CBN.com – Everything
in Mibby Garrett ’s life is falling apart—she needs
a manual to understand her son, a rainless summer has left her
garden-design business dry, and her black Lab is more reliable
than any men in her life. Her loneliness is magnified when her
free-spirited mother and acerbic sister show up on her doorstep.
This “second-chance” romance is fun and inspiring
and sprinkled with colorful characters. Read an excerpt below.
Chapter 1
July 9
Hot, hot, and more hot to come!
This is day 5 of temperatures over 100° and nothing but
100s are forecasted to come.
Leaf scorch everywhere. How long, O Lord?
I stepped on something soft and squishy, and it wasn't a sandy
beach.
A voice came over the public address speakers. "Folks, we'd
like y'all to mosey on over to the barn. The livestock auction
starts in five minutes."
"Wait here," Greg ordered as he closed the corral gate
behind him.
I scraped what I could from the bottom of my Birkenstock onto
a fence rail while Greg joined the owner of a brown horse in the
middle of the corral. The men exchanged a volley of horse-speak,
and the owner coaxed the horse into a trot at the end of a rope.
The horse's coat gleamed with sweat by the time Greg raised a
hand to stop the show. He shook his head and spat near the owner's
boot.
Strike two. No spitting on the first date.
Strike one had been telling me to wait in the sun. I wiped the
sweat from my face with the hem of my T-shirt, creating a reddish
smear on the hem. I'd probably smudged my face with dirt, too.
Oh well. My brain screamed, Get out of the sun, silly!
I looked for a place to sit down.
My prize was a sliver of shade that fell across a hay bale. I
cleaned the treads of my shoes, and then I twisted my hair into
a knot and stuck a pencil through it to hold it off my neck. The
water in my bottle was too warm to satisfy my thirst, so I rinsed
the dust out of my teeth instead. If I sit very still, maybe
the heat won't roost on my shoulders.
From the center of the corral, the pristine whiteness of Greg's
shirt blistered my eyeballs. Translucent with sweat, the shirt
was snapped shut at the collar and wrists. If that was cowboy
fashion, they definitely needed to revise the dress code of the
West. A glint of sunlight flashed off his silver belt buckle as
another owner brought his horse into the corral for Greg's scrutiny.
I inwardly cheered for the horse, a leggy red with muscled thighs,
a kindred spirit.
Greg's face remained expressionless as he inspected each hoof.
I turned away from the scene when he shook his head at the horse's
owner. One comet of spittle per day satisfied my limit, thank
you very much.
After the auction, we ate complimentary burgers at the Western
Colorado Emu Society barbecue. The umbrellas above the plastic
tables proved useless against the low rays of the afternoon sun.
It was too hot to eat or move or even think thoughts faster than
a trot. The first bite of the burger sat in my stomach like a
stone.
Greg approached his emu burger with the same stoicism he'd expressed
while buying horses, so I eavesdropped on the conversations of
other diners, all spoken with an economy of words to avoid exertion.
A man with a red gingham shirt said, "I stole that horse."
His wife replied, "We'll see about that" and took a
long drink of iced tea.
At another table, a man bragged to his dining partners, "Greenhorns.
California. Didn't know enough to look a horse in the eye. Dang
fools." A chorus of grunts agreed with him. A girl of about
ten stuffed the last of her burger into her mouth and asked for
permission to go see the new mare. She ran off before her mother
had a chance to answer. More than anything, I wanted to follow
her.
Greg crushed a bundle of French fries into his mouth and gestured
toward my plate. "Want 'nother?" he asked, which marked
the beginning and end of our supper conversation. He walked off
to get another free burger.
Sitting on the edge of a stockyard collecting dust in my teeth
and watching a man I barely knew sweat and spit, I realized that
dating at thirty-six would be a lot like playing the lottery,
something I'd always considered as reckless as eating potato salad
left out in the sun. I'd come to dating needy, knowing my chances
of striking it rich were, at best, improbable. But there had to
be a winner. Why not me? I couldn't win if I didn't play. The
same desperation that drove people to buy fistfuls of lottery
tickets fortified my optimism. There were men out there, good
men; I just knew it. That's why I'd accepted a blind date arranged
by a client with her sister's grandson's hunting buddy.
We leaned side-by-side against the rails of the corral watching
Greg's new horses nuzzle a bale of hay. I wore a hat I'd folded
from the center page of the auction guide. Around us, people loaded
horses, cattle, and emus into trailers and drove off trailing
plumes of dust. I couldn't think of one good reason why we were
still standing there, unless Greg was working up the courage to
ask me out again. I prayed he wouldn't. Really, how could he ever
hope to top the romance of a livestock auction?
He wiped his brow with his sleeve and fidgeted with his hat.
Uh-oh.
He cleared his throat. "I'm looking for a woman with good
teeth, a strong back, and one who don't complain much."
I fit the profile, all right, but stifled the urge to volunteer.
"It sounds like you'd be happy married to one of your horses."
I smiled broadly so he would know I was kidding--mostly.
His eyes finally opened wide enough to show his eye color, chestnut
brown. Big surprise there. He rubbed his chin, worked his hat
into place, and spat in the dirt.
Strike three.
"Let's go, then," he said.
Red dirt swirled around the cab of his truck and needled my skin
as we drove the fifteen miles back to Orchard City. The air-conditioner
control pointed to off. I felt some pride that, even though I'd
been edged out by a horse, I didn't complain. I inched toward
the open window to catch the hot breeze.
The sky was a faded chambray shirt, dull and lifeless, and for
all its many washings, still tinted pink, as if it had been washed
with red socks when it was new. Smoke from fires throughout the
West and a dust storm as far away as Mongolia flattened the Book
Cliffs to gradient shades of gray and collected at the base of
the Grand Mesa to obscure the eleven-thousand-foot mountain completely.
Only one cotton-ball cloud teetered on the Colorado Plateau to
the southwest. In the single-digit humidity, the inconsequential
cloud was destined to evaporate before one drop of moisture touched
the earth. The bank's digital temperature sign read 105 degrees.
That seemed understated.
Greg's truck rattled to a stop in front of my house. He leaned
over and pushed my door open. "Much obliged."
* * *
Andrea's eyes glistened with tears as Louise pulled a strand
of hair through the frosting cap with a crochet hook. "She
sharpens that thing," Andrea said as I walked into my kitchen.
"Look, my ear's bleeding."
Andrea is my stepdaughter. She came to Orchard City the summer
after Scott's death, looking for the father she had never met.
For whatever reasons, my deceased husband had never told me about
his first wife and his baby girl. Fortunately--and I mean that
with all my heart--Andrea found my son, Ky, and me. God set her
in our family as surely as He sends any child into a family by
birth, and with at least as much labor. She had returned to San
Francisco and her first year of teaching at the end of the summer.
Now she was back with us to recuperate from the popping, patching,
and pilfering of her great expectations.
Louise is my neighbor and friend, but mostly a self-appointed
ministering angel. When my husband, Scott, was killed in a cycling
accident, she lowered herself into the dank well of grief I called
home to hold my head above the water. She is the bravest woman
I know.
A wannabe hairdresser, Louise worked on Andrea's hair within
a circle of electric fans and welcomed me with a private smile.
"You look hotter than a sinner at church on the Fourth of
July. Pour yourself some iced tea, sugar. We can't wait to hear
about your date with Clint Eastwood. Didn't y'all just love Clint
in those lasagna westerns?"
Andrea and I shared a knowing glance. "Spaghetti
westerns, Louise," Andrea said.
"Really?"
According to Louise, no task was too insignificant to dress accordingly.
Today, she wore cropped black leggings and a royal-blue smock
with her name stitched in white above the pocket. To complete
the thematic ensemble, a sterling silver earring in the shape
of a comb swung from one ear and a pair of scissors swayed from
the other. The trim fit of the smock emphasized Louise's new figure.
Her red wig lay discarded on the counter.
I petted her downy head on the way to the refrigerator. "Just
like a baby."
"Manley says I look like Sinead O'Connor."
Manley is Louise's husband. And I agreed with him. Her features
had sharpened with weight loss, first from the chemotherapy and
then from an anti-cancer diet, but it would take more than a bald
head to make anyone mistake Louise for a nettled rock star.
"Are you sure he didn't say the Marquis de Sade?" Andrea
asked.
Louise rested her hands on Andrea's shoulders. "Do y'all
want me to stop?"
Andrea bit her lip.
"That's what I thought." Louise poked through the plastic
cap and dug for another strand. Andrea swallowed hard but didn't
say anything.
A collection of silver loops, no two alike, edged Andrea's ears,
and a tiny garnet nestled in the fold of her nostril. Below her
delicate collarbone, a tattoo of blue stars floated in her milky
complexion. Just recently, she'd added a pointed stud in the fleshy
fold between her bottom lip and chin.
She fingered the stud. "At least they numbed my chin first."
Louise pushed Andrea's chin to her chest and worked at pulling
the hair of her nape through the cap. I told them about the auction
and the supper and the quiet ride home. Then I told them about
Greg's dream wife.
"Better not get tied to his hitching post," Louise
drawled, not even trying to cover her delight in her own cleverness.
"Why, he's tighter than bark on a tree."
It had been this way since Louise returned from a trip home to
Louisiana. After a week of talking to her aunties in the weighted
air of the bayou, her speech flowed like an alluvial stream of
honey, slow and sweet and littered with colloquialisms and mixed
metaphors. She punched the crochet hook through Andrea's cap.
"Ouch."
Louise inspected the crochet hook. "The tip's dull again."
She sharpened the point on a stone and tested it against her finger.
"That should do it."
"I can't believe that Neanderthal had a list of requirements,"
Andrea said. "I'm surprised he didn't ask for a dowry of
cattle--or emus. Louise!"
"Sorry, sugar." Louise rested her hands on Andrea's
head as she spoke. "Having a checklist isn't such a bad idea.
Seems to me a thinking woman would know what kind of man she wants
in her life--and the life of her son."
"No way. Where's the romance in that?" countered Andrea.
In the shadowed places where my dreams huddled, shaken and jumbled,
I had a checklist, but it needed revision. I added thoughtful
and good conversationalist to the bottom and crossed
off strong, silent type, which had lingered on the list
unchallenged from my teens. And you couldn't overestimate the
value of a working air-conditioner, especially in what was proving
to be one of western Colorado's hottest summers on record.
Andrea winced in pain again, so I excused myself.
She beseeched me with her eyes. "You're coming right back,
aren't you? I want someone here in case Louise nicks an artery."
I assured her I'd be back as soon as I changed into shorts.
Louise called after me, "You'd best check on Ky. He skipped
dinner to play a computer game."
The evaporative cooler clattered valiantly at the top of the
stairs, but it was losing the battle against the heat. With each
stair, the temperature climbed another degree. By the time I stopped
at Ky's door, the heat encased me in its woolly grasp. He sat
at his computer; the monitor's glow lit the room. I knocked on
the doorframe with no response and entered.
"It's sweltering in here." I lifted the blinds and
opened the window. A shaft of sunlight illuminated the chaos of
a fourteen-year-old's life.
"Hey!"
"Son, Louise says you didn't eat."
Ky looked at me and I stifled a gasp. He could have been his
father sitting there. When had his face narrowed and his nose
lengthened and his blond hair dimmed to a muddy brown, just like
Scott's? His ears--they were huge--and beads of sweat clung to
the coarse hair of his lip and sideburns. When had facial hair
appeared?
"You won't believe what she cooked for dinner. She called
it tofu aspic, said it tasted like meatloaf. I thought I was gonna
spew." He turned his attention back to the monitor.
I promised Ky some decadent macaroni and cheese when Louise went
home.
"Thanks, Mom."
* * *
I crawled into Scott's closet and closed the door behind me.
In the dim light, the world's dizzy dance slowed. Staring up at
Scott's golf shirts, a revelation surprised me. Love would be
different, if it showed up at all, the second time around. Greg
may have understood that better than I. Second love was more practical,
and a draft horse shouldn't be excluded so easily. That was depressing.
In the twenty months since Scott's death, I'd tiptoed through
all of the anniversaries and holidays and birthdays, most of them
twice. Anniversaries were now would-have-been anniversaries. Last
August would have been our sixteenth anniversary, but no one had
asked. When I'd turned the calendar to April, there was no need
to hunt for the perfect birthday card with an innuendo only Scott
would've understood. There was no one to notice when I took three
ibuprofen tablets for a headache, or when I sighed over the credit
card bill, or when I slammed a car door harder than necessary.
And when Ky had bulleted a throw to home plate to make the last
out, Scott hadn't been there to squeeze my hand in a way that
meant We sure have a great kid.
Just because Scott was dead didn't mean he was absolutely gone.
He still showed up whenever I presumed his opinion about a news
story or a neighbor's house paint or the way an intersection had
been reconfigured. Sometimes his presence was so real, I'd have
to say good-bye to him all over again, but that was happening
less and less, and I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Part of
me wanted to hold him closer; part of me wanted to shoo him away;
part of me wanted to scold him for being so careless with his
life. And the part of me that insisted on thinking about all of
this stuff was driving me crazy.
It wasn't like I didn't believe I would see Scott again. I did.
I believed in heaven. Scott was there now, and someday, I would
be too. For now, though, I only got to see the hurting side of
death. That was faith, Louise kept telling me, to see one thing
before my eyes but to live with a certainty that there was something
better beyond my seeing. And someday, she promised me, I would
bubble with joy just thinking about our eventual reunion. Until
then, my greatest sorrow bisected my greatest hope.
A knock on the closet door startled me.
"Are you in there?" Louise knocked again. "Mibby,
are you in there? Open up, now."
I obeyed because experience had taught me, if nothing else, Louise
knew the meaning of perseverance.
"Honey lamb, you've got to stop doing this."
I couldn't argue with that, not in the heat and not after a date
with Hopalong Cassidy.
Louise knelt before me. "Let me help you empty out this
closet. You know, don't you, that Scott is clothed in righteousness,
walking on golden streets with Jesus, the only light he'll ever
need? If Scott plays golf in heaven--and why anyone would think
hitting a teeny tiny ball a zillion times is fun--" Our eyes
met, and whatever she saw stopped her cold.
"Oh, sweet pea, I'm so sorry. All I'm saying is Scott has
a generous clothing allowance in his Father's house. He wouldn't
mind one bit if you got rid of his golfing togs or his skateboard."
The skateboard was Ky's, off limits until school started again
because he'd forgotten to wear his helmet. "Maybe after Ky
goes back to school this fall."
"When you're right, you're right, sugar. Fall is a perfect
time for fresh starts and new beginnings. First, we'll clean out
Scott's closet, make sure these things get to someone deservin'
and all, and once that's done, we'll purge your closet of denim
and hippie sandals, which means we'll have to wrap you in a towel
to go shopping."
The timer on her apron buzzed. "Phooey. I better go get
Li'l Miss Tender Head neutralized. You'd think someone with that
much metal in her head would be a lot tougher." Louise stopped
to look at Scott's golf clubs in the corner of the room. "For
heaven's sake, Mibby, there are cobwebs all over these golf clubs."
"I was going to--"
Louise covered her mouth with her hand. "I honestly don't
know where my heart is today. I'm so sorry. Don't you go worrying
about cleaning out Scott's closet. When the time is right, you'll
know what to do." She closed the closet door on me and whispered
through the crack. "If you keep the clubs so close to your
bed, you might want to check the bag for spiders. I heard a story
about a gal in Beauregard Parish who died when a nest of black
widow spiders hatched in her hair."
Finally, some information I could use.
Her steps receded down the hallway and then returned. "Listen,
Mibby. Manley's at that plumber's convention in Orlando all week.
Do y'all mind if I ask Andrea to stay with me? The house is so
quiet."
"No problem."
* * *
I woke up craving shish kebabs, but the hankering faded once
I removed Scott's golf shoe from under my back. No light shone
under the closet door. A happy thumping by the door told me Blink,
my faithful black Labrador, was posted outside.
"I'm coming out," I warned him. His broad tongue lapped
the sweat off my cheek. He deserved a belly rub for his kindness.
I found Ky in front of his computer. "Hungry?"
"I ate." He laughed at the monitor and typed frantically.
"What's up?"
"It's Salvador. His sister ran the car through the garage.
Oh man, this is good."
The computer pinged. Over Ky's shoulder I watched another installment
of Salvador's story appear--sans punctuation--on the screen, something
about his dad grounding Theresa for the rest of her life. Ky leaned
forward with his hands poised to respond.
"I'm going downstairs for some ice cream. Want some?"
I asked.
Ky typed a response to Salvador and waited.
"Ky? Did you hear me?"
"What? Uh, yeah. I said no thanks."
I knew better than to argue with him. It was one of those guy
things. He honestly believed thinking something meant he'd said
it, especially when talking to his mother. The Living and
Thriving with Teens book I was reading said I had two choices
in situations like this. I could be flattered that my male teen
thought I was telepathic or be angry over his rudeness. The latter
seemed a more genuine response, but sometimes my genuine responses
stirred a hornet's nest.
More pralines and caramel for me.
In the kitchen, Ky's dinner dishes filled the sink and an empty
box of cheesy macaroni mix lay by the stove with an empty carton
of milk. I scooped some ice cream into a bowl and then attacked
Ky's mess. On the way to the sink, I stepped in powdered cheese
sauce, but the thought of confronting him about the mess, especially
after a long, hot day with my fellow beasts of burden, seemed
overwhelming. Besides, I was the one who had broken my promise
to fix him dinner. I filled the sink with soapy water and massaged
the growing headache over my eyes.
A mound of bubbles rose in the sink, but my arms grew leaden.
Soon, the tears flowed. Since when had dishes in the sink demoralized
me? Or for that matter, the dried rings of iced tea on the counter?
Or a bill coming the day after I'd paid the others? Or the dust
on an end table? Or a recall notice from a car manufacturer?
I was God's right-hand woman on Crawford Avenue. He kept the
planets and stars in their places, and I did the rest, or so it
seemed. Everything that happened in the Garrett household happened
because of me or by me. And sadly, it wasn't enough. No breaks,
no bouncing of ideas, and absolutely no divvying of chores. I
would have ended up back in the closet for sure if I'd allowed
myself to think about the dwindling bank account.
I'm so tired, Lord.
Blink lapped at the ice cream that had melted into praline soup.
I shook my finger at him. "And you'd better put that bowl
in the sink when you're finished, young man."
Right.
Excerpted from Always Green by Patti Hill, Copyright © 2005,
published by Bethany
House Publishers. Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication
prohibited.
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