Bless Your Heart, Rae Sutton

Susannah B. Lewis

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780785248200
• eBook ISBN:
  9780785248217
• Topic: Literature
• Index: Literature

Sometimes what your life is missing is an eccentric group of older ladies to take you under their wing...

When Rae Sutton's mama passes away and leaves her the house where she grew up, Rae can't imagine how the little old place might restore her broken life. Mourning the recent loss of her marriage, she takes the house and settles back into her tiny hometown with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Molly Margaret, and their overweight dog.

There she’s embraced by her mother's close-knit circle of friends, the Third Thursday ladies. Though almost half their age and far less confident of positive outcomes, Rae joins their ministry-slash-book-club-slash-gossip circle and allows the women to speak wry honesty and witty humor into her tired heart. As a new career and a new romance bring their own complications, Rae relies on the unlikely family she's found and begins to wonder if her future holds more hope than she ever could have imagined.

"Wise, witty, and full of Southern charm,?Bless Your Heart, Rae Sutton?is as refreshing as a tall glass of sweet tea on a hot summer day!" -Denise Hunter, bestselling author of the Riverbend Romances

• Sweet, stand-alone Southern contemporary women's fiction
• Coming soon from Susannah B. Lewis: Della & Darby

CHAPTER 1

There was nothing to see but bottomland on the thirty-minute drive from Huntsville to Whitten. Heavy rain had caused the overflow from the Flint River to rise around the fluted trunks of the gum and cypress trees and even puddle onto the shoulder of the highway. After the sharp curve and past the neglected silo overgrown with kudzu on the left, the bottomland was in the rearview and the sleepy little town of Whitten, Alabama, appeared on the two-lane.

Brown’s Store was the first cinder-block building on the right with a metal Dr Pepper sign nailed above a rusted ice machine by the front door. A marquee in the shape of an arrow sat in the gravel parking lot advertising low prices on milk and Marlboros, and, as always, “Go Warriors Go” was at the bottom in black plastic letters.

T. J.’s Auto Sales was next with a few old clunkers in the lot, and then there was Beck’s Beauty Spot—a single-wide trailer with a large pair of pink shears and purple curlers painted on the white vinyl. Every blue-haired lady in Whitten went to Mrs. Beck for their cuts, colors, and permanents, and the parking lot was often filled with Buicks and Oldsmobiles purchased back in the ’90s from T. J.’s competition.

Over a small, shady hill, the hub of town was visible. The railroad tracks ran parallel with Main Street and a row of the town’s oldest buildings. Some had been remodeled and turned into Cookie’s Bakery, Taylor Faye’s Boutique, The Burger Basket, and city hall. A couple of structures still remained derelict, though, with chipped paint and yellow newspaper taped to the insides of the windows. Those buildings hadn’t seen their heyday since the ’50s, when my mama was a little girl and sipped a milkshake at the counter of the corner drugstore while she waited to pick up her mama’s prescriptions.

Across from the railroad tracks were the newer businesses. McDonald’s and Pizza Hut sat side by side, both with marquees advertising specials and supporting the Whitten Warriors. The Shell station was on the corner of Main and McLemore, and then there was the Super D Pharmacy and Tucker’s Dry Cleaners.

The Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches were all in a row, separated only by massive oak and magnolia trees. Right past First Presbyterian, nestled in a grove of trees hundreds of years old, was the historic white house with columns known my entire life as Harper’s Funeral Home. I waited on the traffic to slowly pass as my fourteen-year-old daughter, Molly, sniffled from the passenger seat. Without looking at her, I reached for her hand. We rested our wrists on the console of my SUV as I turned into the parking lot.

My older brother, Jamie, his wife, and their two teenaged sons were getting out of Jamie’s black truck when I pulled in to the parking spot covered in wet catkins. Jamie walked to the passenger side of my SUV in his dark suit, damp with rain, and Molly rolled down her window.

“Sweet Molly.” He reached through the window and touched her arm as his wife, Dawn, stood behind him and wiped her red, puffy face.

“Jamie,” I said, “would you mind taking Molly inside? Give me a minute?”

“Of course.” My brother opened the passenger door. When Molly stepped out of the Tahoe in her black sundress and gray Converse shoes, her aunt Dawn scooped her into her arms.

“I’ll just be a minute,” I said again as they all slowly walked toward the front door of the home built in the early nineteenth century.

I stared over my steering wheel at sleepy Main Street. The rain was merely a drizzle now, and summer steam rose from the asphalt and into the humid June air. My tears fell. I looked at this little town—the place where I’d spent most of my life—and it didn’t seem right. Nothing had changed in this place, and yet everything suddenly had.

I’d pulled in front of my mother’s red brick home on Hazel Tree Cove only three Fridays before. Boxes and bags and Rubbermaid totes of her belongings lined her driveway shaded by overgrown crepe myrtles. She was in her carport bending next to her sedan and rummaging through a box. Bobby pins held her stylish silver bangs out of her eyes.

Molly got out of the car with earbuds draped around her neck and walked to Mama while I searched for my purse in the back seat.

“Molly Margaret,” I heard Mama say. “I bought you a Dr Pepper and a box of Fudge Rounds.”

“You know the way to my heart, Nana.” I watched Molly kiss Mama on the cheek and walk inside the front door as the wrought iron storm door slammed behind her.

“What’s all this, Mama?” I asked when I approached her and the piles of her belongings.

“There’s no need in you and Jamie going through all this when I’m gone.”

“Mama, don’t.” I couldn’t bear to think about it.

“Rae, when your grandmother died, I was left to go through fifty years of junk. There were sentimental things I kept, of course—her apron and photos and recipes and old letters, but I’m not going to put you through the painstaking process of wondering whether or not you should hold on to my old Richard Simmons VHS tapes or placemats I bought in the ’80s or my ThighMaster.”

“Mama.” I chuckled.

“I’m doing you a great service here, Rae.” She looked up from a tattered box and put her hands on her slender hips. “Your uncle Wilson already took two truckloads of stuff down to the Mustard Seed. Bless his heart. He almost broke a hip picking up that heavy box of Dynasty power suits with shoulder pads.”

“You are going to be fine, and then what? You’ll be missing those shoulder pads and that ThighMaster,” I replied.

“What about all these canning jars, Rae?” She looked inside another box. “Are you ever going to can anything? Should I leave a few for you? And my pepper relish recipe? I don’t know why in the world you buy chowchow from the grocery store. You were born and raised in Alabama, for heaven’s sake. It’s blasphemy that you don’t grow peppers and can your own.”

“Leave the canning jars,” I said. “I’ll use them.”

“Have you thought anymore about what I said?” She held up a dusty Mason jar and examined it.

“About moving back home?”

She put the glass back into the box and looked to me. “The house has long been paid for. I know it’s just a little brick house built in 1963, but it would be so perfect for you and Molly Margaret. I give you my blessing to nail up some shiplap and paint everything gray like that girl you love so much on the TV.”

I smiled.

“You know there’s hardwood under the carpet in the living room. And a big dog like Patsy needs a yard to run in. Molly Margaret can shoot basketball right here in this driveway. It would be so much better than the cramped apartment in Huntsville, yeah?”

“You’re going to be fine, Mama.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why we keep talking about this. I don’t know why you’re—”

“Rae.” She walked to me and tucked my long brown hair behind my ears. “Look at me, honey.”

I fixed my eyes on her beautiful blue ones and sighed.

“I’m eaten up with it, Rae. You know that. It’s going to win.”

“But Dr. Pennington said with extensive chemo you would have more time. You . . . ,” I began as my eyes glassed over.

“Don’t you do that. Don’t you do that crying mess, Raeley Ann.” She wiped the corner of my eye with her thumb. “I’m not going through another round of chemo. I can’t do it, Rae. My body just can’t take it. Besides, you ought to rejoice because I’ll be reunited with your daddy. I’ll be with my parents and my baby sister. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my best friend, Linda. I won’t be sick anymore, honey. I won’t have to worry about ThighMasters or Mason jars or anything else. Your mama is ready to go.”

“I can’t think about it.” I stubbornly shook my head.

“I know, honey.” She turned back to a cardboard box on top of her deep freezer. “My mama has been dead over twenty years now, and I still miss her every day. I’m so ready to see her again. And one day, Rae, you’ll see me again, but until then, you’ll get through it.” She looked back at me. “Some days will be harder than others, but you will get through it.”

I nodded.

“I sure would love to know you’re back here in your childhood home and you’re taken care of. I know the idea of moving back to this one-horse town isn’t appealing to you, but you had a great childhood here, and Molly Margaret would too. You wouldn’t have a house payment, and you’ll be set with plenty of money for a while. Your sweet, hardworking daddy made sure of that,” she said as she folded up a box and moved on to another. “Jamie will put in a swimming pool at his house with his share. With your portion, you can buy Molly Margaret Converse in every color and plenty of Dr Pepper and Fudge Rounds. You can splurge on some of that overpriced makeup you like so much. You can sit on the back deck and relax for a while, all right? It would do you good to get out of Huntsville and start over. And then you can go back to cleaning houses if you want. You can find plenty of houses to clean here, Rae. Jean Watkins would keep you in business for weeks on end with her hoarding piles. She’s still got shampoo bottles from 1992.”

I rummaged through a dusty box of Tupperware and wiped my damp eyes. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to imagine a life without my mother in it.

“Better yet”—she looked back at me with enthusiasm covering her face—“use the inheritance to open a store, Rae! You can fill it with junk furniture you find on the side of the road and paint gray and wrap in chicken wire. You can call it vintage and sell each piece for three hundred dollars or more. You love doing that kind of thing. Do something you really enjoy with that money.”

“Okay, Mama.” I pacified her, but I wasn’t sure I would do any of that. When she was gone from this world, would it be too painful for me to even step inside the house? To cook in her kitchen filled with countless memories of her dancing barefoot to bluegrass while she fried pork chops in her cast-iron skillet? To look out the living room window and see her empty rocking chair on the front porch? To walk past her bathtub and remember the nights she’d soak in it with a glass of red wine and a Danielle Steel novel?

“Now, you want to keep this, don’t you?” Mama pulled one of her many violins from a box.

“You know I do.”

She ran the bow across the dusty strings, and there, in her carport in a worn white T-shirt, pink seersucker capris, and flip-flops, she carefully began an elegant classical piece in F minor. I turned away and looked through a box of old Southern Living magazines so she wouldn’t see the tears pouring from my eyes.

I was startled from my memories by a knock on my car window. I quickly wiped my face and looked to see Aunt Maxine beneath an oversize polka-dot umbrella, although the rain had completely ceased. I grabbed my black clutch from the back seat and opened the door. I stepped out and straightened my linen dress.

“Beck just did my hair, Raeley Ann. One drop of water and it’ll frizz to high heaven,” She patted her short silver curls.

“Hey, Aunt Maxine.” I draped my arms around her petite frame and inhaled the scent of her perfumed powder.

“How are you holding up, dear?” She pulled away and placed her wrinkled hands on my damp cheeks.

“I’m okay.”

“Bless your heart.” She removed her hands. “Well, I knew it was coming. I thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t. I’m the only one left, Raeley Ann. First Melba and now Margie. I’m the only sister left.” Her voice cracked.

“I know.” I nodded and patted her slightly hunched back. Her posture had stooped with the early stages of osteoporosis.

“Margie probably sent this rain!” She grabbed my arm as we both walked beneath the umbrella toward the front door of the funeral home. “She had to get the last word, you know? She loved to poke fun at me when my hair frizzed. She called me Albert Einstein.”

I became light-headed when I entered the funeral home. I hadn’t set foot on the squeaky heart-pine floors since my father had passed away twelve years before, but I vividly remembered the smell of the place—peppermints and flowers and musty, damp tissues. Three scents that, when combined, filled me with the d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Acknowledgments
• Discussion Questions
• About the Author