She made it to the car before she broke down. She wrapped her arms over the top of the steering wheel, laid her face on them, and sobbed. “I’m going to miss them both so bad. They weren’t perfect and they drove me crazy, but I loved them.”

Nadine patted one shoulder from the back seat, and Lettie clamped a hand on the other one. “It’s all right,” they said at the same time.

“Let it out,” Nadine said. “It’s natural for little things to set off the grief.”

Jennie Sue straightened up and hiccuped. “It’s not fair.” She slapped the steering wheel. “Mama was coming around to understand that I was my own person. It’s not fair that I didn’t have more time with her and that neither of them will ever see my children.”

“Now, honey, that’s not true,” Nadine said softly. “They are with your little Emily Grace right now, taking care of her for you.”

“Do you really believe that?” Jennie Sue asked.

“Yes, I do,” Nadine answered.

“I want children,” Jennie Sue said softly. “I want a whole house full of them, not just one, and I don’t want to wait forever to start a family.”

Lettie raised an eyebrow. “Are you tellin’ us something?”

“No, but I wish I was.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

A big lovers’ moon hung low in the sky with a gazillion stars twinkling around it when Jennie Sue brought the Cadillac to a stop in front of the Lawson house. She fortified herself with a deep breath and slung open the car door. She stomped across the lawn, trying to build up a bigger head of steam with each step. Rick was not going to treat her this way. She refused to feel like something that had been thrown into the trash when it was no longer usable.

She rapped on the door frame and waited a few seconds. Then she grabbed the handle, determined that she’d go in without an invitation if she had to.

“Come on in,” Cricket yelled.

She poked her head in the door. Cricket was sitting on the sofa with her leg on the coffee table. “He’s not here. He’s down at the creek pouting. And the deed to this place is in the name of Richard or Edwina Lawson. That means I have a say-so without his signature, and I say you can have an easement across the property if you want to build a house back there by the creek.”

“Faster than the speed of light,” Jennie Sue said.

“Telephone, telegraph, tell-a-woman. The three things that are faster than lightning and twice as deadly.” Cricket nodded.

“Thank you.” Jennie Sue started to shut the door.

“Want to take a club with you? He’s pretty hardheaded,” Cricket yelled.

“Maybe I can handle it without violence.” Jennie Sue closed the door.

“If you can’t, call me. I’ll bring my crutches.”

Jennie Sue cracked the door back open. “Is he really that upset? And why?”

“He’s in the same place he was when he came home from the service. He won’t talk, and all he does is brood. If you can get him out of that, then you should put in a therapy room in the bookstore and hang out a shingle to help people,” Cricket said. “And then I might even like you as a friend and not hate you at all.”

“You’d do that for him?” Jennie Sue asked.

“Of course. He’s my brother,” Cricket answered.

Jennie Sue headed around the house toward the creek. She found Rick, sitting against the old oak tree with a mound of small rocks beside him. One by one he was tossing them out into the water. When he ran out of rocks, he waded out into the creek, gathered them back up in his shirttail, and went back to the tree to repeat the process.

If throwing rocks was therapy, then Jennie Sue figured that she should try it. “But I sure haven’t got the time to gather up a whole pile of them,” she whispered.

She looked around and found one the size of a softball and hurled it through the air. It hit the moon’s reflection right smack in the middle and splashed water all the way to Rick.

“Well, that didn’t cure anything. We still have to talk,” she muttered as she started toward him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly.

“I came to talk, so you need to clean off a spot because I intend to have a hissy fit, and once a Wilshire woman sets her mind to have one of those, it takes some territory.”

“Oh, really?” His tone didn’t change.

“I’ve given you plenty of time to get over your pissy attitude and grow up, so now you have aggravated me, and you’ll have to suffer the wrath of your stupidity.” She sat down beside him but kept a foot of distance between them.

“I’m not stupid. I’m dealing with this the best way I know how,” he protested.

“Is this about money?”

“I am a disabled vet, Jennie Sue. I won’t ever be anything else. I grow vegetables and peddle them for enough money to keep the place running. My pissy mood will pass. It did in the hospital when I was injured, and it will again.”

She slapped him on the arm. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“Yes, dammit! It’s about the money. I won’t have people sayin’ that I’m a kept man.”

“Did I propose to you?” she asked.

“No, you did not,” he grumbled.

“Didn’t you hear the latest news? I’m selling everything and giving it to the poor and needy. I am keepin’ Mama’s car, because I need something to get around in since you are being so hateful and won’t give me rides in your truck. And I’m buying the five acres right behind that fence back there so I can build a small frame house just like I want.”

“You did what?” He raised his voice. “And you call me stupid? That land has no road access.”

“I’m going to come across your land,” she told him bluntly.

“The hell you are. I’m not signing an easement.”

“Your sister already said that she would, and it’s a done deal. And for your information, I’m mad at you,” she said. “Hell’s bells, Rick Lawson, you let me think we had the start of a good relationship, and then you dump me. I must be worth less than nothing. One man gets paid to marry me and still leaves me high and dry when the money runs out; the next one that comes into my life leads me on and then throws me out like yesterday’s newspaper because I have a little bit of money.” She stopped to take a breath and then went on. “Looks like I can’t win for losing. I’m leaving now. You can sit here in your self-pity and pout the rest of your life.”

She’d taken about a dozen steps when suddenly she was lifted off the ground in a swoop. The hot night air blew her hair back away from her face as she struggled to free herself.

“Put me down right now,” she screamed.

Her arms flailed against him, and when she could see his face, it was etched in stone. Finally, he dropped her right into the cold creek water. “That ought to cool you down.”

She reached out with one hand and grabbed his good leg and gave it a hard tug. He landed right beside her. “You’re the one who’s all hot under the collar. And you are a self-righteous hypocrite.”

“Oh, yeah, what makes me that horrible?” He pulled himself up on his elbow.

She splashed water in his face. “You’ve said at least twenty times since we’ve been friends that you don’t like gossip, and now here you are fighting against what we have because people might have something to say about it.”

He returned the favor, soaking what little dry threads were left on her shirt. She cupped his face in both hands and kissed him long and hard. And when that kiss ended, she shifted her weight until she was sitting in his lap.

“Did you really give all your money to a charity?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. That’s just what we’re going to tell people.”

“Are you really going to buy that land and build a house?”

She nodded. “I can imagine my house sitting right back there, and it makes me happy. When I think of living anywhere else, I’m sad. Besides, from here, I can walk to the garden and not have to drive.”