Riverbend Reunion(21)

“Speaking of that,” Jessica said, “you all need to go with me to the lawyer’s office on Wednesday. Each of you have to apply for a license to sell liquor and beer.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen, not behind the bar,” Risa argued.

“And I’ll just be doing waitress work, but only in the summer,” Haley added.

“Better just get it done for all of you at once, just in case one of you have to do fill-in work,” Oscar told them. “But don’t get me one. My license to make and sell liquor and wine will hold up. I guess this means that tomorrow we’ll only work until noon, right?”

“Probably so,” Wade answered. “We can measure and figure out the dimensions for the actual bar, and get it sort of designed.”

Jessica glanced over at Wade. “Hey, this is a joint project. Everyone here gets a vote about each step along the way.”

All the talk about names, licenses, and legalese wasn’t what was in her thoughts at all. Now that she’d seen that Risa wasn’t too upset, her thoughts went back to worrying about whether she and Wade would make good partners in this impulsive decision. Neither of them had had a permanent home in twenty years. What if one or even both got the itch to travel or to do something else?

Live for the here and now, not tomorrow or yesterday, the voice in her head whispered ever so softly.

Wade looked up and flashed a smile at her. “Then the next step in this is to make a decision about the name of our new bar.”

“We’ve all been gone for years,” Jessica said, “and fate has brought us back home at pretty much the same time. What about Back Home?”

“I tell you,” Oscar chuckled, “it wouldn’t matter what you put on the sign, folks are going to call it the Old Church.”

“Probably so, but naming it that is a little too much for me since I’m still mad at God right now,” Wade said.

“Back Home Bar and Grill,” Daisy said. “It has a nice ring.”

“It sounds generic.” Lily frowned.

“What if we leave the Bar and Grill off and just call it Back Home? Everyone in the southern part of the state is going to hear about it, and know that we serve food as well as liquor and provide a dance floor,” Risa suggested.

“I like it, but I agree with Lily. It’s a little generic,” Haley said.

“Anyone got another suggestion?” Mary Nell asked.

“Well, the boys from the base could say they’re going back home for the night,” Oscar said with a wide grin that deepened the wrinkles around his blue eyes. “But I’ve got another name to throw in the pot. How about Danny’s Place?”

Jessica’s eyes shifted back toward Wade. He jerked his head around and locked eyes with hers, then shifted his gaze over to Oscar.

“Why would you suggest that?” Jessica asked.

“I know that Danny and Wade wanted to put in a bar together, and that Wade is using Danny’s life-insurance money to go into business with you, so it seems like a good idea,” Oscar said.

Jessica stole another look over toward Wade. The glassiness in his eyes told her that he was thinking of his brother.

“Thank you, Oscar, but let’s think on it for a couple of days before we make a decision this important,” Wade said. “The name sounds good to me, and it sounds like more than just a bar. Folks might come from miles around just to get good food.”

“Not anything against Risa’s food, but I wouldn’t bet on that,” Mary Nell said. “Folks can eat in dozens of places, but finding a bar around here is another story altogether.”

“Just what are you going to cook?” Haley turned to focus on Risa.

“She’s real good with roadkill like possum and raccoon,” Lily said, but she couldn’t keep a straight face as she fell out laughing. “I’m just teasing.”

“She watched those cooking channels all the time when we were in Kentucky,” Daisy piped up from her corner of the porch. “Daddy hated anything fancy, but she can do anything from Cajun to Tex-Mex and all in between.”

“Paul was—is—a meat-and-potatoes man. Give him a venison roast or steak, fried potatoes, and gravy, and he was happy.” Risa shrugged. “We can go over menus and all that later. Like Jessica said, everything we do needs to be joint decisions.”

Warmth that had nothing to do with the hot breeze blowing through the pecan trees surrounding the porch wrapped itself around Jessica’s shoulders. She had found where home was after two decades of traveling from one post to another, and she loved the feeling.



How could so much change so fast? Haley wondered as she laced her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling. The security light her mother had installed years ago at the edge of the backyard filtered through the lace curtains and created an ever-changing pattern of shapes above her head.

She hadn’t planned to come home until the end of summer and then only for a week or two, and then her mother—at least, the person she’d thought was her mother all her life—dropped dead with a heart attack. She’d talked with the lawyer about the will, had her mother cremated as was her wish, and someday when she was comfortable with the idea, Haley would take her ashes to the beach in Florida and scatter them. She had good memories of going there for vacations when she was a little girl.