“What in the hell is Waylon doing here this early?” she mumbled as she slung open the door.
“Good mornin’,” Hattie said cheerfully.
Kate frowned.
“I’m here for Gracie. Jamie said I can have her the next three mornings for Bible school down at our church. Is she ready?”
Kate shrugged.
“You haven’t had your morning coffee, have you? I’m an old bear until I get my two cups, too. I’ll just see if they’re out on the deck and you go get a cup poured,” Hattie said.
Kate stepped aside and let her enter the cabin. Hattie stopped in her tracks when she saw Amanda on the sofa. “Why isn’t she in one of the bedrooms? That can’t be good for her back.”
“She wanted the master bedroom but changed her mind last night,” Kate explained.
Jamie slid back the doors out onto the deck and smiled at Hattie. “She’s ready. We were having breakfast burritos while we waited.”
Gracie’s dark ponytail was held up with a bright-red bow that matched her red-checked sundress. Her white sandals showed wear, but Jamie had taken time to polish them. Gracie tiptoed across the floor and put her hand in Hattie’s.
“I’m ready. You will be my teacher, right?” Gracie slipped her hand in Hattie’s.
Oh, to be as trusting as a child, Kate thought.
“Yes, darlin’ girl, I will keep you right beside me all day,” Hattie said. “I’ll have her back by one. We feed them lunch before we turn them loose.”
Jamie bent down and kissed Gracie on the forehead. “Have fun. When you get home, I want to hear all about your new friends.”
“I’ll try to remember all their names.”
Jamie handed Hattie a piece of paper. “Hattie, here’s my phone number in case she wants me to come and get her before the Bible school is done.”
“I’ll get that programmed into my phone,” Hattie said. “And Gracie, I can’t wait for you to meet Lisa.” Hattie led her out of the cabin, talking the whole way.
Jamie followed Kate to the kitchen and started to dump what was left in a skillet into the trash, then paused with a frown as she stared at Kate’s burned toast and the mixture in the blender. “The toaster runs hot. You got to stand over it and watch it like a hawk or it will burn the bread every time. It’s so old it doesn’t have a setting on it. Whatever you’ve got in that blender looks like ground-up grass. There’s enough egg mixture left for a couple of burritos. You want it?” Jamie asked.
“If she doesn’t, I do,” Amanda said from the sofa.
Kate set the blender in the refrigerator and nodded. “They do smell good. I could eat one.”
“Well, rats! I could eat them both.” Amanda padded barefoot from the living room to the kitchen. She went straight to the microwave and put a cup of water into it to heat. When it dinged, she stirred instant decaf into it, added sugar and milk, and took a sip before she carried it to the table.
“Too bad. I’m having one,” Kate said. “How did you sleep last night?”
“Horrible, but better than if I’d been in that bed,” she said honestly.
Jamie whipped up two burritos in a few seconds, put them on a plate, and set them in front of Kate and Amanda. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with them. “Y’all ever hear of the seven steps of grief?”
Amanda bit the end off the burrito. “I thought it was twelve steps. I went past denial into anger last night.”
“It’s five,” Kate said.
“I’d expect someone as old as you to know,” Amanda said.
Jamie cocked her head to one side. “Age can knock the socks off youth any day of the week, so be careful. There are two of us older than you.” Jamie shook her head. “Back to the stages of grief. Tell us what happened to make you leave that bed. You whined for that room like a two-year-old wanting a cookie. So what changed your mind?”
Amanda swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “I talked to my friend Bailey, who was my maid of honor when I got married. Let’s just say she started to open my eyes, and then I went into that room and I could see all those women who’d been there before and after me. It was not a pretty sight. I went from denial and shock straight to anger.”
“Pain and guilt is step two,” Kate said.
“I tied that up with denial.” Amanda laid a hand on her stomach. “He’s kicking. I wish he’d been a girl now, because I don’t want him to grow up like Conrad.”
“You really did do a turnaround, didn’t you?” Jamie laughed.
“I honestly did. Now tell me what to expect on the rest of this grief crap. Have y’all hit the second stage yet?”
“Oh, honey, I started with anger in the cemetery,” Jamie said.
“I finished the whole process thirteen years ago when Conrad asked for a divorce the first time,” Kate said. “How did y’all meet Conrad?”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about personal things with either of you,” Amanda said with a sniff.
Jamie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Get over it, Amanda.”
“Don’t tell me what or what not to do,” she smarted off. “How’d you meet him, anyway?”
“I was at a beginning-of-school pool party at the principal’s house. He was the superintendent’s date but spent most of the night flirting with me. He left with my phone number, called, and asked me out the next week. We were married the last day of the year, and I got pregnant soon after. But when Gracie was born, there were complications, so we knew she’d be an only child.”
“Makes sense. I had a miscarriage, and the doctor said I couldn’t have children,” Kate said.
“Why does that make sense?” Amanda asked and then clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized what it meant. “He wanted a son, so he married me to get one, right? He only married me because I’m young and he might have a son with me.”
Kate shrugged. “He was a con artist, so who knows, but that would be my guess.”
“He was a jobber who came into our store to see if we wanted to buy from him,” Amanda said. “We set up an account and he flirted like crazy, asked me out that next weekend, and we went on a picnic to the park. Very romantic, under the stars. That was late summer, and like y’all, we were married on the last day of the year. I was about four weeks pregnant at that time, and we were both ecstatic that he’d have someone to carry on his family name.”
“If that is his name,” Kate said.
“He did marry all of us with the same name, Conrad Jonathan Steele, right?” Jamie asked.
Kate and Amanda both nodded.
“And you?” Amanda asked.
“I was at the cemetery putting flowers on my father’s grave, and he was there putting flowers on his mother’s grave. Her name was May Smith, and she died in 1995. She’s buried pretty close to my father. For the first year of our marriage, I kept flowers on her grave as well as my dad’s,” Kate said.
Jamie chuckled. “He told me his mother’s name was Julie Smith and she was buried in Louisiana where he was raised. He had that southern drawl, so I never doubted him. I bet May Smith’s family thought she had a secret admirer that whole year.”
Amanda slapped the table. “He told me that you were his sister and your mother was also his mama. And that you had control of the money. What a mess!”
“Julie Smith is probably the name of one of those women that he conned,” Kate said. “He bragged about how stupid women were. In his mind, with a wink and a few compliments, he could have any woman in the world falling into bed with him.”
Amanda’s hands went up to cup her face as her eyes bugged out. “He talked to you about his women—about us?”
“Not about you two specifically, but yes, about his other women. He was trying to make me mad enough to divorce him so he could have a lot of money.”
“Well, we were all duped by the same rascal,” Jamie said. “The next thing is what are we going to do about it?”