Thirty and a Half Excuses
Page 16

I pulled it out of my purse and handed it to her.
She danced for several more seconds, then stopped, cocking her head. “Why do you look so strange?”
I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her what happened. “I think Jonah Pruitt’s interested in me.”
Her nose scrunched as she watched me, still confused. Then her eyebrows rose. “Oh!” Confusion returned. “Oh.” She paused. “What happened?”
“He invited me to church.”
Rolling her eyes, Violet shook her head. “Good Lord, if that’s interested in you, then that means Reverend Martin has hit on every woman in town.” She giggled. “Can you imagine?”
I leaned my butt against the counter. “That wasn’t all.”
“What else?”
“He said you and I were as beautiful as our names.”
Violet laughed. “Rose, you’re so cute.” She patted my arm and walked around the counter. “He wasn’t hittin’ on you. He was trying to secure our business.”
“I don’t know…”
She put her hand on her hip. “How many men have you dated?”
“That’s not fair.” She knew I’d only dated Joe. I refused to count the two blind dates she’d set me up on. “How many men have you dated?”
An ornery grin lit up her eyes. “Only a few, but I’m changing that tomorrow night.”
My breath stuck. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have a date.”
“A date? With who?”
“Brody.”
I wasn’t sure why that surprised me. They’d flirted at the ribbon cutting ceremony. And Violet seemed ready to move on from her relationship with Mike, even if I wasn’t ready for her to move on. “That’s…great.”
“Don’t sound so excited.”
“It’s just…so soon.”
She rested her arms on the counter and leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I think he’s dating someone.”
“Who’s dating someone?” Then I realized she meant Mike. “Oh.” Try as I might, I just couldn’t picture either of them with someone else. It didn’t seem right. But if Mike really was dating, didn’t Violet deserve to move on too? “What about Ashley and Mikey?”
“It’s Mike’s night to have them.”
This was all too weird for me, but Violet did seem happy. “Good for you, Vi. Brody seems like a great guy. At least, most of the women in town seem to think so.”
“He was three years ahead of me in school. I was a freshman when he was a senior. Of course, he didn’t know me back then.”
I grinned. “Sounds like he wants to know you more now.”
Violet giggled and straightened up the counter. “The Gardner Sisters Nursery had a great first day. Tomorrow we need to figure out how to get all those flowers to the church.” Her mouth dropped open. “Oh! Did you find someone to plant them and trim the landscape?”
I tried not to cringe. “Two someones.”
“Who are they?”
“David Moore and Bruce Wayne Decker.”
Her face screwed up. “I don’t know them, but why does the second guy sound familiar?”
I moved to the door and said over my shoulder, “Because I was on his jury.” Then I hurried out to start covering the plants on the sidewalk.
Violet followed me out the door. “You hired a murderer?”
I shot her an indignant look. “He is not a murderer. Remember? Jimmy DeWade was the murderer.”
“He’s still a criminal!”
I shook my head. “For little things. Pot, DUI, shoplifting.”
She leaned against the door, crossing her arms over her chest and puckering her mouth. “What if he shoplifts at the church? That’s gonna look bad on us.”
My head shot up. “What’s he gonna steal, Violet? The communion plates? Copies of the Bible?”
She fumed as she tried to find fuel for her argument.
I tucked the tarp in the corner and cinched it with a padlock. “Look at it this way: maybe working for a church will be good for ‘em. Build their character and all that.” With any luck at all, Jonah Pruitt would invite them to his church. But then again, if he gave the guys the hard sell, they might run off before the job was finished.
Violet wasn’t entirely convinced, but seeing as we didn’t have anyone else, she relented. She planned to ask her father-in-law if she could borrow his truck to haul the bedding plants to the church. Together, Violet and I would load the truck, and then the guys would help me unload. Violet would order more flowers from the supplier, who had pledged to have them delivered to the church by Friday.
After we got everything locked up, Violet and I stood in the parking lot, staring at the sign above the front door.
“I think this is really gonna work,” Violet whispered, squeezing my arm.
I turned to her, my eyebrows shooting up. “You had doubts? You’ve been Miss Positivity since the moment you announced this crazy idea.” And then I realized the truth: Violet had faked her confidence the entire time we were getting ready to open the nursery.
She’d faked it in her marriage too.
In some ways, I didn’t really know Violet at all.
Her smile returned. “Of course I never doubted, silly. I knew all along it would work.”
We got in our cars and I watched her drive away to her home and her kids, wondering what else she had faked. How much of what I saw was the real Violet? The last several years of our lives raced through my head as I considered our past through this new lens.