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A New Attitude
A New Attitude
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A New Attitude

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She walked around the garage, searching. A dusty garden hose was coiled on a shelf at the back. She examined it, but there was no telling how old it was. Her father had never thrown anything away in his life. Still, it should do the job. She went inside the house for a knife so she could slice off a three- or four-foot section. A few minutes later, Marilee was trying to siphon gasoline out of the lawn mower. She swallowed a mouthful, then spent the next few minutes coughing and gagging before she gave it a second attempt. Grady had made it all look so simple the time he’d done it. Once the gas started coming, she quickly moved her end of the hose to the tank, but in her rush, dropped it. She grabbed for it but was a split second too late. Gas spewed everywhere, dousing her hair, face and eyes. It felt like someone had set her eyeballs on fire.

“Hellfire and damnation!” To hell with dignity and morals! Marilee dropped the hose and raced blindly inside the house to the bathroom, where she bathed her eyes in cold water, ruining her perfect makeup and hairdo.

There went all her plans for a fashionable funeral. Irby Denton, who owned the local funeral home, would take one look at her and insist on a closed coffin. Marilee sat on the edge of the tub and wept. And here she thought she’d used up all her tears.

Where had she gone wrong? What had she done to Grady to make him hate her so? How could two people who’d once been so much in love, who’d vowed to God and themselves they’d never part, suddenly find themselves in such a mess?

It had to be the flannel nightgowns she wore to bed. And the floppy socks that kept her feet warm during the night. It was no wonder he’d left her. She’d failed her husband. She’d let herself go. Chased him right smack into the arms of another woman.

LaFonda Bonaire was probably allergic to flannel.

Finally, Marilee composed herself. She returned to the garage and shook her head at the sight. What a mess. Leaning against her car and feeling defeated, she could just imagine what Grady would say.

“Marilee,” he’d say, “if you had a brain you’d have to wear a warning label.”

Grady had never talked to her like that in the early years. He’d referred to her as his Sweet Pea. “Sweet Pea,” he’d say, “you are a sight to behold in that new dress,” or “Sweet Pea, what did you think of my sermon today?”

Now she was just plain old Marilee, who was rewarded with a weary sigh from him when she asked the simplest question. “Marilee, I don’t have time to worry about the Easter pageant. That’s your job.” Sigh. “Marilee, why are you bothering me with questions about the Christmas cantata when you know I have to prepare my sermon?” Another sigh. Or, “Marilee, why on earth would you serve taco salads at the senior citizens’ dinner when you know elderly people can’t eat spicy food? Have you any idea how many complaints I’ve received? I swear, Marilee, if you had a brain, you’d have to wear a warning label.”

There were times she felt she couldn’t do anything right, no matter how hard she worked. What about all the seniors’ dinners that had been successful? And had Grady forgotten just how many visitors they had at Easter and Christmas? Of course she wanted everything to go right. Some of those visitors became members.

She shook her head sadly. Maybe Grady was right. What did she know about anything? She gave a sniff. Not that Grady was some kind of genius, mind you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten kicked out of the church for sleeping with a woman who had a tattoo on her fanny that read Easy Rider. At least that’s what Darlene Milburn claimed, and she should know since she taught water aerobics at the YMCA. Darlene had “excused” LaFonda from class for wearing a thong bikini, of all things.

Another woman. That was the absolute last thing she had expected of him.

Marilee wondered if Grady’s recent diagnosis of high blood pressure had something to do with the change that had come over him. Seemed he was always tired and out of sorts or feeling under the weather. Her mother had long ago accused him of being a hypochondriac and although Marilee had defended him, there’d been times she’d thought the same thing. Lately, he’d become so moody she’d found herself tiptoeing around him. Then one day, right out of the blue, he told her he planned to leave the ministry.

Looking back, Marilee was surprised she hadn’t tried to kill herself sooner.

With a heartfelt sigh, she stood and walked into the living room. The place was gloomy and musty from being closed up for so long, and she hadn’t had the heart to do anything about it the past few days, hadn’t wanted to remember how warm and inviting the house had been when her parents were alive. Grady had wanted her to sell it once her mother passed on; he resented the utility bills they received every month for a place that had been closed up for two years. “You’ll never find closure until you let go of that house,” he’d said more than once. But Marilee had resisted. She’d planned to put it on the market later, when property values went up, then use the money to send Josh to college.

Sheets covered the furniture and the old piano where she had once practiced her scales under the tutelage of Mrs. Sadie Habersham until her behind felt as if it were growing into the piano bench. The wooden floors wore a thick layer of dust. Heavy brocade drapes locked out the early-morning sun. Lord, but they were ugly, what with those thick cords twisted together like a bunch of snakes in mating season. The tassels looked as though they belonged in a bordello. What had her mother been thinking? They’d obviously been on sale, because one thing Hester Brown had never been able to pass up was a K mart blue-light special or a clearance table.

Wait a minute…Cords?

Marilee stepped closer and examined them. Three nylon strands were braided to make one thick cord. She tugged hard. The fabric was still good and strong. She glanced up at the beam that ran beneath the raised ceiling, her mind working frantically. Her answer was right in front of her.

She would hang herself!

Marilee hurried into the kitchen, to the junk drawer where her mother had kept everything that would fit and crammed in those things that hadn’t. She found a pair of scissors and went to work. Each cord was about five feet long when she pulled the drapes open. She cut four lengths from the living-room drapes before making her way into the master bedroom and guest rooms, where the same drapes, different only in colors and degrees of ugliness, hung. It was no easy task cutting through the cords, and by the time she finished, she wore a blister at the base of her thumb. Gathering them together, Marilee realized she had enough cord to hang a gang of outlaws.

Grady had underestimated her. He figured since she’d never earned a college degree that he was the smarter of the two. It didn’t matter that the reason she hadn’t earned a degree was that she’d had to work two jobs to support them while he went to seminary school. Not that she’d minded. They were a team, working toward a future. Even when Grady sometimes felt he wasn’t meant to preach, she would reassure him, bolster his self-confidence. Wasn’t that part of being a wife and team member?

Once he’d become a pastor, she’d devoted her time to church activities. She’d been good at it too, or so she’d thought, until Grady began complaining about every little thing she did. It only made her more determined to work harder. Even if Grady found her lacking, others claimed she was the veritable backbone of Chickpea Baptist Church.

A lot of good it did her now.

Marilee sat on the sofa and began tying the cords together. The frayed tassels clashed with her outfit something awful, but she had no choice. An hour later, she had a sturdy, if gaudy-looking, hangman’s noose. She spent the next ten minutes trying to throw the noose over the beam, and was about to give up before she remembered the ladder in the garage. It could also be used as her jumping-off place.

Heavens, but she could be brilliant at times!

Marilee dragged the ladder inside the house and placed it beneath the beam. Holding one end of the cord between her teeth, she began climbing. Okay, so the ladder was a little wobbly. She suddenly remembered her fear of heights and became angry with herself. She didn’t have time to fret about every little thing.

Pausing halfway up, she attempted once again to throw the noose over the beam, all the while struggling to hang on to the ladder. Finally! She tied it so it wouldn’t pull free. Marilee knew how to tie just about every kind of knot there was, thanks to Josh’s stint in the Boy Scouts.

Crouching at the top of the ladder, she slipped the noose around her neck. Her hands trembled. She had no idea how much it was going to hurt, but the pain could be no worse than what she was feeling inside.

With an angry burst of determination, Marilee stood straight up. And banged her head on the ceiling beam with such force she almost fell off the ladder. In fact, she would have, had she not grabbed the beam to steady herself. The room spun wildly beneath her and she felt her eyes cross. Her skull throbbed. Afraid she’d given herself a concussion, Marilee stood there, trying to clear her head. The floor seemed miles away. It felt as if she was standing on top of Chickpea’s water tower, where she and Grady had sneaked up the night she’d turned sixteen. They’d kissed under the stars and promised to love one another forever.

Forever. So why, at age thirty-five, was she all alone in the world?

Marilee swallowed the lump in her throat. Well, she wasn’t really alone. She had friends who loved her, people who were probably worried sick about her this very moment. And she had a son. He might not like her right now, but what if he—heaven forbid—ended up blaming himself for her suicide? Josh would have to spend his entire life living with it.

What if he was just going through a stage and didn’t really hate her? What if there was the slightest chance of reconciliation?

What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she seen enough suffering in her life to know that everybody got a dose of it now and then? Parents died, kids rebelled, husbands cheated. And here she was, standing on top of this shoddy ladder with a noose around her neck and what could possibly be a serious head injury. Not only that—her best outfit and makeup were ruined, her shoes were all wrong and she smelled like a Texaco station.

She was being weak and selfish, Marilee told herself. She needed to stop wallowing in self-pity and start working on her problems, namely getting her son out of that den of iniquity. She needed to clean up her parents’ house, find a job and show folks that she was made of tougher stuff than this! And she was tough, dang it. As a minister’s wife, she had sat with the dying, comforted the bereaved and brought smiles to nursing-home patients who felt neglected, of no use to the world and wanted to die. “The Lord has a purpose for us all,” Marilee had told them. “He will bring us home when he’s ready. Until then, we must have faith.”

She was glad those poor people couldn’t see her now, those who were old and sick and in pain. She was young and healthy and had every reason to live. It didn’t feel that way right now, but tomorrow she might see things differently.

Tomorrow. She suddenly realized she wanted to wake up to another day, no matter how bleak the future seemed at the moment.

But first she had to get down this ladder in one piece.

Her mind made up, Marilee tried to decide the best way to descend without ending up in a wheelchair and sporting a handicapped sticker on her car. Working up her last nerve, she oh so slowly knelt at the very top, trying to balance herself like a seal on a large ball. Her high heels proved a serious hindrance, and she decided she had to remove them. Somehow. Still perched precariously, Marilee tried to slip one off, but the ladder gave a shudder and veered right. Quickly she leaned in the opposite direction but overcorrected. Dang, she thought, only a split second before she lost her balance and toppled.

She had been so intent on getting down she had forgotten to take off the noose. Now it snapped tight around her neck. She was only vaguely aware of a noise overhead, and then it sounded as if the whole house was crashing down around her. Poor Josh. It was her last thought. Something hit her on the head, and then there was blackness.

SAM BREWER WAS IN A FOUL MOOD. As he grabbed a shovel from the garage and carried it to his mother’s flower bed, he could only imagine what the neighbors were saying as they peered out the windows at him. Without a doubt, Edna-Lee Bodine from across the street had her nose pressed flat against the windowpane this very moment, watching and fogging up the glass.

“There goes Sam Brewer digging in his mother’s flower bed again,” she’d tell her husband, who kept his own nose buried in a newspaper. “No telling what that old bat has gone and buried this time.” There were times Sam wished his mother would bury Mrs. Bodine in the flower bed. “And just look at him,” Edna-Lee would say. “Why, he looks like a derelict. No telling when he last shaved or combed his hair.”

Sam knew he looked like hell, but how was he supposed to groom himself when almost everything he owned was buried? His mother had set out to make a point, and she’d done just that. After all, her great-great-grandmother had buried the family silver to protect it from the Yankees during the Civil War; Nell Brewer had decided it was up to her to protect their belongings from “Nurse Ratched,” as she referred to her latest caretaker, whom she claimed was stealing. Sam had to admit the retired nurse had the personality of a troll, but his mother had managed to run off several of her “companions” over the past six months. This latest one had stormed off the minute she caught wind of the accusations against her, just as his mother knew she would.

Now he was saddled with the chore of finding someone new, despite claims from his mother that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. That hadn’t been the case six months ago, when she’d insisted she was going blind and losing her mind and needed him there. He’d sold his construction company in Atlanta and moved home to Chickpea so he could personally look after her. Truth was, he’d been looking to leave the rat race behind and find a simpler life anyway. Now he was building single-family dwellings with an old high-school buddy, and Sam rather liked it that way.

Except that his mother was driving him crazy.

Why did women have to be so difficult?

That reminded him of what a royal pain in the butt his ex-wife was. It didn’t matter that they’d been divorced five years now. Shelly still called him for every little thing and was constantly borrowing money, despite the healthy alimony check he sent every month.

Seemed there was no way to win, especially where the opposite sex was involved.

With a muttered oath, Sam searched for a fresh mound of dirt that might produce his electric shaver and the iron he needed to press his shirt before he met with an architect in an hour. He drove the shovel into the soft ground and struck something solid. He pulled a plastic bag from the dirt. Ah-ha! He’d found his electric shaver, perfectly intact. At least his mother was thoughtful enough to wrap everything before sticking it into a hole in the ground. Nevertheless, it had to stop. Yesterday it had been his combs and toothbrush, which was why he looked like the world’s biggest slob.

He stabbed the dirt once more, just as a piercing scream ripped through the late-morning air, jolting his already strained nerves. Dropping the shovel, he lunged toward his house before he realized the sound had come from the Browns’ next door. He stopped, shook himself and turned in the opposite direction.

Sam jumped the hedges separating the properties and raced across the lawn like a marathon runner, skirting bushes and a large cast-iron pot that had gone to rust. He’d assumed the house was vacant. At least, he hadn’t noticed anyone coming or going. But it was of little concern to him as he took the front steps in one leap. He crossed the porch and knocked. No answer. The door was locked.

The scream still echoing in his mind, he knew he had no choice but to break down the door. He braced himself and rammed it hard. Pain ripped through his shoulder, radiated down his arm and arched across his back, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He slammed against the door once more, and the sound of splintering wood told him he’d succeeded.

Stepping inside, Sam crossed a small foyer and stood there for a moment, staring blankly at the sight before him.

The woman on the floor appeared dead. Sam stumbled toward her prostrate body, stepping over Sheetrock as he went, his mind uncertain of what he was actually seeing. He noted the noose around her neck, made of what appeared to be a dozen multicolored tassels. The woman’s face and clothes were dusted in white, as though someone had just dumped a sack of flour on her head. He glanced up and saw that a portion of what was obviously a fake beam had been torn away. Had she hanged herself? Sure as hell looked like it.

Without wasting another second, Sam dropped to his knees, loosened the noose and performed CPR. He felt her stir and raised his head, inhaling deeply as he prepared to blow more air into her lungs.

MARILEE OPENED HER EYES, TAKING in the man before her, and her heart sank. From the looks of his unshaved jaw and wild black hair, she could only assume she’d died and landed in hell. She suspected angels took better care of themselves.

She tried to speak, but her throat hurt. “Excuse me,” she managed in a hoarse whisper. “Are you the devil?”

Sam stared at the woman for a full minute, trying to make sense of what she’d said. She was obviously delirious. Her face was pale. No telling how long that noose had been around her neck. Could very well have blocked desperately needed oxygen to her brain. “Where’s your phone?” he asked hurriedly. “I need to call an ambulance.”

Marilee’s eyes widened. Phone? Ambulance? She was alive! Relief flooded her, and she wondered again why she’d ever considered ending her life in the first place. To think she’d almost succeeded! Wasn’t that just her luck? Just when she’d found the strength to go on living, she’d come close to killing herself by accident.

She bolted upright, trying to disentangle herself from the cords and tassels. “Please don’t call anyone,” she said, too embarrassed to look at the stranger, even as she wondered how he happened to be there. “You have no idea what I’ve already been through.”

“You need medical attention, lady.” And a damn good psychiatrist, he thought. This woman made his mother’s antics seem normal.

“I’m fine, really.” Marilee scrambled to her feet but swayed, no doubt from the two head injuries she’d received. He caught her up before her legs, which felt as if they were made of mashed sweet potatoes, folded beneath her. The noose, still around her neck although no longer constricted, was an annoyance, but she was more concerned with the sudden pain in her ankle as she tried to steady herself. “I think I twisted my ankle,” she said. “I must’ve landed on it wrong. Other than that, I’m okay.” Well, not really, she thought. Her head throbbed. It felt as though the state of Texas was sitting on top of her skull.

All at once, Marilee realized the man was still holding her in his arms. The way Grady had held her when he’d carried her over the threshold on their wedding night. Oh, this was all wrong, she thought. It was simply not done. Why, it reeked of impropriety, and Marilee Abernathy had been raised a lady. Her poor mother was probably rolling over in her grave at this very moment.

“Please put me down, sir,” she said in her best well-bred voice.

He eased her to the floor. “Can you stand?”

“Why, I certainly can.” She pulled free of him and drew herself up primly, dusting off her clothes and taking care not to put all her weight on her sore ankle. “My, I must look a mess. You’ll have to excuse my appearance.”

Sam looked on in disbelief as she hobbled about, holding her head as though afraid it would fall off and trying to walk out the soreness in her foot. The still-attached noose dragged a piece of the ceiling beam after her. “It would probably be easier for you to get around if you removed that noose from your neck,” he said, sarcasm creeping into his voice. His initial fear had waned, now that he knew she wasn’t going to be carried out in a body bag, and he suddenly felt like shaking her.

Marilee regarded him as she fumbled with the tassels. “There is no cause for rudeness. I’m obviously ill-prepared to receive guests at this time, so perhaps we can meet again under more favorable circumstances.” Yes, that’s what she’d do. She’d whip up her special chicken salad and cucumber sandwiches and invite him to a little housewarming gala once she managed to get the place in shape. But she could not worry about that right now. She had more important business to take care of.

Sam gazed back in pure astonishment as realization hit him. “Marilee Brown,” he said, wondering why he hadn’t recognized her the minute he’d laid eyes on her. She was still as pretty as she’d been in high school. Her hair, the color of ripened wheat, was shorter, barely touching her shoulders and turning under slightly at the ends. Her eyes were the same sparkling blue, and she hadn’t lost the figure that had looked so good in a cheerleader’s skirt and the gown she’d worn when she’d been crowned homecoming queen.

“And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop looking at me as though I’m crazy,” she went on. “I’m perfectly sane, and I wouldn’t be in such a predicament had I not been pushed to the brink. The absolute brink,” she added, waving her arms dramatically as she almost shouted the words. She paused abruptly. He knew her maiden name. “Have we met?”

He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember him. “I grew up next door. We went to the same high school.” His mouth took on an unpleasant twist. “We didn’t exactly run with the same crowd.”

“You’re Nell Brewer’s son,” Marilee said at last. “Sam.”

“So you remember.” He wondered just how much she remembered.

Marilee had a sudden image of a good-looking adolescent with dark hair and what mothers had called bedroom eyes in those days. Those brown eyes, heavily lidded with thick, dark lashes, gave him a lazy, come-hither look that had lured more than one high-school girl into the back seat of his car. “Stay away from that boy,” her own mother had warned. “You so much as walk on the same side of the street with him, and you can kiss your reputation goodbye. And you can’t blame his parents. They’re decent, God-fearing Christians.”

His father had died in Sam’s senior year, and the teenager had quit school in order to support his mother. Marilee vaguely remembered he’d worked construction. Somehow, though, he’d still managed to get into one scrape after another. Then, like a bad wind, he was suddenly gone. The town of Chickpea assumed he’d been sent to prison.

“Yes, I remember,” Marilee replied, thankful she had packed her mother’s silver and put it in a safe place long ago. “It’s, uh, nice seeing you again, Sam. As you must have surmised by now, my life has taken a turn for the worse since I last saw you. Nothing I can’t handle, of course, but thanks for stopping by just the same.”

He was being dismissed. Was she crazy? She had just attempted to hang herself, and now she acted as though it was an everyday occurrence and he was in the way. Sam raked his fingers through his hair, wondering what he should say or do. The situation felt unreal, as though he’d just landed in a scene in one of his mother’s favorite soaps.

“Look, Marilee, I don’t know what your problem is, but I think you need to talk to someone. Nothing is worth ending your life over.”

“I realize that now,” she said with disdain, still trying to free herself from the noose.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Sam offered. He struggled with the tassels. She obviously knew her way around knots. Finally, he pulled it free and tossed the makeshift rope aside. He leaned closer and sniffed. “Do I smell gasoline?” he asked. “Please don’t tell me you were planning to set yourself on fire.”

“Do I look deranged?”

He arched one dark eyebrow but decided not to answer. The noose had chafed the tender skin at her neck. She brushed plaster dust from her face, and he couldn’t help noticing her complexion was still youthful and unblemished, as if she belonged in one of those skin-care commercials. It unnerved him to think just how close she’d come to dying.

Marilee noticed he was staring. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a red welt on your neck.”

“Trust me, it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me in the past few days. I’ll deal with it, okay? Just…please go.” She was near tears, and the last person she wanted to see her cry was Sam Brewer, who didn’t seem to like her very much in the first place.

“You’re lucky to be alive, you know. If that beam hadn’t collapsed, you’d be dangling like a puppet right now with your eyes bulging out of their sockets.”

“What?” Marilee drewback. The mere thought horrified her.

“You obviously don’t know what a hanging victim looks like.”

“Well, no.”

“They mess their pants, and their tongue hangs out and turns purple.” Sam wondered what had made him go and say something like that, but he was annoyed with her. Pissed off, actually, now that the initial shock of finding her had worn off. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Marilee shuddered at the mental picture he’d drawn for her, and she was doubly glad to be alive. “I wasn’t really going to go through with it.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

She glared at him. Did he think she did this sort of thing on a regular basis? Could he not see that she was coming apart at the seams? He had no right to pass judgment on her. “Look, you’ve done your good deed for the day, so why don’t you run along now. I can pay you for your trouble if you like.”

She had a mouth on her, and that surprised him. She’d always seemed so prim and proper, always doing and saying the right thing. “What do you suppose your life is worth, Miss Brown?”

“At this moment? About ten cents. And my name is not Miss Brown. It’s Mrs. Abernathy.”

“Ah, yes, you married that Grady fellow. He was into sports, right?”

She gave a rueful smile. “He is still something of a sportsman.”

“A football player, if I remember correctly.” He remembered well. The Golden Boy, they’d called him. Folks in Chickpea could speak of nothing else his senior year. “Wasn’t he offered a full scholarship to Duke University?”

“Yes, but he went into the seminary instead.”

“I see.”