The Oleander Sisters. Elaine Hussey

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       Six

      EMILY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT was wrong with Sis. Ever since their talk about having her wedding in the garden, she’d been snappish and forgetful. It had gotten worse since that awful dinner with Larry, and that was more than a week ago.

      Yesterday Sis forgot to order coffee with chicory, and she still hadn’t brought those polka-dot sunglasses she’d promised Andy last week.

      Still, nothing could mar Emily’s happiness. The cheese balls for her reception were in the refrigerator, the petit fours decorated with pink icing were rapidly piling up in the chest freezer in the pantry and she was going to do one last campout with her son before the wedding.

      Standing in the backyard of Sweet Mama’s Café, enjoying a cup of coffee before the breakfast crowd started getting too big for Sweet Mama to handle, Emily kicked off her shoes and smiled as Andy raced around the ship, his untamable hair flying every which way. She made a note to add a trip to the barber to her list of things to do before the wedding.

      “Can we camp out here tonight?”

      “No. We’re going to camp out at Sweet Mama’s house.”

      “Can we take the rocket ship?”

      “We’re going to sleep in a tent.”

      “Why can’t we sleep in the rocket?”

      “Because then there wouldn’t be enough room for Aunt Sis. You want her to join the campout, don’t you?”

      “I can sleep on the roof. See?” Andy clambered on top and stretched out. When his feet hung over the side, he curled up in a little ball. “Just right,” he yelled.

      “That’s not a good idea, Andy.”

      “How come?”

      Ordinarily, Emily reveled in these meandering conversations with Andy, but lately he’d been trying her patience. Deliberately, it seemed. Was it because he didn’t want to share her with Larry or was there some deeper motive?

      It was a relief when her neighbors Tom and James Wilson came through the back door of the café. Still bachelors at fifty and some said set in their ways, they were nonetheless two of the sweetest guys Emily had ever met. Tom was carrying a toolbox and James was wagging a little stack of lumber.

      “We’ve been seeing you and Andy toting stuff out of your house for his little project out here,” Tom said. “Hope you don’t mind some help.”

      “Of course not!” Emily hugged them both and they got pink in the face.

      Soon the sound of hammering blended with Andy’s laughter as they shored up the cardboard boxes with scrap lumber. Tom looked like a rumpled, friendly elf with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his white hair sticking out from an old fishing hat with the lures still attached to the band. James was just the opposite. Tall, reserved and elegant, even with a hammer in his hand, he was dressed in a summer suit of blue pin-striped seersucker.

      “That ought to do it,” Tom said, pushing back his fishing hat and reaching over to ruffle Andy’s hair. “Now that little rocket ship is sound as a dollar, even if it rains.”

      Emily hoped the little ship didn’t have to be put to the test. She was still planning on a garden wedding, in spite of Sis’s long lip. As much as the new rose hedge would benefit from a shower, she didn’t want anything to ruin her wedding.

      “It just needs this one last thing.” James bent over his toolbox and pulled out a wooden box with a little red steering wheel attached. It was covered with dials that looked as if they’d come from old car parts. Inside he’d rigged a set of hair clippers that buzzed when Andy turned one of the dials.

      Being part of her little boy’s quest for the moon might be the biggest event in their lives. Neither Tom nor James had ever been married, and they both still lived with an ancient cat and their even more ancient mother, who had taken to her bed when she was fifty for reasons nobody knew or would tell.

      Emily teared up, but she didn’t know if she was crying because Andy didn’t like Larry, or because the Wilson brothers had to find joy in a little rocket ship made from cardboard boxes, or because her own sister could end up exactly like them, with nothing to show for her years except gray hair and an old cat.

      As they loaded up their tools, Emily said, “I’m going to give you an Amen cobbler to take home. Your mother might enjoy it.”

      “Mother eats like a bird,” Tom said, “but she’s still partial to Sweet Mama’s cooking.”

      “Good, then. That’s settled.”

      They trudged back to the café, turning in the doorway to wave just as Burt Larson came out.

      “I had some old sheets of plastic up at the house,” Burt said. “I thought I’d help out with that little rocket ship, if you don’t mind.”

      Andy squealed and hugged the postman around the legs. Emily wished he’d show half that much enthusiasm with the man who was going to be his daddy.

      She thanked Burt and then left him in the backyard, helping Andy with the rocket ship while she hurried back to the café. A cloud of sugar and spice rose from the cobblers Sweet Mama had lined up on the counter.

      Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a big bowl of cobbler for dessert worked its magic on Andy? Wouldn’t it be great if the steam that rose around him softened her son so that viewing Larry as his daddy would be as simple as a hug?

      They’d eat it tonight in Sweet Mama’s backyard, while the moon was high and the stars looked like a blanket of lights thrown across the sky. She was smiling as she got a big bowl to serve up Andy’s surprise cobbler, and a length of tinfoil to cover it.

      Emily dug through the flaky crust and into a mixture of peaches and cherries so deep she could see her future. The sweetness of love long denied wafted around her, and the joy of having a real family of her own.

      But as she dipped toward the bottom, she felt an overwhelming sadness, as if something waited for her in the dark with fangs bared.

      “Oh, I’m just being silly.” She quickly covered Andy’s bowl, then wrapped cobbler for Tom and James.

      “What was that, dear?”

      Miss Opal Clemson was standing behind Emily, a little blue hat perched on her gray hair, a black patent-leather purse tucked over her arm and a wide smile on her face. Emily made a mental note to pay her a visit. Miss Opal lived just around the corner from her, and she thought how lonely it must be to rattle around in a house all by yourself.