about me drivin’ all the way home in bad weather. If you’re not comfortable not havin’ a bouncer, I can stay, but . . .” He let the sentence dangle.
Dotty reached across the bar and patted his cheek. “I got a sawed-off shotgun under the bar if things get too rowdy, but I’m not expectin’ a big crowd. You go on home, and drive safe.”
“Thanks, Miz Dotty. I’ve never had to toss anyone out yet, and since I’ve got the new job, you might want to reconsider keeping me on Friday and Saturday nights,” Mickey said.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Dotty said.
Mickey disappeared, and Dotty turned to Jolene. “There was a time I thought maybe he might ask you out.”
“Not my type.” Jolene smiled.
Dotty wiped down the already clean bar. “What is your type?”
“Have no idea right now, just know what isn’t,” Jolene answered.
The door opened and a blast of arctic wind blew half a dozen cowboys into the place. Jolene took a minute to scan their faces, not finding Tucker among them. She was a little disappointed, and yet she hoped that he was home with Sassy, watching television or maybe measuring something for the next room they’d work on.
More than a dozen people filed in next—ready to drink and party, not a bit afraid of the weatherman’s forecast. Dotty and Jolene became too busy drawing up pitchers and mugs of beer and even making a few fancy drinks to talk any more.
“Madam Fate, if you are real and you spent all these years setting this up, then I’d sure like to know what your endgame is,” Jolene whispered.
Montgomery, Alabama
Sugar was watching the countryside fly by at sixty-five miles an hour. When they left South Carolina, the plan was to take their time driving to Kansas and then head back west again in a zigzag pattern. They’d already called ahead and made reservations in an RV park in Alabama for tonight.
It wasn’t until Sugar looked at the calendar that she realized that it was Saturday. If she were home, she’d be thinking about church in the morning—maybe ironing one of her Sunday dresses and making sure she had a decent pair of pantyhose. Girls these days had stopped wearing hose, but not Sugar. She had given up her girdle years ago, but she’d told Dotty that they’d damn sure better bury her in pantyhose or she’d come back to haunt all three of them.
If they were home, she and Jasper would get up on Sunday morning, have pancakes, and go to church. Bless his heart, he’d been so good all these years to have dinner after church with her friends. After Bruce died, he’d had to endure the women without the benefit of another man. And not one time had he ever complained, so she needed to buck up and stop feeling sorry for herself.
“How about pancakes tomorrow morning?” she asked.
“Of course. It’s Sunday and we always have pancakes before church,” he said. “And we agreed before we ever left home that wherever we were on Sunday morning, we’d find us a church with a parking lot to fit this vehicle, and we’d attend services.”
“Yes, we did.” She laid a hand on his arm. “And maybe this one will feel more like home than the last one did. It was just too big.”
She got her phone from her purse and looked at the little house that was still on the market. There were others—one down the street from Lucy looked pretty good—but that white house with the big front porch was the one she liked best. She wished she had a picture of their little church to look at. Big, small, or in between, nothing could replace it.
Chapter Eighteen
Tucker polished his boots, ironed his shirt and jeans, dusted off his cowboy hat, and got into his truck with plans to go to Luke and Carla’s place for Melanie’s birthday celebration. Maybe it would be a level of closure to be there with others who loved her and share experiences with everyone that evening. He drove straight to their house, a redbrick place in a really nice area of town. He parked across the street and watched the family through the big plate-glass window. From the looks of it, they’d put aside the fact that Luke was dying and were laughing and having a good time.
A blast of icy wind hit Tucker in the face when he opened his door. He instinctively shut it again and drew his coat closer