His Small-Town Girl

Expecting to enter a small coffee shop or café through that private door, he felt momentarily disoriented to find himself standing in what appeared to be a dining room. For one long, awkward moment, he could do nothing more than try to take in the place.

Despite the lack of windows, the light seemed softer, warmer somehow, so that the room came across as homey and intimate if somewhat shabby. An old-fashioned maple dining set with five chairs occupied the greater portion of the room. A sixth chair stood between an overflowing bookcase and the door through which they had just entered.

Three more doors opened off the far wall, all closed at the moment, but Tyler’s attention focused on the old man who sat at one end of the oval dining table. As he bent his head over a Bible on the flowered, quilted place mat, his thinning white hair showed a freckled scalp, leaving the impression that he had once been a redhead. He looked up when Charlotte spoke, his faded green eyes owlish beneath a thick pair of glasses, which he immediately removed.

“This is my grandfather.”

At the sight of Tyler, surprise flitted across the old man’s lean, craggy face, replaced at once by a welcoming smile. Rising in a slow, laborious motion, he put out his hand. Tall and lean but stooped and somewhat frail, he wore a plaid shirt beneath denim bib overalls.

“Hap Jefford,” he said in a gravelly voice. “How d’you do.”

Tyler leaned forward to shake hands, careful not to grip those gnarled fingers too tightly.

“Tyler Aldrich. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Looking helplessly to Charlotte, who moved past the table toward the kitchen beyond, Tyler tamped down his unease and forced a smile. “I’m, uh, afraid I misunderstood the situation. I thought you had some sort of little restaurant back here.”

“Goodness, no,” Hap Jefford said with mild amusement, lowering himself back down onto his seat. He waved toward the chair on his left, indicating that Tyler should also sit. “Eating places are real workhouses. Time was my Lydia thought putting in a restaurant the thing to do, back when we were young enough to hold up and it seemed our boy might join the business here.” Hap shook his head, adding, “Not to be. They’re both gone to the Lord now. Him first, God rest him.”

Tyler hardly knew what to say to that, so he pulled out the chair and sat, nodding sagely. After a moment, he went back to the problem at hand.

“I really don’t want to intrude. When your granddaughter said I could eat here, I naturally thought—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Hap interrupted. “We got plenty. She always cooks so her brothers can eat if they’re of a mind. Evenings when one or the other don’t drop by, we have to eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.”

Tyler relaxed a bit. “Sounds as if you don’t much care for leftovers.”

Hap grinned, displaying a finely crafted set of dentures. “Now, I never said that. Charlotte’s a right fine cook. I just don’t mind a little unexpected change from time to time.”

Tyler laughed. “I can understand that.”

“How ’bout yourself?” Hap asked conversationally.

Not at all sure how to answer that, Tyler shifted uncomfortably. “Are you asking how I feel about leftovers or change?”

“Start with the leftovers.”

Tyler had to think about that. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually had leftovers as such.”

Hap seemed shocked, but then he shook his head, grinning. “Where’re you from, boy?”

“Dallas.”

“Now, I’d have thought they had leftovers in Dallas,” Hap quipped.

Charlotte entered just then with plates, flatware and paper napkins. Hap closed the Bible and set it aside.

“Won’t be long now,” she announced, placing a delicate flowered plate on the flowered mat in front of Hap. She placed another in front of Tyler.

“You really don’t have to feed me,” Tyler said uncomfortably as she set the third plate on the mat to Hap’s right.

“Don’t be silly.” She reached across the table to deal out case knives. “It’s ready. You’re hungry. Might as well eat.”

Tyler sensed that declining or offering to pay would insult both of the Jeffords, so he watched silently as she passed out forks and napkins, leaving a stack of the latter on the table.

“Iced tea or water?” she asked. “Tea’s sweet, by the way.”

“Water,” Hap answered. Glancing at Tyler, he added, “Don’t need no caffeine this time of evening.”

“Water,” Tyler agreed, hoping it was bottled.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t forget the ketchup,” Hap called as she hurried away.

“As if,” came the airy reply.

“Her grandma thought ketchup was an insult to her cooking,” Hap confided to Tyler.

“It is when you put it on everything on your plate,” Charlotte chided gently, returning from the kitchen with glassware and a pitcher of iced water.

“Oh, I just put it on my taters and meat loaf,” Hap said with a good-natured wink at Tyler.

“And your eggs and your steak…” Charlotte retorted, placing the items on the table and moving away again “…red beans, fish, pork chops…” She stopped in the open doorway and turned to address Tyler. “He’ll put it on white bread and eat that if there’s nothing else on hand.”

“That reminds me,” Hap said with a wink at Tyler. “Don’t forget the bread.”

Charlotte gave him a speaking look and disappeared, returning moments later with a half-empty bottle of ketchup and a loaf of sliced bread in a plastic sleeve. She placed both on the table and went away without a word, but the twinkle in her eye bespoke indulgence and amusement.

“Thank you kindly, sugar,” Hap called at her receding back. Smiling broadly, he proceeded to open the plastic and take out a slice of bread, squeeze ketchup onto the slice and fold it over before biting off half of it.

Tyler would have winced if his attention hadn’t been snagged by something else. The bread wrapper bore the Rich Foods label, the private label of the Aldrich Grocery chain. Aldrich & Associates Grocery had several stores in Oklahoma, of course, and distributed some foodstuffs to independents, but seeing that label there distressed him. It took only a moment to realize why.

He didn’t want the Jeffords to connect him with the Aldrich family who owned the grocery chain. He didn’t see why they should, really. They might not even know that the Rich Foods brand belonged to the Aldrich Grocery chain, but it seemed very important suddenly that they not make the connection.

All his life, he’d had to worry whether he was liked for himself or his family position. Just once he wanted to know that someone could be nice to him without first calculating what it might be worth. He couldn’t even remember the last time anyone had invited him, on the spur of the moment, to share a simple meal for which he was not even expected to pay.

Stunned by the abrupt longing, Tyler spread his hands on his thighs and smiled with false serenity as Hap licked ketchup off his fingers, his expression one of sublime enjoyment. When was the last time, Tyler wondered, that he had enjoyed something that much, especially something so basic?

Charlotte came in again, wearing heavy mitts this time and carrying a casserole dish. When she lifted the lid on that casserole, a meaty aroma filled the room, making Tyler’s mouth water and his stomach rumble demandingly. Given a choice in the matter, he never ate meat loaf. Ground beef, in his estimation, rarely constituted healthy eating. But what choice did he have?

She brought the rest of the meal in two trips: crisp round slices of browned potato with the red skins still on, steaming broccoli and a dish of dark greens dotted with onion and bits of bacon. Simple fare, indeed, but Tyler could not remember ever being quite so hungry. Intent on the food, he startled when Hap spoke.

“Heavenly Father…”

Tyler looked up to see Charlotte and Hap with hands linked and heads bowed in prayer. Stunned, he could only sit and stare in uneasy silence.

“We thank You for Your generosity and for our guest. Bless the hands that prepared this meal and the food to the nourishment of our bodies, that we might be strengthened to perform Your will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

“Amen,” Charlotte echoed, lifting her head.

Tyler gulped when her gaze collided with his. Belatedly, he realized that she had reached out to offer him a small spatula. When it finally dawned on him that she expected him to serve himself, he shook his head.

“Oh, uh, ladies first.”

Smiling, she began to cut the meatloaf into wedges. Not one to stand on ceremony, Hap dug into the potatoes and plunked the platter down in front of Tyler, reaching for the ketchup. After a moment hunger trumped discomfort, and Tyler began to gingerly fill his plate.

Everything looked, smelled and, to his surprise, tasted delicious. The greens took a little getting used to, but the broccoli and seasoned potatoes were wonderful, and that was saying something, given that he employed an expensive chef and routinely dined in the finest restaurants to be found. The meat loaf, however, came as the biggest surprise.

Melt-in-the-mouth tender with a beguiling blend of flavors, it whet his appetite to a greedy fever pitch. He ate with unaccustomed gusto, and only with gritted teeth did he find enough discipline to forgo a third helping. Hap apparently possessed no such compunction, but as he reached for that third wedge, Charlotte spoke up.

“Pity no one’s found a way to take the cholesterol out of beef. You can cook as lean as possible, but there’s still that.”

Hap subsided with a sigh. Looking to Tyler he commented wryly, “I keep telling her that no one lives forever in this world, but it seems she’s in no hurry to see me off to the next.” Charlotte made no comment to that, just smiled sweetly. “My first mistake,” Hap went on, “was letting her take me to the doctor.”

“Mmm. Guess you could’ve hitchhiked,” she commented calmly.

Tyler found himself chuckling as Hap latched onto that gentle riposte with clownish fervor, drawing himself up straight in his chair. “You don’t think some sweet young thing would come along and take me up, then?”

Charlotte looked at Tyler and blandly said, “If she happened to be driving an ambulance.”

Laughter spilled out of the two men, unrestrained and joyous. Tyler laughed, in fact, until tears clouded his eyes. Whatever clever rejoinder Hap might have made derailed when the door to the lobby opened and two more elderly men strolled in.

“Y’all are having fun without us,” one of them accused good-naturedly.

Hap introduced them as Grover Waller and Justus Inman. A third man identified as Teddy Booker called from the outer room, “I’m stoking this here stove. These dominoes are cold as ice!”

Hap got to his feet, eagerness lending speed if not agility to his movements. “You play dominoes, Tyler?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”

“You all go on,” Charlotte said, “and don’t stay up too late. I’ll heat up some cider after a while.”

“We’ll be having some popcorn, too,” Hap decided.

“I was hoping for carrot cake,” Grover Waller said at just a notch above a whine.

“Now, Pastor,” Charlotte told him, “you know you have to watch your sugar.”

A belly as round as a beach ball, thin, steel-gray hair sticking out above his ears in tufts and brown eyes twinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses gave the preacher a jovial appearance that belied the mournful tone of his voice as he complained, “You’ve been talking to my wife.”

“And she says you’ve got to lose twenty pounds or go back on meds,” Charlotte confirmed.

He thinned his somewhat fleshy lips and hitched up the waist of his nondescript gray slacks before turning away with a sigh.

“Oh, the burden of a caring wife,” Hap intoned, following the two men from the room.

“Seems to me you used to call it meddling,” someone said.

“We all do until they’re gone,” another gravelly voice put in before the door closed behind them.

Charlotte shook her head, smiling. “They’re all widowers except for the pastor,” she explained. Tyler didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply nodded. “They live to play dominoes, those four, and really, what else have they got to do? Well, three of them, anyway. Pastor Waller’s nearly twenty years younger than the others, and he’s got the church.”

“I see.”

After an awkward moment of silence, she rose and began to clear the table, saying, “Just let me put these in the kitchen and I’ll point you to your room.”

The idea of going off alone to a cold, less than sumptuous room did not appeal to Tyler. Rising, he heard himself say, “Can’t I help you clean up?”

He didn’t know which of them seemed more surprised. After a moment, Charlotte looked down at the soiled dishes in her arms.

“It’s the least I can do after such a fine meal,” Tyler pressed, realizing that he hadn’t even complimented the cook.

“I suppose your wife expects you to help out at home,” she began, shaking her head, “but it’s not necessary here.”

“No,” he denied automatically. “That is, no wife.”

“Ah.” Charlotte ducked her head shyly. “Well, if it’ll make you feel better to help out…”

“Oh, it will,” he said, lifting a dish in each hand and following her toward the kitchen. “I never expected a home-cooked meal, especially not such a healthy one.” She looked back over her shoulder at that, just before disappearing into the other room. “And tasty,” he added quickly, raising his voice. “Very tasty. Delicious, even.”

Hearing her wry “Thanks,” he stepped into a narrow room with doors at either end.

Countertops of industrial-grade metal contrasted sharply with light green walls and cabinets constructed of pale, golden wood. The white cooking range in the corner by what must have been the outside door looked as if it came straight from the 1950s, while the olive-green refrigerator at the opposite end of the room appeared slightly newer. Tyler noted with some relief that a modern thermostat for a central air-conditioning system had been mounted above the light switch on one wall. He hoped the rooms were similarly equipped.

What he did not see was a dishwasher. It came as no surprise, then, when Charlotte set down the dishes and started running hot water into the sink below the only window he had yet seen in the small apartment. Covered with frilly, translucent curtains in yellow trimmed with green, that window looked out over a small patio lit by a single outdoor light. Leaves swirled across the patterned brick, snagging on the thin legs of wrought-iron furniture in need of a new coat of green paint.

“You can put those down there,” Charlotte said, indicating the counter with a tilt of her head.

Hurrying to do as instructed, Tyler looked up to find her tying that white apron around her impossibly narrow waist again. Quickly switching his gaze, he watched suds foam up beneath the running water as she squeezed in detergent.

“Better take your coat off,” she advised.

He did that, then looked around for someplace to hang it before walking back into the other room to drape it over a chair. It only seemed sensible to pick up the remaining dishes before heading back to the kitchen.

Returning, he found that Charlotte had already made order out of chaos, stacking the dirty dishes as they were evidently to be washed. Glassware came first, followed by plates, flatware, serving dishes, utensils and finally pans. The leftover food had disappeared into the refrigerator, from which she turned as he entered the narrow room.

“I’ll take those,” she said, coming forward.

He surrendered the two plates and platter, then watched her scrape food scraps into a bucket beneath the sink, which she then sealed with a tightly fitting lid before stacking the dishes with the others. Turning, she placed her back to the counter, her gaze falling to the neatly cuffed sleeves of his stark-white shirt. Her mouth gave a little quirk at one corner as she reached for a pair of yellow vinyl gloves and pulled them on.

Wordlessly, she turned to the sink now billowing with suds, and reached for a plate on the stack to her right. While she washed and rinsed, Tyler wandered haplessly across the room, taking in a calendar from a local propane company on the side of the refrigerator and a clock shaped like a rooster over the stove. When he turned he saw a cookie jar in the form of an owl on the opposite counter next to a small microwave and a glass-domed container covering three layers of a dark, rich, grainy cake iced with frothy white. Several pieces had already been cut from it.

“Is that carrot cake?” he asked.

She sent him an amused glance. “Of course. Want a piece?”

A hand strayed to his flat middle, but thinking of the extra time on the treadmill required to work that off, he said, “Better not.”

She hitched a shoulder, handing him a wet plate with one hand and a striped towel with the other. Tyler had hold of them before he knew what was happening, but then he just stood there, confused and out of place.

Plunging her hands back into the soapy water, she asked smoothly, “Are you going to dry that or just let it drip all over those expensive shoes?”

He looked down, saw the dark droplets shining on black Italian leather and quickly put the towel to good use.

“That dish goes in the cabinet behind you,” she told him, a hint of amusement in her tone. “Door on the far right.”

Stepping across the room, he opened the cabinet, found an empty vertical space separated by dowels and slid the dish into it, noting that two sets of dishes were stored there, cheap dark brown stoneware, chipped in places, and the poor-quality flowered china from which he had eaten.

He realized at once that she had served him from her good plates. Both embarrassed and gratified, he left the door open and went back for more plates. A short stack of clean, wet dishes stood on the metal countertop beside the sink.

“Looks like I’m behind,” he admitted unashamedly. “But then, I’ve never done this before.”

She smiled and added another dish to the pile. “I know.”

Laughing, he got to work, making small talk as he dried and shelved the dishes. “How does a woman such as yourself come to be working in a motel?”

Looking out the window, she replied matter-of-factly, “Her parents die and she winds up living with her grandparents, who just happen to own and operate that motel.”

“My condolences,” he offered softly.

“It happened a long time ago,” she replied evenly, glancing at him. “I was fourteen.”

“Eons ago, obviously,” he teased, hoping to lighten the mood. She ducked her head.

“Thirteen years.”

That would make her twenty-seven, he calculated, a good age. He remembered it well. Had it only been eight years ago? At the time it had seemed that thirty would never come and his father would live forever. Yet, Comstock Aldrich had died of pancreatic cancer only nine months ago, leaving Tyler to fill his gargantuan shoes at Aldrich & Associates. After only ten months in the job, Tyler felt old and burdened, while Charlotte Jefford seemed refreshingly young and…serene.

He blinked at that, realizing just how much that calm serenity appealed to him. It fairly radiated from her pores.

“What about you?” she asked.

He studiously did not look at her. “Oh, I’m thirty-five, an executive, nothing you’d find interesting, I’m sure. You mentioned brothers. Older or younger?”

A slight pause made him wonder if she knew that he’d purposefully been less than forthcoming. “Older. Holt’s thirty-six, and Ryan’s thirty-four. Holt was working in the city when our folks passed, and Ryan was in college, so naturally I came here.”

“The city?”

“Oklahoma City.”

“Ah. And these brothers of yours, what do they do?”

“Well, Holt is a driller, like our daddy was. The price of oil these days keeps him pretty busy. He’s got a little ranch east of town, too. I can’t help worrying some, because that’s how Daddy died.” She looked down at her busy hands, adding softly, “He fell from a derrick.” An instant later, she seemed to throw off the melancholy memory. “But everything’s more modern now, safer, or so Holt says.”

“I see.”

“Ryan,” she went on, warming to her subject, “he’s the assistant principal at the high school. He teaches history, too, and coaches just about every sport they offer. Football, baseball, basketball, volleyball, even track.” She gave Tyler a look, saying, “In a small town, you have to do it all.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked.

“One of each. She’s older. He’s younger.” And they hate my guts, Tyler thought, surprised by a stab of regret.

“Children?”

He shook his head. “Never married.”

“Oh. Me, neither.” She shrugged. “You know how it is in a small town, slim pickings.”

He actually didn’t know, and he didn’t care to know. What he did care about surprised him. Put plainly, he wanted her to like him. He wanted her to like him for himself, not for social status or wealth or any of the other reasons for which everyone else liked him, because he could give them things, because his last name happened to be Aldrich.

For the first time in his life, it mattered what someone thought of him, someone who didn’t know the Aldrich family, someone without the least claim to influence or wealth, someone willing to invite him, a stranger, to dinner. Someone who would take him at face value.

It mattered, even if he couldn’t figure out why.

Charlotte saw her guest to the kitchen door, which opened on the same side of the building as the drive-through, and pointed across the way to his room. After thanking her profusely for the meal, he walked toward his car. Looking in that direction through the screen, she recognized her brother Holt’s late-model, double-cab pickup truck as it turned into the motel lot. The truck swung to the left and stopped nose-in at the end of the building next to the pastor’s sedan.

“You’re late,” she called as he stepped down from the cab, his gaze aimed at the man now dropping down behind the driver’s wheel of that expensive sports car. Still wearing his work clothes, greasy denim jeans and jacket over a simple gray undershirt, Holt had at least traded his grimy steel-toed boots for his round-toed, everyday cowboy pair.

Tall and lean, Holt took a great deal after their grandfather in appearance, though with different coloring. A lock of his thick, somewhat shaggy, sandy-brown hair fell over one vibrant green eye, and he impatiently shoved it back with a large, calloused, capable hand as bronzed by the sun as his face was. His long legs and big, booted feet ate up the ground as he strode toward her.

“Who’s that?” he asked, pulling wide the screen door and following her into the kitchen.

“Name’s Tyler Aldrich,” she answered. “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the Aldrich grocery store family.”

Holt lifted an eyebrow. “What gives you that idea?”

“Just a hunch.”

She liked to shop at an Aldrich store and had often driven as far as fifty miles to do so. More than once she’d seen the large photograph of an older man identified as Comstock Aldrich affixed to a wall over the motto, From Our Family To Yours. She couldn’t remember enough about that man’s face to say whether or not Tyler resembled him in any way, but she’d seen the way Tyler had reacted when she’d plopped that loaf of bread on the table.

Normally, with a guest in attendance, she made hot bread or at least served the sliced variety stacked on a pretty saucer. Tonight she’d left that bread in its wrapper just to see what he would do. He’d stared as if he’d thought the thing might pop up, point a floury finger and identify him.

“Supposing he is who you think he is, what’s he doing here?” Holt asked, going to the refrigerator to take out the plate of leftovers she’d stowed there earlier. “You reckon he’s going to open a store hereabouts? That’d be cool.”

Charlotte frowned. She hadn’t thought of that possibility. After all, he’d said he was stranded, and she had no reason to doubt him. Except that just then he drove by in that flashy car of his. Apparently he had some gas. She turned to look at her brother, who carried the food to the microwave and set the timer.