At the Corner of Love and Heartache

  Stuart James sat in the dim glow of a single desk lamp in his room at the Algonquin Hotel.

  He rarely slept more than four hours a night and had been awake since three, occupying himself by surfing the Internet. Peering at the luminous screen through half glasses, he read the headline that announced the upcoming marriage of his ex-wife.

  Marilee had been floating around in his mind so much for the past six months. That was why he had come back to the States.

  Rubbing the stubble on his cheeks, he read the text on the computer screen and felt such emotion as made him turn away. He looked at the telephone for a long minute, before going to the closet, pulling out his bags and beginning to pack. He would not call her. He wouldn’t give her an opportunity to tell him not to come. If he just showed up on her doorstep, she would see him. And he doubted she would send him, the father of her child come at last, away.

  “Endearing and magical.”

  —Ann B. Ross, author of Miss Julia Throws a Wedding

  “Curtiss Ann Matlock brings us characters who live long after we’ve closed the book.”

  —Lois Battle, author of The Florabama Ladies’ Auxilary and Sewing Circle

  Also available from MIRA Books and CURTISS ANN MATLOCK

  COLD TEA ON A HOT DAY

  DRIVING LESSONS

  LOST HIGHWAYS

  Curtiss Ann Matlock

  AT THE CORNER OF LOVE AND HEARTACHE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If you are a reader familiar with my previous books, you know what to expect. I hope you are not disappointed.

  If you are a new reader picking up this book, I’m honored that you picked it up at all, considering the thousands of books out there. To be of help, let me tell you that this story is about ordinary people living lives of desperate trials and quiet triumphs. I admit to cultivating a positive outlook on life. There are enough books in the world that focus on the gutter; I like to keep my eyes outward and upward, to the beauty. This is the only view I believe worth passing on.

  I sometimes think of the reader out there, picking up the book and reading the words on the page. I imagine the person smiling, or perhaps with a tear in the eye but smiling just the same, because of having read something that expressed a similar personal experience. Many readers have written to tell me this is so. Thank you all for your letters! And should you enjoy this book, please don’t hesitate to write to tell me. I can be reached at www.curtissannmatlock.com.

  I want to thank my family for their support all these years of writing: my husband, Jim, who knows “the look” when I come down the stairs, so keeps his silence; my son, T.J., who gives presents of my books to the many women he meets; and my mother, who rearranges copies of my books from the obscure to the prominent shelves at Wal-Mart.

  And gratitude to my ancestors, too, from whom I inherited a love of books, a certain stubbornness and a deep and wide sense of humor.

  My sincere gratitude to my editor, Leslie Wainger, whose calm strength and unfailing faith in me saw me through a particularly rough time during the writing of this book.

  Welcome to my world—Valentine.

  “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”

  —Robert Frost

  “The Death of the Hired Man”

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Valentine Voice, Wednesday, February 21

  Publisher and Associate Editor to Wed James, Holloway Announce Engagement

  Tate Briggs Holloway, publisher of The Valentine Voice, and Marilee Roe James, associate editor, announce their engagement and plans to marry March 21, 11:00 a.m., at the First Street Methodist Church, with Pastor Stanley Smith officiating.

  Ms. James is the daughter of Norma Cooper of Lawton, formerly of Valentine, and the late Frank Justus of Valentine, and the niece of Vella and Perry Blaine, of Valentine. She has served on the staff of The Valentine Voice for over eight years, and is the founder and director of Angel Gifts, a nonprofit organization that provides educational assistance for special-needs children to small schools.

  The prospective groom is the son of Franny Holloway of Galveston, Texas, and first cousin to Muriel Porter-Abercrombie, formerly of Valentine and from whom he purchased The Valentine Voice last spring.

  The couple will make their home in Valentine, with Ms. James’s son, Willie Lee, and niece, Corrine Pendley.

  New York City, 6:15 a.m.

  Stuart James sat in the dim glow of a single desk lamp in his room at the Algonquin Hotel. The sounds beyond his room were becoming more frequent, footsteps in the hallway, the whoosh of the elevator, horns on the streets below, as the city awoke.

  Stuart, in a navy sweatshirt, plaid flannel lounge pants and worn kid leather moccasins bought years ago while on a photo shoot on a Navaho reservation, was reared back in the chair with his feet up on the desk and a notebook computer open in his lap. He rarely slept more than four hours a night, and had been awake since three and occupying himself by surfing the Internet.

  Peering at the luminous screen through half glasses, he read the headline that appeared. He became still, as if even the blood stopped in his veins.

  Movement returned, first with his eyes, which ran along the lines of text that announced the upcoming marriage of his ex-wife. Then his hand came from behind his head, and his feet dropped to the floor, while he stared for long seconds at the text, his mind assimilating the news.

  Then he reached for the two medication vials sitting nearby. Popping off the lids, he shook one pill from each vial, tossed both into his mouth and downed them with water from a glass that was ready and waiting.

  Carefully, breathing deeply, he set the computer on the desk, his eyes drawn again to the text, which he reread.

  His hand shot out and took up the receiver of the phone. But he halted the action in midair, then slowly replaced the receiver, sitting for a long minute with his hand resting there, as his mind swept back, touching on memories out of time.

  In a motion more swift than he had achieved for some months, he rose and reached for his slacks thrown across a chair. Pulling his wallet from the back pocket, he opened it to the picture he had kept of her and held it into the circle cast by the lamp.

  Marilee’s image was there beneath the cloudy plastic. Not smiling, but fiery. He smiled softly, remembering. He had taken the picture himself, and it was the best of her possible. Marilee had never been one to take a very good picture. She posed too hard. But this one he had caught her unawares, and angry. What had it been that time? Oh, yes, it had been when he had left her a whole day, waiting at that old grocery in the Tennessee mountains.

  He supposed his main mistake had been leaving her too often.

&
nbsp; Rubbing the stubble on his cheeks, he again read the text on the computer screen and felt such emotion as made him turn away. It was just a podunk newspaper in a podunk town, he thought, and that was why the announcement appeared on the front page.

  Marilee had been floating around in his mind so much for the past six months. That was why he had come back to the States, why he had found the Voice on the Internet and looked there every few days for the past month. He had been resisting the urge to run to her. His urge was stupid. Why couldn’t he let it go?

  He shook his head, and then he caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall. Always thin, his face was bony now. In the low-lighted room, his image appeared colorless, lifeless. Fear swept down his spine and sent him turning from the sight.

  He looked again at the telephone for a long minute, before going to the closet, pulling out his bags and beginning packing. He would not call her. He wouldn’t give her an opportunity to tell him not to come. If he just showed up on her doorstep, she would see him then. And he doubted she would send him, the father of her child come at last, away.

  One

  Today—the first day of the rest of your life.

  Valentine, Oklahoma, 5:30 a.m.

  Streetlights twinkled through the trees, and here and there kitchen lights were popping on, as the earliest risers, or those who were just coming home, began to make morning coffee.

  Up on Church Street, Winston Valentine didn’t have to make coffee. His niece, Leanne, had moved in two weeks earlier and brought her fancy coffee machine with its automatic timer. She set it to come on around the time Winston awoke each morning and checked to make certain he was alive. At eighty-eight, he thought it prudent to check his vital signs each morning. He took being able to smell the aroma of the coffee as a main indication that he remained among the living.

  Rising, he looked out the window, saw the frost on the porch roof and thought it a good choice that he and his neighbor, Everett Northrupt, had decided that during the winter months they would push their flag-raising time until one half hour after sunrise.

  He dressed, caught up his breath and his cane, and headed downstairs, passing the closed door of the room his niece occupied and stopping to peek in the room of his elderly friend and boarder, Mildred Covington, who snored lightly with her mouth wide-open. He liked to make certain Mildred was still alive, too, since the death of his former elderly boarder, Ruthanne Bell, who, just after Christmas, had passed away sitting in a chair and they all thought she was asleep for half a day.

  In the kitchen, he swallowed two aspirin, slipped into his old wool coat, poured a mugful of coffee and took it to the front porch. There he eased himself into a rocker, watched for daybreak and talked to God. He thought it best to be on speaking terms with God, since each day he came closer to kicking the bucket.

  Down at the intersection of Main and Church Streets, a spotlight shone on two flags, the Oklahoma state flag and the Valentine city flag, faintly fluttering in front of City Hall. To the west, the buildings of Main Street stretched in shades of grey at this hour, the color broken on the south side by the fluorescent blue and yellow of the old Blaines’ Drugstore sign.

  The stray black cat that had taken up at Blaines’, where Belinda Blaine fed it milk out the back door, walked across the street and disappeared beneath the only parked car on the street, a Grand Am belonging to Charlotte Nation, who was inside The Valentine Voice building. Light shone around the closed blinds covering the plate glass windows of the Voice. Charlotte, receptionist and general girl Friday, sat in front of her computer, where she had been since the early hours of the morning.

  Charlotte’s mother had suffered a stroke back in January, and in an effort to escape the sound of her mother’s labored breathing in the other room, she often left her in the care of the night nurse and came down to her office computer, where she worked on the Voice’s Web site, or boosted herself with e-mail from support lists, such as ExecSecs, for executive secretaries, and MomofMom, for daughters caretaking their mothers, and RealWomen, for women with younger lovers.

  A knock at the front door jarred Charlotte’s attention from her computer.

  “It’s me, honey.”

  It was Sandy Conroy, layout man for the Voice. Charlotte threw off her glasses and raced to the door, where Sandy stood with a bag of cinnamon rolls from the IGA bakery.

  “I know you’re beat. I’ll make us some coffee,” he told her.

  No one had ever considered that staunch Charlotte might need some care; it had always been Charlotte looking after everyone else. Until Sandy.

  Touched to the core in that instant, Charlotte pulled him inside and into her strong embrace, kissing him ardently.

  “Marry me, Charlotte,” he whispered when he dragged his lips free.

  Her answer was to kiss him again, so as not to have to tell him, yet once more, that no, she could not. She was almost thirty-seven, and Sandy was just barely twenty-six, and she had an invalid mother to care for. It was too much—for both of them.

  Over on Porter Street, in the rear bedroom of a bungalow with a deep front porch, Marilee James came awake from a vivid dream. The dream was a repeat of one she had had earlier in the week. While not exactly the same dream, it was close enough to be a little disturbing and cause her to turn on her bedside lamp.

  It was what came from listening to Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, the postmistress, who knew everyone’s business and told it every chance she got. This time Julia had been telling about how Kaye Upchurch had met her husband at the door wearing nothing but a fur coat, which she flashed open to bare her altogether, as Julia put it. Julia did not know if Kaye had succeeded in heating up her husband with this stunt, but she did know that he was now receiving Men’s Health magazine and vitamins through the mail.

  Since hearing about this, Marilee had been toying with the idea of doing something similar to Tate. She thought of it now, her gaze falling to the new engagement ring sparkling on her finger. She shined it on the bedspread and admired it again.

  Of course the idea was preposterous. Marilee was not the sort who did such things. She did not want to be that sort to do such a silly thing.

  Except that Tate told her she was way too serious, and she wanted to show him that she was not. And she felt the need to stir him up, get him to take command of their intimate lives. Well, sort of.

  Marilee wasn’t certain exactly what need she was experiencing, except that there was a craving deep inside causing her to feel frustrated and wild.

  She slipped out of bed and went to open her lingerie drawer, pulling out a long, silk, flaming red nightgown that she had, in a fit of reckless intentions, ordered from Victoria’s Secret.

  Two

  Flying by the seat of the pants

  In the front bedroom of the bungalow, Little Willie Lee, as he was generally known by bigger kids at school, opened his eyes and saw the fuzzy first grey light of morning around the edges of the window blinds. The entire room looked fuzzy. He found his glasses on his bedside table and put them on in the careful, almost reverent manner he always used, because his glasses enabled him to see.

  There was just enough light for him to make out his shiny red cape lying at the end of his bed. He had loved the cape since his mother had made it for him to be Superman on Halloween.

  He looked over at his cousin, Corrine, peering hard through the gloom. The room was yet so shadowy that he could barely identify a lump under her covers. Corrine, who liked a pile of blankets—Aunt Vella said it was because she was so skinny—slept with the covers over her head.

  He held his finger to his lips at Munro, who remained with his head on his paws, although his eyes blinked. Munro knew the plan, and to be quiet.

  Slipping from the bed, Willie Lee knew how to step so that he missed the places where the floor would creak. The wood was cool through his socks.

  His shoes waited in the dark corner. He had to sit to slip them on, but he did not have to tie them, because he had learned to rem
ove them without untying the laces. He took his coat from the hook on the door and put it on over his flannel pajamas. Concentrating as hard as he could, he got it zipped up.

  Just as he was reaching for his cape, floorboards creaked. Mama! Coming from her room.

  For an instant Willie Lee stared wide-eyed at Munro, who sat up on the bed and was also wide-eyed, and then he dived for the bed just as a slice of light came shining in from the hall. He scrambled to get himself, his cape clutched in his hands, and his bulky coat, hidden beneath the covers. Munro lay back down, up close against his legs.

  There came the swish of his mother’s robe and the creak of the floor as she came to the bedroom door. He saw her in his mind’s eye, in her long pink robe, her hair billowy, her eyes that often searched him; he could even smell her sweet scent.

  It was strange for his mother to be up this early. His mother did not like mornings. No one liked mornings the way Willie Lee did.

  He heard his mother go back to her bedroom and shut the door. He peeked out from the covers and saw the empty doorway, hall light out now.

  Slipping again from bed, he stood contemplating his problem. His mother might hear him go out the window. His mother seemed to have a certain knowledge about him. She might already know about him going out the window on the previous mornings.

  He looked at Munro and heard clearly, “Better not this morning.”

  But Willie Lee whispered, “I have to.”

  He pushed his pillow and blankets until they looked like how Corrine did in her bed. He got his cape snapped around his neck and shook it out behind him so that it fell properly. Then, on his knees on his bed, with Munro twitching beside him, he raised the window blinds. He had long ago figured out how to do it with almost no noise. The window needed a tug, and then it whooshed up silently, as if with angels’ help.

  Fresh cold air hit his hands and face.

  “Me first!” Munro jumped through the window from which Willie Lee had removed the screen a week ago. No one had noticed.