Marriage Seasons 03 - Falling for You Again Read Online Free Page B

meeting.”
    Cody glanced at Patsy, who was eyeing the young redhead standing at a table near the window. “Ashley’s not doing it right,” Cody whispered, leaning against Patsy’s shoulder. “Mrs. Moore always clinks her teacup with a spoon until people stop talking.”
    “Shh,” Patsy said, elbowing him. “Esther asked Ashley to take over today, and she’s doing her best.”
    “I miss Mrs. Moore,” Cody told her. “She keeps minutes in her purse instead of in her watch. I think that’s smart, because I’ve lost two watches already. One I accidentally dropped down the garbage disposal when I was grinding up leftovers at the Hansens’ house. The other one I ran over with the lawn mower at the Moores’ house.”
    Patsy tried to keep her focus on Ashley. She was hoping for some current news about Esther, and she wasn’t really in the mood for Cody. “Scoot over, Cody. You’re dropping cookie crumbs into my teacup.”
    “I think you’re mad at me.”
    “I’m not mad. But you can’t drape all over folks like that. And for your information, Cody, there are two kinds of minutes. The minutes that a watch counts, and the minutes that are a record of a meeting.”
    “You’re upset because Pete Roberts is letting his beard grow again, aren’t you, Patsy? You go to church with him, and you eat at Aunt Mamie’s, and you fish off the dock with him. But you wouldn’t go to the football game last Friday night, so he’s growing out his beard. You didn’t do what he wanted, and now he won’t do what you want. Mrs. Moore told me that’s how it is with love. It’s like a seesaw, back and forth, up and down.”
    “Cody, for mercy’s sake, keep your voice down.” Patsy smiled at Opal Jones. She was grateful for once that the ninety-four-year-old widow wasn’t wearing her hearing aids. “Pete and I are not in love, Cody, and no, I didn’t want to go to the game with him.”
    “Because it would be a date—and there are three kinds of dates. There’s a fruit that grows on a palm tree, and there’s a number for a day of the month, and there’s the girlfriend kind of date. That’s what Pete wanted, but you—”
    The tinkling sound of Ashley tapping her teacup with a spoon finally brought silence to Cody and the others gathered in the tea nook inside Just As I Am. Patsy turned away from the young man and hoped that he would stop talking about Pete Roberts.
    “Hi, everyone,” Ashley said into the silence of the room. As if the sound of her own voice startled her, she suddenly blushed bright pink beneath her freckles. “Well, I’m not used to talking in front of people, but anyhow … I went over to visit Mrs. Moore this morning—she came home from the hospital yesterday—and she asked me to read the minutes of the last meeting.”
    “Is Esther on her feet yet?” one of the elderly women asked Ashley. “She’s not bedridden, is she? I heard they kept her in the hospital for two extra days because they had to run tests, and that sounds like cancer to me.”
    “Or kidney failure,” someone else suggested. “She’s been having a few problems in that area lately.”
    “It’s nothing,” Ashley asserted, cutting off the hum of rumors zipping around the room. “The doctor didn’t find anything seriously wrong with Esther, just the usual stuff. She has high blood pressure, like always. Her cholesterol is up. And her bones are weak.”
    “Osteoporosis,” one of the neighborhood’s widows clarified. “Bone loss. You girls need to drink plenty of milk and get your exercise while you’re young, or you’ll wind up all stooped over when you get old. You’ll be a hunchback.”
    “A thumbtack?” Opal Jones asked, turning to Patsy. “I’ve got a box of thumbtacks at home, and paper clips, too. I used to have a stapler, though I never was sure how to load the blame thing.”
    “Ashley’s talking about Mrs. Moore,” Cody explained loudly, leaning across Patsy’s teacup to address Opal. “Mrs.