Lenora Worth - Sweetheart Reunion

“Busy day?” Alma asked after she placed their food on the table and sat down on one of the old high-backed wooden chairs.

Callie nodded, chewing the sandwich Alma had made with fresh sourdough bread. “With this weather, everyone is ready to get back to gardening. Seems to be picking up.”

“That’s good. It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

Alma glanced over next door to where her sister spent most of her time. Callie’s Corner Nursery did a big business year-round. When she wasn’t busy helping customers plant their gardens or redo their landscaping for spring and summer, Callie turned to fall plants and pumpkins, then selling Christmas trees and designing beautiful natural door wreaths during the winter. Her sister worked as hard as Alma did, but they had different talents and passions. Callie was good with her hands and growing things, while Alma loved to cook and bake. Brenna was the civilized, artistic sister. And the one who’d managed to move away.

“Talk to Papa today?” Callie asked between nibbles of sweet potato fries.

“Early this morning, just briefly,” Alma responded. “He sounded okay. Had a group of lawyers from up in Shreveport down for some deep sea fishing. Should be back by now, though.” She glanced at her watch, wondering if Papa would come by for supper tonight.

Callie tapped a finger on the wooden table. “He’ll be okay. He always enjoys taking the boat out.”

“I worry about him,” Alma said. “I know you do, too.”

Callie nabbed another fry. “Yes, but what can we do? Nothing will mend his broken heart.”

“No, nothing.”

Alma looked out at the bank that fell away from the steps leading down to the bayou. Large live oaks dripping with gray moss shaded the tin-roofed porch. A mockingbird chirped and fussed in one of the live oak’s branches. Out near the shallows, palmetto palms and rhododendrons languished on the black, decay-filled earth. Somewhere off in the bushes, a frog croaked a repetitive song. An old log jutting out into the water held two turtles that seemed to be enjoying the warm, filtered sun dappling the dark water.

“What are you thinking?” Callie asked, her blue eyes as deep as the gulf waters just a few miles away.

Alma pushed back in her chair. “Why do you always ask me that?”

“Maybe because you’re always thinking.”

“I have a brain, therefore I think.”

Callie dropped the last of her sandwich then wiped her hands on her napkin. “You get like Papa, all dark and sad, when you look out over that water. Especially after Julien’s been around.”

“It’s not Julien.” Alma denied the pain in her heart. “I miss Mama, of course. I guess I sit here and think about what might have been.”

Callie glanced at the water then back at Alma. “We all think about that from time to time.”

“Do you miss being married?” Alma asked, her pain now for her sister.

Callie shrugged, but her expression hardened against her high cheekbones, causing her face to blush pale. She nodded, dark golden curls shimmying around her face. “I miss what I thought marriage was supposed to be. I wanted what Papa and Mama had. I thought I’d found that with Roy, but I was wrong. If I ever decide to get married again, I want someone with sticking power—the kind that lasts through thick and thin, through sickness and health.”

“Just as the vow you spoke promised,” Alma said, wishing she hadn’t asked the question. “Just like Papa and Mama.”

Callie lowered her head. “Yes, just like that.” Then she looked up at Alma. “Is that what you were thinking about, really? Marriage and a family?”

“Not for me,” Alma retorted, gathering their empty plates, the image of Julien smiling at her playing through her mind. “Do you want pie?”

Her sister gave her a resigned look. “What kind?”

“Today I have coconut and key lime.”

“Can we split a piece of key lime?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Alma took their dishes in and smiled when Winnie, one of her long-time waitresses, handed her two tiny slivers of key lime pie.

“I heard you ask,” Winnie explained. “The door is open after all.”

“Is that all you heard?”

Winnie bobbed her head, her brown bob flowing around her face. “Yes, ma fille, that’s all I heard. I didn’t have to hear the rest. I saw that tale told on your faces.”

Curious, Alma turned at the screen door, holding the pie plates one in each hand. “And what tale was that?”

“Two sisters, remembering and regretting. That’s all.”

Winnie turned and went back to her afternoon chores.

Alma turned and went back to her sister.

Winnie was right. Two sisters remembering and regretting, nothing more.

Except the knowing that they might not ever have the kind of marriage their parents had. Callie had learned that the day her husband walked out. Brenna refused to even discuss such nonsense.

Alma had learned the same at a very early age. She’d learned it the night she’d found Julien LeBlanc in the arms of another girl.

Chapter Two

Julien unloaded his catch of the day at the back of the Fleur Bakery, his eyes ever wary but hopeful for the sight of Alma. Wary because he knew she didn’t like having him around. Hopeful because he liked seeing her around.

Couldn’t be helped, either way, since they did business together. He occasionally provided fresh seafood to her restaurant and she cooked it up into some of the best around. And tonight, he had a few hundred pounds of fresh crawfish from the small farm he worked during the season. It looked to be a good year, even after all the heartache of storms and oil spills.

Julien loved springtime the best. It was a time of renewal and hope, a time when he remembered being young and carefree and in love. Fish jumping, fresh vegetables and fruit growing, swimming holes open and flowing, and long ago, Alma in his arms dancing at the annual spring festival. Lately, however, he didn’t seem to enjoy dancing the way he had when he was young and carefree. Nothing was the same without Alma, anyway.

Why had he waited so long to see that, to admit that?

The poet in him wanted to be young and carefree again, wanted that innocence of a first kiss, that newborn hope of a first dance.

He wanted what he’d had with Alma. That realization had hit him like a gale force wind the day they’d buried his daddy last fall. But it had taken him all winter to figure it all out.

The pragmatic side in him knew to quit dreaming and get on with the here and now. His late father’s birthday was coming up in a few days. That reminder made Julien less carefree and more somber. That and the fact that his baby brother, Pierre, twenty-one and on a path of self-destruction, needed Julien to be a better role model. No revelation there.

But Julien had managed a few epiphanies lately. He believed in signs, little hints from the Almighty. He didn’t have to be hit on the head to get it through his noggin that something in his life needed to change.

Alma walked out the back door, and both of those conflicting sides of him merged into a hopeful regret. Or maybe a regretful hope. Technically, they’d broken up in high school but Julien had never let go. Besides, they couldn’t avoid each other in such a small town. So they’d learned to be polite to each other, and over the years that politeness had aged into a patina of respect and appreciation, along with a rub of regret. He’d always been conflicted around Alma. Now he wanted to start over, all new and improved, and he wanted to win her back.

He smiled up at her now, determined not to show that conflict. Alma could sense turmoil the way an old-timer could predict a storm coming in off the gulf. She had that ability.