Hope Springs - 05 - Wedding Cake Read Online Free PDF Page A

there it was at least another two hours before he would make it to Hope Springs.
    Louise thought about what was happening. She’d had three phone conversations with George and she still had not figured out why he was coming to see her. The last time they had been together was at the funeral of Roxie, his wife, her best friend, and that had been almost ten years earlier. And it hadn’t been such a sweet reunion even then.
    Not that George and Louise were ever close. He knew Louise loved Roxie more than just as a friend and he had tried to tell his wife that Louise was dangerous with her loyalty and her love. In fact, inthe beginning of his courtship with Roxie, he tried to break up the friendship, immediately casting a suspicious eye on Louise Fisher, but it never worked. Roxie and Louise had been best friends long before George entered the scene. Roxie loved the man who would become her husband, but she told him flat-out to stay away from her friendship with Louise and that he had better learn to like her.
    “Louise Fisher,” she had told George on their third or fourth date, “is my family. And if you marry me, she will be your family too. So get used to it or say good-bye now.”
    And he had figured out a way to get used to it. He finally and ultimately accepted their friendship. He got used to it just as Louise had to get used to him and accept the fact that Roxie and George got married, moved away, and had a family, while she stayed at the cotton mill in North Carolina, alone and abandoned.
    When Roxie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Louise had been there for her and for her family. And when George called to say that he could not care for her any longer and that he was having an affair, Louise swooped in and brought Roxie back to her home in Hope Springs. She had cared for Roxie until she died. And it was still the best thing she had ever done in her life, the best days of her life, even though they were hard and messy, and even though Roxie had only brief moments of clarity, short spans when she knew Louise and understood what was going on. Still, it had not been a burden for Louise. Taking care of Roxie, having her in her home, loving her, being with her, was still the brightest spot in life she had ever had.
    She went to Maryland for the funeral, stayed with George in his home. She had helped the children go through some of Roxie’s things, ate meals with them, was civil to them, loving to them, but shehad not visited with or talked to George again, and her communications with Ruby and Laura, Roxie’s daughters, included only cards at Christmas and an occasional birthday greeting. Once Roxie died, there had been no reason to stay in touch with her “adopted family.”
    She hadn’t wanted the relationships to end like that but she had not been able to figure out how to do things differently. George was having his affair with some woman with whom he worked. The girls, though grown and on their own, were angry with him for leaving their mother and angry at their mother for leaving them. Louise had never known how to talk to them after Roxie died since she was still so bereaved herself, and she grieved not only the loss of her best friend, but also the loss of those girls. But it was as it was, and like everything else hard about her relationship with Roxie, she had accepted it.
    And now, here was George, wanting to see her, driving all the way down to North Carolina to talk to her about something. Louise couldn’t imagine what he wanted. She glanced out the window again and got up from the table and poured herself a glass of water. She considered calling Jessie or Beatrice for moral support, even considered asking them to be there with her when George arrived, but she thought better of it. She was a grown woman, she told herself, and she could manage a conversation without assistance. Besides, she knew that Jessie wouldn’t say much, would stay in the background, understanding that this was Louise’s