Authors: Elizabeth Bass

Wherever Grace Is Needed (23 page)

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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Impulsively, she blurted out, “Are you busy March tenth?”

He drew back. “Why?”

“I was going to ask you on a date. I mean, I know the last time didn’t work out so well . . .”

“I thought you didn’t like me,” he said.

“Actually, I thought you didn’t like me, either.”

“That’s crazy.” He chuckled. “Well . . . maybe not so crazy. But I can’t deny I’ve been curious about something.”

The look in his eye caused her to shiver, but whatever was in that martini had mellowed her nerves to the point that she didn’t flee for her life. “What?”

“This.”

He lowered his lips to hers, and she braced herself for the onslaught. Given her opinion of the man, she was expecting his kiss to be all slaver and tongue. But it was actually sort of . . . nice.

When he pulled back, she was left blinking in surprise. He smiled at her, and she blushed.

“So is that a yes?” she asked.

“Yes to what?”

“To March tenth. Peggy is getting married to my uncle Truman.”

“I know. Got my invitation yesterday. Unfortunately, you’re too late to claim my services as escort. I’m taking Pippa.”

Had she heard him correctly? Pippa?

Fire surged into her cheeks, and she straightened up as far as she could without kicking him out of the way. “You said Pippa had flown the coop!”

“Well, yeah, for the evening. She had a red-eye tonight.”

“Do you mean you’re still engaged?”

“Of course.” He grinned. “Do you mind?”

She gave him a hard thump on the arm. “You jackass! What were you kissing me for?”

“I told you—I was curious.”

“You’re not supposed to be curious. You’re engaged!”

“But not married. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, baby.”

He leaned toward her and she put her hand against his chest and shoved. As he went sprawling onto the pavers, she scrambled off the low lounger as quickly and with as much dignity as she could. Which wasn’t much.

Am I losing my mind?
She couldn’t imagine what lunacy had made her think that a quiet moment with Wyatt would be a good idea. She was obviously more screwed up by Ben dumping her than she had realized. All her thoughts about Ray . . . and now this. Pining after the impossible . . . hurling herself at the unspeakable.

“This day can’t end fast enough to suit me,” she muttered as she fled back over the property line. The only positive was that no one had been around to witness this humiliating scene.

R
OAD
T
RIP

E
ven for Texas, winter had been puny that year, so after March arrived, Grace felt confident in declaring that spring was here. Time to get out more. What she and her dad needed was a barbecue road trip.

She mentioned it to Lou as she was driving him in his car to his six-month dental checkup, which Lou had forgotten six months ago, and she hadn’t thought about, either. Or even known to think about.

“Why don’t we take a road trip?” she asked him.

“Today? I’m going to the dentist.”

“I know, but what about tomorrow? We could go to Belton.”

“Why would we want to go there?” he asked.

“You know why. Schoepf’s barbecue.”

His eyes lit up. “If it’s barbecue you want, we should go to Lockhart. To Kreuz’s.”

“The best barbecue in Lockhart is Smitty’s,” she said.

“Kreuz’s.”

“Smitty’s,” she argued back. “And that’s why we should go to Belton. Because in Lockhart, we’ll just have this argument all over again, and you’ll never admit you’re wrong.”

He laughed. “All right. Have it your way.”

She left him in the dentist’s waiting room reading
National Geographic
and went back to the car. Steven’s office wasn’t far from the dentist, so this morning she had arranged to meet him for coffee. It was a gorgeous day. It had rained the night before, and the still-moist air carried the scent of spring.

At the office, whose walls now taunted her brother’s mobility-challenged patients with pictures of tennis and basketball stars as well as ballerinas, Grace found Emily in a glum mood.

“Dr. Oliver told me to tell you that they would be waiting for you in the coffee shop,” she said in a strained, clipped voice.

“They?” Grace repeated.

“Your brother and his friend. Muriel.”

Ugh. “Feel free to call her Frau Blainey. Or even The Blainey,” Grace said. “That’s what I do.”

For once, Emily cracked a smile. “Is it serious between them?”

“I’m hoping it’s just temporary insanity.”

At the sandwich shop in the building next door, Muriel waved Grace over. She was perched at a window table, waiting for Steven, who was at the counter picking up their order. On the table in front of her lay several glossy brochures. Grace looked at the title of the one on the top,
Live Oak Villa, an adventure in assisted living,
and immediately felt on her guard.

“What is
this?”
she asked as she sat down. Although it was perfectly obvious what it was.

When Steven brought their coffees and took a seat, she could tell by the anxiety in his eyes that he knew her blood pressure was already on the upswing.

Muriel got right down to brass tacks. “Steven thinks your father should be in a home. A residence center, I mean.”

He turned on her. “No—I said that we could start
considering
it.”

“But Dad loves his house!” Grace said.

“So would a lot of people.” Muriel crossed her arms. “That’s the point. Your father’s house is worth a fortune. He would be able to afford to move into a really nice place.”

“A nursing home?” Grace said.

Muriel rolled her eyes. “We’re not talking about putting Lou in a skanky home that smells like urine and serves Vienna sausages for dinner. These are nice places.”

“You don’t understand,” Grace told her. “He’s lived in his house forever, practically. And now you propose to take him out of it at the exact moment when he most needs familiar surroundings and homey comforts? That would be the worst thing in the world for him right now!”

Why was Muriel here talking about this? She wasn’t even part of the family.

“Here,” Muriel said, pressing the brochures on Grace.

They felt like a pile of bricks in her lap. She leafed through one filled with pictures of tidy rooms done up in beige and mauve, and caring nurses hugging smiling old people. Her hand trembled as she turned the pages.

“You have to plan for these things.” Steven eyed her with the same studied patience he probably used on patients who refused to believe surgery was necessary. “A lot of these places have waiting lists.”

“Who does it hurt to have Dad staying where he is for as long as possible?” Grace argued.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Steven said. “But then, the other day . . . You probably don’t see it, but Dad’s going downhill, Grace. He’s not going to be functional forever, and then it will be hard for you. And that would be unfair.”

“Dad’s not ready for a home,” she repeated. “He’s not.”

Muriel leveled an impatient stare on her.
“He
might not be, but y’all have to think of the market. Character homes centrally located fetch a lot now, if you’re willing to wait for the right buyer.”

“Muriel . . .” Steven said.

“What?” She blinked at him, all innocence. “You said I should come here and talk to her about it.”

“But not from such a bloodless, mercenary angle.”

Muriel’s eyes widened innocently. “Mercenary! Just because I’m being realistic? But of course
I’m
not emotionally hobbled by daddy issues.”

Grace shot out of her chair. “I didn’t come here to discuss Dad with neighbors, or to be insulted.” She turned to Steven. “And I don’t appreciate being ambushed this way.”

She turned and headed out the door, tears in her eyes. She was determined not to fall apart. At least not until she was in the privacy of the car. When she started to dig in her purse for a tissue, she realized she had the brochures that she had been carrying in her lap.

Footsteps followed her, and she turned to see Steven approaching, a distraught look on his face. “I’m sorry, Grace.”

“She’s awful,” Grace said.

“I know, but it’s my fault. After that thing with Dad and the record a few weeks ago, I began to worry that you would be overwhelmed by taking care of him.”

“Don’t tell me this is for my own good,” she said. “I shouldn’t even be part of the equation. It’s Dad who should decide, not us.”

He nodded. “I guess you’re right. I see that now. And please—don’t think I care how much Dad’s house is worth.”

“I don’t. I just don’t understand how you can care about someone who does.”

She stomped back to the car and was starting to drive home when she remembered she had to go back to the dentist office. She needed to pull herself together. In the parking lot she looked at the worried face staring back at her in the rearview mirror and quickly worked to brighten herself up. She took a lipstick from her purse and swiped it across her lips, and then combed her hair out. Her father must have seen his car pull up, because he came out of the dentist’s office door, saluted her with his cane, and started toward her. In a panic, Grace remembered the awful brochures for assisted living centers that she’d pitched into the passenger seat. She scooped them up, started to stuff them into the glove compartment, but thought better of it and slid them under the passenger seat.

A second or two later, Lou opened the door and got in.

“Everything go all right?” she asked.

He grinned. “Dr. Beckwith said I had the teeth of a sixty-year-old. How’s that for a compliment?” He laughed. “What about you? Have you been up to anything interesting?”

She swallowed and kept her smile fixed. “No, not really.”

The barbecue excursion was still on, but the next morning when Grace walked into the living room after getting herself ready, she found her dad drinking his second cup of coffee and staring at the old version of
The Forsyte Saga
he’d found at the library. He’d seen it when it was originally broadcast in the sixties and now he was on a full-throttle nostalgia trip. There were over twenty episodes in the series. If Grace didn’t get to the library to pick up more DVDs, he’d rewatch the ones he had. Multiple times.

She waited for a break in the drama before she pressed pause. “Dad, we’re going to Belton today, remember?”

As the word Belton sank in, his smile faded.

Her heart squeezed painfully. “You know—the road trip. Schoepf’s barbecue.”

He frowned in thought, then glanced down at the dog. “What about Iago?”

“He’ll be fine. We’ll only be a couple of hours.”

He looked doubtful.

“We’d better get moving,” she prompted. “You might want a jacket.”

She held her breath, but he stood obediently and started for the stairs. Sometimes it was difficult to get him out if he was feeling stubborn. But when he came back down the stairs wearing his favorite hat—a greenish felt Tyrolean fedora with a rope band and festooned with one of those doohickies that reminded Grace of an old typewriter eraser—her heart lifted. He looked jauntier than she’d seen him in months.

Driving his car again, she got onto the interstate and headed north. The traffic was light, and bluebonnets and a few early red paintbrushes dotted sections of the median and slopes running along the highway. Lou hummed along with Mozart, stopping every so often to shake his head at the way Austin kept sprawling. “Austin’s going to spill right into Waco one of these days.”

He had been saying that for twenty years and it always made her laugh. “I think we can trust Waco not to let that happen, Dad.”

Grace had a homing instinct when it came to barbecue places. She hadn’t been to Schoepf’s in years, but she remembered exactly which exit to take.

As soon as they pulled off, however, her father grew agitated. He frowned through the windshield. “This isn’t the way to Kreuz’s.”

Kreuz’s?
“Dad, this is Belton. We’re going to Schoepf’s. Remember? We decided not to go to Lockhart because you like Kreuz’s and I like Smitty’s . . .”

“Smitty’s!” he exclaimed. “Why would you want to go there?”

“I don’t, right now.”

“Good. Let’s go to Kreuz’s.”

She felt as if she’d fallen into an Abbott and Costello routine. “Dad, that’s way on the other side of Austin. Schoepf’s is right here. And you like it.”

He looked as if he was going to argue some more, but he ended the discussion with a shrug. “I was only making a suggestion.”

At the restaurant, his mood perked up again as soon as the door closed behind them and they were enveloped by the out-of-this-world scent of mesquite-grilled meat coming from a pit just feet away. It was like spa day for the taste buds.

They strolled over to where the pit master was waiting to take their orders.

“What do you want, Dad?” Grace asked.

“I want the turkey.”

The man moved to oblige, but Grace stopped him with a raised finger. “Are you sure?” she asked her dad.

“Why not?”

“You never eat turkey here.”

“Yes, I do.” She looked at him doubtfully and he said, “You haven’t been with me every time I’ve come here.”

She couldn’t argue with that. In any case, why did she want to? She needed to guard against this urge to tell him what to do.

At her nod, the man continued to pile up a plate with turkey, and then she ordered ribs.

She and her father made their way into the main part of the restaurant to order sides and iced teas and then sat down at the end of one of the long wood tables. Grace looked around contentedly at the walls covered in deer heads and crosses made from old license plates. It had been too long since she’d been here.

Lou interrupted her thoughts. He had taken a bite and was scowling at his plate. “This doesn’t taste right.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It doesn’t taste like it usually does.”

That’s because it’s turkey.
She held her tongue.

He took another bite, which he appeared barely able to gulp down. He chased it with a long swallow of tea. “Did they say that it would be like this?”

“Who? What?”

“The doctors? Did they warn you my taste buds would change? They didn’t tell me. Nobody told me that.”

“Dad, it has nothing to do with—” She stopped herself. Instead of arguing, she reached across the table, took his plate, and switched it with hers. “Here. Try the ribs.”

He looked offended for a moment, but then tentatively picked up a rib and nibbled at it. His brows shot up. “This tastes okay.” He looked at her with veiled accusation. “Why did you let me get that other stuff?”

A shriek rose in her throat, but she swallowed it. “All’s well that ends well, Dad.” She tucked into his plate.

“Do you like that?” he asked, nodding toward the food he’d given her, his nose wrinkling.

“Yes, it’s good.”
Not as good as those ribs. . . .

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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