Linda Evans Shepherd - The Potluck Club

the Potluck Club

A NOVEL

Linda Evans Shepherd
and Eva Marie Everson

2005 by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson

Published by Fleming H. Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shepherd, Linda E., 1957

The potluck club: a novel / by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8007-5984-2 (pbk.)

1. WomenSocieties and clubsFiction. 2. Female friendshipFiction. 3. Prayer groupsFiction. 4. Women cooksFiction. 5. ColoradoFiction. 6. CookeryFiction. I. Everson, Eva Marie. II. Title.
PS3619.H456P68 2005
813.6dc22 2005006687

The lyrics on page 224 are from Sweet Hour of Prayer, words by William Walford (1845) and music by William B. Bradbury (1861).

The lyrics on page 323 are from This Is My Fathers World, words by Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901) and music by Franklin Lawrence Sheppard (1915).

To the woman I called Grandmother, a fine lady who knew her way around a Southern kitchen and who taught me much about loving Jesus. I love and miss you!

Eva Marie Everson

To my wonderful mother, who cooks even better than Lisa Leann Lambert. Also, to the sisterhood of AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association). I love you, girlfriends. And a special thanks to my dear friend Eva Marie. You and your characters rock!

Linda Evans Shepherd

Contents

Oh, the ladies
of the Potluck Club...

Clay Whitefield sat in his usual spot at the Higher Grounds Caf and shook his head as he jotted notes on a clean sheet of his reporters notebook. The Potluck Club. This was a group so exclusive, hed seen country clubs easier to get in toa group led by a sassy old maid named Evangeline Benson.

Evangeline Benson, Clay Whitefield thought. Now theres a pieceof work...

Maybe I should begin by telling you what the Potluck Club is, exactly. More than twenty years ago my dearest and oldest friend in the world, Ruth Ann McDonald, and I started praying together on a regular basis. Wed meet once a month at my house. Id make coffee, and Ruth Ann would make one of her near-famous coffee cakes. While the aroma of good-to-the-last-drop Maxwell House wafted through the kitchen and into my dining room, Ruth Ann and I sat waiting at my grandmother Millers old cherry dining room table, our Bibles spread out before us. Id read a passage or twoperhaps something the Lord had given me since last we metand then we would share the issues that needed our prayerful attention.

I think, Ruth Ann said at our very first meeting, that we should begin by praying for Annice Brightmans daughter, Julie. She reached for the pad and pen she kept tucked in her Bibles cover.

I watched her push her large-frame glasses up the bridge of her petite nose before she jotted Julie B. on the pad.

Why? Whats going on with Julie?

Ruth Ann shook her head sadly, without so much as a only her hairdresser knows for sure blond hair moving on her head, then looked back down to the paper and began to retrace the name of the girl who needed our prayer.

That boy shes been dating? I asked.

That boy shes been dating.

This, of course, was the Lords confirmation.

I pressed a hand to the dark brown hair I wore pulled back in a French twist. Ruth Ann said that with my thin frame I looked like Audrey Hepburn when I wore it that way, but the truth is, it was easy, and around Colorados high country, women are into easy. Today I keep it cut short with just a hint of curl. Now people say I look more like Shirley MacLaine when she played in that movie about being the late presidents wife who got kidnapped. I think thats supposed to be a compliment, but I could be wrong.

How should we pray, then? I asked Ruth Ann.

Ruth Ann looked up and raised her brows. Well pray she sees the light.

And we did. We prayed just as hard as we knew how, but Julie Brightman and Todd Fairfield ended up getting married anyway, bringing into the world a precious childif there ever was oneAbby, about six months later. Not that Im gossiping. I mean, after all, that child is nineteen years old now, going to school at the same university where I received my degree in business education on an academic scholarship. (The child, not me.)

Months later Ruth Ann declared we should pray for Janet Martin. Poor thing, Ruth Ann said. Shes got cancer.

How do you know so much, Ruth Ann? I asked her. Do you stand with your ear to a glass pressed against the world or something?

Ruth Ann sipped at her coffee before replacing the cup in the saucer. Very funny, Evangeline. But Im telling you, I heard it from a reliable source. She was seen in a doctors office.

Well, that much was true. She was seen in a doctors office, only it wasnt because of cancer. It was an extreme case of vanity. In other words, Janet was getting a nose job.

So thats how the Potluck Club began: two women, a pot of coffee, some coffee cake, and enough misinformation to bring down a church. And it would have too, had it not been for Yvonne Westbrook, the godliest thing youd ever meet, and Im not kidding.

Yvonne had been a classmate of Ruth Anns and mine, but Ruth Ann and I hadnt been especially close with her growing up. Then Ruth Ann went off to the Great Lakes with her new husband, and Vonnie and I ended up going to the same college and becoming sorority sisters. While I was studying business management, Vonnie worked toward getting her RN. In our senior year, Vonnie decided to go to Berkeley (I cant imagine why, but she did), but she didnt stay long. Before I knew it, I heard shed gone back to Cherry Creek College to finish school.

After graduation I came back to our sweet little town of Summit View, Colorado (Gods country), and started a home-based tax service, and Vonnie eventually went to work for Doc Billings. Of course, that was before everything around here changed... before the Rushies moved to town, bringing us out of simple life and into a more modern existence.

I imagine youd like to know a little more about Summit View, wouldnt you? Well, know right up front that if anyone in this town has the authority to inform you, its me. After all, my daddy was, at one time, the mayor.

Summit View, Coloradopopulation 25,000is pretty as a picture when it comes to scenic mountain towns. It was established during the Colorado Gold Rush in 1856, about ten years after the California Gold Rush.

I remember sitting on my grandmothers front porch, rocking in a rocker, listening to Grandpa telling us the stories he remembered being told himself back when he was a child.

Back then, he said, we had gold mines, all right, but we had some of the best gambling joints and houses of... and then hed look at me sideways and say, ill repute.

Daddy, why on earth do you say things like that? my mama implored. Why encourage her natural curiosity?

Shes twelve years old, Minnie. Dont you think she knows what a house of ill repute is?

I nodded. I know what a house of ill repute is, Mama, I said, though I had no idea. I had to go ask Ruth Ann, who went to her older brother, who told us, giggling, then called us innocents too. I suppose we were, and I suppose thats not a bad thing. Its a shame to know your beloved little town used to harbor things like that.