Page 13 of The Party Line

“Gossip travels faster than the speed of light,” she chuckled. “Gloria Sue and her sister, Tresia, asked me whether I was going to keep working at the café.”

“Hey, Sarah!” A stout woman with salt-and-pepper hair got out of the car that had pulled in beside us. “Are you buying Madge out? I hear her café is up for sale.”

“Not today, Melanie,” Mama said.

While she visited with the lady, I loaded the groceries into the back seat and returned the carts to the front of the store. When I got back, she was behind the wheel and Chris Stapleton was singing “Millionaire.”

“I always wanted that kind of relationship,” she said with a long sigh.

The lyrics talked about having a woman whose love made him feel like a millionaire. Neither of my more serious relationships had ever made me feel like that. I wasn’t even sure if such a thing existed. “If I can’t have one like in the song, then I’ll just be an old maid like Aunt Gracie,” I declared.

Mama backed out of the parking spot, waved at a couple of folks who were walking toward the front of the store, and then pulled out onto the road heading toward town. “I want a strong, healthy, and happy relationship for you. I want grandbabies—and even more than that, I want you to have the joy of being a mother. But never settle for just anything, Lila. Be sure to listen to your heart. It won’t ever lie to you.”

The sound of her voice breaking when she spoke brought tears to my eyes. I’d been super emotional since Aunt Gracie’s funeral, and crying snuck up on me at the strangest times. Like when I heard her voice in my head or when I started to get a coffee mug from the cabinet and saw her favorite one, with a long crack cutting through the words ILOVE MY AUNT. There was never any doubt in my mind that she loved me. But Mama’s words about listening to my heart was the same advice she had given me the last time we visited.

“Why didn’t you ever get married?” I asked.

“I had some trust issues, of course, and I was afraid to bring a stepfather into our family. I’d seen what chaos that created in some of the regular customers at the café.” She sighed. “I didn’t want you to have to deal with someone new in our family.”

“Not all of them were sorry excuses for fathers, though, right?”

“No, they weren’t, but still ...” She paused. “Some were good to the children they got with the marriage license, but it wasn’t the norm. I’m changing the subject because something is making you all emotional. What did Richie Brewer have to say? He asked me out when he first came back to this area, but I turned him down.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There’s no spark, and without that, there’s no passion. I had sparks with Billy, even if he wasn’t a responsible man.” She raised one shoulder in half a shrug.

I thought of the chemistry between Connor and me. Could there be responsibility and heat at the same time?

“Besides, Richie is dating Melanie, the woman that spoke to me back there,” Mama was saying when I tuned back in to what she was saying. “I’ve decided that I don’t want to buy the café. Finding dependable people is tough.”

“Are you thinking about working for Annie, then?”

“I told her that I was weighing my options.” Mama frowned. “That I didn’t really want the responsibility of being an owner and doing all that paperwork, but I wasn’t ready to have a full-time job. She said she would be glad to let me work a few days a week.”

“Did Richie tell you that he wants to buy my house and strawberry field because he wants something to work at part-time?” I asked. “Why is everyone interested in a house that’s over a hundred years old and is possibly haunted, if you are right? Do they think there’s gold hidden in them there walls and under the strawberry fields?”

Mama giggled. “Maybe they want to turn Aunt Gracie’s place into a bed-and-breakfast and bill it as haunted, or maybe they think there’s more oil to be discovered on the acreage that Gracie’s father kept when he sold the company. Or maybe Richie really just wants to have a hobby farm.”

My mind was still trying to figure out why anyone would want to buy property in Ditto when my mother turned left off Highway 16 and onto West Ditto Road. She hadn’t even gotten up to speed yet when she braked so hard that a bag of groceries flew off the back seat and landed upside down in the floor of her truck.

“What the ...?” I squealed and then saw the puppy sitting on the yellow line in the middle of the road.

“People who dump animals out on the road should be hung up by their toenails,” Mama fumed.

“Even cats?” I opened the door and got out of the truck.

“Even cats. Just because I’m allergic to them ... What are you doing?” she yelled out the open window.

“Rescuing a puppy and getting a free pet. We’re going back to town to see the vet and get some food.” I picked up the dog, carried it to the vehicle, and settled into the passenger seat with the pup in my lap.

“You’re lucky I didn’t buy any frozen food, what with this detour,” Mama said. “That thing is going to grow up to be as big as a bear.”

“Be a good guard dog, then—and the backyard is fenced, so he’ll be safe until he gets used to the place. Look at his blue eyes. They are even lighter than mine and yours. I don’t know much about dogs, but a friend of mine in Austin had a white dog with blue eyes just like this one, and he said it was part husky. If this feller grows up to be as big as my friend’s dog was, he might scare away any of those weird feelings you get in the house.”

Mama cut her eyes around at me as she pulled into the vet’s parking lot. “Ain’t dang likely.”

Chapter Four

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