He laughed. “It’s a numbers game. Most of the prospects don’t pan out, so I’ve got to keep a lot of them coming in. Perseverance is what it’s all about.”
Perseverance. Laurel rolled the word around in her head. Perseverance—that was the key. Her spine straightened. Perseverance. She’d make it through tonight, come hell or high water.
*
It was cleaning day. After Jase left, she dressed in her old gym shorts and a Lynnwood Elementary tee, then went through the whole house, room by room.
If Mama could see her now, bucket and mop in hand, she’d be horrified, but Laurel wasn’t leading her mother’s untroubled, leisurely existence. Dovie Elizabeth Kinkaid Harlow had lived all but the last two years of her life in a cocoon, insulated from anything the least bit unpleasant. Would she have been strong enough to handle bad times if she’d had more challenges earlier in her life?
By noon, she needed a break and some fresh air. Boldly opening the front door without first checking if someone was waiting in ambush, she walked out onto the sidewalk and took several deep, cleansing breaths.
She looked up and down Austin Avenue. She’d always been proud of where she lived. All six houses on this block had been built in the late 1800s, when cotton was king of the blackland prairie. Most of them had changed hands through the years as old-time fortunes ebbed or their owners aged. The house next door had been sold four years ago when old Colonel Kraft, whose family had been in residence there since the place was built, had to be hauled off to a nursing home when he began flashing the housekeeper. The Carrolls—a young couple who drove off to their jobs in Waco at six every morning and returned at eight every evening—lived there now. Laurel had never met them and doubted anyone else on the block had either.
Kinkaid House, though, had stayed in the family, and Laurel had grown up assuming she would inherit it and fill it with a brood of noisy, happy children, enough to keep the Kinkaid heritage going for generations to come.
When she and Sarah contemplated their future families—they both considered being only children a tragedy of monumental proportions that they’d never impose on their own children—Sarah limited herself to one boy and one girl, while she’d decided on three boys and three girls, enough to fill the third-floor bedrooms.
She caressed the top of the old-fashioned hitching post at the curb and glanced back at the house. Well, she’d inherited it, all right, but now the house would pass into the hands of someone else. If it would ever sell, that is.
Feeling the darkness gathering again, she went back inside. Maybe music would cheer her up. She sat down at the piano and tried to play some Schubert, then crashed the keyboard, stood up, and closed the lid like a coffin. The dissonances were more than she could bear.
A peanut butter sandwich served for lunch, after which she armed herself with a duster, polish, and vacuum cleaner, and climbed up to the third floor again.
Good thing Kel hadn’t rung the doorbell today. She didn’t want him to see her with a dish-towel apron, her hair bound up in a kerchief, toting cleaning supplies around.
The rooms went fast, and, in less than two hours, she’d closed the windows again and hauled the vacuum down to the second floor.
By late afternoon, the whole house was clean, but she herself was filthy. After a quick shower, she gave herself an iced tea break and retreated to the cool den.
Exhaustion felt good—she’d earned it. Leaning back in the overstuffed leather chair, she took a long, slow swallow from her glass, then jerked to attention as the phone beside her rang.
It was Jase.
“I won’t be back till later, hon, but plan on leaving by about six thirty. Okay?”
“Six thirty? I’ll be ready.”
What should she wear? The way she saw it, she could either dress for her funeral or dress to conquer, and she wasn’t planning to die anytime soon.
She sorted through her evening dresses. The pale pink was pretty, but far too subtle, and the black looked more stately than sinful. The fuchsia strapless—yes!
She hauled the dress out of her closet and held it up to herself in front of the mirror. The deep pinky-purple matte satin looked great on her. The Bosque Club would never know what hit it.
*
Jase came through the door at full speed, vaulted up the stairs, burst into her room, and rapped on her bathroom door. “Sorry to be late. I’ll dress in the room across the hall and meet you downstairs.”