“What makes you trust me? I could go tell your secret tomorrow,” he asked as he turned the faucet on that stuck out of the back of the house. In seconds a stream shot out from a short hose, and he sprayed off her feet before doing his own.

Oh, honey, she thought. Compared to the rest of the baggage, you know very little. She wiggled her toes to air-dry them and then put on her sandals. “Because my heart says I can trust you. I’d ask you the same thing—you just told me things that Cricket doesn’t know.”

“I feel better for tellin’ you. Kind of takes part of the burden off my chest,” he answered.

“Me, too, Rick, but you’d better take me home now, or else Miz Lettie will get out the shotgun and insist you make an honest woman out of me,” she teased.

“Or Dill Baker will, and believe me, darlin’, I’d be more afraid of his aim than Miz Lettie’s.” He opened the door a crack and yelled inside, “Hey, Cricket, I’m takin’ Jennie Sue home now. Anything you want from town?”

“Not a thing,” she answered.

A few minutes later, he was pulling into Lettie’s driveway. “Thanks for listenin’ to me tonight.”

“That goes both ways. There’s just something about being in a garden—” She paused.

He laid a hand on her arm. “I understand.”

“I think you do.” Three times—or was it four?—he’d touched her that evening, and every time she’d wanted more. A kiss or even a long hug. “Good night, Rick. See you tomorrow.”

“After I park the bookmobile at the library, I’ll come down to the bookstore. Maybe I’ll get in on the job of snapping beans, or I can help you rearrange the shelves.” He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “Thanks for all this, Jennie Sue.”

“You are welcome, but I should thank you.”

She hopped out of the truck and was on her way through the garage when Lettie hollered from the kitchen door, “I’ve been lookin’ for you. Come on in. We can brew up some hot chocolate and have a cookie. I’ve got news.”

She did an abrupt turnaround and headed toward the porch, carrying her shoes.

“I’m coming right out of the garden, so I might track in some dirt,” she called out when she reached the house.

“I’ve got this really good cleaning lady who’ll come around in a couple of days, so I’m not worried. Pull up a chair to the table and let’s visit. Lord, I love having you close. It’s like you’re the granddaughter I never got to have,” Lettie said.

A lump popped up in Jennie Sue’s throat. “I’d hug you, but I’m too sweaty and dirty.”

Lettie patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll hug it out later. Hot chocolate is in the slow cooker. I make a batch every couple of weeks and then store it in the refrigerator. It’s good with a little whiskey in it on the nights when I can’t sleep. Want a little shot in yours?”

Jennie shook her head. “I really don’t want anything at all to eat or drink, honest.”

“Then tell me how things are going out on the farm.”

“Just fine. We got plenty gathered in for Rick’s deliveries tomorrow, and it seems like Cricket is coming around. I kind of like her bluntness, to tell the truth. My friends in high school were the Belles’ daughters, for the most part, and in college, it was sorority sisters. I always felt like they couldn’t wait for me to leave the room so they could bad-mouth me. With Cricket, I don’t need to leave the room. If she’s got something to say, she says it.”

Lettie picked up a cookie. “The secret to good pecan sandies is real butter. Don’t never use margarine in pecan sandies.” Lettie handed a mug of chocolate that smelled like Irish whiskey to Jennie Sue. “You can have a sip of mine just to see how good it is.”

Jennie Sue took a small sip and rolled her eyes. “That is amazing. Next time I’ll have a cup with you.”

“I can heat you up a cup anytime. Didn’t you make friends in New York?”

“A few, but when Percy divorced me, they stopped invitin’ me to anything or even callin’. Tell the truth, when I left, I didn’t have a single person to tell goodbye except the IRS guy who wanted the keys to the apartment and my car,” she said.

“How did you live like that?” Lettie shook her head in disbelief.

“It was just the way things were. You said you had something to tell me,” Jennie Sue answered and reached for a cookie. Just one, because anything with real butter and fresh pecans had to be good.

“Yes, I surely do. Your mama and her little Sweetwater bitches are coming home earlier than they’d planned. Remember when we talked about Belinda bein’ sick? Well, it ain’t got nothing to do with the food at the spa. She’s pregnant.” Lettie picked up a cookie and dipped it in her Irish coffee.

Jennie Sue wasn’t sure that she could utter a word, but when she opened her mouth, they came tumbling out like marbles from a soup can. “Good Lord! How did you find that out? They’ve got a rule about not telling anything on each other except to the members in the club.”

“The rumor pipeline reaches to far places,” Lettie laughed. “Take a bite of that cookie and tell me what you think.”

Jennie Sue rolled her eyes. “Oh. My. Goodness. This is amazing. Belinda is pregnant? Her girls must both be at least twenty years old.”

“Fattenin’ as hell, but worth every bite,” Lettie said. “And Belinda’s daughters are both over twenty. Thinkin’ of mothers and daughters, you need to make up with your mama. If I had a daughter like you, I’d bend over backward to keep her happy. But that ain’t Charlotte’s way. If it means that you can’t clean for me, then I can live with that. But even in this short while, we’ve become close enough that I don’t ever want you to have regrets about bein’ my friend.”

Jennie Sue laid a hand on Lettie’s arm. “I’ll talk to Mama, I promise, but I will not have regrets. I’m happier than I’ve been since I was a little girl and Mabel took care of me.”

Lettie dabbed at her eyes with the tail of her apron. “That woman has the kindest heart in the whole world.”

“Yes, she does. Thanks for the cookies and chocolate. I should be gettin’ up to my place for a shower,” Jennie Sue said.

“Refill your cup and take half a dozen cookies with you. You might need a little bedtime snack before you turn in,” Lettie said.

She gave Lettie a hug before she left. After a shower, she crawled up in the middle of her bed and replayed the day, the funny moments, the sad ones, but most of all the emotional ones.

“Thank you, Cricket and Rick and Lettie and Nadine.” She yawned and pulled back the covers. “Enemies, frenemies, or friends.”

Chapter Eleven

When she was a child, Jennie Sue had often wondered if she was even related to her mother. Charlotte was a night owl, staying up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleeping until almost noon every day. Jennie Sue was the opposite. She liked to be in bed by ten and was awake at the crack of dawn. She loved the quietness of the early morning and had missed that in New York, the city that never slept. But what she liked even more in the rural area of Texas was the smell of morning—fresh dew on green grass, maybe the scent of dirt coming from a neighbor plowing a field or a soft breeze blowing across the roses. Those kinds of things couldn’t be faked with a scented candle.

That Thursday morning she sat on her tiny little balcony and gazed out across the trees. Three miles away was her folks’ place, but it might as well have been eight thousand miles and several time zones.

“Why can’t she like me as much as she does her girlfriends? Maybe if she did, she wouldn’t feel the need to pay someone to marry me,” Jennie Sue whispered and then sighed. “I’ll call her tonight. I promise,” she vowed to the universe. “Maybe since she and her little buddies have had a fallin’-out, she’ll be a little softer.”

She finished off the last of the pecan sandies that Lettie had sent home with her night before last and a second cup of coffee before she got dressed and headed to Nadine’s to clean that day. She smelled the bacon half a block away. She crossed her fingers, hoping Nadine had made enough breakfast for an extra person.