Riverbend Reunion(73)

Risa wanted to butt in, but clamped her mouth shut and kept quiet.

“But since Paul has talked to the lawyer and assures me that you have a choice, then I want you to know this. If you girls do not come back here before school starts and that abominable bar opens its doors, then you will never be welcome here again. Do you understand what you are giving up to stay in Texas?” Martha asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” they said again.

Lily nudged Daisy on the shoulder and both of them smiled.

“Do you also understand that this family, including your cousins, will be ordered to have no further contact with you?” Martha asked. “I will not have my kinfolks associating with people who are turning a house of worship into a place of iniquity.”

Risa bit back tears of pure, unadulterated anger. Neither Martha nor Paul had the right to tell her girls they couldn’t even talk to their cousins.

“But, Granny Martha—” Lily started.

“That’s the choice you have, and you know what you have to do to be a part of your family,” Martha said.

“Daddy?” Daisy asked the question in one word.

“A house divided cannot stand,” Paul said, quoting part of a verse of scripture.

“What happened to loving thy neighbor?” Risa asked.

“So, you’re in the room, too?” Martha said. “This is not between you and me. I’ve banned you for your decisions. This is between the family here in Kentucky and the girls. I’ve spoken, and now we are ending this call. Goodbye.”

Haley poked her head in the kitchen door and said, “Mary Nell has a problem, and we’re all supposed to go to the bar to talk.”

“Thank God!” Risa muttered.



Jessica took a cold beer out to the porch after work to celebrate the framework of the bar being finished that day. They had ordered the mechanical bull and the jukebox, both of which would be delivered the middle of August. The plumber was coming next week to do all the work for the bar’s dishwasher and sink, and the electrician would be taking care of what needed to be done for the beer tap and the plug-ins for blenders.

She sat down and braced her back against the porch post where Stella had tacked up her vengeance warning and imagined a parking lot full of trucks and cars. Friday and Saturday nights would be their busiest nights for sure. That was a given. The sun dipped behind the rolling hills and pecan trees, bringing that moment of dusk before real dark set in. The tiny lights of dozens of fireflies flickered out across the parking lot.

“Hey, I thought I might find you out here.” Wade came around the back of the church with a glass of sweet tea in his hands.

“I like to watch the lightning bugs and listen to the tree frogs and crickets. We didn’t get much of that when we were deployed, did we?” she asked.

Wade sat down close enough to one of the other porch posts so he could use it for a backrest. “I missed the smell of the river when I was over there.”

A soft breeze ruffled the leaves on the pecan trees that surrounded the parking lot and brought the scent of the Lampasas River. She closed her eyes and sniffed the air to get the full effect of what the wind was blowing toward her. “I’d forgotten about the way this place smelled when we all came out here, but I didn’t forget the sounds.”

“You could hear them over all that music and conversation?” Wade asked.

“I was here, but I wasn’t here.” She turned up her beer and finished off the last lukewarm sip.

“What does that mean?” Wade asked.

“I came with Risa, Mary Nell, and Haley, but I spent most of my time either on the back porch watching lightning bugs or thinking,” she said.

Wade chuckled. “That’s funny.”

“Why?”

“Because I was behind the shed when I came out here,” Wade answered.

“Kissing on girls?” Jessica teased. She remembered seeing him a few times, but all too often he would be there and then he was gone.

“Don’t you remember me at all?” Wade sat down beside her. “I was the science and math nerd that everyone thought would turn out to be a professor in a junior college. Girls avoided me like the plague, because if they liked me, their friends would think they were crazy.”

Jessica nodded. “I understand.”

“How could you?” Wade asked. “You ran with the popular girls, and you’ve always been beautiful.”

“Folks say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You must be nearsighted, Wade Granger,” Jessica teased, but down deep she held on to the compliment like it was a lucky penny. “I was always tall, so most guys wouldn’t give me a second look.”

“Too bad we didn’t know that we were hiding out behind the church and barn back then. Our lives might have turned out different,” Wade said.

“Yes.” Jessica bit back a sigh.

Her phone rang before either of them could say anything else. Jessica dug it out of the cargo pocket of her camouflage pants and answered it without even looking at the caller ID.

“Hey, Jess! Where have you landed?” She recognized the deep voice as that of Roger, one of her old teammates who had finished his last enlistment a few weeks before she had.

“Roger, it’s good to hear from you!” she said. “I’m in Texas. How about you?”