Picket Fence Promises

The bells jingled mournfully as she left and I walked over to Jim.

“Okay, spill it. What’s going on?”

“On?” He frowned up at me, his expression way too innocent.

That was it. Two attractive, overly confident men in one day were plenty. More than plenty. “Take your pick—green or orange?”

Panic flared briefly in his eyes. “I just want you to be careful. That’s all.”

“Careful?” I was confused. “About what kind of sculpture we should have for the park?”

“About that guy you were with at Sally’s.”

Alex. He was warning me about Alex?

“And this would be your business…why?”

“I can put two and two together.”

And come up with eight.

“Or should I say one and one?”

Under normal circumstances, if someone would have shouldered their way into my life and given me advice that I didn’t want, I would have spun the chair around so many times that he would have experienced a g-force. Now I felt a familiar nudge inside and I knew Jesus wouldn’t approve.

I sighed. “You’re talking about Heather.”

“I saw you in church with her a while back. She looks like you. And him. Listen, Bernice, I know you’re right and that this is none of my business, but I always thought somewhere down the line someone broke your heart.”

“So, the little pizza party you invited me to when I moved to town was supposed to be a Band-Aid?” I asked, surprised that that little wound still hurt.

“I’m sorry about that.” Now Jim sighed. “I was just being stupid. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve regretted that. But…just be careful. Now, go ahead and dye my hair green if it makes you feel better.”

He was being protective of me. Just like Candy and Sally and the retired farmers in the café, who all went to the Buzz and Blade but knew who I was. There was a warm and fuzzy chenille feeling inside of me at the thought.

“How about a nice trim? We’ll skip the dye for the next time you ignore my No Trespassing sign, okay?”

After he left, I still had one more appointment and then I had to drive over to the Golden Oaks Nursing Home. Once a month I donated a few hours and cut the residents’ hair and then ate dinner with them. It also gave me a chance to spend more time with Esther and her husband, John.

Should I check on Alex? I chewed on my bottom lip as my brain and my heart tried to come up with an acceptable compromise. The irony of Jim’s warning came back to mock me. He’d assumed that Alex had broken my heart. Assumed that for someone like Alex to have fallen for someone like me would have been impossible. I’d assumed the same thing, which was why I’d left him. Knowing my heart was going to get broken, I’d simply saved him the trouble and done it myself.

Chapter Four

I sat in my car for fifteen minutes trying to decide if I should stop by Charity’s. Hard to believe that when I woke up this morning, I thought the most challenging part of my day was going to be Mindy’s one o’clock appointment.

I put the car in Drive and inched my way down Main Street, pretty sure that I saw a kid on a tricycle pass me on the sidewalk.

“Fine.” I huffed the word out loud and made a quick right turn at the last second onto Lily Road.

Charity’s house was a bright spot of color, even surrounded as it was by the faded colors of fall. It was painted a cheerful buttery yellow, its gingerbread trim accented with a soothing ivory coupled with soft shades of sage and ochre. What gave it an unexpected touch of whimsy was the crimson front door that greeted her guests where the cobbled walkway ended.

Weirdly enough, right before I pressed the doorbell, I heard it ringing inside the house.

“Bernice!” Charity opened the door and greeted me like a long-lost relative. She was small and birdlike, her entire body enveloped in a lavender tasseled shawl that hung past her knees. She wore blue eye shadow and there was a brush of peach face powder on her cheeks, like a fine layer of dust on a piano. Pulling me down to her level, she brushed her face against mine. I caught the unmistakable scent of rose water.

“Bernice?” Alex suddenly darted into view farther down the hallway. He looked slightly rumpled and extremely glad to see me. And extremely handsome. Once again awe struggled with irritation. I mean, think about this. Does a woman really want to be with a man who’s better-looking than she is?

“I just stopped by to make sure you were settled.” Yes, I was defensive. Call it self-preservation against the pair of gorgeous blue eyes locked on me.

Charity chuckled. “Of course he’s settled, dear. I gave him my best room. The one with the fireplace. He’s from California, you know.”

At least Charity seemed to be treating him well. Maybe the grapevine hadn’t sent out runners to the side streets yet. Somehow, though, I sensed that it wouldn’t make a difference to Charity. She didn’t have many honest-to-goodness guests at the Lightning Strike—oops, the Weeping Willow and…

“‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

The words blared out of nowhere and I jumped. Charity put a calming hand on my arm.

“Come in and sit down. Murphy and I were just having tea with Mr. Scott.” I glanced at my watch as Charity shuffled past me.

Alex was at my side in a heartbeat. “You have time for tea, right, Bernice?” he whispered in my ear, his fingers wrapping around my elbow.

“Enjoying your vacation?” I whispered.

“Mrs. O’Malley is fine,” he whispered back. “It’s Murphy that I’m not too sure about. But then, he’s probably the reason why you sent me here instead of the Super 8, right?”

“There is no Super 8,” I reminded him under my breath.

“You’re looking very pretty today!” The words were chortled loudly just as we reached the doorway to the old-fashioned sitting room.

“Is he talking to you or me?” I murmured.

Alex’s response was to lightly pinch my arm. I yipped in surprise.

“Murphy, you’re such a charmer,” Charity chuckled.

I looked around the room for Charity’s other guest but all I saw was a grouping of empty watered-silk furniture swathed in plastic.

“‘Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,’” the invisible Murphy shouted disapprovingly.

“And my beauty fled years ago!” Charity laughed agreeably.

I headed toward an oversize chair by the fireplace but just as I was about to sit down there was a flash of white and a rush of air several inches from my face.

“Blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of mockers.”

I froze in place and blinked. There was an enormous white cockatoo sitting in the exact spot that I was just about to claim. His feathers lifted to create a huge ruffle around his face and he clicked his enormous gray beak.

“You’re paraphrasing again, Murphy,” Charity said with a disappointed shake of her head. “You’re supposed to be working on the Beatitudes now, not the Psalms. Please concentrate.”

Charity’s noisy bird was apparently not a rumor, after all. I’d imagined something…smaller. Like one of those little blue-and-white parakeets. Something in a cage.

“You can sit over here, Bernice.” Charity patted the cushion next to her. Alex, I noticed, had picked the chair farthest from Murphy.

“I only have a few minutes,” I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as Murphy took little marching steps up the arm of the chair. A bird who had more Scripture memorized than I did. It wasn’t fair. I loved reading the Bible and I valiantly tried to memorize verses—there were three-by-five cards taped to practically every surface in my apartment—but so far all I had down was a whopping three. Annie cautioned me not to make memorization something to beat myself up over—did she know me, or what?—and said to think of them as “grace graffiti.”

“Are you going over to the Golden Oaks, dear?” Charity asked.

How did she know that? Was my daily schedule posted somewhere in town? It was definitely worth looking into.

She lifted a beautiful china teapot and poured hot tea into a cup for me, then carefully refilled the other two on the tray. I’d never been a tea drinker—I drink coffee out of a mug that could double as a thermos—but there was something so quaint and sweet about a dainty cup decorated with tiny violets that I was momentarily swayed.

“What is the Golden Oaks?” Alex accepted the cup she offered and snagged a sugar cookie off the tray on the coffee table to go with it.

“The nursing home outside of town.” Charity answered Alex’s question before I could. “Bernice goes there a few times a month and gives free haircuts.”

“Really.” Alex smiled slightly.

I could read his mind. Future ammunition.

“So how long have you been Bernice’s beau, Mr. Scott?” Charity asked.

“Bernice’s beau!” Murphy repeated, and then made a noise that sounded like he was choking on a cracker.

“He’s not—” Without thinking, I took a quick, very undainty swallow of tea, which burned a path all the way down my throat.

Charity’s eyes were as bright and unnerving as her cockatoo’s as they searched my face. She smiled benignly. “You make a lovely couple.”

Alex lifted his cup and waved at me with his pinkie finger.

I had to run away. But this time, I knew I couldn’t go very far. My roots in Prichett weren’t as deep as some, but like it or not, they were anchored there by my responsibilities and I couldn’t just pull them up, shake them off and relocate to an Alex-less place. But at the very least, I could leave Charity’s.

“I really should go. They’re expecting me by five.” Probably breaking several unwritten laws about proper tea etiquette, I downed what was left in my cup and stood up, smoothing wrinkles out of my skirt that weren’t there. I still hadn’t called Elise and Annie, and I knew they’d be beside themselves with curiosity about Alex.

“‘The Lord bless you and keep you,’” Murphy intoned, then cackled delightedly and belted out, “Bye-bye, baby!”

“I’m going with you,” Alex decided.

“Take your time, Mr. Scott. I’ll leave the door unlocked until ten, then you’ll have to climb through the basement window around back.”

“‘Enter by the narrow gate…’” Murphy began.

I didn’t hear the rest because Alex practically pushed me out of the room.

“You can’t come with me,” I grumbled as he towed me toward the escape door at the end of the hallway. I discovered that digging my heels in on a polished hardwood floor was an exercise in futility.

“I can tell that bird doesn’t like me. Animals never like me.”

I stopped so quickly that Alex bumped into me. He smelled a bit like lemon furniture polish and rose water. “Oh, please. Don’t give me that,” I said, annoyed with him. “Everyone loves you. Babies. Second-graders. Elderly women. You can charm the birds out of the trees.”

“Not all birds,” Alex said darkly. “I won’t get in your way. Scout’s honor.”

“Don’t try to tell me you were a Boy Scout.” I rolled my eyes.

“I played one on TV?”

I wasn’t going to laugh. Laughter led to…Well, in our case it had led to like…and like had skipped right to love. At least it had for me and I had the scars to prove it. Alex was in Prichett on a mission to…to what? Tell me how he was doing? That could be taken care of with eight simple words. I’m fine, Bernice. See you in ten years. No, he obviously had a more sinister agenda.

I slid into the front seat of my car and before I could put it into gear, Alex was buckling himself in next to me.

My car decided to add to my torment. The engine gargled too much gas and quit. There was a ritual that I had to perform whenever this happened and it wasn’t pretty.

“It died,” Alex pointed out helpfully.

I turned on the brights and the radio and the windshield wipers, pumped the gas pedal several times and then turned the key in the ignition again.

Alex leaned across me. “You have over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on this vehicle.”

“And she’s still going strong.” I patted the dash as the engine hiccupped and then settled into a rough purr as I eased the car into the street.

Just as I saw the long row of lights from the nursing home, my cell phone rang from the depths of my quilted purse. Which happened to be in a heap at Alex’s feet.

“It’s probably Elise or Annie,” I muttered. “Can you just pick it up and say hello and tell whoever it is that I’ll call them back? My voice mail is messed up.”

Alex dug deep and found it on the third ring. “Hello? This is Alex Scott, playing Bernice Strum’s answering service. Bernice is unavailable at the moment but she loves to hear from her fans. Leave a message and she’ll call you back.”

Cute. I mouthed the word at him and yanked the phone out of his hand. Now I had some serious explaining to do with whoever was on the other end. “Hello, I’m sorry about that…”

“Bernice? You have the funniest messages on your phone. I just called to find out what’s new.”

Heather. And she thought that Alex’s voice was a recording! A hysterical giggle formed in the acid churning in my stomach. I sucked in some fresh air to diffuse it. “Ah, not much new happening here.”

Ruthlessly, I stuffed all my emotions into the vault in my heart that I’d let Jesus clean out. I didn’t know what else to do with them at the moment. Heather was the new that was happening in my life and I didn’t take a breath during the day without thanking God that she’d found me after twenty years. But, Alex…he was the something old. He’d been the main ingredient in a stew of insecurities that I’d kept warm for years. What was I supposed to do with him?

He started to hum the song “Unforgettable.” Even in the gloomy interior of my car, I could see that his eyes were closed and he was smiling.

Chapter Five

“I’m just pulling up to the Golden Oaks,” I said, pressing my chin against the phone so Heather wouldn’t hear Alex in the background. “It’s my night to cut hair.”

“I won’t keep you then, I just want you to start thinking about the holidays. What are your plans?”

I never made special plans for the holidays. They just kind of…happened. Elise and Sam always invited me for Thanksgiving and after dinner, Elise and I would waddle into the living room with our second piece of pumpkin pie to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s one of Elise’s favorite movies and that’s the only reason I pretended all these years to enjoy a movie about a man who was given a second chance—even though I knew that never happened in real life. Now, since Heather had reappeared in my life, I was beginning to believe.

“I’m not sure just yet.” I answered her question cautiously and glanced at Alex.

“I’ll call you tomorrow and we can figure something out. Mom and Dad know I want to spend some time with you and they said they’re flexible.”

“Sure. That would be great.” Make room, stuffing more emotions!

“Is something wrong?” There was a touch of uncertainty in Heather’s voice and I glared at Alex. Which was wasted because his eyes were still closed.

“No, not at all. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I scraped up some cheerfulness and injected it into my voice.

“Bye…Mama B.”

Mama B. My throat tightened and I blinked away the tears that scratched the backs of my eyes. Where had that come from? Not that I minded…I just felt totally humbled by the honorary title. I certainly didn’t deserve it.

Alex followed me into the Golden Oaks and I was relieved to see that Audrey Cooke, the receptionist, wasn’t sitting behind the desk to greet people. Maybe it was possible to smuggle a celebrity into a group of senior citizens without any fallout.

“I always stop by to say hi to Esther and John first,” I murmured.

“Relatives?”

“Friends.”

I navigated Alex through the corridors until we came to a room near the end of the hallway. “I should mention something, although you’d probably figure it out soon enough by yourself. John is blind.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t act weird around him, though, because he has a sense of humor about it.”

“How can someone have a sense of humor about being blind?”

“You’ll see.” I rapped lightly on the door. “Esther?”

“It’s Bernice,” I heard Esther say just before the door opened.

She and John must have set a record for the oldest pair of newlyweds. Their summer wedding was held right at the nursing home and I’d even fixed Esther’s hair for the occasion. It was a day I’d never forget because it was the day I took a deep breath and faced the past. Although, it had been a little easier when part of it wasn’t warming the air beside me.

“Hi, Esther.” She put out her arms and I hugged her, resisting the urge to lift her off her feet and swing her around the room. She is so petite she could get lost in a group of fifth-graders and I feel like a giant next to her.

“Come in, come in.” Esther linked her arm through mine and noticed Alex hovering in the hall. “Is he with you?”

No. Yes. Argh. Complications. How was I supposed to introduce Alex?

“I’m Alex.”

I exhaled. Problem solved.

“One of Bernice’s old flames.”

I was going to kill him. Wait a second, there was a commandment about murder, wasn’t there? Maybe I could dye his hair green…And what was this about being one of Bernice’s old flames? Like I’d had a buffet to choose from?

John, sitting in his wheelchair by the window, laughed. “Both of you, come in. Alex, let me take a look at you.”

Alex glanced at me, clearly puzzled.

“I warned you,” I whispered.

“Do you live nearby?” John asked.

“California.”

A sudden thought hit me like shrapnel. Esther always asked about Heather when I visited her. That was because in a sunny window one afternoon I’d spilled out my life story to her. But I wasn’t ready to tell Alex about Heather yet. It wasn’t a good time. Not that there was any empty space in my appointment book that I could fill in to make that announcement.

“Bernice?” She looked at me and the compassion in her eyes broke straight through to my heart. She knew who Alex was. Was there anyone in Prichett who hadn’t figured out who Alex was? Still, relief cut a sweet path through the panic.

“I lived there for a few years. Near Monterey,” John was saying as he reached out and took Esther’s hand. “I can’t compare it to living here, though. I’m spoiled by the changing seasons. We know we’re going to get winter, but what kind of winter? The kind that yanks your breath out and steals it away or a mild one that dumps huge drifts of snow outside the windows? And spring, is it going to be warm and green or gray and muddy? If I lived anywhere else, I’d miss the variety, that’s the truth. Even when I was in New York, I’d remember this area and it pulled me back like high tide. Now I know why.”

Esther blushed an adorable pink. “Sounds like it’s the seasons you love, not this old lady,” she teased.

“I love you both.” John winked. “How long are you staying in Prichett, Alex?”

“I have some vacation time.”

“A week?” Esther asked the question that I had been afraid to.

I could deal with a week if he really insisted on staying in Prichett. I worked every day except Sunday and could avoid him on several evenings when I had other commitments. He’d be long gone before Thanksgiving.

Alex smiled. “Actually…I have three months.”

I lost sight of Alex an hour after I started cutting hair for the residents. The last I’d seen him, he’d been talking to a woman named Althea, who thought that he was her son, Henry, who’d finally come for a visit. No one had said anything about having a celebrity in their midst. In fact, half the people in the family lounge probably thought that Alex was Althea’s neglectful son. Once in a while, I saw one of the nurses give Alex a speculative glance but no one approached him.

“Three months,” I muttered under my breath.

“That’s if I decide to go back,” a voice said behind me.

I’d lost sight of Alex but apparently he hadn’t lost sight of me. If he decided to go back? What did he mean by that? “You can’t just step out of your life.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Alex Scott. People like you can’t just decide one day that they’re not going to be famous. You picked your life and now you’re stuck with it. If you wanted this—” I poked a comb in the air “—you would have chosen it a long time ago. After what you’ve gotten used to, you’d go insane in a small town like Prichett.”

“You seem pretty sane.”

Ha. The fact that he thinks so only shows how good an actress I can be. The truth is, I’m only coasting next to normal and like every good daughter, I blame my mother.

“Henry?”

Althea wandered up to us and I saw Alex’s expression change. His face softened and he put his hand on Althea’s arm to steady her. “I thought the nurse told you it was time to go back to your room now,” he reminded her, his voice so low and warm that it brought another dormant memory to life. Alex was a good man. I’d assumed that by now he’d be cynical and self-absorbed, and knew it would be easier on me if he was. I didn’t want to see him being kind to little old ladies who thought he was their long-lost son.

Althea looked at me, and then her gaze shifted back to Alex. “I just wanted to be sure you’ll come back to visit me. Don’t be gone so long next time.”

“I won’t.”

“Henry is my son,” she told me, her voice faltering slightly. “I’m lucky to have a boy like Henry.”

“Good night, Althea.” I watched as the nurse came to take her to her room and then I glanced at Alex. “I’m almost done here. I can give you a ride back to Charity’s.”

“Just give me five minutes. I’ll meet you by the reception desk.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Henry.”

I took advantage of the few minutes I had to duck back into Esther and John’s room. John was already asleep but Esther was sitting in a chair by the bed, knitting.

“I’m starting early. I’m going to have to make two, you know.”

“You’re making blankets for Annie’s babies?” I reached out and touched the whisper-soft skein of mint-green yarn. Twins might not be such a big deal anymore when women all over the place were having triplets or quintuplets, but these were Annie’s twins.

Esther nodded, the knitting needles gently clicking together as the blanket grew in her lap. One of the things I loved about Esther was the way she didn’t feel the need to crowd the air with words. She knew I had something to say and she gave me the time and space I needed to say it.

“Thank you for not mentioning Heather. I’ll tell him. I’m just not sure when. Soon.” The thought suddenly occurred to me that if I wanted him to leave, revealing that particular bit of news just might do it. But why? I felt a ripple of unease. Over the years I’d convinced myself that I’d done him a favor by removing the baby and me from his equation, leaving him a famous, wealthy entity while saving myself from the rejection that I knew would eventually happen. I couldn’t let myself imagine that Alex and I might be celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a few years if I’d made another decision.

“And are you going to tell Heather?”

“I don’t know yet.” That was something else that I didn’t want to face. I felt the urge to run away again. God, could we just rewind the last twenty-four hours and start over with a new script?

“God is bigger than this,” Esther said quietly. “Don’t forget that.”

“I thought the Christian life was supposed to be peaceful,” I said, hearing the faint whine creep into my voice. I never whine. I blamed Alex. “You know, like a nice scenic riverboat ride.”

“A riverboat ride.” Esther tipped her head thoughtfully and the knitting needles fell silent. “I think it’s more like…oh…bungee jumping off a bridge? Skydiving…?”

“I get the picture! Why didn’t someone tell me that?” Bungee jumping? She had to be kidding. I got dizzy if I ran up the stairs to my apartment too fast.