Free Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring by Gary Chapman, Catherine Palmer Page A

crappie, there's
something to be said for healthy, lively minnows."
    Patsy clamped her mouth shut and began finger-combing
Esther's hair into place. As she worked with the curls, she did her best not to think about Pete Roberts next door. Though she had
tried to be kind to him, she could find no excuse for his behavior.

    Esther Moore was dead wrong about him. Maybe Pete was nice
to his customers and kept a tidy store. Maybe he had used his
blasted weed whacker on the flourishing dandelion patch in front
of her beauty salon the other day. And maybe Patsy had seen him
eyeing her from his pew at LAMB Chapel the past three Sundays in
a row. But that did not mean he had a "little thing" for her. And she
certainly didn't like him. Not even a little bit.
    "Oh, that looks so pretty," Esther spoke up as Patsy began spraying the style into place. "You always do such a good job. It's no
wonder everyone in Deepwater Cove and most of the west side of
the lake comes to Just As I Am. You have the power to transform us
all! In fact, I think Brenda Hansen is looking better than she has in
months. When that homeless man she was taking care of ran away,
I predicted she would go right down the drain. But she sure has
perked up. Maybe it's that new haircut you gave her."
    Patsy shrugged. She had enough to worry about with Pete Roberts threatening to start up one loud engine or another next door.
Which made her think about poor, simpleminded Cody and how
scared he had been when he ran out of the salon that day. Which
led her to wonder what had really brightened up Brenda Hansen so
much. Her husband hadn't seemed too thrilled when he came in
for his monthly haircut-he said their basement was all torn apart
and some handyman had practically taken up residence in the
Hansens' house. Which brought Steve's glum face to Patsy's mind
and led her to recall how hard she'd had to work to repair his haircut. Which took her right back to Pete Roberts and his infernal
weed whacker. That man was just about all she could think of these
days.

    Brenda tore off a strip of blue, low-tack painter's tape and began
to edge the molding around the staircase in the basement. It had
taken the best part of two days to tape the windows, doors, floors,
and ceilings, but she didn't mind. Nick LeClair kept his radio
tuned to a country station, and Brenda had discovered to her surprise that she liked the twangy Southern music-especially the ballads. She had grown up in St. Louis listening to rock and pop, but
some of the country songs almost made her cry. She told herself it
was hormones.
    Lately, everything had seemed a little out of whack. At forty-five
she was probably too young for menopause, but maybe not. Her
emotions had leaped onto a roller-coaster ride that never stopped.
Feeling almost as crazy as she had in her teenage years, Brenda
swooped up into giddy happiness one minute and then plunged
into tears the next.
    It was Steve's fault.
    After their fiasco the night he brought home the stringer of fish,
they hadn't touched each other and had barely spoken.

    "You just saved my bacon!" Nick exclaimed as he stepped
through the basement's sliding door this morning. "I've got the
paint, and you've done the taping!"
    "I was wondering where you were," Brenda said. She rose from
the floor and faced him.
    Nick wore his usual chambray work shirt, jeans, boots, and
baseball cap. He wasn't handsome like Steve, he drawled like a hillbilly, and sometimes he messed up his grammar, but Brenda had
come to enjoy the man's jovial company. In fact, she went to bed
each night replaying their conversations in her mind, and when
she woke up the next morning, she waited to hear his pickup
crunching the rocks on the driveway.
    "I asked the hardware store to shake up the paint," he was saying
as he crossed the basement floor, "and then I realized we couldn't
start on the Serene Green sewing zone until we'd taped it off. But
there you go, girl,