Vicky shuddered. “Don’t talk like that.”
Emily hugged her tightly. “It won’t happen until we’re married eighty years. We have it all planned.”
Nettie shook a finger at Emily. “Don’t make plans like that, or God will get out the monkey wrench.”
“He already did. The birth control pills failed and I had to deal with Nicole—lordy, but I hate that name. In both instances it didn’t pull us apart but made us closer,” Emily said.
Nettie kicked off her shoes. “Like I said before, we got a smart kid.”
The sun was setting behind the trees on the far side of the lake that evening when they arrived. Shane had a quilt draped over his arm as they made their way from Ryder’s truck to the shoreline. He flipped it out under the drooping branches of a weeping willow tree. Emily and Ryder went on down the banks of the lake toward a swimming hole they’d all used since they were in high school.
“I love this place. W-we don’t come out here often enough,” Shane said.
“Never been here before right now,” Jancy said.
“Ahhh, come on! Surely you w-went swimmin’ wh-when you lived in Pick, didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “Not one time, but I love it. It can be our special place from now on. I’ve always pictured a little white house with a weeping willow in the backyard. In my mind I can see the wind blowing the limbs and kids playing chase in and out around it.”
“I’ll plant one tomorrow,” Shane said. “You said you had something to tell m-me and then the girls interrupted us.”
“When my car first caught on fire, I thought I was the unluckiest person alive. Then I got to feelin’ like maybe I was the luckiest, since I met you because of that fire and I’ve got these friends who are like family.” She hesitated.
He moved over close enough to draw her to his side with an arm around her shoulders. “I like that you turned things around,” he whispered next to her ear, his warm breath on her neck creating a quiver deep in her heart.
“Luck don’t last.” She sighed.
“We m-make our own luck, and love lasts when luck plays plumb out,” he answered. “Look at all those beautiful colors reflected in the w-water. It’s almost as gorgeous as you are.”
“Okay.” She inhaled deeply and told him everything about the probation, including why she’d been leaving Texas at the time she did.
“Is that all?” Shane asked when she’d finished.
“Every bit of it,” she said.
“I have a confession to make,” he said.
Her stomach tightened into a knot, and she held her hands so tightly in her lap that they began to tingle.
“I knew that three days after you got here and, Jancy, I don’t care about any of it,” he said.
Her eyes felt as if they might pop right out of her head and roll around on the grass until they reached the water. “How? What? How did you . . .”
“Now you are about to stutter.” He planted a kiss on her cheek. “I had to get the papers in order to sell any usable parts of your car, and I’d let the rest go in the junk m-metal pile. Got a flag on your name and looked it up.”
She pushed away from him and cocked her head to one side. “And you didn’t mention it?”
He shrugged. “I told you. I don’t care about the past. I just w-want a future with you, darlin’. I w-wish you could’ve stayed in Pick and w-we w-would have gotten together right out of high school. But that’s not wh-what happened, so w-we’ll have to m-make up for lost time.”
“I love you, Shane Adams.”
He grabbed her and rolled backward so that they were both lying down, facing each other. “Those are the sweetest words I’ve ever heard in my whole life. I’m the luckiest man in the state.”
Vicky was sitting on her bed when Nettie knocked and pushed open the door. “Need some company?”
“In the worst kind of way.” Vicky scooted to the middle to make room. “This is really happening, isn’t it, Nettie? Next week there is going to be a wedding. And I think I’m going to be all right with it.”
Nettie fluffed up two pillows against the headboard and propped her back against it. “Yes, and you can be thankful that she is coming home at night rather than moving in with him before the wedding.”
“I am grateful for that, and Ryder has been so sweet that it’d be tough to stay mad at him. But what if he can’t change? What if . . .”
Nettie laid a hand on her knee. “I heard Thelma say the same things about Creed, and you were seventeen and still in high school. Emily’s twenty-two and has promised to finish her schoolin’ with them online courses.”
“And what did you tell Mama?” Vicky toyed with the tufts of chenille on her snowy-white bedspread.
“To be careful, because she didn’t want to lose you. Hearts can be mended and problems fixed, but only if the lines of communication are open between the mother and daughter,” Nettie answered.
“I’d rather it had been Shane.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Shane is a sweetheart, but he’s not for Emily. She has to have someone who’s on her mental level, who can talk her language. She and Ryder can do that. When the lust settles and the love is stretched, they’ll still be able to talk. She and Shane would have grown apart fast.”
Vicky sighed. “He was always such a bad boy.”
“Like mama, like daughter.” Nettie giggled. “And like grandma, too. And I thought you said you were okay with it. Where are these doubts coming from?”
Vicky jerked her head up so fast that it made her dizzy. “I don’t know, but I need to get them out of my mind. What did you mean, like grandma?”
“Thelma Jane Green was the piano player at church from the time she was thirteen. Leonard’s mama had been before that, but she died and Thelma had a right good ear for music, so she offered. Now put a girl like that with a boy that was twice as bad as Ryder.”
“My daddy?” Vicky frowned.
“Was your dad and he could do no wrong. But before he got that title, he was the worst womanizer in Henderson and Anderson Counties. Your mama fell hard for him, and your grandma, God love her soul, couldn’t do a dang thing to change her mind,” Nettie said.
“Go on,” Vicky said.
“That’s all, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that your grandma was attracted to the same kind of man. You know”—Nettie lowered her voice—“that your great-grandma and grandpa made moonshine here in Pick during the Prohibition days.”
“I heard that before. I hope that this baby is a boy.”
“Will he be a bad boy?” Nettie giggled.
Emily knocked on the door. “Who’s a bad boy? Can I join this party, or is it a private one?”
“Ryder is a bad boy, and you are welcome to come in. I hope your baby is a boy. Did y’all have a good swim?” Vicky patted the bed beside her.
Emily crawled up beside her mother and laid her head in her lap. “We sure did. The water was nice and cool. I hope this one is a boy, too, Mama. I want two boys and then a girl.”