Kathryn Springer - Picket Fence Promises

“I thought they’d be safe there while we grabbed some lunch,” Alex said, smiling up at her.

“Alex, this is Candy Lane, Prichett’s mayor—” I tried to interject.

“Of course they’re safe there.” Candy looked thoroughly offended. “But they’re a hazard to pedestrians. If you don’t get rid of them, I’m going to have to cite you for violating ordinance number B31, section eighteen.”

Alex laughed. Candy didn’t.

“Candy, you can’t be serious.” I tried again but Candy shifted her weight and didn’t crack a smile.

“I’ll give you fifteen minutes to remove them or they’ll be confiscated.” With a short nod at me, she swept out. Do not pass go. Do not collect your bag of birdseed.

The temperature in Prichett may have been chilly but now it was downright arctic. Not exactly a warm place to vacation. And I had no idea why. As far as I knew, no ordinance B31, section eighteen even existed. Maybe Candy had written it on the way to the café.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” I muttered, feeling strangely embarrassed. Maybe a tad more embarrassed than I would have felt if the whole town had been waving paper and pens in his face.

“I do. They’re protecting you.”

“Protecting me? Don’t be silly. Everyone knows that I don’t need to be protected.” I’d been living on my own for…well, a long time. And only in Prichett for the past ten years. My roots weren’t nearly as deep as most of the people who lived in the area. For the first five years I’d lived here, I was regarded cautiously, like a strange weed that had popped up unexpectedly in their little garden. I guess at some point they got used to me.

Alex stood up and for a second I thought he was going to leave.

“Um, could I have everyone’s attention, please?” he said. Loudly.

The stools at the counter swiveled on cue as the farmers swung around to face him. The rest of the people sitting at the tables all looked in our direction.

“I just want to know right now how many guys I’m going to have to arm wrestle to take Bernice Strum out for dinner tonight?”

Hands shot up around the room. I stopped counting at eight. Closing my eyes, I prayed once again for those green pastures and quiet waters that God had promised me!

“Now do you believe me?” He sat down just as Sally marched back with our food. I dared a look at the plate she dropped in front of Alex. BLT on white.

“That’s the palest-looking wheat bread I’ve ever seen,” he said, winking at me.

His milk shake was a bit on the anemic side, too. In fact, it looked suspiciously like vanilla. Sally was giving a whole new meaning to the term food fight.

“Okay, what have you been doing? Using a poster of my face as a dartboard? Why is everyone circling you like a wagon train under attack?”

The sip of shake I’d just taken took a quick detour from my esophagus into my lungs. Nothing had prepared me for this. A phone call was one thing, but to be sitting two feet away from Alex with only our BLTs separating us, was a whole different story.

Alex was right. Incredibly, annoyingly, unbelievably right. And suddenly, as if someone yanked the curtain in my brain to the side, I knew what was happening. I knew why Sally was probably in the alley, stirring a barrel of hot tar and why everyone would gladly part with some of their ruffled feathers to roll Alex in before he was chased out of town.

The only thing that made sense out of the way people were reacting to Alex’s arrival was that they’d taken one look at him and connected the DNA dots. Heather. She looked like him. She may have inherited my green eyes, but his genetic code had waged war with mine and fortunately his had won. Heather was beautiful. Not only on the outside, but on the inside, too.

And just this past summer, Heather had used all the brand-new Internet technology at her disposal to find her birth mother. Me.

But I couldn’t tell him that. Not yet. After so many years, how did a person drop that bombshell into a conversation? By the way, remember when I left twenty years ago? I didn’t realize I was pregnant. I decided not to tell you and I gave the baby up for adoption. I didn’t think you were serious about me…about us…and I was too scared to take the risk.

“Alex, why are you here? Really?” The tangled threads of the past, the ones that God and I had been painstakingly snipping over the past few months, were starting to wrap themselves around my feet again, threatening to trip me up.

“I told you—”

“You’re on vacation,” I finished, rolling my eyes. “Well, those of us who aren’t on vacation need to go back to work. I have an appointment in five minutes.”

How could I get rid of him? Maybe a case of frostbite from Prichett’s cold shoulder would discourage him from staying.

“I’ll tag along. I have some suitcases to move before they get confiscated. Ordinance B31, section eighteen.”

It wasn’t fair that he had a sense of humor about all this. I searched for mine and realized it had probably left at the same time the limo did.

Alex paid the bill and left a generous tip for Sally. The skittering up my spine told me that everyone was watching us as we walked to the door. Alex thought that everyone was protecting me, but I realized that I was protecting him, making sure that he was in front of me on the way out. One never knew when a rogue dinner roll could fly out of nowhere and hit someone in the back of the head. I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“So where is this bed-and-breakfast you were telling me about?”

“The Lightning—um, the Weeping Willow? It’s three blocks down, turn right and it’s the last house at the end of the street.” Another twinge of guilt but I rationalized it away, reminding myself that it was too late in the season for thunderstorms. At least if he wasn’t safe from Charity’s bird, he was safe from another lightning strike. I could live with that.

“So, how about dinner?”

Why was it that I couldn’t remember where I’d left my car keys or why I’d walked into the kitchen, but I could remember that those had been the exact words Alex had said to me the day we met? Another question to ask God when we finally met face-to-face. I’d started a list.

“I can’t.”

“You have a date.”

I almost laughed. A date. Oh, those gross brown fruit things that look like crayfish with no legs? Because that’s the only kind of date Bernice Strum is familiar with….

“No, just plans I can’t change.”

“Where do you live? Maybe I can stop by later this evening.”

“Look up.”

“What?”

“Up.” I repeated the word patiently, even though my heart had just shifted into high gear. I didn’t want him to stop by later. Stopping by meant conversation. Conversation would lead to questions like, What’s been happening in your life? Which would lead to answers like, Our daughter found me after twenty years and she’s smart and beautiful and she has your smile….

Alex was looking around, trying to figure out if I was nesting in one of the oak trees in the park or maybe on the roof of the post office.

“Do you see those windows? I live there. Above the salon.”

“I thought you always wanted a house with a picket fence.”

Something snagged in my throat. It took a minute before I could squeeze some words out around it. “It made sense to be close to where I work.”

“This town is the size of a nine-hole golf course,” Alex pointed out helpfully. “I can’t imagine that anywhere you lived would be that far from work.”

The house I’d had my eye on for years wasn’t for sale but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I couldn’t pay rent on the building plus make a house payment. Even with some creative stretching, my budget couldn’t perform those kinds of fiscal gymnastics. When I’d moved to Prichett and opened the salon, I told myself the apartment would be temporary but somehow it had become my “temporary” home for the past ten years.