“I’m not doing one blasted thing,” Jamie said.
“Then if he finds us guilty, you’d better get your affairs in order as far as Gracie is concerned, and you’d better have someone designated to raise that baby, Amanda.”
“You are just trying to scare me.” Amanda frowned.
“No, she’s not. She might have money, but . . .” Jamie stopped.
Gracie picked up a couple of dolls. “I’m going to my room where it’s cool. When is supper, Mama? I’m hungry.” She slammed the screen door on the way inside.
Kate almost smiled as she remembered how she used to get into trouble from every single nanny she’d ever had for slamming the back door at her house in Fort Worth.
“But what?” Kate shook away the memory and glanced over at Jamie.
“Do you have children?” Jamie asked.
“No, I do not,” she answered.
“Then she has less to lose than we do if that detective makes a case against us,” Jamie said. “And she’s not trying to scare you. I can prove the days that Conrad was with me and Gracie with my credit card accounts. I charge everything to get the points and then pay it off at the end of the month. Until the past eight or nine months, he came home on Sunday night and we always went to McDonald’s for supper, and every evening after we had supper at home, we went to Culver’s for an ice-cream cone. He said it was his way of spoiling Gracie since he didn’t get to be with her all the time.”
Kate set her mouth in a firm line. “He was spoiling her, but you paid for everything, right?”
Jamie shook her head. “He took care of the taxes and insurance on the house and paid the mortgage.”
“No!” Amanda slapped the arm of her rocking chair. “I wanted to buy a house instead of living in an apartment, but he said we had to pay off this cabin first. I’ve been giving him five hundred dollars a month to make an extra payment on this place.”
“He inherited this place and it’s paid for,” Kate said bluntly.
“Then where was my five hundred dollars going?” Amanda asked.
Kate shrugged. “Maybe to buy lots of flowers for other women.”
“Mama”—Gracie poked her head out the door—“I’m really hungry.”
“We’ll have to go to the store. Maybe we’ll get pizza,” Jamie answered.
“There’s sandwich stuff in the refrigerator,” Kate offered.
There was no way she was going to let a child go hungry, not even for the length of time it took to drive into Bootleg and get a pizza from the deli part of the convenience store.
“Oh, so she can have some of your food, but I can’t?” Amanda shot a dirty look toward Kate.
Kate ignored it and sat down in her favorite chair.
“Go on and play five more minutes,” Jamie told Gracie. “And then we’ll see about making sandwiches.”
“Okay, Mama. Can I get a glass of milk until then?”
Jamie looked at Kate.
“Of course, she can have milk. I’m not a monster.”
“Yes, you may,” Jamie said and waited until the door slammed again. “I teach school in inner-city Dallas. Shall we set down some classroom rules here, since we are all living in the same house?”
“Maybe I’m sorry that I didn’t ask before I ate the sandwich or drank the tea, but rules or no rules, I’m staying right here until September,” Amanda declared. “Aunt Ellie says I need to get my head on straight.”
“Apology accepted,” Kate said, ignoring the latter part of her statement.
“I vote that we each take care of our own space, keep things picked up in the living area, buy our own food, and do our own cooking. Any leftovers that go in the refrigerator are up for grabs unless we put our name on them,” Jamie said.
“Fair enough. Where’s the nearest store?” Amanda asked.
“About six or seven miles south in Seymour,” Kate answered. “Open until nine every evening. Hopefully the whole thing will be settled by the end of summer.”
“The business part might be all done and finished by summer’s end, but I’m scarred for life,” Amanda whined.
“Stop the dramatics. Think about him in bed with a fifty-five-year-old woman,” Jamie said.
“Yuck!” Amanda’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “My Conrad wouldn’t do that. He might have married her, but he didn’t go to bed with her.”
“Or all those women he brought up here toward the end of the month? You stupid enough to believe they weren’t screwin’ like minks?” Jamie argued.
“How do we know Hattie isn’t lying or just sayin’ those things because Iris was her friend?” Amanda asked.
“It’ll be easy to verify,” Kate said. “I can check his bank records as soon as the lawyers get this straightened out. I bet we see where he deposited your money, Amanda. There are probably receipts where he bought gasoline right here in Bootleg at the end of every month.”
“How could he do this to me?” Amanda whispered.
“You? Do you think you are the only one? He was cheating on all of us outside of being married to us,” Jamie said. “Grow up. How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-eight,” Amanda said defiantly.
“Then stop acting like you are sixteen.”
“And you?” Kate looked over at Jamie. “I’m guessing you are about thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six,” Jamie said.
“I’m forty-four,” Kate said. “We were all about thirty when he married each of us.”
Amanda’s chin popped up two inches. “He married you for your money and Jamie to get a kid. He married me for love.”
Kate shook her head slowly from side to side. “Wake up and smell the bacon, girl. Jamie, how much is your mortgage?”
“Four hundred eighty-nine dollars and fifty cents a month,” Jamie said.
“Amanda”—Kate pointed at her—“your five hundred made her house payment so he could use his money to look around for rich women to fleece.”
“No! He wouldn’t do that,” Amanda declared. “If you are so smart, then why didn’t you divorce him? Oh, wait! Because he divorced both of you. When the papers show up, you’ll both feel like fools.”
Jamie pushed up out of the chair and stretched. “I’m tired of this crap. If you were serious about us using your food for tonight, I’m going to make sandwiches for our supper.”
“I was serious, and Amanda, he would never divorce me,” Kate said.
“Why? You are old,” Amanda said.
Kate took a couple of deep breaths. “Because the prenup said that if he divorced me he only got what he brought into the marriage, and that could fit into a suitcase. If I divorced him, then he was entitled to a lot more. He said on the day that he signed it that he loved me so much that he would never leave me. A year later he vowed to make my life so miserable that I would divorce him and give him what was legally his for marrying someone no one else would have.”
“And?” Amanda pressured for more.
“I inherited my mother’s stubborn streak,” Kate said as she headed inside the house.
CHAPTER SIX
Kate spread an old quilt out on the ground and sat down. The past two days had been a time of cool adjustment, sometimes a bit awkward, most of the time simply learning to stay out of one another’s space. She’d already said more than she’d intended to ever share with these women, and she’d given them permission to use her tea and her food. That was enough.
It would take more than listening to the gentle waves lapping against the grassy shore to comfort her that day. She wished that she was back in her office, where the carpet was every bit as plush as the soft green grass beyond the quilt. Once this was over, she would go home, put it all behind her, and never deal with those two snippy women again.
Gracie’s giggles drifted across the slight breeze—she had the spirit of an angel and the smile of an imp. It would take a heart of stone not to be even a little charmed by Miss Gracie. She skipped around the edge of the lake, running back and forth to the lawn chairs Jamie had brought up from the old boathouse for Hattie and Victor.