her hips and grinned. “Did you just change the subject?”
“I wondered, that’s all…”
“Walmart gift card for winter clothes, some toys for the girls and, get this, he brought dinner—roasted chicken, potatoes, vegetables. He bought it on the way.”
“I guess you don’t need much now… .”
“I need to know how your weekend went!” she said, laughing. “Okay, look—I’ll follow you back to the orchard. I’ll make your coffee. We’ll have a cup while we wait for the others to come—the ones you’re so careful to arrive before and leave after. You can ask me questions and then you’ll tell me all about your weekend with that magnificent woman!”
“Magnificent?” he asked with a frown.
“Well, Tom, I saw her! Let’s get a move on or we won’t have time to talk. Because God forbid old Jerome or Junior think we’re friends. Come on!”
* * *
Tom was completely unsure how this little spitfire did it to him, but he was grinning all the way to the orchard, following her as she carefully putted along the almost deserted road at dawn. And after they’d arrived and parked, he suggested they have coffee in the kitchen with Maxie.
“But Tom, I’m not going to get all the more intimate details if your grandmother is there,” she said quietly.
He leaned down, close to her face. “You’re not going to get intimate details anyway.”
“Oh,” she said, laughing, covering her mouth. “All right, then.”
When they walked into the kitchen, they found Maxie leaning on a hand, elbow braced on the table, her paper and coffee in front of her. She was dozing.
“Maxie?” he said.
She jerked awake. “Oh!” Then she smiled. “Morning, Nora.” And she yawned. “Good grief.”
“Oh, you’re tired,” Nora said. “Let’s go get coffee going in the office.”
“You okay, Maxie?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “I think I didn’t sleep well the last couple of nights or something. So—are we having coffee?” She sipped hers and made a face. “Mine has gone cold.”
“Let me fix that up for you,” Nora said, taking her cup. She dumped it, dressed a new, hot one with cream and sugar while she fixed her own, then sat down at the table. “Tom has promised to tell me about his weekend.”
“That should be interesting—he hasn’t really told me,” Maxie said.
Tom cleared his throat. “You were here,” he said, pouring his own coffee.
“Yes, and I’m not sure if we had a good time or not.”
“We had a great time. Darla’s a city girl, a businesswoman. She loved the orchard, the redwoods, the coast. She just couldn’t appreciate our country lifestyle, I think. You know what I mean—not the type to get real excited about country-fried steak and gravy. But she wants to come back.”
“She does?” Maxie asked.
“She does,” he confirmed, narrowing his eyes at Maxie, trusting her not to carp about the strange appetite, the many outfit changes, the fact that Darla never got out of her chair to help with dishes.
“How wonderful.” Maxie looked at Nora. “She’s a very beautiful and successful woman. Widowed.”
“So I heard,” Nora said. “Her husband served with Tom, right?”
“What was her husband like?” Maxie asked Tom.
“A good guy,” Tom said.
“Oh, now I could pick him out of a crowd,” his grandmother said.
“He worked for me,” Tom said. “You can’t usually get real cozy with the men you command, but he was a sergeant and his boys would walk into hell for him. In the end, he walked into hell for them—he lost his life saving others. But let me tell you this—he was loyal, smart, brave…and he had a great sense of humor. When he wasn’t driving them hard for their safety and survival, he was making his boys laugh. Sometimes he thought rules were stupid and sometimes I agreed. He didn’t exactly cross the line, but man,” he said, laughing and giving his head a shake. “He ran right up to it—he was an edgy guy. He had common sense and terrific instincts. Unafraid. He didn’t talk about Darla too much, at least not with me. But then, we were kind of busy.”
Nora was in a trance, listening. “Busy,” she repeated. Though he hadn’t said, what she imagined he meant was that they were under fire. She tried to shake that off—he was home safe now. So she asked, “What’s Darla like?”