“He doesn’t come to weddings,” Linda, the young woman who owned the café, said softly as she stepped closer to Barbara’s side. “Besides, Charley’s son is already in love with someone else. We need to find Barbara a man who’s going to be hers exclusively. That’s the only way it can really work.”
Barbara was surprised to smell jasmine perfume on Linda. In the five months she had known the café owner, the young woman had seemed to go out of her way to avoid perfume and skirts and anything that would hint that she was an attractive woman. Usually, she just wore a big white chef’s apron over her blue jeans and T-shirt.
Linda had spoken of some unrequited love in her life one morning when she and Barbara had sat at a table in the café and shared a pot of tea. Barbara wondered if Linda was thinking of that love now, whoever he was. If she was, it had brought a wistful, fragile look to her eyes.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not—” Barbara tried again. She looked at the faces around her. She liked all of these people. She didn’t want to disappoint them. She just wished they could have asked her for something she could give. “Of course, I appreciate it. But you don’t need to—”
“Don’t you worry none about finding a man who will be yours altogether. My nephew will be faithful,” Charley interrupted staunchly. He’d found his second wind, Barbara thought in dismay. “He may be old, but he’s a fine man. Committed.”
“Well, I’m committed, too, if that’s all you need,” Jacob replied.
“Should be committed is more like it, you old coot,” Charley said. “No one here is talking about you.”
Barbara saw the vein grow more pronounced on Charley’s neck.
“No one needs to be committed,” Barbara said as she held up her hands in surrender. A petal or two fell off the bouquet as she lifted it. She made sure she smiled when she talked. She supposed she should be touched that people were worried about finding her a new husband. “It’s all been a mistake. I didn’t mean to catch the bouquet; it was just reflexes. The thing was coming at me and I just grabbed it so it wouldn’t hit me. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not looking for a husband.”
She didn’t add that now that she’d had a moment to think about it, she wished she’d had enough sense to duck when she’d first seen the bridal bouquet heading her way. Failing that, she should have let it hit her square on. She wasn’t sure if she’d live long enough for the story of how she’d caught Lizette’s bouquet to fade from the minds of everyone around here.
That was because every story about her lasted longer than it should. That was what had finally made Barbara realize something was wrong.
Barbara had been okay with all of the interest at first. She’d moved around enough to know how it was when a new person moved into a small town. The heightened-interest stage came first, but usually it didn’t last long, and once it was over, someone would ask the newcomer to serve coffee at a PTA meeting or head up a fund-raiser for the school, and that was an official sign that the person was no longer an outsider but a member of the community.
Barbara was prepared for this cycle. She wasn’t sure how many times the person needed to pour coffee before they really belonged to the community, but she figured it was probably somewhere around a thousand cups of coffee poured at various functions.
It was the after-coffee place that Barbara wanted to reach—the place where she was a comfortable part of everything just as these people standing around her now were part of it all.
She’d begun to wonder if she’d ever reach that place.
There was a moment of silence as the conversation stopped swirling around Barbara. There was still noise elsewhere in the community center, but the circle around Barbara had grown quiet.
“I suppose we can’t blame you for not looking for another husband—you probably still have feelings for the one you have,” Charley finally said quietly.
“Of course she has feelings,” Linda agreed and then sighed. “Sometimes that’s just the way of it. No matter what you do, the feelings stay with you.”
“They say even geese mate for life,” Jacob added with a grunt. “Doesn’t matter what kind of a bird they end up with, they stay hooked to that one. Reckon it’s the same with her and him.”
Barbara shook her head. Finally, they were at the heart of why the people of Dry Creek were so fascinated with her. If it had only been she and her children who had moved to town, the others wouldn’t have been interested for so long. No, the interest was mostly because of him.
Her ex-husband was sitting in the jail in Billings awaiting trial for robbing several gas stations. It was obvious that the people of Dry Creek were watching to see what happened with her and Neal before they welcomed her into the fold and asked her to do something as simple as pour coffee for them at some function. Barbara wasn’t sure what people expected to learn about her by waiting, but she had a sinking feeling that at least some of them were wondering if she was going to play Bonnie to her ex-husband’s Clyde.
Barbara didn’t know how to explain to everyone that Neal no longer held any part of her heart or her life. He didn’t have the faithfulness of a tomcat, let alone a goose. She wouldn’t follow him anywhere…and certainly not into a life of crime. If she had learned anything from Neal, it was that crime ruined lives. She’d never be Bonnie to anyone’s Clyde.
She hesitated long enough that a whisper came from somewhere behind her. Barbara knew she wasn’t supposed to hear it.
“Poor thing. She’s so brave,” the woman’s voice said, low and filled with pity. “And him sitting there in jail—he’s not worth it.”
“Hush, now,” another woman hissed. “He must be worth something if she married him.”
Barbara knew she wasn’t the only one who heard the whispers because there was a sudden chorus of throat clearings and foot shuffles. She hoped no one expected her to answer the whispers. Barbara wasn’t upset that people wondered about her and her ex-husband—she just didn’t know what to say. She wanted these people to truly welcome her into their community, and she doubted anything she said about Neal would make that happen. If they didn’t trust her to be an honest citizen, they wouldn’t trust her any more because she said she would be one.
From the first day Barbara had driven into Dry Creek, she had wanted to belong here. She’d been frantic with worry that day because she was trying to locate her second cousin, Judd Bowman, so she could beg him to take care of her children while she drove to Denver to check out an abused woman’s shelter that might take them. Bobby was six at the time, Amanda was five. Now, they were both a year older.
Even in her distress, Barbara had noticed that the town offered its residents the opportunity to put down roots. It had clotheslines that were actually being used and old men who sat around a potbellied stove in the hardware store and talked. It was obvious that people really knew each other here. When Barbara’s husband was finally arrested and she was released from the hospital where his beating had put her, she was glad she could come back to a place like Dry Creek.
But becoming rooted here wasn’t as easy as she had thought it would be. She and her children had been here since November, and she hadn’t poured a single cup of coffee. Even now, although she was a bridesmaid at this wedding for Judd and Lizette, no one had allowed Barbara to do more than walk up the aisle.
People still treated her like a visitor, and she didn’t know what to do to change it. At this rate, she wouldn’t be accepted into this town until she was lying in the cemetery behind that little church. Even then, they’d probably put a fence around her grave and Visitor on her tombstone so that people would know to tiptoe around her in search of the people who belonged in Dry Creek.
“Well, it’s a beautiful bouquet anyway, with all that baby’s