“If I was sitting where you are, I would feel the same way,” Anna Grace said. “I don’t want to date Bryce. I don’t want a relationship with him. I’m in love and have been for a long time with Tommy Bluestone, a biology teacher who lives in Sweetwater. Mama won’t hear of it, and Daddy says if I marry him, I’ll have to move out of the house and find a job elsewhere because he’s not living with Mama when she’s that mad. So I just let them think I’m dating other guys, but I haven’t dated anyone but Tommy in more than three years.”
“Are you serious?” Cricket eyed her carefully. “I heard you just recently broke up with a dentist.”
“I have to invent a reason to break up with my imaginary boyfriends when Mama begins to insist that I bring them home for a weekend, or that I invite him to go out to eat with us so she can meet him.” Anna Grace looked absolutely miserable when she admitted that.
Cricket shouldn’t feel sorry for her after the way Anna Grace had looked down on her all those years, but she did. “That must be tough.”
“You can’t even imagine.” Anna Grace looked like she might break into tears any minute. “I wish Jennie Sue was here so I could talk to her, but then she probably wouldn’t even answer my calls after the way we all shunned her when she married your brother.” She lowered her voice and looked around the store. “I was proud of her for what she did. I’d never admit it to anyone else, but I was. She stood up to her mother and all the Belles when she came back to town. I want to know how she did it, because I can’t live with all this stress any longer.”
Cricket still wasn’t sure this wasn’t just playacting. “She had the guts to go after what she wanted, even before she met Rick. She rented an affordable apartment and cleaned houses for enough money to live on. You know all this, and yes, all her old friends did shun her for doing it. What makes you think she’ll even talk to you?”
“I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t,” Anna Grace said. “I want to make Mama happy, but I can’t make her happy and be happy myself. Tommy has asked me to marry him.” She pulled a black velvet box from her purse and popped it open to show Cricket what looked like an engagement ring. “Mama would throw a Southern hissy if she even knew I had this. The diamond is barely half a carat, and I think it’s gorgeous. I love it. Tommy saved up for a long time to buy it for me.”
“That reminds me of your sweet sixteen ring,” Cricket said.
Anna Grace held out her hand to show a ruby ring on her right hand. “This is my sweet sixteen ring, and I guess other than my engagement ring having a diamond instead of a ruby, they kind of do resemble each other. My birthday is in January. Mama didn’t think a garnet was fancy enough, so she bought a ruby, which is about the same color. But how did you…” She frowned.
“I remember every one of y’all’s rings. You came to school showing them off and bragging about them,” Cricket said. “I was sixteen that same year, and we were still mourning my mother’s death. Rick was in the service and couldn’t even come home. I was lucky that Lettie and Nadine brought me a cake that day. So yes, I remember that and every mean thing y’all did to me. I hated school because of you.”
“I’m so sorry.” A tear made its way down Anna Grace’s cheek and dripped off her jaw.
“Apology accepted,” Cricket said. “What did you tell Tommy when he proposed, and how did he ask you to marry him?”
Cricket figured Anna Grace would stutter and stammer, but she smiled.
“We took a blanket out into a field of Texas bluebonnets to watch the sunrise. He’s very inventive with our dates, and we have so much fun together. He’s taught me that money isn’t everything and helped me find my inner self,” Anna Grace answered. “Right when the sun came up that morning, he brought out the ring and asked me to marry him, and I said yes. Now what do I do?”
“Well, since you said yes, I suppose that you should marry him,” Cricket answered, but she still didn’t believe all of this was real.
“I’ve always dreamed of having a big wedding with the fancy dress, at least eight bridesmaids, a blowout reception, and all the trimmings, but I know if I tell Mama that I’m engaged to Tommy Bluestone, I’ll have to give all that up,” Anna Grace sighed.
“A wedding is a day. A marriage is a lifetime,” Cricket told her. “Jennie Sue and Rick didn’t have a big wedding. They went to Las Vegas and got married in one of those funny little chapels out there. You have to decide whether you want a big wedding or a marriage. At least that’s the way it looks to me.” Cricket didn’t give a flip about a huge event, if and when she ever got married, but she did want a man to look at her the same way her brother looked at Jennie Sue. That was pure love, and it beat the hell out of a fancy dress, a string of bridesmaids, and a four-foot wedding cake.
“Tell me more about Tommy. Why are your folks so set against him? Teaching school is an honorable profession.”
“That’s what I told them back when we had been dating a few months,” Anna Grace sighed. “But they informed me that I’d been raised in a better lifestyle than he could ever offer and reminded me that I made five times what he did in a year working at Daddy’s oil company, but my job would come to an end the day I married Tommy. That’s how much they’re against me and him having a happy ever after.”
“What’s money compared to love?” Cricket said. “You go to work. You come home, have supper together, talk about your day, and then spend the night in each other’s arms. Tell me where you would live if you decided to go against your folks.”
“Tommy has a small, one-bedroom apartment in Sweetwater. The whole thing is about the size of my walk-in closet. The Belles will shun me worse than they did Jennie Sue if I do this. Mama and Daddy swore three years ago that they would disown me if I marry him.”
“Do his parents accept you?” Cricket asked.
“Oh, yes! He’s the baby of eight kids, and they all are so sweet to me. They invite me to everything—birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—and they are just awesome. I love spending time with them,” she said.
“What do his folks do, as in jobs?” Cricket asked.
“His mother was a high school math teacher. His father was a history professor at the Tech College. They’re both retired now,” Anna Grace answered.
They sounded like pretty influential folks to Cricket, but then in the eyes of the Belles, she could understand where the Bluestones might not make the social cut.
“How much money do you need to be happy?” Cricket asked. “You could get a job at a rival oil company. That would really piss your folks off.”
“Truth is, I’m not qualified for another job,” Anna Grace said. “I’m just window dressing at the company. I answer Daddy’s phone calls, take coffee to him, and take care of his appointment book. I don’t know anything about managing money or living on my own.”
Cricket remembered sitting in the café and seeing Jennie Sue get off the bus when it stopped across the street. Cricket could hardly believe that the famous and very rich Jennie Sue, the daughter of a Belle, was coming home with just a suitcase and riding on a bus instead of driving a fancy sports car. “I guess it just depends on what you want most. Tommy or money.”