Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(4)

“No question the pies are tasty,” Suzanne replied, “but three dollars?”

Ida then did something she’d never even imagined herself capable of. She told a barefaced lie. “The Muffin Tin didn’t think so. In fact they said—”

In the space of that few minutes Suzanne had already dug into the peach pie and was busily chewing a sample. “Hold on a minute,” she garbled. “I’m willing to pay the three dollars, but I want an exclusive.”

Ida tried to imagine herself as Big Jim. He was such an admirable businessman, so strong and staunch. She hesitated a moment, then spoke as she believed he would have. “An exclusive’s more.”

“Three-twenty-five per pie,” Suzanne offered, “and I can take up to twenty a week.”

Ida smiled. “You’ve got a deal.”

As she drove home Ida began singing along with the radio. She was certain Big Jim was looking down and feeling mighty proud of her. As a matter of fact, she felt pretty proud of herself.

Later that night Ida sat down at the table and tallied her income and expenses again. “Oh dear,” she said. Although the pie money helped, she was still way short of the amount needed. One day at a time. She would simply have to take it a single day at a time. That’s all she could do. Tomorrow she would post a notice on the supermarket bulletin board announcing that she was available for babysitting.

~

Two days later when Ida was up to her elbows in flour and Crisco, the doorbell rang. She slid the fourth peach pie into the oven, swiped her hands across her apron, and hurried to the door.

She’d expected it to be a neighbor or perhaps a harried mother responding to her babysitting services sign. But when she opened the door there stood Alfred Maxwell Sweetwater or Max as everyone had come to know him. A large brown suitcase stood alongside of him.

“How’s my favorite sister-in-law?” Max pulled the bewildered Ida into a bear hug that left his brown shirt dotted with flour and bits of pastry dough.

Ida wriggled loose, then backed up and looked him square in the eye. “What are you looking for, Max?”

That may have seemed a harsh question, but in truth it was quite appropriate. Max was Big Jim’s younger brother, and they were as different as day is from night. Jim was hard working, generous, and faithful as a Baptist preacher. Max was none of those things. He’d go a mile out his way to avoid work, was selfish to the core, and a scoundrel with the ladies. Before he turned forty he’d been married to four different women, and after those marriages went south he took to living with first one woman and then another. There were no shades of grey where Max was concerned; he was the blackest of black sheep.

“What makes you think I’m after something?” Max grinned. “I just got to worrying about my big brother’s wife being here all alone and thought I’d come and check on you.”

“With a suitcase?”

“I was figuring to maybe stay a while.”

“Well, you can figure again. I’m too busy for your nonsense, and I’ve got no money to lend you.”

Max saw a window of opportunity and jumped on it. “That’s exactly why I’m here. To help out financially.”

“Help out financially?” Ida repeated dubiously. “How?”

“Well, you’ve got this big house and all these empty rooms. I was thinking I could move into one of them, help keep an eye on things, and pay a bit of rent.”

The thought caught hold in Ida’s head. “How much rent?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty dollars a week.”

“Twenty-five, and you get the small guestroom at the end of the hallway.”

“That include meals?”

Ida eyed Max. He was small and skinny. How much could he possibly eat?

“Okay,” she said. “Meals, but nothing fancy, just home cooking. And no ladies in the room.”

“Why, Ida,” Max said, “I’m surprised you’d think such a thing of me.”

Ida wanted to tell him she didn’t think it, she knew it, but by then he’d grabbed his suitcase and was halfway down the hall.

~

The first three weeks of Sam Caldwell’s search uncovered very little other than the fact that James spent a considerable amount of time moving from place to place and apparently got tangled up with a singer named Joelle Williams in Nashville. But following such a haphazard trail of breadcrumbs involved a considerable amount of traveling from state to state and subsequently a larger-than-anticipated amount of expenses. In addition to the three-hundred-dollar fee for that week, Ida had to pay one hundred and seventy-three dollars in expenses.

On top of that, not one person had called for babysitting services.

~

At the end of his first week Max handed Ida twenty-five dollars, and that’s when she got the idea. If she could rent a room to Max, why not rent out two or three of the other rooms? That afternoon she typed up a new sign and took it down to the Piggly Wiggly.

Ida removed the babysitting services sign and posted her new one.

“Room for Rent” it read and stated that the price was $30 a week with meals included.

Before nightfall she had received two calls.





Ida Sweetwater





I suppose you can tell I don’t have much use for Max, and given his history such a feeling is justifiable. Max and Jim had different daddies, and you knew it just by looking at them. Jim’s daddy was a carpenter, a man who got up every morning, went to work, and provided for his family, but the Lord called him home when Jim was only five years old.