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She grinned, her eyes sparking with excitement. Everyone knew that witnessing for the Lord was the reason Lacy woke up every day. Molly had experienced it firsthand in the middle of a highlight.
Taking in Lacy’s beautiful work, Molly realized there was no way her streamers were going to remotely resemble the artfully draping decorations her friend had strung. Every dip was perfectly matched, no bulges, no kinks. Molly plastered on a smile and thought positive. “Sure, I can handle this, Lacy. You go do that thing you do.”
“Catch ya later,” Lacy sang. “’Bye, Norma Sue and Esther Mae. Try to be good, why don’t ya.”
“Hey, what fun would that be?” Norma Sue laughed, studying her work. “Don’t you agree, Molly?”
“Oh yeah. Sure thing.” She raised an eyebrow at the two spicy women. Picking up a strand Lacy had already strung across the floor, she climbed the ladder, listening to the two friends chatter on, returning to their previous banter without skipping a beat.
“What would possess you to think about cutting your hair like that?” Norma Sue asked.
Esther Mae gave an exasperated sigh. “I feel fat. I thought maybe a shorter cut might help.”
“Esther, it doesn’t work that way!”
“Well, something has to give. I tell you I can’t fit into my dress,” she wailed. “The wedding’s two weeks away and I’m as bloated as a cow. I think Sam gave me the wrong prescription. I’ve been taking my new derivatives and all they’re doing is sending me trotting—”
“Pulleeze!” Norma’s hand shot up. “Skip the trotting part. And the word is diuretics! And why are you blaming Sam?”
Esther harrumphed. “The sign does read Sam’s Diner and Pharmacy. And, he has been acting weird lately is all I’m saying. He’s even being rude. And you know Sam—he might be grumpy sometimes but not rude and distracted. I’m telling you something’s up.”
“Maybe he’s just being cranky for no reason—it happens sometimes. Or maybe he isn’t getting enough sleep,” Molly offered.
“Well, he’s been that way for days—I think he’s thinking about Adela. I think something is wrong. Haven’t you noticed the food at the diner hasn’t been up to snuff lately?
Norma Sue nodded and stopped braiding. “Now that you mention it, Adela has been extra quiet lately.”
Molly thought about that. Everyone could tell there was something special between Adela and Sam. But there seemed to be an invisible line drawn between them. They always sat beside each other at church, Sam making certain Miss Adela was comfortable after she came down from playing the piano, fussing over her sweater when it fell off her shoulders as she sat down. It was the sweetest thing Molly had ever seen. It was one of the things that made Molly have some hope about—well, she wasn’t going to think about that right now. She had too many other things pressing to be worried about why Sam wouldn’t ask Adela to marry him.
“Maybe we need to do something,” Esther Mae snapped, sitting up straighter and drawing Molly back to their conversation.
“Oh no, you don’t.”
“Norma Sue, you know those two are in love. They need our help. Tell her Molly. Tell her, it’s our duty to make sure Adela and Sam see the writing on the wall.”
“But, I—” Molly felt trapped as she stared at the wall and willed herself to be invisible. She was already in enough trouble for messing with Bob’s life. She didn’t want Sam and Adela mad at her, too. They seemed to have things under control.
“Yeah, Molly,” Norma Sue chimed in. “Maybe Esther Mae has a point.”
“I…well.” Molly scrambled down the ladder and grabbed her backpack from where she’d set it by the door. “Look. I just remembered something I forgot to do. Y’all can figure this out on your own. Do whatever you feel you need to do.”
Feeling guilty about abandoning the job, she backed out the door and closed it before she could hear their startled replies. She was still too shaken up over Bob being so put out with her. She wasn’t cut out for all this matchmaking any more than she was cut out to be a decorator.
She was a reporter. She was supposed to stand back and record what was going on around her. To document it in a professional, even creative way was something she strove hard to do. But she’d never experienced anyone being upset with her work, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Not sure at all.
As a matter of fact, Bob’s displeasure had brought up a whole cache of hidden questions she didn’t want to think about right now.
She needed to write.
She needed to write and not think about anything other than the words on the paper.
And that pretty much summed up how she’d always looked at life. Until lately, when the words refused to flow.
It was nearly eleven o’clock as Molly hoisted her backpack to her shoulder and started to cross Main Street. She paused, thinking about poor unsuspecting Sam and Adela. Norma Sue and Esther Mae’s snooping might be just what they needed to take that next step toward the altar—it had worked many times before. But Molly had never actually had a hands-on experience in matchmaking. Sure she had written some articles that expanded on the original ad campaign that Adela, Norma Sue and Esther Mae had started with. But she had never point-blank picked two people and set out to manipulate them to fall in love.
Then again, that wasn’t really what was happening at all, not exactly. No one could make a couple fall in love, not even the matchmaking pros of Mule Hollow. There had to be that special connection. “Sparks,” as the ladies were fond of calling it—and they were hawks at spotting those romantic little embers. And it made them happy. And she was happy for them if that was what they wanted to do. She, on the other hand, was content to simply write her articles. She certainly didn’t have the knack for seeing sparks of a romantic nature. Now sparks of a disturbing nature—that just might be her niche!
What was happening to Bob was as close to getting involved on a personal level as she’d ever gotten. That was a really sad thing if she let herself dwell on it. She had a problem with closeness. But really, with the life she had chosen, closeness wasn’t a factor.
She stepped off the plank sidewalk and started across Main Street. At the sound of a fast-approaching vehicle, she glanced over her shoulder, jumping out of the way just in time for a gray minivan to whiz past her. There was nothing like nearly getting creamed to make a person lose her train of thought. Molly’s mouth fell open in a silent scream as she glimpsed the driver looking over her shoulder talking, completely unaware she’d almost mowed someone down.
Molly’s heart was pounding at the near miss. She couldn’t move for a few moments, trying to collect her wits, but her eyes were glued to the disappearing van of death.
She didn’t recognize it so she assumed it was from out of town. At the end of the street, at Prudy’s Garage, the brake lights came on and the vehicle careened to a halt beside the gas pump. It had no sooner stopped moving than suddenly heads popped out of every window! From this distance Molly thought it looked like the van literally exploded with kids. Five at least. No make that six…seven!
She was counting, when the driver stepped from the vehicle in her spandex-looking black pants and her four-inch red heels.
Oh my. That didn’t look like a mother of seven. Molly immediately wondered what her story was? Her imagination started chugging, drawing her toward Prudy’s. Stranger in town. Car full of kids. Was it by accident? Was she a woman looking for a cowboy?
There certainly could be a story in this, despite the bad headline. As Molly drew closer, the woman leaned back into the van and pulled out what looked suspiciously like a cake. A pound cake. Yes, from this distance she thought it looked like a pound cake settled on a square of foil-covered cardboard, wrapped with pink transparent plastic wrap. She squinted in the sunlight and could see a purple square in the center, like a name tag.
Was there a cake sale going on somewhere Molly didn’t know about? Maybe there was a fund-raiser going on? No, she would have known if there was a fund-raiser. That was her job to know these things.
Prudy ambled out of the grease bay squinting at the woman through his oil-speckled glasses. Molly racked her brain, making mental notes as she tugged her pencil from behind her ear and pulled her emergency notepad from her back pocket. Nearing Prudy’s, she heard the woman ask a question. Molly knew it was a question, because all of a sudden Prudy’s greasy hands began to move and wave and gesture. Everyone knew Gordon P. Rudy—Prudy for short—talked with his hands. It was fairly entertaining. And since Mule Hollow was such a small place, a person needed all the entertaining they could get. The problem was that most of the time Molly didn’t understand Prudy’s sign language!
Nobody did.
So there she was, pencil poised, paper in hand, only to watch as her story sashayed back to her van, yelled at the kids to buckle up, then sped off.
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