My Stubborn Heart (5 page)

“Yeah.”

“Me too. Do they have a Potbelly Sandwich Shop in town?”

He nodded. “Over on the south side near Fourth and Riverbend.”

“Oh good. Have you had their Italian on white bread with the pickles and hot peppers?”

“No.”

“You should, it's incredible.” She carried their dishes to the sink. “What about cereal? You ever eat that for dinner?”

“About once a week.”

“Me too. What about canned vegetable soup?”

“Yeah.”

“Same here. Chinese takeout?”

“Sometimes.” That was a lie. He didn't want to tell her that even stopping at a restaurant for takeout got him all kinds of attention he didn't want.

She started wiping off the plates with a long-handled scrub brush. “At home in Dallas I'll get Chinese some, but I get Mexican more. We have unbelievable Mexican food in Dallas. There's none here in Redbud, though, right?”

“Right.”

Matt took a sip of coffee, torn. He wanted to hightail it out. But just how rude would it be for him to leave her with the entire mess to clean up? He eyed the pile of dishes and could hear his mother in his head, schooling him on manners. She'd be devastated if she knew he'd left without at least offering to help.

Resigned, he walked to the sink and nodded to the dirty dishes she was working on. “I can do this part.”

“It's okay, really. You don't have to help me clean up.”

“I don't mind.” Another lie. And another thing he'd gotten out of the habit of—saying what he really felt.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, thanks.”

He rolled up his sleeves and began slotting the dishes into the dishwasher while Kate moved around the kitchen putting things away. They worked in companionable silence until the job was done.

As he drove home afterward, he thought back over the evening. Cooking. The way the food had tasted. The things they'd talked about. Mrs. Donovan. Kate. He'd come away from it all okay. But his instincts were telling him that it would be safer, much safer, for him to refuse their dinner invitations from now on.

The two of them were welcome to their nightly dinners, but they were going to have to count him out.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Despite Matt's good intentions, he came for dinner the next night.

And the next.

Mrs. Donovan, a lady he'd thought to be a sweet and gentle person, flatly refused to accept the fact that he wouldn't be coming for more of her cooking lessons. Try as he might, he couldn't convince her otherwise.

On Saturday and Sunday he gratefully retreated to his solitary life. He didn't have to go to Chapel Bluff for two whole days, didn't have to cook, didn't have to speak, didn't have to shield himself from Kate's hazel gaze.

Nothing like a brisk walk in the company of seventy-year-olds to make a person feel like a fitness slacker.

It was Sunday, and Kate and the others had been to church that morning. Gran, Velma, and Peg went to different congregations because they each had to attend,
obviously
, the church they'd gone to since babyhood. Next they'd done what any sane Christian rushed to do after worship: They'd changed out of their church clothes. Then they'd met at Peg's for lunch. And now, because it was a pristine day and because the older people got, the more they grumbled after big meals about needing to “walk it off,” they'd set out into the woods behind Peg's house. Their party included the regulars: Kate, the three “girls,” Peg's husband, William, and the still-haven't-figured-out-how-he-fit-into-the-group Morty.

The weather was painfully pretty. Sunny and clear, with a clean brisk wind that rustled the grass and lifted Kate's hair away from her face. The forest that surrounded them smelled like a Girl Scout campout—damp and woodsy and comforting.

Fall.
Kate loved it. Loved the holidays. Loved wearing jeans and her quilted trench coat that she'd saved and saved for. Loved the temperature.

Predictably, Velma had charged into the lead. William, in his good-natured way, was attempting to keep up with her both in pace and conversation. Gran and Peg came next, walking arm in arm, heads bent toward each other. Which left Kate, huffing and puffing ever so slightly, to bring up the rear with Morty.

“So where do you live down there in Dallas? You have a house?” Morty asked.

“I do, actually. It's a duplex I bought four years ago.”

“Oh yeah? Who's living in the other side?”

“A really nice lady. She's a librarian at SMU.” Her renter had been living in the right half of the duplex for thirty-five years, so Kate had simply inherited her when she'd bought the place. Judy was quiet, scholarly, had two cats and loads of potted plants. Judy'd never been married. As much as Kate liked her, she couldn't help occasionally thinking that their duplex was like a before and after snapshot. Kate was the “before,” but frequently felt like she was sliding inexorably toward the exact same fate as Judy. Cats and potted plants.

“Your tenant isn't making meth, is she?”

She glanced abruptly at Morty. “Meth?”

“Yeah. I'm retired from the force, but I keep up with things pretty good. All kinds of people making meth in their kitchens these days. Selling it right from their home.”

“Ah . . .”

“Strangers coming and going at all hours?”

“No.”

“Suspicious people parked out front?”

“Nope. I'm pretty sure my tenant isn't making meth.”

He harrumphed. “Well, good then.”

Morty looked like Elvis might have looked at seventy-seven. Hair dyed black and glistening with gel. White T-shirt over a barrel chest and a stomach that wasn't quite a potbelly. Ironed jeans. White socks. Black penny loafers. When they'd left the house he'd pulled on a gray Member's Only jacket.

“Do you do much bowling down there in Dallas?” he asked.

“No, I'm afraid not.”

“Well, come on out while you're here. Bring Beverly there. I'm at the lanes every Tuesday and Thursday at ten. Be happy to give you some pointers.”

“Thanks, Morty.”

They walked, shoes crunching over twigs and leaves.

“Play any poker?” he asked.

“Not much these days.”

“Well, these here and I,” he motioned to the group ahead, “we get together on Friday nights for poker.”

“Was that your idea?” She couldn't imagine anyone else in the group coming up with it.

“Yeah. But the rest of 'em are getting pretty good.”

Kate nodded.

“I talked with Beverly about it at lunch, told her to come and bring you this Friday, but she said Matt Jarreau eats with you on Fridays and she didn't want to leave him.” He dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “So I was thinking that if you and your grandmother are interested in playin', we could all meet up over at your place there at Chapel Bluff on Fridays.”

“Sure, that would be fine.” Sorry social life when this prospect excited her. “What do ya'll play for?”

“Money. But the buy-in's just five dollars each.” He nodded disdainfully toward the others. “These here don't want to play for big money.”

“I see.”

Quiet stretched as they ambled along the dirt path. In the distance, Kate could hear the gurgle of a stream.

“So, Kate.”

“Yes, Morty?”

“There's something I've been wanting to talk to you about.”

She couldn't imagine what, since they'd already covered meth, bowling, and poker. “Okay.”

“You're young. You know all about romance and such.”

Who did Morty have to offer, she wondered. Commitment-phobe grandson? Geeky neighbor? Self-obsessed nephew? “I'm not sure I do know that much about it, unfortunately.”

“Well, I . . .” He scowled. Alongside the trail, the creek came into view—clear and cold looking with a few leaves floating on top. “Young girls your age—you like going to the, what do you call it? Spa? Getting your nails done?”

She looked at him, befuddled.

“What I'm trying to say— What I mean is—” He growled in frustration, stopped walking, and turned to face her. “I love Velma.”

“Ah.”

His faded green eyes filled with earnest sadness. “She won't have me, though. Won't even agree to a date.”

Kate winced. “I'm sorry.”

“And I'm sick of waiting for that woman.” He began to gesture, warming to his subject. “My wife's been gone twenty years and a man has needs. . . .”

If he finished that thought, Kate was going to hurl herself into the stream.

“Velma's a spirited one,” he continued. “I know that. Heck, I like fire in a lady. But I must've asked her out fifty times now and still nothing. Nothing!”

“I see.”

“I have my pride, you know.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I've about had it up to here with her.” He vehemently indicated his forehead.

“Got it.”

He stared moodily at the stream, cracked a few knobby knuckles. “I've got a couple of tricks left up my sleeve, though.”

Kate waited, curling and uncurling her toes in her sneakers.

He indicated the path ahead. “Shall we?”

“Sure.”

They began forward. “I'd like to offer you a deal,” he said. “I'd like you to help along my pursuit of Velma. You know, get her to go on some proper dates with me.”

“I don't think I have much influence with her, Morty.”

“Oh, I reckon you do. I can tell that she thinks highly of you.”

This was news to Kate. Apparently affection and grim acceptance were, coming from Velma, indistinguishable.

“She only has sons and grandsons, you know. Freeloaders, the lot of them. Compared to them, you're a peach.”

“Oh.”

“So here's the thing. Bring her around to me, and I'll give you some certificates—gift certificates, you know—to the spa.”

Now he was talking her language. “How many gift certificates?”

“One for each date.”

“How much would each of these certificates be worth?”

He peered at her, eyebrows lowered.

She grinned at him, shrugged. “Velma's not going to be easy to convince.”

“Fifty dollars per certificate and not a penny more.”

“Done.” She extended her hand.

He received it with a firm shake.

Apparently Gran didn't think Kate could fit a key into a lock without help. Or perhaps Gran worried that the barn was infested with spiders and didn't want Kate bitten without company. Or maybe—and with a sinking sensation, Kate acknowledged this possibility most likely—Gran was attempting some matchmaking. She'd insisted that Matt accompany Kate to the upper floor of the barn so that he could “help her” investigate whatever was stored within.

Matt, who was wearing worn jeans, boots, his ball cap, and another soft-looking flannel shirt over another long-sleeved shirt, had agreed to Gran's request. But he'd agreed with an air of long-suffering resignation, which was hardly flattering.

Matt tolerated her. God knew she'd been trying to establish rapport with him, to loosen him up, to make him smile. But the very best that could be said was that he
tolerated
her in return.

The lower story of the barn was easily accessible through enormous garage doors. But a doorway located at the top of a rickety wooden staircase, which clung to the furthest outer wall of the barn, provided the only entrance to the second story. After unlocking the bolt, Matt shouldered the door open and held it for her.

Kate clicked on the flashlight she'd brought and entered the cavernous storage area. Gritty, heavy air swirled around her like fog. She wrinkled her nose and made her way further inside. The smell reminded her of the churches she'd been to on a trip to England a few years back. Closed up, damp, and old.

“What do you think?” Matt asked.

“I'm not sure yet.”

She recognized a few hope chests together near the center of the space, but almost everything else had been covered with fabric and secured with ties. Furniture? It looked like the fabric might be covering furniture. She approached a medium-sized something that was perhaps a chair.

She could hear Matt's footsteps behind her.

Kate set her flashlight on the ground and aimed it at the chair. It took her a minute to free the first knotted tie, and she was grateful when Matt knelt near her feet and went to work on the tie beneath. They were very close to each other, so close that she could almost hear him breathing. Her senses swam.

Just friends
, she reminded herself firmly, struggling to get her stupid body's response in check.

When they'd unraveled the knots, Kate pulled away the filthy cover and tossed it aside.

Recognition flooded through her in a singing rush. She lifted her hands to cover her mouth. “Oh,” she murmured, staring with disbelief at the chair they'd revealed.

After a few beats of silence, Matt asked, “Does that mean it's good?”

She nodded dumbly.

The wooden chair was illuminated by the flashlight, but also by a wash of sunlight that had managed to fight past a grimy window. The chair stood in a reverent halo of dust motes. Gleaming. Seeming to say,
It's about time someone found me.

Kate swallowed. Licked her lips. “This is a . . .” She glanced at Matt. He was looking at her strangely, waiting. “This is a Windsor chair.” She gestured vaguely. “It has a comb-back and armrests . . . and—” she gripped the wooden piece that ran along the top—“a serpentine crest rail.”

“How old is it?”

“Probably about two hundred years.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Was it made in America?”

“Yes. New England. This,” Kate pronounced, “is a
fabulous
chair.”

They stood together for a full minute saying nothing, simply looking. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Full of history. Worn, but perfectly so for its age. An extraordinary find.

“How do you know it's not a fake?” he asked.

She made herself move past her shock to tilt it up, then peer below the armrests to see how the wooden slats fit in. “An expert will have to come and look at it before we'll know for sure. But I think it's the real thing.”

“You know a lot about antiques.”

“Yeah, I love antiques.” She ran her fingers down the chair's tapered leg. “I cannot
believe
we just discovered this chair up here!” She grinned at him.

He met her gaze. Not smiling, but not frowning, either. He extended his hand to her, she accepted it, and he pulled her to her feet.

“Do you think there could be more furniture like this up here?” Kate assessed all the other hulking objects filling the loft.

“We can look,” Matt answered.

There were at least twenty more fabric-covered pieces. Plus the hope chests, plus wooden boxes of every size. What had seemed like a chore five minutes ago now seemed like an odyssey.

Kate made her way to another nearby piece of covered furniture, something about six feet tall and four feet wide, and started in on one of the four ties.

Matt joined her again, his big hands graceful and sure on the time-crusted knots. Again, she tried hard to squelch the effect his nearness had on her. She couldn't quite do it. Couldn't quite steady herself.

“Care to do the honors?” Kate asked when they'd finished, motioning to the fabric cover.

“It's all you.”

Kate whipped the cover off. This time they'd unearthed a corner cupboard. The bottom half contained two wooden doors topped with two drawers. The top half held three shelves visible behind two paned-glass doors that opened outward from the center.

Kate touched one of the knobs on the upper door, then gently ran her fingertips along the glass.

“Well?” Matt asked.

“I think it's even older than the Windsor chair.” She laughed with disbelief at this outrageous streak of good fortune, then opened one of the cupboard doors and peered inside. “Second half of the 1700s, maybe.”

“Is the paint supposed to look like that?”

“Yes.” What had been cream-colored paint when applied had faded, scratched, and worn away to almost nothing. “It's perfect. It should look exactly like this.” She gazed at him. “If I'd known there was furniture like this up here, I'd have been here the first day I arrived at Chapel Bluff. The first minute! Gran thought it was mostly junk. Instead, it's . . . it's amazing. We're going to need an appraiser. And someone to clean everything properly. And more fire detectors.”

“Fire detectors?”

“All through the house, once we move these things in. Imagine if these were destroyed.”

“Imagine.”

“Who can we get to move these pieces into the house?” Kate asked.

“I know a few people.”

“Good, because as soon as we have our garage sale on Saturday and move all the shabby furniture out of the house, we can move this stuff in.”

“You might want to paint first.”

“Oh right.”

“And refinish the floors.”

“Oh right.”

“And then you can probably move this stuff over.”

She put her hands on her hips and blew a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “I think I better go get Gran.”

Her ancestors had had some kind of incredible taste in furniture. About half of the items left forgotten for decades in the barn were extremely valuable. As in, they could have been featured on
Antiques Roadshow
valuable. The mix was eclectic: a Federal mahogany sideboard; a Chippendale—Chippendale!—desk; a walnut Queen Anne dining room set; some Shaker furniture; and a table that Kate suspected might have been made by Gustav Stickley.

Matt had stayed with Gran and Kate all day, saying little in the face of their squeals and exclamations, doing all the hardest work. He'd wielded a crowbar for them, lifted crates, dragged things out of their way, and taken loads of trash to the Dumpster.

Out of splintering wooden boxes they'd uncovered quilts, journals, aged Bibles, three wonderful Hudson River School–era paintings, some pottery, and an extensive collection of Depression glass.

That night after dinner, Kate curled up in the den with a cup of tea, too excited to go to bed. She stared into the empty fireplace and saw lustrous wooden drawers, the clean planed top of a desk, the curving linear beauty of an armrest. She'd made finds today that took her breath away. More finds in a day than she'd dreamed of making in a lifetime. All the better because they were part of her family's history, because they'd find a home again here inside the walls of Chapel Bluff, where they belonged.

She took a long sip of tea, savoring its minty smell. It was all much, much too good to be true.

She found Gran's Bible in the basket by the foot of the sofa and managed to locate the verse she wanted with some help from the concordance.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Thank you,
she prayed.
Thank you, God.

Tonight, with the stars visible through the den's windows, she couldn't help but brim with hope. Hope for this old house, hope for her future, hope for her job, hope even for their heartbroken recluse of a contractor.

On Friday, the geriatric gang showed up early for poker night.

Dinner wasn't until 6:30, but Kate spotted Peg and William's silver BMW cruising up the driveway at 5:43. Morty's Oldsmobile at 5:48. And Velma's
Smokey and the Bandit
black Trans Am, complete with the big gold bird on the hood, at 5:55.

Kate, upstairs in her terry-cloth bathrobe with wet hair, quickly went to work with the blow-dryer.

Over this past week, and against all odds, she and Matt and Gran had settled into a nightly routine. Every weeknight Matt left work, went home to shower, then came back for Gran's cooking lessons. If the dinner of the night needed time in the oven, they'd sit at the table while it baked, snacking on cheese and crackers or hummus and pita chips. Over dinner they'd chat about upcoming community events, memories from Gran's childhood, movies, books. Everything but Matt himself. Sometimes, he'd help Kate clean. Always, he was out the door by 8:15 to go home and do . . . she wondered what.

Kate sensed that the dinners were hard for him. Simply showing up forced him to extend himself much further than he wanted to. She hadn't told him about poker night, because she'd known if she did that he wouldn't come. But now she was second-guessing herself, thinking that she should have warned him. He might not deal well with Gran's friends, and the last thing she wanted at this point was to push him too hard and scare him off.

By the time she arrived downstairs, the seniors' mealtime gender role-play was well under way. She'd watched this dance since childhood. Amazing how it differed so little from state to state, decade to decade, or with the inclusion of these new participants.

William and Morty were sitting at the kitchen table, doing nothing. In fact, had there been a TV available anywhere downstairs, she was certain they'd have been stationed in front of it watching sports. As it was, they were simply sitting, looking slightly awkward.

The women, on the other hand, were moving at double speed. Stirring green beans, spooning pot roast onto a serving platter, whisking butter out of the refrigerator, and seventeen other things at once.

These two very different time-to-get-food-on-the-table roles had always confounded Kate. How odd and vaguely insulting that she was expected to plunge into meal preparation because she had breasts, while those without were clearly expected to do nothing more than notch back their La-Z-Boys.

Of course, she wasn't exactly in a place to criticize Morty and William. Those Who Filled Glasses With Ice had precious little elevation on their high horse.

After greeting everyone, Kate walked dutifully to the cabinet with the glasses. She was still twisting ice cube trays when she heard Matt's truck pull up outside. She paused, waiting to hear him kill the engine.

He kept it running.

Still running.

He'd seen the other cars and was about to drive home without coming in. She glanced up and found Gran already looking at her. Kate widened her eyes in silent communication.