re going to plump your mama up, Callie, and put roses in her cheeks.”

“Why?”

“’Cause she needs it.” Ada Mae plated the eggs, added a slice of toast, passed it over the counter. “And one bite more.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now.” Ada Mae busied herself tidying the already tidy kitchen. “You’ve got a hot stone massage booked at two o’clock at Mama’s.”

“I do?”

“Could do with a facial, too, but I’ll do that myself later in the week. A woman drives clear down from Philadelphia hauling a toddler’s earned a good massage. And Callie and I have plans this afternoon.”

“You do?”

“I’m taking her over to Suzannah’s. You remember my good friend Suzannah Lee? She couldn’t come yesterday as she had her sister’s girl’s wedding shower. That’s Scarlet? Scarlet Lee? You went to school with Scarlet.”

“Sure. Scarlet’s engaged?”

“Got a May wedding planned, to a nice boy she met in college. They’re getting married here as Scarlet’s people are here, then moving clear up to Boston, where he’s got a job in advertising. Scarlet got her teaching degree so that’s what she’ll be doing.”

“A teacher?” Shelby had to laugh. “As I remember, Scarlet hated school like it was spinach soaked in arsenic.”

“Goes to show. What it goes to show, I can’t say, but it goes to show. Anyway, I’m taking Callie over to Suzannah’s, show her off some, and Suzannah’s getting her granddaughter, Chelsea—she’s three, like Callie—that’s her son Robbie’s daughter who married Tracey Lynn Bowran. I don’t think you’ve met Tracey. Her people are from Pigeon Forge. She’s a nice girl, a potter. That’s one of her bowls there, with the lemons in it.”

Shelby glanced at the rich brown bowl with its bold blue and green swirls. “It’s beautiful.”

“She’s got herself a kiln, works out of her house. They carry some of her pieces in town, at The Artful Ridge, and up at the hotel gift shop, too. We’ll be giving you and Tracey a day off as Suzannah and Chelsea and Callie and me, we’re having us a playdate.”

“She’ll love that.”

“So will I. I’m going to be greedy with her for a while, so I expect you to indulge me. I’m taking her over about eleven. They’ll get acquainted, then we’ll have lunch. If the weather lets up, we’ll take them out awhile.”

“Callie usually naps about an hour in the afternoon.”

“Then they’ll have a nap. You can stop fretting about it, as I can see you are.” With her chin jutted up, Ada Mae fisted a hand on her hip. “I managed to raise you and two boys besides. I think I can handle a toddler.”

“I know you can. It’s just . . . she hasn’t been out of my sight in . . . I can’t think how long. And fretting because she will be says more about me.”

“You were always a bright girl. I wouldn’t have any other kind,” Ada Mae added as she came around the island, laid her hands on Shelby’s shoulders. “Sweet Jesus, girl, you’re nothing but knots. I booked you with Vonnie—you remember Vonnie, she’s a cousin on your daddy’s side.”

Vaguely, Shelby thought, as cousins were legion in her family.

“Vonnie Gates,” Ada Mae continued. “Your daddy’s cousin Jed’s middle girl. She’ll work these out of you.”

Shelby reached her hand back, laid it over her mother’s. “You don’t have to feel you need to take care of me.”

“Is that what you’d say to your daughter, under these circumstances?”

Shelby sighed. “No. I’d tell her it was my job and my wish to take care.”

“Well then. One bite more,” Ada Mae murmured, kissing the top of Shelby’s head.

Shelby ate one bite more.

“After today, you’ll clear your own dishes, but not today. What do you want to do this morning?”

“Oh. I should unpack.”

“I didn’t say should,” Ada Mae reminded her as she cleared Shelby’s plate. “I said want.”

“It’s both. I’ll feel more settled once I get things put away.”

“Callie and I’ll help you with that. When’s the rest of your stuff coming?”

“I’ve got everything. I brought everything.”

“Everything.” Ada Mae stopped and stared. “Honey, they only took up a couple of suitcases, well, and Callie’s things since you had those boxes marked. Clay Junior didn’t stack more than a half dozen boxes, if that, in the garage.”

“What was I going to do with all those things, Mama? Even when I find a house—and I have to find a job first—I couldn’t use all those things. Did you know there are companies that come in, look things over and buy furniture all at once, right out of the house?”

She said it conversationally, lightly, as she rose, bent to pick up Callie, who was dancing, holding her arms up. “The realtor helped me find them. She was such a help to me with that sort of thing. I should send her flowers when the sale’s all done, shouldn’t I?”

The question didn’t distract her mother as Shelby had hoped.

“All that furniture? Why, Shelby, there were seven bedrooms in that house, and that big office, and I don’t even know all the other rooms. It’s as close to a mansion as I’ve ever been in without paying for the tour. And so new.” Shock and worry clear on her face, Ada Mae rubbed the heel of her hand between her breasts. “Oh, I hope you got a good price for all that.”

“I worked with a very reputable company, I promise. They’ve been in business over thirty years. I did a lot of research online on that kind of thing. I swear, I could get a job as a researcher with all I’ve done with it, if I didn’t think I’d want to shoot myself before the first week was done.

“We’re going to unpack, Callie. You gonna help before you and Gamma go?”

“I’ll help! I like helping Mama.”

“Best helper ever. Let’s get started. Mama, do you know if Clay took up the box that had Callie’s little hangers? I can’t use regular ones for her things yet.”

“He took up everything that had her name on it. I’ll just go out and look, be sure.”

“Thanks, Mama. Oh, I’ll go out, change the car seat over to your car.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.” The edge in Ada Mae’s voice told Shelby her mother was still reeling from the idea of selling all that furniture.

She didn’t know the half of it yet.

“Your daddy and I got the same one you use,” Ada Mae added. “It’s all ready for her.”

“Mama.” Shelby stepped over and with her free arm pulled her mother into a hug. “Callie, you have the best Gamma in the whole world.”

“My Gamma.”

And that distracted Ada Mae—enough, Callie thought as she knew her mother would chew over the idea of selling all the furniture in a near-to-ten-thousand-square-foot house in one fell swoop.

• • •

IT WAS ODD not having Callie underfoot or playing in her eye line, but she’d been so excited about the playdate. And it was true enough she’d be done with the unpacking and sorting in half the time without Callie “helping.”

By noon, with everything put away, the beds made, she wondered what in the hell to do with herself.

She glanced at her laptop with some dislike, but made herself boot it up. No notices from creditors—so that was good news. Nothing yet on the sale of the house, but she wasn’t expecting it. She did read a short e-mail from the consignment shop, letting her know they’d sold two of Richard’s leather jackets, his cashmere topcoat and two of her cocktail dresses.

She replied with a thank-you, telling them yes, it was fine to wait until the first of the month to send a check to the address she’d left with them.

With unpacking and business done, she showered, dressed. Still too early to go in for the massage—and wouldn’t that be heaven? So she’d take a walk. She could use a good walk.

The thin drizzle persisted, a steady trickle of wet out of a sky soft and gray as smoke. But she liked walking in the rain. She pulled on a hoodie, short, soft leather boots, and reached for her big bag. Her Callie bag. And remembering she’d given it to her mother to take, pushed her wallet into the back pocket of her jeans.

She felt so light, so unencumbered, she didn’t know what to do with her hands, so slipped them into the pockets of the hoodie, found the little pack of wet wipes she’d stuffed in there the last time she’d worn it—when she hadn’t been so unencumbered.

She drew in a deep breath of the cool, damp air when she stepped outside. Just stood breathing in with her fingers around Callie’s wet wipes and the empty afternoon stretching ahead of her.

Everything was greening and sprouting and blooming with the misty rain turning the green, the color, more vibrant. All those scents—wet grass, wet earth, the tender sweetness of hyacinths dancing purple among the yellow of daffodils—drifted to her as she walked the long, familiar road.

She could walk by the Lee house, just to check. It was getting on to nap time, and Callie wasn’t a hundred percent on the potty training in her sleep. About ninety-eight, but she’d be so embarrassed if she had an accident because her grandmother didn’t think to take her in to pee before her nap.

She could just walk by, just a quick peek to . . .

“Stop it. Just stop. She’s fine. Everything’s just fine.”

She’d listen to her mother’s advice, take the day to do what she wanted. A walk in the rain, taking her time, time enough to study the mountains in their smoky blanket, to appreciate the spring flowers and the quiet.

She glanced over at Emma Kate’s house, noted the handyman truck in the drive, and the bright red car behind it. She wondered how she’d approach Emma Kate now that they were both back in the Ridge.

And her friend got out of the car.

She wore a hoodie, too, in a bold candy-pink Callie would have loved. She’d changed her hair, Shelby thought as Emma Kate pulled two market bags out of the backseat. She’d hacked off the long nut-brown braid Shelby remembered, wore it all cute and shaggy, with bangs.

She started to call out, then could think of nothing to say and felt stupid and awkward.

As she swung the door closed, Emma Kate spotted her. Her eyebrows lifted under the warm brown fringe of bangs as she hauled one strap onto her shoulder.

“Well, look who’s standing out in the rain like a wet cat.”

“It’s just a drizzle.”

“It’s still wet.” She stood hipshot a moment, bags hanging from her shoulders, her wide mouth unsmiling, her deep brown eyes critical even through the rain. “I heard you were back.”

“I heard the same about you. I hope your daddy’s doing okay.”

“He is.”

Feeling more stupid just standing there, Shelby walked up the short driveway. “I like your hair.”

“Granny talked me into it. I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’s your little girl?”

“With Mama. They have a playdate with Miz Suzannah’s granddaughter.”

“Chelsea. She’s a pistol. You got a destination, Shelby, or are you just out wandering in the wet?”

“I’m going into Viola’s, but I have all this time on my hands with Callie off with Mama, so . . . I’m wandering first.”

“Then you’d better come inside, say hello to my mother or I won’t hear the end of it. I’ve got to take her these groceries anyway.”

“That’d be nice. Here, let me take one.”

“I’ve got it.”

Rebuffed, as she was meant to feel, Shelby hunched her shoulders as they walked to the door. “I . . . Forrest said you’re with someone, and living in town.”

“I am. Matt Baker. We’ve been together about two years now. He’s at Viola’s right now, fixing one of the sinks.”

“I thought this was his truck.”

“They have two. This is his partner’s. Griffin Lott. Mama’s redoing the kitchen, and driving us all insane.”

Emma Kate opened the door, glanced back at Shelby. “You’re the talk of Rendezvous Ridge, you know. That pretty Pomeroy girl who married rich, was widowed young, come back home again. What will she do?” Emma Kate smirked a little. “What will she do?” she said again, and walked inside with her market bags.