“Money is just dirty paper with dead presidents’ pictures on it.” He chuckled again. “Now let’s go pick out the furniture for your dream house.”
* * *
“Well, isn’t that the cutest thing? I can see it sitting on a chest of drawers in a nursery.” Jill picked up a teddy bear made from an old quilt. The primary colors were yellows and browns, and the piece making the fat little bear belly was a yellow daisy on a brown background. He had chocolate-colored buttons for his eyes, and someone had painstakingly embroidered his nose and mouth.
Sawyer knew handiwork when he saw it. His maternal grandmother always had a hoop and a needle lying close by, and he’d watched her embroider from the time he could pull up to her rocking chair.
“It’s a cute little bear.” A few weeks ago, any talk of a nursery would have sent him spinning and running toward the woods. Now it didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“Oh, look at this, Sawyer. Both of my grandmothers had these and used them right up until they passed away.” She held up a metal ice tray with a lever in the middle that released the thick cubes.
“Mine still do. Let’s buy it and display it to remember our first date,” he said.
She held it in her hand, working the lever up and back several times. “Where would we put it?”
“How about in the freezer with water in it to make ice?” he said.
“I love it. Then every time we fill up a sweet tea glass, we will remember how much fun we had today.”
She was absolutely amazing. Most women would have whined for days about how the Gallaghers and the Brennans had destroyed their entire day. But Jill brushed it away like a fly on her shoulder.
She was looking at a display of gravy boats when he carried the ice tray to the front counter. He hoped that she couldn’t see the bulge in the side of his jean jacket made by the patchwork bear. He might not be ready for a nursery, but he had other ideas in mind for the daisy bear.
“Please put these in a big bag that you can’t see through,” he told the cashier.
“A little surprise for someone?” Her mouth curved upward in a shy smile.
“Yes, ma’am. Hopefully, a big surprise later on down the road.”
Chapter 25
Gladys, Polly, and Verdie were sitting around a table at the back of the bar when Jill and Sawyer unlocked the place and went inside, out of the blustery cold February wind.
“Guess the groundhog wasn’t lyin’ last week when he predicted six more weeks of winter, was he?” Verdie said.
“What are all y’all doin’ here?” Jill asked.
“We’re having a beer and trying to decide what in the hell we can do to end the pig war,” Verdie answered. “And we had to convince Polly that her bar was still in one piece.”
Polly lifted her bottle of beer. “Y’all have done a fine job of keeping it running for me. Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Aunt Polly, but why would you think you could end the feud?” Sawyer asked. “If it’s not this, it’ll be something else. It’s been here for a century, and it’ll take something major to end it for good. You might end the pig war, but the feud will keep coming back to life over and over again.”
“You got a point there, but it really got hot today,” Gladys said. “Tyrell Gallagher sent Leah Brennan a lovely box of long-stemmed roses. Tyrell is denying it to Naomi, who is threatening to have him drawn and quartered in the church parking lot. Mavis wouldn’t even let Leah bring them in the house. She said that they were probably poisoned with arsenic.”
“Not arsenic, that other stuff. What’s it called?” Verdie tapped her chin.
“That shit that’s worse than bubonic plaque,” Polly said.
“Anthrax?” Sawyer asked.
They all three pointed at him. “That’s it!”
Jill tied an apron around her waist. “She really thought the Gallaghers would send over anthrax?”
“Before she’d let Tyrell and Leah start dating, or any other Gallagher and Leah for that matter, Mavis would give them a bath in it,” Verdie answered.
“We all knew the day would come eventually when one of them fell for the other side, and we knew it would be a big battle. It’s just hard to picture Tyrell interested in Leah. If anyone would have a torch for her, it would be Tanner.” Polly sighed.
Jill’s eyes opened so wide she couldn’t force them to close. She knew in her gut what had happened, because she’d done the exact same thing with the doggie treats and the pork rinds.
She slapped the bar. “Sawyer?”
“What’d I do?” He chuckled.
“This is a come-to-Jesus moment, which means it’s confession time,” she said.
“Forgive me, darlin’, for I have sinned, but they tried to ruin our date, and they shouldn’t have brought us into their shitty old pig war to begin with. And I’m not really sorry for a bit of it.” He bowed his head and looked up at her with a broad grin and mischievous eyes.
“What are you two talking about?” Gladys asked.
“We’re talkin’ about roses, Chicken Chips, and pork rinds,” he said.
“And you did all of that, didn’t you?” Verdie asked.
“Guilty. But we didn’t ask to be kidnapped, have to sleep in a barn, or ride home in a wagon. We didn’t ask to be surrounded by them at the movies or for them to try to ruin our dinner. They deserve payback,” Jill said.
Gladys clucked like a hen gathering in her chicks before a storm. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her bibbed overalls and hit two buttons. “Mavis, honey, I don’t think you need to send Leah to a convent just yet. I’m not at liberty to say who sent the flowers, but they are not from Tyrell or any other Gallagher. They were sent to stir you up. No, I don’t care what you say. I won’t tell you how I found out or who they are from.”
A pause while she stared at the ceiling.
“No, they aren’t from Tanner, either. I believe you done stirred in the wrong shit pile and upset some folks. Now that’s all I’m saying. Why don’t y’all call a truce? The church party is Friday night. Be nice if the feud was over by then, wouldn’t it?”
No one had to strain to hear Mavis’s answer. “Call a truce? Are you bat-shit crazy, Gladys Cleary? The Gallaghers stole my hogs, and there will be no truces. And you tell those smart-ass informants of yours that if I find out who they are, they are dead.”
“Guess we’d better dig the foxhole a little deeper,” Sawyer said.
“Their bark is a lot worse than their bite, but I don’t reckon there’s going to be a truce before Valentine’s Day,” Verdie said. “I’m going home now unless y’all want to have a dominoes game at Polly’s house.”
“Give me a bottle of that Jack Daniel’s,” Polly told Sawyer. “And, Jill, it don’t matter how many people are in here tonight. You turn off the jukebox and the lights at eleven o’clock.”
“I’ll do it,” Jill said.
“And just for the record, that was funny as hell.” Verdie chuckled. “That’ll teach them to keep their feudin’ at home and not involve other folks in their battles.”
“Shit, Verdie! Whole town has been connected one way or the other since the damn thing started. Let’s go play dominoes and drink Jack Daniel’s. It’ll get even funnier in an hour or two,” Polly said.
They hadn’t been gone more than a few seconds when Jill’s phone rang. She whipped it out of her hip pocket and said, “Hello, Callie.”
“I just heard what happened yesterday. Need some help tonight at the bar? I’ll leave the kids with Finn and bring my six-guns,” she said.
“I might take you up on that if it gets too rowdy. Keep your phone on and your boots ready. Don’t have to tell you to keep your guns loaded,” Jill said.
“You do not. If they want to bitch and bite, they can do it, but they’d best leave the O’Donnells alone.”
“I’m a Cleary,” Jill said.
“Hopefully not for long. I’ll be ready if you need me.”