“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
“No problem, but I believe we were talking about bacon in the potato salad. I figure anything that has bacon or ham in it has to be good.” His pretty green eyes lit up when he smiled.
“Amen to that,” she agreed. “Have you ever made whiskey bacon?”
“No, but I’d love to.” Cricket’s tone was almost sweet. Maybe they could find some common ground over recipes.
There could be hope for a friend there after all. “You mix equal parts of brown sugar and whiskey and paint it on thick-sliced bacon. Bake it for fifteen minutes at two hundred and fifty degrees, take it out, and flip it over and do the other side. Repeat that until it’s crispy, and then let it cool. Oh, I forgot, you need a rack to put it on while it’s cookin’.”
Cricket nodded. “That would be something a little different at our book-club meeting—it sounds really good.”
“I’m finished eating, so I’m going back inside to help Lettie and Nadine with cleanup. We’ll be going to the football field in less than an hour,” Jennie Sue said.
“I’ll help.” Rick pushed back his chair.
“Me, too,” Cricket said.
Who would have ever thought that she could win a friend with a bacon recipe and a bowl of potato salad? Jennie Sue’s heart lightened as she picked up her plate and headed inside.
The fireworks show might not have been as big or as fancy as the one out on the Baker property, but Jennie Sue loved every minute of it. She sat between Rick and Lettie. Cricket sat right behind her, flanked by Amos and Nadine.
When the first display lit up the sky, she pursed her lips and inhaled deeply. “Ohhh, that is so pretty.”
Rick leaned over and whispered, “Not nearly as pretty as you.”
She whipped around to see if he’d really said that or if she was imagining things, and bumped noses with him. They each clamped a hand over their faces at the same time.
“What?” Cricket leaned down and asked. “Don’t you like the smell of the smoke?”
“No, we turned at the same time and almost broke each other’s noses,” Rick said.
She didn’t see Rick as a guy who’d use pickup lines like the boys in college the two years that she was there. So where had that come from?
When the show ended, she threw an arm around Lettie’s shoulders. “This has been an amazing day. Thank you so much.”
“It has been fun, Lettie. Thank you, ladies, for the good meal and the fun.” Cricket stood up and got a firm grip on Nadine’s arm to help her down the bleacher steps. “We’ll all get to meet again at the book-club meeting on Friday, so this is a good week.”
“I heard you’re bringing a new thing that has bacon and whiskey involved,” Nadine said. “I can’t wait to try it out.”
“It’s Jennie Sue’s recipe,” Rick said.
Cricket gave him another of her looks, and he just laughed it away.
“So what are you bringing, Jennie Sue?” Lettie asked. “The new member should show her worth by showing up with something in her hands.”
“And it can’t be a vegetable tray, because I’m bringing one of those,” Nadine said.
“Make it something sweet, like cookies,” Amos said.
“Cookies or cake or both,” Jennie Sue said.
“Then make it a cake. I love cake,” Amos suggested.
“How about my praline caramel cake?”
“Sounds wonderful,” Amos said.
“Need some fresh pecans to make that cake? We’ve got lots in the freezer. Pralines always have pecans, right?” Rick asked as they made their way down the steps and headed toward their individual vehicles.
“Would love a quart.” Jennie Sue nodded. “Just put them in with my vegetable order and add them to my bill.”
“Sure thing,” Rick said. “Good night, y’all. It’s been a great day.”
There was definitely something to be said for small towns, the folks who lived there, and their traditions.
Chapter Six
With a bucket of hot soapy water in one hand and a tote of cleaning supplies in the other, Jennie Sue started at the back of Nadine’s house. She’d barely gotten one room done when Nadine yelled that she was going down to the church to help with a funeral brunch. She’d be home at noon. Jennie Sue took time to get a bottle of water and her MP3 player from her purse. She chose a playlist of country music and went to work on the second bedroom.
Percy would have fussed for hours if he’d seen the dust on the ceiling fans and the half dozen dead flies between the window and the screen. Just as she thought about one of his last tantrums, Miranda Lambert started singing “Mama’s Broken Heart.”
Every word sounded just like Jennie Sue’s situation. The lyrics talked about powdering her nose, lining her lips, and keeping them closed, but the line that really hit home was when Miranda sang that she should start acting like a lady. She played the song five times as she worked and then listened to “Gunpowder & Lead,” and anger boiled up inside her. If Percy had hit her, her daddy would have done just what the song said about loading a shotgun. But her mother would have been a different matter. A little infidelity—that was just a man, right? Going on the run from the IRS—that was only protecting his sorry hide, right? Verbal abuse if one of the cans of green beans had been shifted over to the side where the corn was kept—well, Jennie Sue promised to love, honor, and obey in her vows, right? And he did keep her in pretty jewelry, a nice apartment, and a car, right?
She forced herself to focus on the work and forget about the past, but it wasn’t easy. Her playlist stopped when she finished up in the two bedrooms and hung the sheets on the line. She took the earbuds out and put the MP3 player back in her purse. Before long she was humming an old Travis Tritt tune, “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares),” and giggling. She really hoped that someday Percy found himself backed up in a corner with a woman who was messy, who hated to clean, and who didn’t give a damn what he wanted or thought. She hoped that he had a quarter to call someone. It just better not be her, because she didn’t care anymore. Today she had a job and new friends.
“Hey, are you gettin’ hungry?” Nadine yelled as she pushed into the house. “It’s hotter’n Lucifer’s little spiked tail out there. Let’s have a beer and take a break; then we’ll drag out leftovers for lunch. Wait till I tell you what all I learned at the brunch today.”
“Gossip at a funeral brunch?” Jennie Sue asked.
“Honey, you can find it anywhere.” Nadine twisted the lids off two longneck bottles of beer, handed Jennie Sue one, then collapsed on the sofa, propping her feet up on the coffee table. “Sit down. You’re workin’ too fast. You got to pace yourself to make the job last all day.”
Jennie Sue sat on the other end of the sofa and sipped the icy-cold beer. “Who died?”
“Laura Mae Watson’s sister. She ain’t lived here in years, but Laura Mae wanted her to be buried next to their parents. Since there wasn’t many at the funeral, and it was a nine o’clock service, we decided to do a brunch. Who in their right mind has a funeral that early in the morning? Ten o’clock is early enough for folks to have to get dressed and put on makeup, don’t you think?”
Nadine didn’t wait for an answer. “There wasn’t but three floral sprays in the church, and those were from the immediate family. Won’t even be hardly enough to cover the grave. Whole thing, including the graveside service, was over in an hour; then we served the family for an hour, did cleanup, and visited a spell.”