Page 82 of The Party Line

“Did you say yes?” I asked.

“I did not!” Her voice went up a couple of octaves. “Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.”

“Isn’t thatfoolme once?”

“Same difference. Besides, why would he want to date me now? He made it clear I was beneath him when I was a waitress. Now I clean houses and mow lawns—which reminds me, I’m doing yard work tomorrow to work off some of this anger,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You did the right thing,” I assured her and pushed back my chair.

She held up both palms. “Hey, you can’t leave. We haven’t talked about that scalding-hot scene I disturbed. Sorry if it was the prelude to y’all leaving your clothing strung from the foyer to your bedroom.”

“I’m not leaving, and there wasn’t any bras or shirts on the staircase,” I said as I dipped up another helping of peach crisp and poured myself a second glass of milk.

“You must’ve worked up quite an appetite,” she said.

I sat back down at the table. “Yes, I did, but I don’t kiss and tell the details.”

Gina Lou finished off the last of her milk. “You really don’t have to. You are flushed and your lips are bee-stung, and sucking on a green persimmon couldn’t wipe that smile off your face. Have you ever felt this way about anyone else?”

I shook my head.

“Then you’ve found your gold mine. I thought Derrick was mine, but I found out he was just fool’s gold. Pretty and shiny, and worth nothing.”

So, Connor was a gold mine, was he? I couldn’t think of a single comeback for that one because I agreed with Gina Lou wholeheartedly.

Gina Lou found time to put a chicken in the slow cooker before she went outside to work on the lawn on Monday. I spent the morning in San Antonio with the lawyer who had always handled Aunt Gracie’s affairs. Sending both Gina Lou and her sister to college in the fall would be no financial burden with all the money that had been left to me, and if I wanted to build a place to make my strawberry wine, that was totally feasible. That afternoon, I wandered through a shopping mall and wound up buying new red underwear from Victoria’s Secret.

Tuesday evening, Gina asked for the car to go take her mother for groceries. Jasper’s pill bottles were almost empty. Only three more days to go, and he would be free of taking medicine. I took his supper—meat loaf and mashed potatoes—out to him and sat on the porch with him while he scarfed down every bite.

“Man could get real spoiled to having food brought out to him three times a day, but after I get done with all them pills, you don’t have to do this, Lila,” he said.

“Even after Gina Lou leaves us, I have to eat, and it’s much easier to make food for two than it is for one,” I told him. “Or I might just hire someone to cook for us.”

“So, she’s leaving us in the fall?” he asked.

“I talked to the lawyer yesterday. I have control of the estate, but I wanted his advice,” I said with a sigh. “And he thought it was putting the money to good use.”

“That’s good,” Jasper said. “Now, what about Connor? I hear his truck leaving about nine o’clock every night. Does that mean you aren’t having breakfast together?”

“Not yet.”

Jasper patted his lap, and Sassy jumped up onto it. “You kids today have it better in some ways than me and Gracie did when we were your age. Folks might get frisky out behind the barn, but they did not ever move in together.”

“You just want to see me settled and having grandbabies for you to rock,” I teased.

“That’s right, and Sassy wants a baby to protect,” Jasper said. “But I want to talk about something else. Now that a couple of days have gone by since I told you what I did, how are you feeling?”

“Strangely enough, more at peace than ever before. The house seems to have a new energy to it, like it’s alive after being in a coma for years and years.”

“Granny told me that Clarence and Betty were the golden couple of this area from the time they were in high school until whatever happened that fall when Rita moved to Poteet. She never knew what caused them to change, but she figured it was because Betty and Rita had words. They were both pretty high strung in those days. I let her think that even though I knew better.”

“How long after that did Betty leave?”

Jasper frowned as if he couldn’t quite remember. “It was kind of a gradual thing. She had friends that she’d known in school. One in particular that she went up to Oklahoma City to spend time with.”

“Didn’t she hate to be away from Gracie?”

“Granny was still alive in those days. Gracie was a teenager, so she didn’t need much looking after,” Jasper said. “Clarence tried to get back on her good side, but Gracie wasn’t having none of that. I reckon he was still seeing Rita on the sly even then. He loved Betty, but Rita was like a magnet for him.”

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