High Cotton Read online

  We were still in the buying stage during the last reunion, so I promised Digger I’d keep quiet about it in case something went wrong. I don’t think he believed it would actually happen until it did.

  I put the box back in the drawer and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. I imagine the sounds of Digger’s aunts and cousins as they ooh and ahh over our beautiful home with country décor straight out of Southern Living, and I can’t help but smile.

  “And the winner of this year’s chili cook-off is . . .” Everyone holds their breath as the announcer looks around, his eyes gleaming, a wicked grin playing on his lips. He finally settles his gaze on me as his smile widens. “Missy Montague, for her delectable chicken chili.” He starts clapping his hands and adds, “Let’s give Ms. Montague a nice round of applause.”

  Only a few people clap, but the sound of groaning from the other contestants hums in my ears as I feel more joy than I ever imagined bubbling up inside me. I look around at all the disappointed folks—most of them women about my mama’s age, along with a few men who use cheap beer as their “secret ingredient.”

  I have to admit, I don’t get all that fancy with mine. I use white beans, shredded chicken, and a boatload of spices. If I had to name one of them a “secret,” I reckon it would be the cinnamon. Oh, and Mama once taught me that a dash of sugar makes everything better, so I dump in a palmful. It might not be as nutritious as it would be without the sugar, but no one judges chili for its health benefits. Whatever the case, it works. Everyone loves my chicken chili.

  As I wait for the next competition to be over so the judges can give us our awards at the same time, I stand by the front table and look around at the other contenders. They’re all caught up in their own lives, hoping for a shred of validation from the judges. I already have mine, so I’m able to relax as I smile.

  It takes a while for the rest of the competitions in the slow-cooker category to be done. One thing I notice is that everyone else has a family member nearby to share the glory. By the time they give us our ribbons and shake our hands, some of the joy has faded, and my thoughts are on who I can impress next, which isn’t too difficult since the next Bucklin family reunion has just been announced.

  Most families have reunions once a year, if that. But not mine. We do it every time someone has a new baby or graduates from college or manages to make it through high school or whatever any of my aunts can think of, even if the reason is simply to bring everyone together. It’s not usually as terrible as some of my kinfolk make it out to be, but I can think of other places I’d rather go on a warm summer day. Like shopping.

  At least I’ll have a dish people will want to eat. The first time I brought something to one of the reunions, there were only a couple of spoonfuls of it missing when I went to get my dish. Mama had told me everyone likes ambrosia. She was wrong. They hate it.

  “You should have left out the coconut,” she said when I whined about it. Of course, this is coming from someone who thinks tomato aspic is the bomb. No one likes that either, but there’s always at least one on the salad table.

  But my chicken chili is different. I started working on it immediately after the last reunion, and I’ve finally managed to perfect it to please even the most discriminating palate, namely these judges. I don’t have to think too hard to imagine my uncles and cousins all lined up to get a scoop of this hearty delight, which is what the judges are calling it as they congratulate me.

  “Way to go, Missy.”

  I smile at one of my competitors. “Why thank you, Ms. Dunbar. Maybe next year you’ll do better with your meatless chili.”

  Her expression turns sour. “Those judges wouldn’t know good chili if it bit ’em in the—”

  “Edna!” The sound of her husband’s voice stops her. “Be nice, okay? There are other competitions.”

  She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Okay, then I’ll just say them judges don’t have much taste in their slimy little mouths.”

  Mr. Dunbar gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Missy. My wife worked mighty hard on her chili.”

  “I understand.” It’s easy to be understandin’ when you’re the winner. I try to show sympathy. “We all work hard. Too bad we can’t all go home winners.”

  He picks up his wife’s Crock-Pot, gives me a nod, and heads toward the exit, his wife following right behind him, her face all puckered up like she’s been eating persimmons.

  I turn back around and face my personal reality. I might have won the chili competition, but no one but me cares.

  Yeah, most of the folks had someone behind them to support them throughout the contest, but not me. My husband, Foster, is out on a bass boat with some of his buddies from church, and our daughter is off somewhere with her friends. It doesn’t take long for the tent to completely clear out, leaving me and one other contestant standing there, trying to figure out what to do next.

  “Wanna swap a bowl of chili?” the man I’ve never seen before asks, a flirty smile tweaking the corners of his mouth.

  “No, thank you.” I brush the hair from my face, making sure my wedding ring shows to let him know I’m not available. “I’m not hungry.” Before he has a chance to say another word, I pick up my slow cooker and first-place ribbon and leave.

  All the way home, I try to relish what I’d accomplished, but it’s difficult since no one I care about was there to witness it. I let out a sigh of resignation. Now I know what Mama was talking about when she said she spent so much time carin’ for her young’uns, there wasn’t anything left for her. I send a prayer up for Mama, and then I add myself.

  I pull into the driveway and open my car door, still praying. Before I get out of the car, I finish my prayer, glance over at the almost empty slow cooker, and decide it’s high time I start living life for myself. Foster won’t be home until tomorrow, and Wendy is eighteen, so why not?

  The pot seems heavier when I get it out of the car, carry it inside, and put it on the kitchen counter. It’s awful quiet in the house, with Foster on his fishin’ trip and Wendy who knows where.

  I wiggle the mouse on the kitchen computer to bring the screen to life. The first thing I do is email Aunt Irma and let her know I’ll be at the reunion. She and a couple of my other aunts have taken it upon themselves to help coordinate this one, which means it’ll be good. Last time we had a reunion, it was Uncle Bubba’s turn, and he turned it over to his wife, Aunt Lady, who forgot to assign casseroles, so we wound up with a half dozen lasagnas and no bread. Everyone knows you gotta have bread with your lasagna.

  Next, I click around to see what movies are playing in Pinewood. It doesn’t look like anything that would interest me, so I change gears and decide to head over to Walmart. I don’t need anything, but I’m sure I’ll find something interesting.

  The Walmart parking lot is huge, and there are no empty spots near the entrance. I find one close to a light, get out of my car, and look around to get my bearings so I can find my car when I come out. I’ve parked in aisle four, so I repeat that in my head several times to commit it to memory. I can’t tell you how many times in the past I’ve wandered around, looking for my vehicle, wishing I had established a point of reference.

  The store is buzzing with activity as usual, and there are long lines populated by weary people who would rather be anywhere but here. I notice a girl with her buggy filled with diapers, thumbing through coupons, her eyebrows knit with worry. That girl was me nearly eighteen years ago. Times were tough back then, and without coupons and a little goodwill from Mama and a couple other people who took pity, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to us. I’d just married Foster and given birth to Wendy six months later. Mama was furious with me. She kept talking about her premature grandbaby to everyone else, but we didn’t fool anyone.

  I turn my buggy toward the electronics department. Maybe they have those smartphones everyone’s been talking about. They’ve been out for a number of years, but Foster doesn’t believe in replacing anything that’s
not broken. My flip phone keeps cutting out on me, so I have every reason to get a new one. If Foster and I had even a fraction of my cousin Bucky and Marybeth’s money, I’d have me a brand spankin’ new phone every time one comes out. I’d love to be one of those folks who can shop for groceries, watch movies, and check my email, all while sittin’ at the beauty shop, waitin’ for the color to take.

  I let out a sigh. All that material stuff sounds good, but deep down, I know what I really want is more attention from my husband, who seems less interested in me now than ever. I’d give up just about anything if Foster would give me more of his time.

  My identical twin sister, Sara, annoys me to no end. She not only borrows my eyeliner whenever she wants, she expects me to know where to find her stuff. And it’s never anywhere I’d put it.

  People think we’re alike in every single way, but we couldn’t be more different. She’s a slob, and I’m OCD when it comes to putting things away. She’s left-handed, and I’d poke out my eyeball if I tried to feed myself with my left hand. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sara and can’t imagine life without her. But sometimes . . . well, maybe it’s just a twin thing.

  “What did you do with my lipstick?” she hollers from her room in the two-bedroom apartment we share.

  “I didn’t do anything with it.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “Right where you left it,” I holler back. It takes every ounce of self-

  restraint to keep from growling at her. She growls back, and since we’re identical twins, I can tell it’s not a great look for either of us.

  “It’s not in my makeup drawer.” She storms into my room and stands at the door glaring at me.

  “Are you sure you put it there?”

  A flicker of doubt flashes across her face. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Why don’t you look under your vanity? Sometimes things roll and, you know, gravity happens.”

  She opens her mouth then quickly closes it as she shakes her head but remains standing there, watching me do my hair. I let out a sigh of relief that this hasn’t turned into a full-blown argument. We’ve been fighting a lot lately, and I hate it. But I’m not about to let her get away with accusing me of something I have nothing to do with.

  Even though we’ve been out of our parents’ house for almost a year, I still can’t get over the fact that I finally have my own room. Mama and Daddy said that since we were twins, there was no reason to move out of the family’s perfectly adequate house and into a bigger one just so Sara and I could have our own rooms.

  I lift another section of hair and wrap it around the active-ion brush that’s supposed to smooth out my frizzy hair in seconds. Before I hit it with the blow dryer, I look at my sister, whose shoulder-length blond hair forms a halo around her head.

  “You really should get one of these,” I say.

  She shrugs. “I don’t see why. You already have one. I can just use yours.”

  Annoyance once again floods my veins. Still holding the handle of my brush, I slowly turn to face her and narrow my eyes. “You may not use mine.”

  She smirks, the look that, even though I make it, too, bugs me to no end. “You’ll never know. We have the same color hair.”

  “Oh, I’ll know. You never put anything back where it belongs.”

  We both pause and widen our eyes, glaring at each other, waiting for someone to yell for us to stop bickering. Then it dawns on me that there isn’t anyone else to interfere, so I start back up as I smooth out the section of hair I’ve been working on.

  “And you’ll probably break it. I had to watch a lot of YouTube videos to learn how to do it right.”

  She rolls her eyes. “How do you know I haven’t been watching YouTube videos?”

  Once again, I turn to face her. “Have you?”

  “Maybe.” Without another word, Sara turns and goes back to her room.

  “That Sara.” I shake my head and chuckle.

  She reappears at my door. “What do you mean, that Sara?”

  I see her annoyed expression, and somehow that tickles my funny bone. I start to laugh, and after she gets past whatever’s bothering her, she laughs, too. Then we both stop at the same time, and she leaves my room shaking her head. “That Sally.”

  I go deep inside my own head while I finish getting ready. Although I love my sister, I often have mixed feelings about being with her so much. Not only are we twins and roommates, but we also own an Etsy business together. It has its positives, but the negatives sometimes make me want to give up and start my own business without her. We had no idea how big it would become when we first signed up on Etsy.

  It all started as a side job when we worked as tellers at two different banks. Neither one of us could imagine counting money all our lives. In fact, I wasn’t even good at it, and I suspect she wasn’t either. Every evening during supper, we spent the first half hour complaining about work.

  “I think I’ll go back to college,” she said one evening before we turned on the TV.

  “And major in what?”

  “Elementary education.”

  I laughed. “You hated the thought of teaching when you found out you’d have to work with kids.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, then. Something that pays a lot and I don’t have to deal with annoying people.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  After six months of misery, she came up with a plan to make hair bows for little girls. “Remember when Mama used to go to craft shows and come home with all those gaudy things she stuck in our hair?”

  “Why would someone buy a hair bow from us when they can go to Walmart and get one really cheap?”

  Sara gave me a closed-mouth grin. “Because we’ll make ’em bigger and better than the ones they have at Walmart. Ours will be different, and they’ll stand out.”

  That was the start of the business we now own and run full time. It never dawned on us that we’d ever make more than pocket change. But we do. Much more. In fact, each of us makes more than double what we earned in our former teller jobs, and it appears from the upward trend that we’ll soon be doubling our income again over the next year or so. We figured out that the bigger the bows, the more people wanted them, and we could charge a fortune for them.

  As soon as we’re both ready for the day, we meet in the kitchen for coffee. “There’s a sale on ribbon at the craft store, so I’m thinking it’s time to stock up,” she says as she fills two mugs and hands one to me.

  “That is, if they have any decent ribbon left.” I take a sip of my coffee. “Didn’t the sale start last week?”

  She shrugs. “We can look around.” She glances at her phone. “Mama’s texting us.”

  My phone is still in my room, so I walk over and look at her phone. “What does she want?”

  Sara groans. “There’s another family reunion.”

  “That’s crazy. Didn’t we just have one?”

  “I know, right?” Sara stares at her phone again. “We’re supposed to RSVP.”

  “Of course.”

  “But why? We all know who’ll be there and who won’t.”

  I tip my head back and laugh. “Sara, I don’t know how you can say that since we don’t even know if we’re going.”

  “I think we should go.”

  “Now that’s a first.” I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “If I go, I’m not staying long. It gets old—”

  “Having people think we’re the same person just because we’re twins, right?”

  “Yeah, just because we finish each other’s sentences . . .” I look her in the eyes. “I guess we should probably go to make Mama happy.”

  “Yes, for Mama,” she agrees.

  We both grow quiet for a few seconds. I can tell she’s thinking the same thing as me when she shudders. The very thought of what Mama will do if we don’t show up gives me chills up and down my spine. Granted, all southern mamas know how to use guilt, but ours is the master at it. I won’t be s
urprised to hear that she gives classes in guilting your young’uns.

  She breaks the silence. “What should we bring?”

  “We never bring anything.” I shrug. “I don’t see why we should start now.”

  “We don’t live with Mama and Daddy anymore, so that makes us adults. We have to bring something. Adults bring stuff to these things.”

  Memories of the dessert tables at the family reunions pop into my mind, and I get excited. “Hey, how about some pies?”

  She gives me an incredulous look. “Pies?”

  “Yeah, like apple, blueberry, sweet potato, or pecan.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” She shakes her head. “We’re not even good at heating up frozen pies. How do you think we’ll manage that?”

  “Don’t be so dense, Sara. All we have to do is go to the Blossom Bakery and pick them up.”

  “People will know.”

  I grin as a plan hatches in my head. “Not if we buy some matching pie pans with our initials and get Rosemary to bake the pies in them.”

  “You’re brilliant, Sally.”

  “I know.”

  I glance at the time on my cell phone as I wait for the light to turn green. I’m getting to the office early, but that’s exactly what I want to do. It’s not easy juggling all the demands I face each and every single day as general manager of a major food distributor. As busy as I am, I’ve done everything so many times, the challenges have become busywork. But it still has to get done.

  A company that wants us to represent them is sending some people over to tout their attributes. Sometimes this aspect of the job gets old because we can’t take on everyone. We’re the premier food distributor in South Mississippi, so we’re generally the first place people start. If I could give any of them advice—and I typically do after they finish their presentation—it would be to start with the smaller distributors where there’s not as much competition. Once they reach a level of success that they can sustain, they can work their way up to my company, Southern Foods.