Anna Louise chuckled at Richard’s indignant expression, fascinated by the obviously fond byplay between him and Tucker. “Isn’t that a little like leaving the foxes guarding the henhouse?” she asked.
Tucker’s eyes twinkled behind his rimless glasses. “Sure was, but I paid them in food they’d have eaten anyway. At least I wound up with free help.” He winked at her. “Now you two enjoy yourselves. Good to see you back, Richard. Hope you’ll be around for a while. I know Orville will be mighty glad to see you.”
When he’d gone back behind the counter, Anna Louise bought some time by tasting her pecan coffee cake and taking a few swallows of coffee.
“So you and Orville Patterson grew up together,” she said finally, after it became obvious that Richard had no intention of getting the conversational ball rolling.
He nodded. “You know him?”
Anna Louise considered her reply carefully. She and Tucker Patterson’s son were not on the best of terms. In fact, he was leading the crusade to get her thrown out of her church, had been from the day she’d been voted in. His father, thankfully, didn’t seem to share his bias against women preachers. In fact, Tucker obstinately sat in the front pew of her church every single Sunday just because he knew it gave his stiff-necked son hives. Unfortunately, just in the last two months Orville had gained support from two new pastors in the region.
“He’s the pastor over in Jasper Junction,” she said finally. “We meet on occasion.”
Richard shook his head in wonder. “Old Orville is a preacher?”
She grinned at his amazement. “Not what you expected of him?”
“Actually, I thought he’d go straight from juvenile hall to prison.”
Fascinated, she leaned forward. “Exactly what mischief did you and Orville used to get into?”
“By today’s standards it wouldn’t even warrant a slap on the wrist, but back then we were regarded as troublesome,” he admitted.
“Come on, tell,” she encouraged. “What did you do?”
“Why the fascination with our childhood pranks?”
Anna Louise wasn’t prepared to admit that her motive wasn’t entirely pure. She figured one of these days she could probably use all the ammunition she could get to fight the narrow-minded man who’d sworn to see her thrown out of the Kiley church or die trying. “Let’s just say I always like to know the character of the people I’m dealing with.”
He shot her a puzzled look. “Are you talking about me now or Orville?”
“Both,” she said candidly. “Though I assure you the reasons are very different.”
He leaned forward intently, a sudden glimmer of pure mischief crossing his face. That look reminded Anna Louise of Maisey and made her like him all the more. In a way, she suddenly felt as if she knew him.
“Do tell,” he said.
She shook her head. “You first,” she insisted.
“Okay, then,” he agreed, but he took his time about getting on with it. He stirred another teaspoon of sugar into his already sweetened coffee and took a long sip, before leveling a serious look at her. “Keep in mind, though, that Orville was always the ringleader. I was merely an innocent he led astray.”
Though his tone was sober, she caught the amusement lurking in his eyes. “Right,” she said dryly. “Talk.”
“Well, now, let’s see.” He drummed his fingers on the table as if he was considering which tale to tell first. The one he chose brought a smile to his lips. “I suppose the height of our glory as Kiley’s bad boys was the time we stole Mabel Hartley’s girdle from the clothesline and paraded it around town like a flag.”
“That’s not so bad,” Anna Louise said, trying—and failing—to hold back a chuckle. She doubted, however, that Mabel had the sense of humor needed to excuse the act.
“You don’t understand,” he said, sounding offended that she hadn’t given the misdeed enough credit. “Mabel was chagrined. She was convinced that everyone in town thought her fine figure was purely natural.”
Anna Louise practically choked on her coffee. “Excuse me, but she weighs nearly two hundred pounds now. What did she weigh back then?”
“At least that,” Richard confirmed. “It was a heck of a girdle. I’d say that sucker could have tucked in the sides of a freighter.”
Anna Louise laughed out loud at the image, but what made her even happier was the expression of pure mischief on Richard’s face. She was right about the laughter. It transformed him. The hard angles of his face softened. His eyes lit up. For an instant there was no trace of the hard, bitter man who’d seen too much of death and destruction around the world.
“What else?” she prodded, just to keep the mood alive. “Nobody goes to jail for stealing a girdle and embarrassing one of the town’s matrons.”
“They do if her husband is the sheriff, which he was back then.”
“Oh, my.”
“Orville and I spent two whole hours in a jail cell until Maisey and Tucker came storming through the door to rescue us. Actually I credit Tucker with that. I think Maisey was inclined to leave us there. She was very sympathetic to poor Mabel.” He shook his head, an expression of wonder crossing his face. “I can’t recall the last time I thought about that.”
“You’ve had other things on your mind the past few years.”
“That’s part of it, I suppose.”
“Only part?”
He shrugged. “The good memories of Kiley were few and far between after that summer. It wasn’t all that difficult to forget they’d happened at all.”
Anna Louise was taken aback by the renewed bitterness in his voice and by its apparent cause. “What happened to make you hate this place so much?”
His gaze lifted to meet hers. The spark had gone out of his eyes, leaving them dulled with pain again.
“Small town, small people. Let’s just leave it at that,” he said in his typically cryptic way. He picked up
