The Magnolia Inn(44)

“Your new partner has a cure because she had to use it really often for her mother.” Jolene covered a yawn with her hand. “I’m going to bed. I’m not goin’ to pass go, collect two hundred dollars, or even take a shower until morning. Good night, Tucker.”

Just like that, she was gone. He’d just told her about Melanie and she hadn’t told him that he’d get over it or that time would help—none of those things folks usually told him when he mentioned her name. She’d listened—like he had when she’d told him about her mother. But talking to her about it made him feel better than he had in months.

A pang of guilt hit Tucker smack in the heart. He’d never want to inflict pain on Jolene like what he’d heard in her voice when she said that about her mother. She sure didn’t need to take care of him every weekend like she had her mother. It was time for him to straighten up and move on, but the thought of leaving Melanie behind didn’t seem right—not at all.





Chapter Twelve

This is not what I was expecting at all,” Jolene said as Tucker parked in front of Lucy’s house that Sunday afternoon.

“I figured Lucy would live in a two-story painted lady,” Tucker said.

“Me, too, but this is the address she gave me.” Jolene checked her phone, then glanced up at the house number on the porch post and turned around in her seat to see if they were on the right street. It all checked out. “And there’s Dotty’s van and Flossie’s car in the driveway, so I guess we are here.”

“All those years you visited your aunt, you never went to any of their homes?” Tucker asked.

Jolene frowned as she tried to remember. “No, never. Aunt Sugar would have never, ever let me go to the bar, and the ladies always came out to the inn. It doesn’t look like the home of an antique dealer, does it? Seems strange, but when I was here, we even had Sunday dinner at the Magnolia. I wonder when they started taking turns.”

“Maybe the inside is different,” Tucker said.

As she walked up the sidewalk to the porch, Jolene looked up and down the block. Lucy’s little brick house built on what they used to call a ranch plan was the last one on the block with three other houses about the same size. Two were painted white and one was yellow brick. They each had a one-car attached garage and small, well-manicured front lawn. They looked like they’d all been built in the seventies, from the same floor plan—small porch, garage, and a picture window with drapes drawn back to let in the light. Modern houses in that day and age, and still pretty much so even now, but nothing like what Jolene had imagined an antique dealer would live in.

Tucker knocked on the doorframe and glanced down at Jolene. She could feel him staring at her and looked up into his eyes. There was a difference in him that day, as if he’d shed some of the stuff weighing down his soul. They both started to say something at the same time.

“You go first,” he said.

“I was just thinking,” she started, but before she could say another word, Lucy swung the door wide-open and motioned them inside.

She wore an apron printed with Hershey Kisses all over it. “Will work for kisses” was embroidered in sparkly gold thread across the bib. “Y’all come right in. We’ve just about got the dinner on the table. I was hungry for fried chicken today, so we skipped church and we’ve been cookin’ since eleven o’clock.” She raised her voice. “The kids are here. Y’all get them potatoes mashed and the biscuits out of the oven. I’m going to talk to them in the living room.”

Jolene could hardly believe her eyes when she entered the small living room: a black leather sofa; shiny, modern black end tables; a soft, pure-white leather recliner with a bright-red pillow on it. She should make a comment, anything, but nothing came to mind.

Lucy pointed at the recliner. “Have a seat, Tucker. It’ll be at least five minutes. You’re shocked by my style, aren’t you, Jolene? When you work around antiques all day, you don’t want to come home and look at them all evening. You can sit right there on the end of the sofa, honey. It’s real comfortable.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve always been the modern gal among us four. Dotty was the wild one. Sugar was the sweet one that held us all together, and Flossie wore lots of hats, but mostly I think she was just someone to fuss at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jolene said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. And believe me, Lucy, I did not grow up around antiques in West Texas, either. This room looks like the living room we had when my dad was alive, except the leather furniture was brown.”

“Shocked and rude are two different things. I bought this house back in the seventies and thought it would be a good starter home. Evidently, it’s been a good permanent home, because I’m still here,” Lucy said.

“It’s very nice,” Tucker said. “Reminds me of the house my grandparents had in McKinney, only theirs had some acreage around it.”

“Dinner’s on the table,” Flossie called out.

“That’s our cue,” Lucy said. “Follow me.”

Memories flooded through Jolene’s mind. The house was built on practically the same floor plan as the one she’d grown up in. She remembered family pictures hanging in the hallway. There’d been one of her at her first dance recital in a little yellow outfit. Elaine had decided that Jolene needed to do something to come out of her shell and enrolled her in ballet. Jolene had been five years old that year and she’d hated the class, but it meant a time when Elaine had been proud of her.