Page 22 of Beside the Rolling Waves
Rita snapped her mouth shut. And then she seemed confused. “Didn’t you know?”
“No. The first time I talked to her in years was earlier this week when I went to the farm to see her, because I didn’t have her number and I wanted to get together with her. She stood me up on Wednesday when we were supposed to meet at the Blueberry Beach diner, and I haven’t talked to her since.”
“She stood you up?” Rita’s brows furrowed.
“Yeah. I don’t want to go on about it, but we were supposed to meet, and she didn’t show.”
“Her truck probably wouldn’t start.” Rita seemed to be thoughtful. “Was it the day it was really cold?”
“It was really cold all week this week,” he said, but then after thinking about it, he agreed. “I do think Wednesday was the coldest day.”
“Yeah. Her stupid truck. I’ve told her over and over that she needs to get something newer, something that at least starts, but…she won’t listen. She keeps insisting that she needs it for the horses and that trucks are too expensive for her to buy anything newer.”
Becky was having trouble with money? He just assumed that she was fine. That Matt and Davis were taking care of her if there were any problems, but come to think about it, she was in Raspberry Ridge, and they both said they hadn’t talked to her in a while.
“She’s struggling?” he asked, wanting to jump up out of his chair and go help her immediately, which was ridiculous. First of all, she had stood him up earlier in the week, and second of all, he was going to see her the next day, when they met at the hospital for Rita’s surgery.
“I don’t think so. Although, I guess she must be a little bit, if she can’t afford to buy a new truck. But you know how she gets attached to things,” Rita said. “And when I asked her about the twins, she didn’t say a word about not being able to afford them. You know she would have if she didn’t think she could do a very good job. The very best.”
“You’re right. It just must be that she got attached to that stupid old thing and can’t get rid of it when she knows she needs to.”
Nothing else made sense.
“But if you don’t mind, I called an Uber, and it’s waiting for me now,” Rita said as she looked back down at her phone.
“Sure.” He had already taken care of the bill, and he stood, grabbing her coat from the back of her chair and helping her into it. It was the nastiest coat in the room, but it was on the body containing the most beautiful spirit there. Rita was a true beauty, inside and out, and he felt blessed to know her. She’d taken a life that wasn’t the best and had cultivated an attitude that made people forget that she was going through something that was harder than most people ever dreamed of. And she did it with a smile and a laugh and questions about him and what he was going through, and she didn’t focus on herself or complain the entire time. It was admirable.
He walked her out, helped her in the Uber, and watched as she drove away.
His mind went back to Becky, and he realized that Rita and he had never talked about this person that she was with. Was it serious? He supposed in five years it could have become that way. But he just couldn’t believe that Becky would do that to him. She was so loyal and dependable. But…Matt and Davis had warned him. They had said that there was a downside to her loyalty, and that was the grudge that she carried. He’d seen it himself, but he just didn’t ever think her love for him could flip into anything else.
He must have been wrong. This was going to complicate things. If Becky was with someone, it would complicate things as much as him having a child.
He couldn’t even blame her for being with someone, especially if he came with a child. How could he give her a hard time, when he obviously wasn’t faithful?
What a mess. He wanted to say that he couldn’t believe what a mess his life had become, but that wouldn’t have been true.This actually was very reminiscent of five years ago, when even then, he couldn’t believe what a mess his life had become.
Tomorrow might be interesting. Of course, that was only if Becky was talking to him. In the meantime, he was going to go home, and he was going to pray as hard as he could for Rita and the babies and for Becky most of all. That there was some kind of spark, some kind of feeling left for him in her heart, and that whoever she was with wasn’t someone she had feelings for. That it was just…someone she was putting in time with. Except, that wasn’t Becky. She did everything with her whole heart and soul.
When he looked at it, it seemed hopeless, but he knew that God had worked huge miracles in his life, and God could work this out too. He just had to have faith that it would happen.
Twelve
“Rita!” Becky said, opening the door and enveloping her sister in a huge hug.
Her sister’s heat was turned down too, although not as far as the heat in her little apartment above the barn was. Now, with the horses gone—they had left earlier that afternoon—she didn’t need the water to not freeze. So she turned it completely off and shut the heat off as well.
If she had to go back to her apartment, she could turn the water back on, and it should be fine.
“Becky. I’m so glad you’re here,” Rita said, walking in and closing the door behind her. Becky was surprised to see her all dressed up.
“Well. You look like you’ve been at the opera or something,” Becky said, standing back and looking at Rita in her long dress coat and beautiful ball gown-type dress.
“I picked this up at the Goodwill store. It was five dollars. It’s got a hole in it right here,” Rita said, shoving her finger through a hole in the side of the coat. “The shoes were a buck, and the dress was seven.”
“So you were at the opera,” Becky said, wondering where in the world Rita was. She was much less interested in where Rita got the outfit than that she actually was wearing it somewhere.
“No. I went out to eat with Rodney.” She paused. “It was a fancy restaurant.”
