A Woman Like Annie. Inglath Cooper

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СКАЧАТЬ a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to say his name because it hurt too much to see the pain on your face.”

      The mood in the Tahoe had gone suddenly somber. Annie heard the love in her sister’s voice and was grateful for it. Clarice had indeed seen her on the down side of disillusion. Not a pretty sight. “I have a feeling J.D. and Jack Corbin have a lot in common.”

      Clarice’s perfectly arched eyebrows shot toward the roof. “How so?”

      “Self-interest being their number one priority.”

      “Well, I won’t deny it where J.D. is concerned. But isn’t it jumping the gun to hang that sign in Jack Corbin’s window just yet?”

      Annie kept her gaze on the road, maneuvered around a brown bag in the middle of her lane that had fallen off the A&E Seed truck in front of them. Guilt needled at her. Maybe it was a tad unfair. She was going on surface impressions, after all. Hadn’t she been the one defending him to Clarice just a couple of hours ago? And now she was ready to put him in the same box with J.D. and toss the key in Lake Heron. “I just wish he would give the company a chance to get on its feet. That’s all.”

      “Maybe he will. Party’s not over yet. And even though I talked a big game before going over there this morning, I wimped. But I’ve got all the googly-eyed stuff out of the way now, so maybe I’ll actually be able to string together a few coherent sentences at the picnic.”

      Annie smiled.

      “You aren’t interested in him, are you?” Clarice asked, failing to hide her worry.

      “Oh, Clarice, of course not,” Annie said. As sisters, they’d had this conversation numerous times in their lives. And Annie always said the same thing because if Clarice really wanted the guy, she didn’t stand a chance, anyway. Not that she was interested in Jack Corbin. Or any other man at the moment. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I am very, no, extremely, happy with things the way they are in my life. I’ve finally proved to myself I don’t need a man to be complete.”

      Clarice shot her an exaggeratedly appalled look over the rim of her sunglasses. “Heresy.”

      “No, if I ever start looking again, it’ll be the flip side of J.D. The kind of man who drives a nice ordinary Buick or Chevrolet. A man with roots. Feet on the ground. Steady. Dependable.”

      “Boorrring!”

      Annie laughed. “Boring can have its selling points.”

      “Not if you’re talking about men. You’ve got to be willing to get burned a time or two to ferret out a good one.”

      “Then they ought to come with warning labels.”

      Clarice laughed now. “Oh, Annie, most of the time they do, we just choose to ignore them.”

      NO DENYING IT. Jack was having his share of serious misgivings by the time he pulled into the C.M. parking lot just after five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.

      Who, of all the employees at this picnic, would be glad to see him coming? No one. He, after all, was the guy in the black cape, the one with villain scrawled across his back in big bold letters. Had he secretly hoped they might understand that everything ran its course, had its time? That the glory days of C.M. were over, and he was merely the one taking the steps to put it out of its misery.

      No, he didn’t expect them to understand that. Probably should never have said he’d come to the thing in the first place, but Annie had flung the invitation at him as a challenge. And he wasn’t a man to ignore a challenge.

      He parked his car at the back of the lot, got out, and reached in the back seat for the basket of fried chicken he and Essie had spent the past two hours making. He’d been more hindrance than help, he was sure, but Essie had been so thrilled to hear that he was attending the picnic, she had practically floated around the kitchen fixing his mistakes, two of which had included a dozen eggs splattered on the brick floor and a measuring cup of flour upended on the countertop.

      The parking lot was full. The factory itself sat on twenty acres of what had once been prime farmland. Its owners had sold out and moved back to Ohio some twenty-five years ago. Jack’s father had bought the property for its flatness and the fact that it was surrounded by Virginia mountains, the trees lit up every fall with colors only nature could blend. Now, in September, they hugged the level piece of land on which C.M. sat in an embrace of green.

      Music floated out from behind the building. Bluegrass. It had been years since he’d heard the twangy notes of a fiddle. Homesickness knifed through him with an unexpected edge. The sound brought with it a deluge of memory, fiddler’s conventions he’d gone to as a boy with his dad who had loved the folk music and taught Jack to appreciate it. Booths set up with candy apples and hot cakes, Jack’s father letting him use his own money and his own judgment in buying the treats. Jack had always gone home with a stomachache. Joshua had believed in letting his son make his own mistakes, reasoning that was the only way he would remember them.

      The factory itself was an enormous brick building, tall pane windows letting in plenty of natural light. Joshua Corbin had wanted to give his employees an appealing place to come to work every day. “Light affects a man’s soul, son. We weren’t made to live in the dark.” The words echoed in Jack’s head as if he’d just heard his father say them.

      He followed the music, rounding the corner of the building. Hundreds of people filled the grass yard in front of him. Adults—young, old—teenagers and toddlers. What looked like the whole town. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but not this. Laughter. Smiling faces. Some flat foot dancing up front by the bluegrass trio. On the stage hung a banner that read: C.M. THANK YOU FOR THE GOOD YEARS.

      Jack blinked, surprised.

      Fifty feet or so out from the music were tables of food. He looked down at the basket of chicken in his own hand and felt like an intruder at someone else’s party.

      But a round-faced woman with soft gray hair bustled up just then, taking the offering from him. “Come right on in. Um, this smells good. You make it yourself?”

      “Had a little help,” he said.

      “What’s your name, young man?”

      “Jack,” he said, feeling like the Grinch about to steal Christmas.

      “I’m Ethel Myers. Retired now. Worked here for twenty years, though. Still miss it.”

      He could do little more than nod.

      She waved him inside. “Go in and get comfortable now. We’re just about ready to eat. Iced tea and lemonade set up on those tables over there.”

      “Thank you, ma’am.”

      “You’re surely welcome,” she said and waved a greeting to another latecomer.

      Jack weaved his way through the crowd, recognizing some faces, sure he heard someone murmur his name. He picked up a glass of sweet tea from the table Ethel had directed him to, then stood there on the periphery of the crowd, wondering at the jovial tone of the gathering. His understanding from Annie had been that this was a farewell picnic of sorts for those who had worked at C.M. He’d fully expected to be the target of seriously grim head-shaking. Had maybe even brought himself here because on some level, he thought he deserved their ire for СКАЧАТЬ