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  “Me? Granny always said I looked exactly like my mother.”

  “Not in your looks as much as your actions. You move like Verline. She was tall like you and you have her smile.”

  “Well, thank you. I take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s meant as one,” the teller said.

  The drugstore hadn’t changed a bit since the last time she’d been in it and that had been at least fifteen years before. She’d gone there for ice cream with her grandmother the last time she came for a visit. That would have been when she was fifteen. After her sixteenth birthday, her mother and father decided that she would work summers at the dealership. She missed Terral the first year but soon her life was so busy that the years slipped by quickly. She always managed a couple of days at Christmas and maybe two or three scattered quick visits throughout the year, but never a long visit again.

  She went inside to find that it had changed very little. The pharmacy part of the store was still at the back on the right-hand side with the soda fountain on the left and a few scattered tables and chairs. A couple of elderly ladies were sitting at one table and waved at her.

  “You’d be Verline’s granddaughter, I bet,” one said loudly.

  Austin nodded.

  “Come on back here and let us buy you some ice cream. We used to meet with her on Fridays right here.”

  “I’m Austin Lanier and you are?”

  “I’d be Molly and this here is Greta.” The one with the bluer hair pushed a chair back. “What kind are you eating?”

  Austin sat down. “Chocolate and a cup of coffee for afterwards. She talked about you two when we visited on the phone.”

  Greta held up two fingers. “We sure do miss Verline. We looked forward to our ice cream Fridays with her. She’d tell us stories about the watermelon farm, what all you’d said on Thursday night when you called, and then we’d bitch and moan about our families.”

  The lady set a cup with two enormous scoops of chocolate ice cream in front of Austin and patted her on the shoulder. “I loved your granny. She was an independent old gal.”

  Austin picked up her spoon. “She did things her way right up to the end. And we did what she wanted even though I’d have liked a real funeral.”

  “It’s best to do what she wanted. That way there’ll be no regrets. I’m making a pot of coffee now. I’ll bring out three cups when it’s finished.”

  “Verline did do things her way,” Greta said.

  Austin changed the subject. “I’m going to have to run an extra hour tonight to get all these calories off my thighs.”

  “Ah, honey, you got Verline’s genes. That woman wouldn’t fatten up if she ate six pounds of bacon and a gallon of ice cream a day. She was slim her whole life.” Molly giggled. “Y’all ain’t built for fat cells. But I am. I got a right good relationship goin’ with my fat cells. They’re happy as sailors in a whorehouse when they hear me orderin’ ice cream and I’m happy to keep them that way.”

  Austin giggled. “Tell me stories about Granny, since you knew her so well.”

  “Honey, we could make your hair stand straight up like them punk rockers on the television set but we made a pact with her long ago that what got discussed in the drugstore stayed in the drugstore. We growed up down in Terral with her and Pearlita. Pearlita married and she and her husband built a motel over at Henrietta because he worked on the railroad part time. Them two never did have no kids but Pearlita took a big shine to one of his nieces who was named after her. You know Pearl. She used to come up to visit when Verline got you in the summertime for those weeks. Then me and Molly, we moved to Ryan when we married, so that kept all four of us pretty close together. We know too many secrets to tell anything much in one Friday afternoon but if you was willin’ to meet us here about two o’clock every Friday, we might forget that we promised we wouldn’t tell secrets,” Greta said.

  Austin raised an eyebrow. “Y’all wouldn’t be tryin’ to keep me in Jefferson County, would you?”

  Both of them nodded emphatically. “Verline said once you come back and got a taste of farmin’, you’d stay. We’re just hopin’ to make sure you get a good taste.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what Verline wanted. She always wanted Eddie to love the farm like she did. You know your grandpa wasn’t worth a damn on the farm. He was smart as a tack when it comes to investin’ money but it was Verline who liked farmin’. He wanted to move into a house in town when he got that job for that company that took care of other people’s money up in Waurika, but she wouldn’t have no part of it,” Molly said.

  So that’s where Dad got his business savvy and his distaste for farming, she thought.

  “She said that she made the money and he took care of it. Then he died and she kept doin’ what she liked and bringin’ in the crops,” Greta said.

  No wonder she and Mother didn’t get along. They are just alike.

  “You met your neighbor, Rye O’Donnell, yet?” Molly asked.

  Greta fanned her face with the back of her hand. “Now that’s a man with a future. Let me tell you, if I was fifty years younger I’d done already have him corralled up in the hay loft and you wouldn’t have a sinner’s chance in heaven of takin’ him away from me.”

  “Ah, Greta, you never would’ve had a chance with him. He’s like Mark Chestnut sings about.”

  Austin cocked her head to one side. “What is it that Mark sings about?”

  Greta’s eyes lit up. “He talks about something bein’ hotter than two rats in heat inside an old wool sock. That’s the effect all of those O’Donnell boys have on the women.” She lowered her voice and her chin and looked up over her wire-rimmed glasses. “Personally, I always thought Rye was the prettiest one of the lot.”

  “That’s pretty hot. There’s more of the O’Donnells?”

  Greta nodded.

  ***

  Rye whistled all the way to the feed store and told the man there to load twenty gallons of tractor oil in the back of his truck.

  “What’s got you in such a good mood today? You break down and buy a new tractor or what?”

  “Nothing.” Rye grinned.

  “Boy, it’s either a new tractor or a new woman. Ain’t nothin’ else can put a look like that on a man’s face. So is it a John Deere or what’s her name?” the old fellow asked.

  Rye’s face lit up even brighter just thinking her name and visualizing her big blue eyes and the way his hands felt when he kept her from falling.

  “Might as well spit it out, son. You sure didn’t look like that the last time you came in here all serious. Matter of fact, I ain’t never seen such a spring in your step.”

  “I just met her. Don’t want to jinx it by talkin’ about it.”

  “I knew it was a woman. A new John Deere might put that look on my face but I’m forty years older ’n you. I’ll tell Randy to load up that oil and you’d best get on home to her. Don’t be lettin’ her out of your sights now,” he said as he walked back through the store and told his son how much tractor oil to put in the bed of Rye’s truck.

  Rye signed a ticket and started whistling again before he made it to the feed store door. Damn, she was pretty in that suit, but he bet she’d look like a rodeo queen all dolled up in jeans and a pair of boots. Or a model from Victoria’s Secret in a cute little sky blue silk nightgown with those skinny straps and her dark hair set loose to fall down to her shoulders.

  That last visual was set firmly in his mind as he drove past the drugstore, made a right-hand turn, and was three miles down the road toward Terral before he remembered that she was waiting for him at the drugstore. He whipped the truck around in the middle of the road, stomped the gas pedal, and was driving eighty miles an hour when he looked up and saw the flashing lights right behind him. He stomped the brakes, came to a sliding stop in the parking lot of the tiny used car business not two blocks from the drugstore, and slapped the steering wheel.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He pushed the
button and his window rolled down.

  “License and registration, please,” the officer said.

  Rye pulled out his wallet and opened the console to find the papers. He handed both to the highway patrolman and waited.

  “Mister O’Donnell, do you have any idea how fast you were driving?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. It was stupid but I was supposed to pick up my…” Damnation and hellfire, what do I call her? My friend? The woman in the sexy silk nightgown in my dreams?

  “Yes?” the patrolman asked.

  “I brought a lady friend to town and I forgot her and left her at the drugstore. When I realized what I’d done I was hurrying back to get her,” Rye explained. Even in his ears it sounded stupid.

  “I’ll be right back.” The patrolman carried his license and registration back to the black and white car with the lights still flashing.

  Rye tapped his foot. He set his jaw and ground his teeth. He rolled his eyes.

  Austin was going to be furious that he’d forgotten her. She’d never go anywhere with him again. Granny Lanier would haunt him forever.

  “And shit! I forgot to buy feed too,” he mumbled when he looked over his shoulder and saw the oil but no sacks of grain in the back of the truck.

  The patrolman took his own good time returning and even when he was beside the truck, he held the papers in his hands for a full minute before passing them back to Rye. “Mister O’Donnell, I ran your license and you haven’t had a ticket in the last three years. Since you were distracted and there were no other cars on the road, I’ve written you a warning, but the next time you’re doing eighty down this road, I will write you a ticket. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir, and thank you,” Rye said.

  “Go on and get that woman. You’re probably going to be in more trouble with her than a speeding ticket would be anyway.” The gray-haired fellow chuckled and walked back to his car.

  Rye tossed everything over into the passenger’s seat, looked both ways, and pulled back out on the highway. He drove very slowly to the flashing red light, made a left, and parked right in front of the drugstore. He quickly put the registration in the console and his license back in his wallet. When he got out that silly grin plastered itself right back on his face!

  “Well, I do declare, speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Greta said when Rye walked into the drugstore. “And ain’t he pretty?”

  “Shhhh. You’ll embarrass Austin,” Molly said.

  “Hello, ladies, warm day, ain’t it?” Rye said.

  “Afternoon, Rye. What brings you to town? And yes, it’s a warm day but it’s goin’ to get really hot here real soon.” Greta pushed her ice cream dish back. “Summertime, it gets hotter than Lucifer’s tail feathers, Austin. By then you’ll be wearin’ Verline’s old overalls and they’ll feel right good especially if you roll up the legs up above your knees.”

  “What makes you so happy today? Warm weather?” Molly eyed Rye.

  The tips of his ears turned red and he felt the heat, but he couldn’t think of an answer.

  Greta looked at Molly.

  Molly winked at Greta.

  Austin could figure out what was going on between the three of them, so she spoke up. “I know about southern Oklahoma in July.”

  And this other heat that gets me from the inside out every time I’m in Rye’s company is something that overalls won’t fix.

  “Well, if you stay on, anything under a hundred degrees from the end of July to the end of September means we done got us a cold snap,” Greta said.

  Molly slapped Greta’s arm. “Don’t be scarin’ her away.”

  Greta grinned. “Don’t drink the water then. If you ever do, you’ll be doomed forever.”

  “Why’s that?” Austin asked.

  “Tell her, Rye,” Molly said.

  “It’s magic. If you drink the water in Terral, you won’t ever be happy anyplace else.”

  “I drank it when I was a kid and it didn’t affect me. I even took baths in it.” Austin smiled up at him, careful to blink when she looked down so her eyes wouldn’t fixate three inches below his belt buckle.

  “You ready?” Rye asked.

  “I am. Felix and the guys will be waiting to go to the store. Next week I’ll buy the ice cream.” Austin stood up.

  Rye escorted her to the front of the store with his hand on the small of her back. After the shock in the café and the jolt when he caught her when she stumbled, he wasn’t a bit surprised that his palm felt like it was on fire. Or that the only way he wanted to move it was further down to cup one cheek or up around her shoulders to hug her close to his side so that he could feel more of her body next to his.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Greta whispered loudly. “She didn’t say he’d brought her to town.”

  “Shhh,” Molly said. “They’ll hear you.”

  “You are right on time. We’d just finished our ice cream,” Austin said.

  Rye’s grin got bigger.

  The DJ was rattling on about it being Good Friday when she got into the truck. The Friday before Easter; the day she was to toss her granny’s ashes into the Red River. Why on earth had Verline wanted it done that way and in that manner?

  She looked around at the town, a little bigger than Terral but not much. Her mother said the first time her father, Eddie, brought her to Ryan she thought all the history books in the world were wrong. The world was not round. It was flat and when they left Ryan they drove off the edge, landed in hell, made a left-hand turn at the Welcome to Terral sign, and drove another two miles out to the place where he grew up. Barbara said that she felt like she’d landed right smack in the middle of a Hee Haw set that day.

  “I need to run back by the feed store,” Rye said. He didn’t dare go home without the grain or Kent would never let him live it down.

  “Okay,” she said. “Must’ve taken awhile at the tag agency?”

  “You know how those things go,” he mumbled. No way was he telling her that he hadn’t even gone to the tag agency. He still had two weeks before deadline on the pickup tag so he’d take care of that another day.

  Her cell phone rang when they were backing out. “That’s my mother. How far is it to the feed store? I can tell her to call back.”

  “No need. It’s not two minutes from here. You can visit while I run inside and take care of things,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Is it over? Are you okay?” Barbara asked.

  “It is and I am. I’ve got a six-man payroll that I’m taking care of today. Tomorrow I meet with the lawyer and start packing.”

  “I don’t envy you that job. Verline never threw out a thing. You’ll probably come across school papers that your dad colored when he was in kindergarten down there. God, I hate that place.”

  “Well, stay in Tulsa, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “That house is as old as God. I swear it is and she wouldn’t move up here even when she got sick. I offered to take care of her, hire the best nurses, send her to a specialist, and have the tumor removed, but she’d have no part of it.”

  “I know, Mother. Granny did things her own way right up to and including the funeral.”

  “Well, if it overwhelms you, I’m just a phone call away.”

  “Thank you and I’ll remember that. I may just pack it all up and put it in a storage unit, then go through a box or two a month until it’s all done. That way I won’t have to make decisions right now.”

  “You were always organized. Gotta run. It’s payroll day here too.”

  “’Bye, Mother.”

  “That was quick.” Rye backed the truck up to the feed store so loading would be easier.

  “She just wanted to be sure everything went as planned. I told her that it had.”

  As planned, he thought. Not one blessed thing has gone as planned today. From the time I hid behind the willow tree and watched you dump those ashes into the river, my whole life would make Katrina look like a summer r
ainstorm.

  “I’ll be right out,” he said and disappeared down the side of the truck into the store.

  The two big glasses of iced tea at the café and the cup of coffee she’d had at the farm plus the two cups she’d had after her ice cream while she talked to Greta and Molly hit bottom and she needed to find a bathroom. She opened the door, slung her long legs out, and walked inside where Rye was signing a ticket on the counter.

  “Do you have a restroom I could use?” she asked.

  An elderly man looked up at her. “Yes, ma’am. Right back down that aisle and to the left.”

  His eyes widened and he looked back at Rye, a silly grin on his face. “Is that what made you forget to buy your grain?”

  Rye nodded.

  “Well, son, I reckon you done good to remember what your name was when you signed the tickets. I ain’t sure I could if I had that a waitin’ on me.”

  Rye chuckled.

  “John Deere don’t make nothin’ that looks like that. You better keep her in your sights real good or some other old cowboy will boot scoot her right out from under you,” he teased.

  “Yes, sir,” Rye said.

  By the time she was finished and had walked back to the front of the store, the feed was loaded and Rye was leaning on the side of the truck waiting for her. She and the older gentleman exchanged waves as she left.

  “You need anything else before we go home?” he asked.

  Home? That sounded strange. Terral wasn’t home.

  “Not a thing,” she said.

  The wind kicked up a minor dirt storm right outside of Terral and by the time they reached the farm it had blown enough red dirt around that her cute little Corvette looked like it had gone through the Great Depression dust bowl days. She jumped out of the truck and headed into the house as fast as she could in three-inch spike heeled shoes.

  Rye was right behind her. “We’ve got to get the windows down or there’ll be dust in everything. That stuff can get into the smallest cracks. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them. I know which ones I opened to air the place out for you.” The minute he was in the house he was chasing from one room to the other slamming down windows.

  “I wondered if they’d been up all week.” She brushed a coating of something resembling rust-colored baby powder from the front of her black suit.