Cupid’s Confederates

“Who the hell is Mildred Riley?”

“Damned if I know.” Zach rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Grady slid into the chair across from him and raised both legs to prop his feet on an empty chair. “You’re not having a little trouble, having two women in the same house, are you?” he asked wryly, and peered out the window. “Where’s the truck?”

“Hiding behind your barn.”

Grady nodded, as if that were a perfectly logical answer. After a minute or two of silence, he rose and got himself a beer, popping the top noisily as he settled back down.

“She’s driving me nuts,” Zach said finally. “Plastic flowers all over the place. Salmon. Every time I try to start a conversation with Bett, she jumps in. You ever worked up a sweat in a starched shirt?”

Grady smothered a grin. “Can’t say I have.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“I walk in and she’s got a drink waiting for me, ice-cold. She chases me down when I’m out in the field with homemade cookies and lemonade. She’s so damned nice.”

Grady took a long slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the side of his wrist. “You told Bett how you feel?”

“Of course I haven’t told Bett how I feel,” Zach said irritably. “Bett’s got enough on her plate. A few months ago, Elizabeth couldn’t get through a day without crying; Bett’s turned that around so fast it makes my head spin to think of it. I’m proud of her.” Zach turned the cold can in his hand. “I’ve backed her up as much as I can, being out of the house so much. Tried hard to let her think none of it’s bothering me.”

Grady fixed Zach with an even stare. “Seems to me Bett just might be even more upset than you are.”

Zach shook his head. “Just the opposite. In fact, for the first time since I can remember, they’re actually getting along together.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Grady shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t get any smile when I drove by the last time. The times I’ve seen your wife without a smile on her face I can count on one hand. As in lately. I think you’ve got just one too many women in that house.”

“Well, there isn’t any question that Bett wants her mother there.” Zach sighed.

“Actually,” Grady said slowly, “I don’t much care what she wants. I’m telling you I expect a smile when I ride by your place, and lately I’m just not getting it. Women,” he added, “are strange.”

Zach gave him a wry look.

“Excepting your Bett. She’s not like most. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as taking all the trouble of trying to understand any of them, but it does seem to me…” Grady stood up, hitching up his trousers. “There’s nothing more fragile than a peach. You have to handle them real careful or they bruise. And sometimes a bruise starts on the inside.”

Zach stood up, sighed and frowned at the still unopened beer can in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. Setting it down on the table, he stalked toward the door.

“Want another?” Grady asked blandly. “Seeing as how you’ve taken up drinking in the middle of the day?”

With a faint chuckle, Zach pushed open the screen door and went back out to work.

Chapter 7

Bett viewed the tiny hole in the truck’s radiator with a scowl. Radiator holes were high on the list of last- things-she-needed on that particular afternoon. How had the branch managed to poke all the way up there, anyway?”

“Brittany, what on earth are you doing?”

“Just take it easy, Mom.” Bett swung back into the driver’s seat and leaned over to open the glove compartment. “I promised you we’d have sweet corn for dinner, and we will.” Sorting through a melange of screwdrivers and maps, she finally found an unopened package of gum. Popping three sticks in her mouth, she started chewing vigorously. The gum, naturally, was stale.

Elizabeth regarded the wad in her daughter’s cheek with a scandalized expression, and then sighed. An “I have come to the end of my rope and I guess you have, too” sort of sigh. Elizabeth stared out the window, dressed for the corn-picking outing in purple slacks, a ruffled pink blouse and the ubiquitous pink tennis shoes.

After their earlier excursion into town, Bett had changed into a disreputable pair of jeans with a hole in the thigh, old sneaks and a red crinkly cotton blouse that was disgracefully faded, and one of her favorites.

She continued to chew.

This morning, her mother, trying to help, had gotten rid of the patch of weeds growing at the corner of the house. Bett’s prize herbs, those weeds. Later in the morning, Elizabeth had announced her intention of going into town to buy a carpet for the green room. A white carpet was what she had in mind. White carpeting and Bett’s housekeeping formed a combination that was never going to work, nor did Bett want her mother buying anything like that for her. Moreover, a white carpet and children didn’t seem to be a good blend-not the way Bett had in mind to raise children.

The two women had come home from shopping four hours later. Elizabeth was frazzled and visibly upset with her daughter; Bett was keeping a very, very tight rein on her patience.

Finally, the sugar was all out of the gum. Bett popped the wad on her finger, leaped down from the truck again and leaned over the radiator. The thing was cool, or cool enough. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house. She removed the rag that had temporarily slowed the leak and jammed the gum in its place. The leak stopped. Elizabeth was peering at her from the open window.

“I don’t believe you just did that.”

“Zach’ll do the permanent fix when we get home, but this will get us there,” Bett promised.

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“Zach will be mad as a hornet,” Bett said glumly.

“He should be. Women in my day and age wouldn’t have anything to do with that sort of mechanics.”

Bett sighed, wiping her hand on the rag as she returned to the truck. “Zach will be mad because I found the only straggly branch in the entire orchard to run over and get stuck in there.”

Elizabeth looked startled. “He shouldn’t be mad about that. It was an accident.”

“But this pickup is accident-prone. I think it’s losing its will to live,” Bett said dryly. “Nasty thing. It knows we need it to last one more year before we can replace it.”

“There’d hardly be a worry about replacing it if Zach were working in a law office right now-and you could be at home, not working at all. Having children. I keep waiting for both of you to regain your senses.”

She just wasn’t going to let up, Bett thought wearily. Her mother, to be honest, rarely got into such a relentless mood. Bett knew well that Elizabeth would be perfectly happy right now if a roll of white carpet were sitting up in the spare bedroom, ready to be laid down. It wasn’t just her reaction to Bett trying to put her foot down tactfully but firmly. It was coming home from shopping empty-handed. To Elizabeth there was no greater sacrilege.

Bett turned down the dirt road that separated the pond from the garden, absently noting young Billy Oaks’s bike shoved up against a tree. There was no sign of the boy, but she knew the pond was his favorite haunt in the summertime and after school. It made her a little nervous. Billy could swim well and had his parents’ permission to come here, but she still felt uneasy at the thought of the child alone near the pond.

“I will never understand why you put the garden so far from the house,” Elizabeth said as she got out of the truck and straightened the ruffles on her blouse.

“Irrigation, Mom. It was closer to water here. We could just pipe it in from the pond.”

“I suppose so.” Both of them reached into the back for the bushel baskets Bett had brought, and suddenly, for the first time all day, they were smiling at each other. “There is nothing better,” Elizabeth admitted, “than the thought of fresh sweet corn dripping with butter.”