The Husband School Read online

  Meg waited, listening. He still had his hand on her shoulder, so he slid it down her arm and up again. The material was dark and soft, some kind of sweater that zipped up to her chin and brushed her earlobes. Meg stepped back and Owen dropped his hand to his side. The knot of tension that had tormented his gut all evening expanded.

  “So,” he continued, “I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls, folks wanting to know if I’m going to get involved.”

  “You know how small towns are.”

  “Yes, I certainly do.” He chanced a smile but she didn’t return it. “I kept saying no.”

  “Go on. What does this have to do with the streak?”

  “Yeah. The streak. I looked around the house today and saw Ed. Saw my grandfather. I’m not sure you’d call them hermits, but whatever they were was something I didn’t want to be. And I could see it happening.”

  “How?” She took another step back, as if she wanted to remove herself from the conversation.

  “I’ve been living out there. With my dog. The house is, well, the house is the same as it was when I was a kid. And not in a good way.”

  “And you’re afraid you’ll turn into Ed.”

  “It’s a real concern,” he admitted, embarrassed now for having said of all of this. Maybe he’d come closer to the truth after all. Maybe she’d go home and laugh to herself about Owen MacGregor’s fear of becoming a hermit. He tried for levity. “I talked it all over with my dog and we agreed I should get out more.”

  “I don’t—” She stopped. He caught a glimpse of disappointment before she turned away from him, so he didn’t say anything else. It wasn’t as if there was more to add.

  He opened her car door, made sure she was tucked inside and even drove past the café to make sure she’d arrived at her cabin safely. Only four blocks, but it was the polite thing to do.

  He had no reason to be less than polite, no reason to be more than that. They had a past together, with memories and pain and sweetness and heartache. Revisiting that summer meant remembering all of it—his father’s death, his mother’s despair, the explosion of everything Owen thought his life would be—and he didn’t want to relive it. He never wanted to go through anything like that again.

  * * *

  MEG AND SHELLY studied the enormous, intricate quilt hanging in front of them. Stitched entirely of small triangles in shades of blue and white, it formed an impressive star.

  The girl leaned closer to frown at the tiny running stitches crisscrossing the fabric. “I thought they only did this, you know, in the old days.”

  “You mean on the wagon train?”

  “Yeah.” She darted a quick look at her boss. “No offense. It’s nice of you to, uh, take me to see this stuff.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad for the company.”

  “I wonder how long it took to make this.”

  “Three years.” At Shelly’s startled look, Meg added, “It’s in the program.”

  “The quilter must be a very patient person.”

  “Yes, she must.” Meg couldn’t fathom sewing all those triangles together either, but she loved to look at them. The community center was filled with rows of quilts attached to wooden stands, hanging from walls or pinned to bulletin boards. Each one was different from the rest.

  “Sometimes you don’t have any choice except patience,” Shelly mumbled.

  “Is that the way you feel? That you don’t have any choice?” Meg asked, remembering how she’d waited to hear from Owen after he’d been sent back to college. She’d poured her heart out in a letter, but he hadn’t replied. So much for patience.

  The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. She wore an old cotton blouse of Meg’s, and Meg knew that under it, Shelly’s jeans were unzipped to allow for her expanding belly. Al had donated a belt big enough to get her through the entire pregnancy.

  “You have choices.” Meg walked over to the next quilt, a modern red-and-white log cabin. Aurora had outdone herself.

  “Wow, this is cool,” Shelly said, gazing at the bartender’s small quilt.

  “You can go home to your family,” Meg suggested. “Your mother? She must be worried about you.”

  “Not likely.”

  “Is there any family you and the baby could live with, you know, until you get on your feet?”

  “I wish there was.” The girl sighed. “But that’s not gonna happen. I don’t want my little guy here to grow up like that.”

  “Like what, Shelly?” Meg pictured neglect, abuse, divorce, poverty—all sorts of situations in which a child would suffer. But the girl didn’t answer, instead moving sideways to another displayed quilt.

  “I think it’s a boy, you know.” She patted her growing bump. “He’s gonna need a father.”

  “Have you thought about adoption, then?”

  Shelly’s blue eyes widened. “You don’t think I’ll find Sonny, do you? You don’t think he’ll want us!”

  Several elderly women examining a nearby antique quilt turned to see what the commotion was. Meg put her hand on Shelly’s thin back and moved her toward the metal chairs along the side of the room.

  “Come on,” she said. “Sit.”

  Shelly sat, but she blinked back tears and hugged the show’s program to her chest. “I know I can find him. I just need some luck, that’s all.”

  “Look, honey, you need a lot more than luck.” Such as a loving husband with a job, a man who will be a loving father and provide a home for his little family. Somehow Meg didn’t think Sonny, probably Rodeo King of the One-Night Stands, was likely to turn up or step up. “I’m still not clear why you ended up on a bus in Montana. Where do you think this guy is, precisely?”

  “He told me Willing was a cool town.”

  “But he didn’t live in Willing when you met him?”

  “No. He’d worked in Lewistown. And Big Timber. And he said he had family in Billings, but I checked on the internet and Facebook and couldn’t find his name anywhere.”

  “And you’re sure he told you his real name?”

  She nodded. “It was on the program. The rodeo program.”

  “But why the bus?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” the girl sniffed. “I don’t have a car.”

  Meg tried again. “But where were you going on the bus? Your destination?”

  “Billings,” she said. “And then Denver. Sonny said he always wanted to live in Denver.”

  “Denver is a long way from Willing,” Meg pointed out. This girl was either incredibly naive or totally desperate. Or both.

  “Lucia’s taking me to Lewistown with her on Tuesday, after she takes the boys to school. There’s a library there, with yearbooks. So I can see if Sonny grew up around here.”

  Meg nodded. “Well, that’s a plan.”

  Shelly wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yeah, well, right now it’s the only one I’ve got.”

  * * *

  “MEN GET IN trouble when they have opinions,” George confided, taking a sip of the hot coffee Meg just poured for him. “Have you ever noticed that?”

  “Yes, I think I have.” Meg wanted to laugh, but one look at the old man’s expression as he sat on the stool on the other side of her counter told her that he was serious. “There seem to be a lot of opinions around here lately.”

  The breakfast crowd had been surprisingly small this Monday morning, which gave Meg more time to browse through building supply websites on her laptop. She’d moved a napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers and a ketchup bottle to make room for her notes. She was trying to come up with a renovation budget, just in case this whole Hollywood thing actually worked out.

  “My wife has a few. Got one right here.” George handed her a yellow sheet of paper with a daisy border.

 
Meg picked it up and read:

  He should bring his wife coffee in bed.

  A mother-in-law should not visit longer than a week.

  The man takes out the garbage.

  Never go to bed angry.

  Meg had received plenty more advice from the women in town. Those who had been married for a long time approved of the attempt to find wives for the local bachelors. Others thought it was a joke and highly humorous. Meg had heard grumbling from a couple of single women who weren’t happy with the idea of competition coming to town. But then again, neither one of them planned to settle down anytime soon. And like Meg herself, neither one was in love.

  Meg worried about Lucia, whose own husband had been killed in Afghanistan when she was three months pregnant with her third child. All this talk of husbands couldn’t be easy for her friend. She’d loved Tony Swallow, of that Meg was certain. Meg could only hope that Lucia was telling the truth when she said she would be relieved to be left alone by her neighbors. She hated hurting anyone’s feelings, but dating was out of the question.

  The quilters had even held a special meeting at the center Sunday afternoon over coffee and zucchini bread. There was talk of making a wedding quilt for next year’s raffle and they’d also put together a pile of suggestions for Meg’s class. It seemed that there were more opinions about husbands than there were deer in Montana.

  Don’t think you’re going to change him that much.

  Make sure he loves his mother, but not too much. You don’t want to marry a mama’s boy.

  A good husband doesn’t say “I told you so.”

  A good husband calls home if he’s going to be late.

  Please teach them to pick up their socks. Even though that doesn’t sound important, it can get aggravating, especially when you get older and have a bad back.

  No gambling, smoking or drinking.

  Pick a man who will be a good lover and a good father and a good friend.

  Meg liked that one. Janet had pressed that slip of paper into her hand, saying, “I suppose this is advice more for women, but men should know what’s expected of them, don’t you think?”

  The married men were free with their advice, too.

  “Don’t walk across a clean floor. And don’t slice into a cake unless you ask first, in case it’s for taking somewhere. That’s all I’ve got,” George said. “Shouldn’t get me into any trouble with the missus, I don’t think.”

  “They should put signs on them,” her customer at the closest table called. “Cakes, I mean.”

  “There are a lot of ways to get in trouble,” Gary Petersen muttered around his grilled cheese. “That’s why I’ve been divorced twice.”

  “And because you drove truck,” the FedEx driver beside George at the counter said, then tipped back his coffee.

  “True. I always liked being on the road better ’n being home.” He called to Meg, “Make sure you tell the single guys not to get married unless they’re gonna stick around!”

  “We’re concentrating more on dating,” she attempted to point out. “Etiquette. Dancing. Things like that.”

  “And seduction, I’ll bet,” he said, giving her a little wink.

  “Boy, howdy,” George moaned. “You can bet there are a lot of rules to that, too!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “LOOK AT THIS.” Jerry gestured toward the crowd. “We’re making history.”

  “No pressure, then.” Meg continued to organize the handouts Jerry had printed for her. She and Lucia had spent hours putting the information together. They’d debated using Aurora’s suggestions and decided to eliminate the more suggestive “what women want from men” ideas.

  “She might want to teach an advanced class,” Lucia had said.

  “Maybe it should be an optional handout.”

  “Even better. We don’t want to scare them off.”

  Men were everywhere. They trickled into the café, sauntering in from the parking lot, arriving early for coffee. Some looked resigned or embarrassed, others excited. They were all ages, shapes and sizes. And there were thirty-two of them. Most of them looked as if they were going camping or just returning from three days in the wild.

  Meg recognized all of them, knew most of them by name. At least three were older than forty-five, Tracy’s age limit, but Meg assumed they hadn’t wanted to be left out of the excitement. Or the free buffet.

  “We should have had name tags,” Jerry muttered.

  “Too formal.”

  “Do you have enough handouts?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Want me to start passing them out?”

  “No. I’m going to give them out at the end of the night, for them to take home.”

  “But—”

  “I want them listening, Jerry, not reading.” The mayor was going to drive her crazy before the workshop even began. When he wasn’t pacing, he studied the information she’d assembled. When he wasn’t reorganizing her papers, he worried about what could go wrong. At the moment he was picking imaginary lint off his sweater and mumbling about aftershave.

  “Okay. Whatever you say. How do I look? I wanted to set a good example.”

  “Navy blue suits you,” she said, wishing he’d take his nerves to another side of the room. “A dark forest green would look good on you, too.”

  “I don’t know,” he pondered. “With red hair I could look like a carrot. Where’s Luce? She’s doing clothing tips, right?”

  “She’ll be here in time for the speed dating session.” Against her better judgment, Lucia had agreed to take part, after she’d made Meg promise to keep her away from lovesick Joey.

  He scanned the crowd again. “Maybe we should have another class called How Not to Dress Like Paul Bunyan.”

  “Jerry, there’s decaf coffee in the urn over there.” She pointed to the rectangular table in the back of the dining room. “Go. Help yourself.”

  He pulled out his fancy cell phone, read a text message and then quickly texted back. “Tracy,” he explained after he finished. “She wants me to send her some pictures.”

  “When is she coming?”

  “That’s still up in the air. I’m hoping for Halloween. The town always looks good on Halloween, with the party and all.”

  “That doesn’t give us much time.” She looked at her list. Manners, grooming, conversation, dating, dancing, children, romance and the importance of listening. “If anyone can do it, it’s you,” he said, scanning the crowd. “We’ve got a good turnout. Hey, there’s my star now.” He waved to Owen and took off across the room to greet him.

  Star? Well, Meg supposed Owen would be. He had a confident way about him that attracted attention without his having to do or say anything. He made her more nervous than she already was.

  “Meg?” Shelly, a blue-striped apron tied around her waist, held a tray of sliced sourdough bread, salami and assorted cheeses covered with plastic wrap. “Do you want this on the table now?”

  “Not yet. Not until I get to the part about food.” Shelly had insisted on working tonight, and Meg could guess why. “Is he here?”

  The girl blushed. “No.”

  “Leave when you get tired, okay? And if anyone named Sonny shows up, I’ll come get you.”

  “Thanks, but I kinda want to ask Les about the rodeo. I heard he was on the circuit.” She set the tray down and wiped her hands on her apron. “I met his grandma at the quilt show. She told me.”

  “You’ll have to hurry.” Meg glanced at the clock above the door. She’d start in about five minutes. It wasn’t going to be easy to create the perfect men in two hours, but she was going to give it her best shot.

  * * *

  IN AND OUT. He’d make an appearance because he’d said he would. In the name of doing his civic dut
y, he’d filled out the dating form.

  He’d felt like an idiot, but he’d done it. He didn’t want to go out with anyone, didn’t want to meet the love of his life while cameras were rolling—if such a thing existed, which he doubted. He didn’t intend to add to the population of Willing by getting married and making babies.

  Certainly not that.

  Owen stepped inside the café and found a seat at an empty table by the door. With luck he would be able to sneak out after half an hour, tops. He looked at his watch. The meeting would start in six minutes. He’d timed it perfectly. He unzipped his jacket and tossed it on the empty chair to his left. The mayor had drawn quite a crowd, but most of them had gathered near the refreshment stand and a platter piled high with buffalo wings. Owen wondered if Chili Dawgs would still be open later. Les, the youngest member of the town council, took the empty seat next to him.

  “Wow, hi, Mr. MacGregor.” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

  “Owen, please.” He shook the young man’s hand. “Big crowd tonight.”

  “Yeah.” Les looked around the room and drummed his fingers on the table. “Have you seen Shelly?”

  Ah. Owen tried not to wince. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Huh.” The kid continued to scan the crowd, and Owen leaned back in his chair and decided to mind his own business. Kid, he wanted to say, she’s too young, too pregnant and too eager to find her boyfriend.

  Which made entirely too much sense and of course would not matter in the slightest. Owen felt a hundred years old and thought about leaving right then and there. Unfortunately Jerry chose that moment to step up to the microphone.

  “If you’d all find seats,” he began. “We’ll go over some basic dating information and then, while we’re enjoying Meg’s famous pot roast, I’ll outline the rest of the agenda. Any questions before we—”

  “When are these Hollywood people coming?”

  “How many?”

  “How old?”

  “How young?”

  “How do we get on television? Do we get paid?”