Chapter 4

4

I 'm sorry, I'm not going to make it for the auction.

Ellen looked down at her phone as she parked her car, and sighed. She hadn't seen Travis for five years. He'd gone to Brazil and never come back. During that time, she'd sent him letters, they'd had phone calls and texts, but his job had been very demanding.

Not that she'd been idle, and they hadn't lost touch, they just…hadn't been in contact nearly as much as what she wanted.

But he was on his way home. She thought he was going to make it to the annual Sweet Water spring festival, but he got held up with business. He was tying up all of his loose ends and coming home to stay.

She couldn't wait. Not that Travis was her only friend, even her only good friend. And she didn't expect that things hadn't changed at all. Maybe he'd be bringing a wife home, although if he got married, he'd never told her.

"Are we going in?" her sister Maeve said from the front seat.

Tadgh and Ashley were already in, hanging up decorations and getting things started. They had left Ellen at home to put together a lunch bucket for herself and one for Maeve so they could sell them at the auction.

It was the old-fashioned, buy the bucket and eat with the girl kind of auction. Of course, Tadgh was planning on buying Maeve's bucket. Although Maeve didn't know.

They'd talked about allowing her brother to buy it, and Ellen wasn't entirely sure what they had decided about that other than they thought perhaps Maeve would be disappointed. She had been so excited about getting to put a lunch bucket in the auction.

It was her first auction, and she had made the cookies and the fried apple pies that were in the buckets herself.

Ellen had made country-fried steak again, hoping that it would summon Travis home. Of course, for the last five years, every time she made it she thought of him, but he'd never come. Not that she expected him to, but country-fried steak always made her think of him and long for him to be with her.

Still, the spring festival was one of Ellen's favorites, and she was determined to have a good time. Even if Travis wasn't there to buy her bucket. She would have loved to have been able to sit and catch up with her old friend, but she wasn't going to allow that to spoil the evening for her.

"We sure are, pumpkin," she said to her sister, giving her a smile and sharing an excited look. Maeve wasn't at the age where she was too mature to be called by the nickname that Ellen had given her at birth.

Ellen felt blessed to be able to spend so much time with her sister. Even though she was an adult, with several businesses that she ran on her own, her parents welcomed her, actually wanted her, to continue to live with them. She had never felt like she was in the way or that they were trying to push her out. On the contrary, she felt like they enjoyed her company and wanted her to stay. She loved her family, loved the sense of safety and community that she felt with them, and loved the fact that she had extra years to develop a relationship with her sister.

"Yay!" Maeve said as she grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Miss Ellen O'Reily." Ellen cringed at the familiar voice. Chalmer Leggins was a familiar sight around town. He'd graduated with Ellen and had been considered a good athlete. He'd been the high school quarterback, although not good enough to play at the college level, and he hadn't gone to school after his high school career. Instead, he married the head cheerleader, Shanna, and they had two kids together. They'd been divorced for several years, and Chalmer had gotten a job as a truck driver for the Powers family trucking.

Irritatingly, he showed up at a lot of Ellen's dog competition events, and any time she saw him in town, it felt like he chased her down.

She'd been very clear that she wasn't interested, but Chalmer had a hard time taking no for an answer. She had been hoping that he wouldn't be here this evening. Of all the people in town who could buy her basket, Chalmer would be her last choice. Not because she hated him, just because anytime she was even a little bit nice to him, he took it as encouragement and asked her out, not understanding her no and going so far as to show up at her house to pick her up, even after she told him she wasn't interested in going anywhere with him.

"Hi, Chalmer. I'm sorry I can't talk. I need to rush in." They weren't late or anything, she just didn't want to get stuck talking to him.

"No problem. I can walk in with you. I'll carry your bucket."

"No. Actually, it's kind of special, and I don't want it to get upset."

"What? You think I'm not going to be careful enough with your little bucket?" he said, grabbing both buckets out of the back seat and holding them up with one in each hand, held by the handles with his pointer fingers.

Ellen watched with her heart in her throat. Not necessarily for her bucket, but if he did anything to Maeve's bucket, Maeve would be devastated.

"Hey! That's mine. I want to carry it," her little voice chirped up.

"Which one?" he said with a teasing grin that didn't seem friendly. "This one?" He held up the one with the pink flower.

"Yeah. That one's mine."

"If you want it, you need to say the magic word," he said as he slowly began to twist her bucket around on his finger, making slow circles. Ellen resisted the urge to grab for it. That would only make things worse, because it would make Chalmer laugh, and he would continue to tease them. The best thing she could do was to play it cool and not give him the attention and reaction he wanted.

"Please. Please give me my bucket," Maeve said, and she still sounded cheerful, although there was a little wrinkling in her brow that bespoke her concern for her bucket.

Ellen couldn't blame her, she was worried herself. He had started to swing it faster, around his finger, almost as though he were trying to see how fast he could get it to go. Or how long he could do it before they threw a fit and started crying for him to stop.

For Ellen's own bucket, she wouldn't have said a word, but for her sister's bucket, she would give him what he wanted. "That's enough, Chalmer. You're going to spill it."

"Oh, I'm going to spill it," he said in an affected female voice. "Don't you have any faith in me?" He gave her an arrogant look as he began to spin her bucket on his other finger, until he had both buckets going round and round each finger, holding them up and away from his head and body.

"Of course we have faith in you. I'm sure you can spin buckets with the best of them. But we would like to have our meal so that we can go in and put them where they go. We have things to do."

"You're going to drop it," Maeve said, and she no longer sounded happy.

"You're going to drop it," Chalmer mimicked in his affected voice again.

"Chalmer—" Ellen began, but it was too late. He had moved just a little bit, and Maeve's bucket went flying off his finger, smacked into Ellen's car, tipped over, and all the contents ended up on the ground with the bucket on top.

"No!" Maeve let out a keening cry as she dropped to her knees, trying to pick the things up quickly, but the country-fried steak had fallen out of the container and lay on the ground right in the dirt. The mashed potatoes had come to the same fate. She could probably salvage the cookies, although they were cracked, and the pie had broken.

About the only thing that could be salvaged would be the sweet corn cake that had been wrapped in aluminum foil.

Ellen tried to tamp down her anger. Anger never helped anything. Although, it would certainly make her feel better if she could haul off and smack Chalmer right in the nose.

"Oops," Chalmer said, not sounding sorry at all. Then his brown eyes landed on Ellen. "Maybe the next time I ask you to go out with me, you'll say yes."

"I don't think so," she said, her lips pulled back, but she had them buttoned tightly closed, so she didn't give him a piece of her mind, one that she couldn't afford to lose. She'd never been happy anytime she allowed her mouth to run when it shouldn't, and this would be no different.

"Here. I'll set this one down very, very carefully so that nothing happens to your precious bucket. And I'll make sure I know which one to bid on," he said with a laugh before he slammed her bucket down on the ground and sauntered off.

He was so irritating.

"I'm so sorry about your bucket," Ellen said to Maeve who had touched the country-fried steak that lay on the ground before she realized that there was no way she was going to salvage any of it. "Our buckets were exactly the same other than my blue flowers. Can you salvage your pink flower and put it on my bucket? You can have it."

"Really?" Maeve said, hope entering into her eyes.

"Sure. You made the cookies and the pie for this one just like you did for yours. It's no different."

"I guess you're right. But then you won't have a bucket."

"I'll think of something else to put in the auction," Ellen said, knowing that she had pledged to do something for the auction, and she couldn't go back on her pledge. Well, she could. She could explain what happened. No one was going to hold a gun to her head and make her do it. But she wanted to keep her word. Even when it was hard. Even when she could point to Chalmer as the reason she couldn't.

"But what would you sell?" Maeve asked, and she looked around. "Your car?"

Ellen laughed. "It's a piece of junk, and I can't imagine anyone would want to buy it." It was twenty-five years old, and while it started every time she turned the key, it wasn't much to look at. Which was exactly how she liked it. She'd rather save her money than spend it on a fancy car. Plus, it got good gas mileage, and she wasn't afraid to drive it in the snow, because it didn't matter whether she ran it into a snowbank or not. It already had a lot of dents in it. One more wasn't going to make any difference at all.

"You don't have anything else?" Maeve said, chewing on her lip as they fixed her pink flower beside the blue one that was already on Ellen's bucket.

"I can auction off my clothes," Ellen suggested with a little grin.

"You wouldn't," Maeve said, laughing.

"You're right. I'd better not do that. I might not be welcome at church anymore."

"Church is a hospital for sinners," Maeve said, the pain and suffering that had been in her voice because of Chalmer almost completely gone as they fixed up Ellen's bucket and Ellen handed it to her.

"Thank you. I was really looking forward to this. I've always wanted to have a bucket to sell. I wonder who will buy it?" That was a question Maeve had been asking all day long, and it made Ellen think that there was someone she wanted to buy it.

Maybe one of the Hansom boys. They were a little older than Maeve, but they definitely would catch the girl's eye, although they were a little too wild for Ellen to be comfortable with them.

There were some Powers boys, as well as the Calhoun brothers, two different families of them. Whoever Maeve was interested in was anyone's guess. She was way too young to be dating, but that didn't mean she wasn't looking. Ellen hadn't come right out and asked, and she probably wouldn't. If Maeve wanted to tell her, she certainly could, and Ellen figured she knew that.

Ellen had always been a confidant to her. Every time she had done something wrong and her parents had disciplined her, she cried on Ellen's shoulder, talking about how unfair her life was.

Ellen had tried to gently nudge her in the direction of realizing that her parents were only doing it for her good, the way that Ellen sometimes had to discipline her dogs, for their own good and safety. To turn them into perfectly trained herding animals, who were able to do what they were born to do. Without the training, they might want to chase cows, but that's all they'd do. Just chase them. There would be no rhyme or reason, and they wouldn't be any good to anyone.

Ellen wasn't sure whether Maeve had ever truly understood what she had been trying to say, but she supposed she'd keep trying, until Maeve either got it or moved out.

Maeve carried the bucket with a big smile on her face as she slipped her hand into Ellen's and skipped along beside her as they walked into the community building which had been there for more than a decade. It used to be new, of course, and Ellen still thought of it as new, but a decade had slid by, almost without her recognizing it. She felt like an old lady, because she used to come here as a young girl, about Maeve's age, always excited to be able to participate in whatever town festival was going on. And now, she was part of it.

It was amazing to her how quickly life went by. And a little sad too. She missed being little, the naivety of youth, and the unbridled enthusiasm she had for everything she did. For some reason, there was a growing sadness inside of her, and she wasn't sure exactly what caused it.

It was a longing for something, she supposed, but she wasn't sure what. Maybe it was something that God put in every young person, something that drove them from their comfortable place with their parents and pushed them out into the world, ready to leave their own mark on it.

But she'd think about that some other time, because she loved her town and never wanted to leave, except for that growing discontent inside of her that felt a little bit like wanderlust. Maybe it was just a bit of jealousy because her best friend had been in Brazil for so long and traveled the world, and she barely ever left the town where she grew up.

"We have one lunch bucket for you," Ellen said as they reached the platform and gave Maeve's lunch bucket to the lady in charge.

"You're scheduled for two. Where's the other one?" she said, checking the clipboard that she held in front of her. Every other town in the United States probably had gone electronic, but not Sweet Water.

Ellen didn't smile, because she felt bad. "We dropped one. I'm sorry."

"Well, is there something else you can offer instead?"

"Don't let her offer you her clothes. She told me she wouldn't. Her car is a piece of junk too," Maeve said, with the unfiltered way a child often spoke.

"Thank you for the tips," Lim said, giving a benevolent smile to Maeve. "I would not allow her to offer me her clothes, and I definitely do not want her car. I've seen it. It belongs in a junkyard," Lim added, looking over her glasses.

Ellen tried not to be offended. She loved her car. It was…dependable and had never let her down. Except for the times that she'd run it into a snowbank herself.

But it started when she wanted it to, it ran well, and it got her where she needed to go, without costing her a lot of money. Plus, with all the places that she took her dogs, she really didn't want to get a nice car that would just get covered in dog hair.

But she didn't want to get into an argument with Lim, so she just smiled and held her hands out.

"I wish I could do something. I know I signed up for it." She didn't say what had happened. She wasn't a big believer in offering excuses. Plus, she didn't want to make it sound like she was complaining about Chalmer. This was a party, not the place to complain about people.

"Just sell yourself." Mr. Higginbotham came up beside Lim and spoke over her shoulder.