Little Town, Great Big Life. Curtiss Matlock Ann

lifting weights and running.

      Clearly one focused on the mind and one on the body. Belinda thought them a perfect pair.

      Already showered and wearing her favorite Delta Burke rose-print satin gown, Belinda met Lyle in the kitchen, anxious to tell him the good news about Corrine. She had just gotten started when she found herself scooped up into his arms and carried so quickly into the bedroom that her head spun.

      “You haven’t started readin’ yet, have you?” he asked.

      “No, sugar,” Belinda said, just as he entered the bedroom, where the bedside lamps and candles were lit but the books were still stacked on the night chest.

      In inspiring movie-scene fashion, Lyle smiled a delighted, sensuous, promising smile and laid her as carefully as a fine jewel upon the bed.

      Belinda found herself once more grateful and amazed by the gift she had been given in her man. Truly, as the scriptures said, a woman was made for a man, a fact Lyle proceeded to prove.

      Twenty minutes later, Lyle, his shirt still off, made a protein drink in the blender on the kitchen counter. Belinda, all soothed and happy, gazed at his broad, muscular back while she enjoyed a cheese Danish and remembered to tell him about the good fortune of hiring Corrine Pendley.

      “She’s goin’ to work each afternoon after school, and close the store twice a week.” She licked her fingers happily. “Now all I need to do is find someone to open the store a couple times a week and work mornings. At least three days. That will sure take a load off.”

      “Honey, I’ll be glad to help,” said Lyle, glancing over his shoulder. “I really liked openin’ the other mornin’. I did.”

      Belinda, who thought, Ohmyheaven, said, “Sweetie, you have a job. You do not need to stretch yourself by workin’ in the drugstore. You are the head sheriff’s deputy. That is demanding enough.”

      “When I’m on nights, I’m never tired when I come home, anyway. I have to unwind, and I just sit around for a couple of hours watchin’ TV. I’d just as soon open the store for you. When I go on days, I can still open, and I can close, since the store’s open later.” As he spoke, he got out his carry mug and poured his drink into it, snapping on the lid.

      “I appreciate the offer, sugar—” she sidled up to him, rubbing her hands over his back “—but we can surely get by the two months until Mama comes home. And you are a sheriff’s deputy, and that’s important. You know you don’t work firm hours, either. What if you’re caught up arrestin’ somebody right when the store needs to open or close? You can’t just tell them to wait.”

      “I can cuff ’em to a pole and come on to the drugstore,” he said.

      Belinda tried to judge the seriousness of this statement. He looked serious. She replied, “Well, maybe you could do that, but we are not goin’ to jeopardize what we just enjoyed—I’m not lettin’ you waste energy on a second job workin’ in the drugstore.” She smiled seductively.

      He looked away as he put on his shirt.

      Belinda started clearing the counter, remembering the previous morning, after Lyle had opened the store and worked the soda fountain counter with Arlo for an hour. She had come in to find coffee and latte splashes and spills all over, the barbecue pot set on high, a half-eaten banana set aside, and could not walk across the floor without sticking to it. The receipts did not add up to what was in the cash drawer. Lyle never could count change, and he had simply piled a lot of money to the side of the cash register.

      “You just think I can’t do anything,” Lyle said.

      “What?” She looked over to see him near the door, hat in hand. “I do not think that.”

      “Yes, you do. You don’t let me do anything for you.”

      “I do so. Who does the mowin’ around here? And…the grilling. And keepin’ me safe.” There, that last one was important.

      “I mean that you don’t let me do anything for you, Belinda. You could hire a guy to do everything I do for you.”

      “I am hirin’ people to work in the store.”

      “It’s not the same. You just don’t let me help you in a special way. And you and that store have your own marriage.”

      He actually pointed with his hat, then plopped it on his head and left.

      She hurried to the door and called after his shadowy figure, “Well, who was it just in the bedroom with me, then?”

      He did not reply.

      She stood there and watched his patrol car leave, wondering what had just happened. It was not like Lyle at all to have a complaint or cross word. She had never seen him so perturbed.

      Belinda carried her purse into the master bathroom and plopped it on the long counter.

      Pausing, she turned back to lock the door, just in case. Then she dug down into the bottom of her purse and pulled out a new pregnancy-test kit—another $6.99 one. She hiked up her thigh-high gown, positioned herself over the toilet and took careful aim at the test strip. It might have been easier for a smaller-breasted woman. And, darn it, she should have drunk a whole glass of water with the sweet roll.

      Brrrnnnggg!

      The telephone on the wall right beside her ear rang. The test strip slipped out of her fingers.

      It could not be. She could not have done it again!

      The phone rang again.

      She gazed at the test strip floating in the water.

      The phone rang yet again. She snatched up the receiver.

      “Hell-o!”

      “Belinda? Sugar, is that you? It’s your mama. Over in France,” her mother added, as if Belinda might have forgotten where she had gone.

      “Yes, it is me, Mama. What other woman would be answerin’ my home phone at ten o’clock at night?”

      Her mother, who had at the age of seventy quit living by anyone’s normal hours, said, “Oh, is it ten o’clock there? I must have miscalculated.”

      Belinda knew her mother had not bothered to calculate whatsoever.

      Her mother continued, “However, is that any way for a daughter to speak to her mother?”

      Her mother launched into a lengthy lecture on Belinda’s less-than-cordial attitude, for which Belinda immediately apologized, because her eye had fallen on the pregnancy-test box and she imagined her mother seeing all the way from Europe. She did not think it a stretch of the imagination that her mother had such power.

      Her mother then wanted to know how everything was going at the drugstore, and had Belinda been listening to Winston’s new early-morning radio show? Her mother’s awareness of Winston’s escapades was the perfect example of her mother knowing everything, even over in France.

      Just then, with her mother’s voice in her ear, Belinda tucked the telephone in the crook of her neck and snatched up the pregnancy-kit box, folded it into a small shape and stuffed it down in the bottom of the wastebasket.

      After hanging up with her mother, she went to the kitchen and drank a full glass of water. Returning again to the master bathroom, she shut and locked the door and turned off the phone.

      Digging down again into her purse, she pulled out yet another home pregnancy-test kit. After all, Belinda was both the owner of a drugstore and a practical woman who anticipated contingencies.

      Opening the box, she removed the test strip and set it on the counter. Then she brought a plastic bedpan from the closet, along with a set of medical collection cups. A drugstore owner had plenty of equipment. She expertly pulled off one collection cup, put it in the bedpan and set the bedpan atop the closed toilet.

      She looked at everything with satisfaction.