A Husband of Her Own

“Nothing. Forget it,” Rebecca said.

“Now that you’ve brought up it up, I’d finally like to know.”

“The memories we have of each other from high school aren’t the most pleasant, that’s all.”

“What memories?”

Most of them had far more to do with Josh Hill than Randy, but Randy had been constantly at Josh’s elbow, which meant he was included. “We had a few run-ins,” she said vaguely.

“Because he was a friend of Josh Hill’s?”

Unfortunately the conversation was drifting toward Josh and she wasn’t sure she could stop it. “Maybe.”

“So we’re not really talking about Randy. We’re talking about Joshua.”

“No, I’m not talking about Josh. I never talk about Josh,” Rebecca responded.

Her mother found a spatula in the drawer and began stirring the sizzling onions. “Well, perhaps it’s time you did,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to get to the bottom of this feud between you two. We love Josh and his older brother. His parents are good friends of ours.”

Rebecca sighed. “I know. But it’s too late to improve relations between Josh and me, so don’t get it in your head to try. The bad blood between us is old, old news.”

“That might be the case, but I want you to bury whatever grudge you’re holding against him.”

“Are you kidding?” Rebecca paused in her knife attack on the radishes. The sudden absence of her rapid thump, thump, thump made the silence seem loud. “What’s the point? We run into each other a lot, but it’s only in passing. We could go on like this indefinitely. There’s no reason to change anything.”

“Now there is. You’ll soon be seeing each other more than in passing.”

“That sounds pretty specific. When?” And Rebecca had thought Buddy’s news was the worst she could receive.

“Your sisters are planning an anniversary celebration for your father and me. It’s in two weeks.”

The scent of her mother’s grilled onions became almost overpowering. “Somehow I knew you didn’t invite me over to talk about candles.”

“I did find some good candles,” her mother said.

Rebecca retrieved two stalks of celery from the fridge, washed them and started chopping them on the cutting board. She realized she could probably avoid the subject of Josh by using the candles to segue into Buddy’s postponement of the wedding. But the words stuck in her throat when she envisioned what her experience at the anniversary party would be like if she mentioned her latest setback too soon. “Heard you and Buddy are waiting a few weeks longer…You think that boy really knows what he wants?…Musta figured out what he was getting himself into, huh?” (said with a hearty chuckle).

Deciding that it would be much better to wait until after her parents’ anniversary, she plunged back into the subject of Josh Hill. “What does this party have to do with me and Josh? We can attend the same function without causing a scene.”

Her mother looked less than optimistic. “Like you did at Delia’s wedding?”

Rebecca threw the core of the lettuce in the trash compactor. “Is that what this is all about? You blame me for what happened at Delia’s wedding? I’ve told you, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?” her mother wanted to know. “You can’t blame Josh, not when you were the one who tripped him.”

“He only thought I was going to trip him. He overreacted.” She’d said so before, but no one seemed to care.

“Regardless, he fell into the cake and took the whole food table down with him.” Her mother winced at the painful memory.

“I told you, it was his mistake.”

“Maybe. But you’re the one who darted away from him at the last second and ran smack into the punch fountain, dousing your poor sister. She was so sticky, she had to miss the end of her own reception to change and shower. By the time she and Brad left on their honeymoon, her eyes were swollen, her nose was red from crying, and her hair and dress were ruined.”

“Okay, the punch part might’ve been my fault,” Rebecca conceded. “Josh grabbed at me when he fell and I was trying to get away so he couldn’t pull me down with him.”

“Better you fall in an undignified heap than the bride gets sprayed with punch. It wasn’t a pleasant thing for Delia to—”

The door banged open as her father strode in from the garage, briefcase in hand, and whatever her mother was about to say was immediately lost in the human power surge. Loud, authoritative and supremely confident, her father commanded respect simply by being. The fact that he’d been the mayor of Dundee since Rebecca was in high school, was well over six feet and resembled Billy Graham certainly didn’t hurt. “Did you tell her?” he demanded the moment he spotted Rebecca.

Her mother gave him one of her famous warning looks and cleared her throat. “Actually, Doyle, we were just getting around to—”

“Tell me what?” Rebecca interrupted, meeting her father’s direct gaze. He might not approve of her, but she wasn’t going to flinch in his presence like everyone else. And she sure as heck wasn’t going to use her mother as a go-between.

“That you’re not invited to the anniversary celebration unless you can behave yourself,” he said point-blank. “I’ve had it with this thing between you and Josh Hill. I won’t have you embarrassing me again.” With that, he stalked from the kitchen, presumably to change out of his suit.

Rebecca put down the knife she’d been rinsing and let her wet hands dangle in the sink. “Not everyone sees Josh Hill through the same rose-colored glasses you do, Dad,” she called after him.

“That would only be you,” he hollered back. “Everyone else in this town knows Josh for what he is—an ambitious young man with a shrewd business mind. That boy’s going to make something of himself someday. You wait and see.”

“And I’m not? Is that what you’re implying?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Though Rebecca loved her profession, she knew that in her parents’ opinion, a hairstylist—even an accomplished hairstylist—could never compare to a successful horse breeder like Josh. Josh Hill had somehow been able to win the love and approval she’d always craved, especially from her father. But what bothered her most was that he’d done it so effortlessly and so long ago. How could she compete with someone so well entrenched in her father’s affections?

She hadn’t been able to compete with Josh at seven. She couldn’t compete with him now. She wasn’t even sure why she kept trying.

After finishing the salad, she set it on the table and retrieved her keys.

“Where are you going?” her mother asked, alarmed. “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”

Rebecca pictured the moment her sister and the kids arrived; she pictured sitting across the table from her father. “No, Dad already took care of what you both wanted to say. Consider me warned,” she said and headed for the entry.

“Rebecca?”

She paused.

“He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh, honey,” her mother said softly.

“Oh, he meant it all right,” she said. Rebecca wasn’t sure about a lot of things—why Buddy kept putting off their wedding, why she’d gone home with Josh a year ago last summer (and how she’d even started dancing with him in the first place), why she didn’t really fit into her own family. But she knew her father had meant every word.

REBECCA SAT on her back step as darkness fell, and lit up a cigarette. She’d managed to get through yesterday without smoking, despite Buddy’s call, but one visit to her parents’ house and—POOF—there went her resolve. What difference did it make, anyway? She couldn’t change her stripes. Even if she decided to become a nun, the good folks of Dundee would find something to criticize, her father chief among them.

At least she’d come by her reputation honestly. She’d raised eyebrows in Dundee more times than she could count and had certainly given Josh a run for his money in their younger days. She still remembered filling his locker with pincher bugs, spray-painting “Josh Sucks” on the sidewalk in front of his house and telling everyone that his penis was a mere three inches long (without adding that she was going by information gleaned ten years earlier in a classic “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”).

Contrary to popular belief, however, he was hardly blameless. He’d retaliated by jamming her locker so she couldn’t open it, which made her fail an English test because she couldn’t turn in the essay she’d written the night before. He and Randy stole a pair of panties from her gym locker and ran them up the flagpole. And Josh had offered to give her a more current measurement of his penis. She’d refused, of course. But plenty of other girls had come forward to vouch for something far more impressive than three inches. Taken with his football prowess, even her accusation of a small penis wasn’t enough to dent Josh’s overwhelming popularity.

Rebecca was the only one, it seemed, who didn’t worship Josh Hill. And that hadn’t changed over the years. No matter what happened, her father remained one of his staunchest supporters.

A staunch supporter of the enemy. She grimaced and took another drag on her cigarette. About Josh, her father always said, “He’s made his parents proud, hasn’t he?” About Rebecca her father always said, “God tries us all.”