She was not disappointed.

Nadine met her at the door and ushered her inside. “I’ve got bacon and waffles. Got to use up those fresh strawberries that Rick brought me last Friday, so I sliced and sugared them and whipped up some real cream. I haven’t eaten yet, either. It’s no fun eating alone.”

“Thank you. That sounds delicious. What can I do to help?”

“Not one thing, darlin’ girl. Just pull up a bar stool, and we’ll eat right here. Waffles won’t take long to cook. I’ve already got the iron heated up.”

Jennie Sue nodded. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

Nadine poured batter into the waffle iron that she’d placed in the middle of the bar. “I’m going to do a little yard work this mornin’ while it’s cool, and then I’m plannin’ to fry apple fritters so I can send some out to the farm when Rick picks you up this evenin’. Cricket is real partial to them. And I got to tell you, she said that you’re a real good cook. She loves to bake cookies and cakes and such, but she don’t have a lot of imagination when it comes to real cookin’. Y’all ought to go into the cleanin’ and caterin’ business together.” Nadine rattled on while the first batch of waffles cooked.

Yeah, right. I’d rather go into business with the devil himself, Jennie Sue thought as she listened with half an ear. But that idea didn’t sound too bad. After seven years of marriage to Percy, she definitely knew how to clean a house and plan a party. If she started up a business of her own, she could live right there in Bloom in Lettie’s apartment. She could do events on the weekends, especially in the winter after the farmers’ market closed down. She’d have to give up her goal of finding a job in her field for this crazy idea. Or maybe not? She wasn’t even thirty yet—she could give the new venture a couple of years and then use her education to run her own business. It would take some serious thought, but maybe it was worth looking into.

“I’d have to have equipment,” she mused aloud.

“Oh, honey, between me and Lettie, we’ve accumulated enough silver and crystal that you wouldn’t have to buy a thing. We come from a long line of hoarders when it comes to pretty things.” Nadine opened the waffle maker and put the first one on Jennie Sue’s plate. “Pile on the strawberries and whipped cream and add some bacon on the side for a little protein. Juice and coffee are on the end of the table.”

“Why would you loan me your precious things?” Jennie Sue asked.

“Honey, it’s just stuff,” Nadine answered.

Ideas bounced around in Jennie Sue’s head. In five years she could be using her business degree to run two businesses—a housecleaning one that might employ four or five ladies, and a catering one that could give part-time work to dozens.

But why would I want to stay in Bloom? she asked herself as she finished her waffle.

Because that’s where Emily Grace is buried, and your new friends are here, and they care enough about you to offer to let you use their pretty things to start a business and even make you waffles with sugared strawberries without even noticing your weight, the voice in her head said.

“I can see the gears workin’ in your head.” Nadine refilled her coffee cup. “Well, you just let them keep turnin’ while you clean today.”

“It’s hard to think that I’ve only been back in Bloom a bit and I’m even entertaining the idea of stayin’. I really wanted to walk into a company and start working my way up the ladder,” Jennie Sue said.

Nadine patted her on the arm. “You just think about it, honey. If you decide to go the CEO route, then you could commute to Sweetwater. It ain’t but a fifteen-minute drive, and you could still live in Lettie’s apartment.”

“Thank you, Nadine,” she said, “but one thing is for absolute sure—Cricket Lawson wouldn’t be interested in helping me with a business in town, and I’m not sure I’d want her to. It would be like workin’ with my mother.”

“Lot alike, ain’t they?”

“In different ways, but yes.”

“And you like Cricket enough to be an almost friend with her and not your mother?” Nadine asked.

“At least Cricket doesn’t tell me I’m fat,” Jennie Sue answered.

“Charlotte is wrong to do that, but she is your mama. You can have lots of friends, but you only get one mama. So call her and make things right,” Nadine said.

“I will. I promise,” Jennie Sue vowed for the second time that morning.

She’d worked her way from the bedrooms and the bathroom and had dusted the pictures lining the walls in the hallway. Most of them were of people that she didn’t know, but there were a few of three little girls, then three teenagers and three older women that she figured were Flora, Nadine, and Lettie at various stages of their lives. Someday Jennie Sue was going to have a hallway with pictures of her family all lined up pretty in it to make her smile when she dusted them each week. She’d never have a picture of Emily Grace to hang on the wall with the rest of her kids’, if she was ever blessed enough to have them, but she’d tell her children about their older sister, for sure.

Leaving the pictures behind, she parked the vacuum in the middle of the living room floor and headed outside to see if the slight wind had dried the sheets hanging on the line. Stepping out in the heat from the cool house almost took her breath, but that was Texas in the summertime. It was unusual that there was even a slight breeze. Mabel said that the wind blows constantly in Texas until the first day of July, and then it’s impossible to buy, beg, or borrow enough to flutter the leaves until September.

The sheets still felt damp on the edges, so she crossed the yard to go back inside and dust the living room when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. Before she could jerk her head around to see what was happening, she heard a thud and a moan. She took a step backward and peeked around the edge of the house to see Nadine lying on her back under the huge pear tree.

“Sweet Lord.” Jennie Sue dropped to her knees beside her and touched the artery in her neck to see if she was alive. Her pulse was beating, but not nearly as fast as Jennie Sue’s.

Nadine took a huge gulp of air, and her eyes opened wide. “Help me up. Gravity just got more than my boobs and butt. Either that or them damned aliens swooped down and pushed me off that limb.”

“You lie perfectly still. Don’t even move your fingers,” Jennie Sue demanded as she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. “You could have a fractured back or neck. If you move, it could paralyze or kill you.”

“I’m fine,” Nadine argued. “I’m not going to die fallin’ out of the pear tree. Me and God got a deal. I get to live to be a hundred years old, because that’s how long it’ll take for Him to forgive me of all my sins. Dammit! My shoulder hurts.”

“Don’t move.” She kept her eyes on Nadine as she talked to the lady on the other end of the line and explained what had happened.

“I’m not payin’ for an ambulance. You and Lettie can take me to the doctor here in town,” Nadine fussed.

“If you don’t be still, I’ll tell the aliens to come back and get you,” Jennie Sue threatened.

Jennie Sue finished talking on the phone, quickly called Lettie, and then sat down on the grass beside Nadine. “If you don’t have the money for an ambulance, then use my cleaning money until you save up enough to pay for it. You’ll need a backboard and a neck brace.”

“It’s not the money. It’s the principle. They come less than ten miles and charge out the ass for what? A ride in the back of a crowded van. Hell, I got a van, and I’ll even lie in the back seat if you’ll let me sit up. Besides, I’ve got on my oldest panties. I can’t go to the hospital with ratty underbritches. What will people say?” Nadine said.

“I won’t tell a single soul about your panties, and you know those doctors can’t, either.” Jennie Sue crossed her heart with her forefinger and then pulled her phone out of her hip pocket to check the time. It startled her so badly when it rang that she dropped it like a hot potato. She hurried to pick it up to answer.