As if in answer to the unasked question, the woman burst into sobs.
The next instant a siren sounded from behind.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Belinda knew even as she glanced in the rearview mirror that it was her husband, Deputy Lyle Midgett, f lashing his patrol car’s lights.
She might have ignored him, but he tended to get into such a sulk when she did that. He drove up right up beside her, indicating she needed to pull over. She shot him a warning look. He knew that she did not like to take her Cadillac off the pavement and expose it to more dust and dirt than absolutely necessary. She went on another quarter mile and turned onto a small paved road.
“Now, honey, how do you think it looks for you to always be speedin’, and me the first-deputy?” Lyle said right off, bending down to her window. He was tall. “I really, really wish you wouldn’t speed, darlin’. Oh, hello, Emma. How are you today?”
“Fine.”
“I don’t speed on purpose, Lyle. I don’t think, I’m gonna speed and make Lyle look bad. And no one thinks a thing when I speed, ’cause I have been drivin’ this way my whole life—every bit of those years we lived together—and you never felt it reflected on you. Now I’m stopped, and in fact, Emma and I are gonna sit here a minute and discuss some things, so you can go on. I want to put the window up. This wind is messin’ up my hair.”
“Okay, darlin’,” he said in his gentle tone. “But please don’t speed anymore. At least not anywhere near town.”
“I won’t, sugar,” she said, blowing him a kiss as the window slid up. “Until next time,” she whispered. Belinda knew herself well and without apology.
In her side-view mirror, she watched Lyle as he walked back to his patrol car, running her eyes from his broad shoulders downward over his lean hips. She had not married Lyle Midgett for his brains. It was for everything below his neck, all of which was quite large and strong, and that included his heart.
Then she turned her attention to Emma. In Belinda’s estimation, blue-eyed pale blondes were generally really high-strung, even if they were not natural blondes, which Belinda knew that Emma was not. Every six weeks, Emma came into the drugstore and bought L’Oreal No. 9.
“I’m all right. It’s nothin’…I was just…” Emma gave her a wan smile, then broke off, her gaze going to the radio. Her eyes widened, and then her face crumpled.
Belinda looked at the radio, which seemed innocent. Don William’s voice was singing out, “…another place, another time…”
She reached over and punched the Off button, then pulled tissues from a box in the backseat and shoved them at Emma, who was bent over and just boo-hooing her heart out.
A practical woman, Belinda checked her watch and waited. After a minute and a half, Emma was coming back to herself.
“You have mascara smears, sugar,” Belinda said. “Here’s some lotion. There’s a mirror over the sun visor.”
Emma repaired herself. “I’m sorry…it was hearin’ Don Williams. You see…John Cole…and I…went to see him in concert once for our…anniversary.”
Oh, dear, she might go again. Belinda handed over more tissues, and Emma took them but managed self-control, which Belinda both admired and appreciated. Displays of emotion wore on her nerves.
“John Cole and I have separated,” Emma said. “We’re gettin’ divorced.”
Belinda, who was rarely surprised about anything, was stunned. “Oh, honey… I’m so sorry to hear that.”
She shut up, not wanting to say anything to get Emma started again, and to calm her own emotions. Good Lord, if this could happen to Emma and John Cole, two simply lovely people who seemed like the perfect couple, what did that say about her own chances as a fairly new and somewhat reluctant married woman?
“Thirty-two years. We’ve been married thirty-two years.”
Emma’s voice was a hoarse whisper filled with so much sadness that Belinda felt struck to the core.
“Well, these things happen,” Belinda said at last, swallowing down a lump. “What is it? Another woman? Men just lose their minds when they get middle-aged.” She had seen it time and again, although she was quite certain her Lyle never would. It was the really intelligent ones who did. Women were so stupid about intelligent men.
“Oh, no! At least I don’t think so. John Cole isn’t like that.”
Belinda thought the wives were always the last to know.
Emma said, “It might be easier if it was another woman, because maybe I could fight that. It’s just that we don’t have anything in common anymore. We don’t talk. We don’t…relate.” She broke off and f lipped down the visor again to look in the mirror. “John Cole has decided to be married to his job, and I’ve decided I’ve had enough of being his cook and maid at home.”
Despite her good sense, Belinda felt depressed. The situation was exactly why she had resisted marrying Lyle for so long. She had feared that once they married, complacency and boredom would settle in. She had set herself not to let that happen, but maybe there was nothing she could do. Reality of life on earth was just too big.
Just then, Emma’s purse began ringing, startling them both. Emma dug for her cell phone. Immediately upon answering, her face brightened. “Hi, sweetie!”
A boyfriend? Belinda f lipped down the driver’s visor to check her own appearance and repair her lipstick, while keeping an ear tuned to the conversation. It wasn’t like she could help hearing. Everyone said she was nosy, but she wasn’t. All she did was pay attention to people.
She heard Emma tell whoever it was that she was heading home and would be there to meet “Honey,” whoever that was. She would make lunch for “us.” Belinda imagined a very handsome man, but then, as she f lipped her sun visor back up, her gaze went out the windshield to the main entry of the Valentine cemetery directly up ahead.
“That was Johnny,” Emma said. “He’s on his way. I have to get right home.”
Johnny was Emma’s son. Belinda was both relieved and let down at that mundane fact, but her attention was mainly on a sign to the right of the wrought-iron arched entry to the cemetery.
“Do you see that sign? I have never seen that before. I don’t think it was there when Daddy was buried.”
Emma looked in the direction Belinda pointed. “Well…my goodness.”
The two women looked at each other, and Emma laughed, her face just lighting up.
Belinda pulled out her own cell phone and called Winston.
“I have a sign for you, Winston. Out at the entrance to the Valentine cemetery, at the front. Yeah…it says…now, it’s right beside the entrance, and it says…All Donations Welcome.”
When Belinda let Emma off at her house, Emma said, “Belinda, please don’t tell anyone about me and John Cole.”
“I won’t, sugar.”
“I mean really. I don’t want a lot of talk to get back to Johnny until I have a chance to tell him myself.”
“Well, of course you don’t, and there’s no reason for me to say a thing to anyone.”
Belinda felt a little hurt that Emma would think even for a second that she would go and blab.
Many people considered Belinda a gossip, but she was not the one who blurted out anyone’s intimate secrets. Just as Emma had done, people were all the time telling her stuff. She didn’t know why. And she didn’t know why she would be called the gossip, when it was others who were the ones telling her everything.
Why, if she told even a fourth of what she knew, before nightfall there would be two