Abide With Me (11 page)

A
s always, the dog days of August blessed Welleswood with stifling heat and excessive humidity. No one was in the community more anxious than Andrea to see September arrive next week and let autumn snap the leash that held them all within summer’s sweaty grasp. Even though she had tried to change her perspective, the other leash that had kept her from living a normal life did not show any signs of disappearing.

Last Friday, the day after her last weekly chemo treatment, she had gone to the hair salon. Her stylist, Judy, was on vacation, but Andrea could not wait. She had a new stylist cut her hair as short as she could and prayed the new growth would not feel like steel wool. That same afternoon, she had her final visit to the orthopedist and traded in her crutches for good. Her ankle and the muscles in her
left leg, however, were stiff, and facing physical therapy three times a week for the next month certainly infringed on the freedom she had envisioned for herself now that she had a full month off between chemo treatments.

On the Wednesday before Labor Day, she arrived at work a little earlier than usual and limped a bit on her way to her desk. She took one look at the chaos on Doris’s desk as well as her own and groaned. Not even that hideous flower arrangement was big enough to hide this disaster. And now her desk was a mess, too?

Working side by side with Doris for the past six weeks Andrea had watched the woman with a combination of awe and disdain. Truthfully, Doris also had a remarkable mind. She could remember the slightest detail surrounding a real estate transaction, and the clients absolutely loved her. Unfortunately, she was also a veritable hurricane when it came to paperwork. In a matter of minutes, she could wreak havoc on the organized papers Andrea gave her. Obviously, leaving Doris alone for the afternoon yesterday while Andrea had gone to physical therapy had been a major mistake.

“I can’t work like this. I won’t work like this. I shouldn’t have to work like this,” Andrea muttered to herself while she simply took the mess of papers from her desk and dumped them on top of Doris’s desk. “There! That’s my first executive decision of the day. My second is that Doris will sit here and put everything in order before she takes a step out of here today. Or touches the phone,” she added when she caught a glimpse of the light blinking the number nine on the answering machine.

She sat down at her desk, pulled her daily planner from
the drawer where she kept it from meddling hands and took out a fresh memo pad.

First things first. She flipped the planner open to check the appointments for the day and gasped. “She wrote in my planner? In pen? In
red
pen?” Her pulse quickened and her cheeks flushed hot. “Nothing is sacred here anymore. Nothing is mine anymore,” she griped.

So much for trying to hide her planner.

She noted the reminder that today was Jamie’s last day. The meeting for the Shawl Ministry was tonight at seven, and she regretted, once again, letting Madge talk her into attending. She had one appointment with Bill Sanderson set for noon. Great. She had not had a client as fussy as this man for years, but at least he was her client and not Doris’s. Actually, Doris had three appointments scheduled for that afternoon, but none for the morning. No settlements today for either of them.

She closed the daily planner, picked up a pencil and pressed the button on the answering machine to listen to the nine messages waiting to be retrieved. She wrote the number one on the memo pad, circled it and wrote as she listened to the first message:
Mrs. Malloy, confirming two-o’clock appointment with Doris.
Message two:
Alex Boxley. Needs certificate confirming home-owners’ insurance for the Potter settlement.

“Good. I can do that.”

She continued through the next seven messages. Some were requests to see a listing. Two were requests to set up appointments to sign listing agreements. One was a hang-up. All of the messages had been left for Doris. None were for Andrea, except the Boxley call. Dismayed but not de
feated, she listened to the last call and wrote automatically:
Call from Doris. She’s having a body massage this morning. She’ll be in at one o’clock for her first appointment.

She stared at the message and tossed her pen into the air. “A body massage? You left this mess in my office and you’re having a body massage?” She felt the tears well and held them back.

The pen fell to the desk, bounced and landed point first on the back of Andrea’s hand. She yelped and rubbed the back of her hand. No real damage, but it sure did smart! “That about says it all, doesn’t it? This day is going to be pure torture. Nothing can save the day now. It’s already ruined.”

As if on cue, the front door opened and Max Feldman came in with a vase of mixed flowers so big she could scarcely see the top half of his body. That was no easy task, given the three hundred pounds he carried on his frame. Her mood immediately shifted from agitated to overjoyed. “Flowers!”

He peeked over the flowers and chuckled. “That’s why I’ve been in this business for thirty-four years. I make people smile every day. Arlene said to bring this over first thing. We’ve got so many deliveries to make outside of town, I probably won’t be back to the avenue again until suppertime.” His upbeat mood disappeared the moment he spied the artificial arrangement on Doris’ desk, and he paused mid-stride between the front door and the two desks. “Tell me you haven’t had to look at that for more than a day or two.”

“Try six weeks!”

“Six weeks? Whoever made that…no, never mind. I know
where that came from. I’d better not say another word or Arlene will have conniptions. She’s friends with you-know-who.” He set the vase of flowers on top of Andrea’s desk and removed the clear plastic wrapped over the top. He paused to take a deep breath and smiled again. “You can’t do that with artificial flowers, can you? Enjoy. Don’t forget to add fresh water every day,” he instructed before he continued on his way.

She was fairly certain the flowers had come from either Madge or Jenny or both of her sisters. They were such dears. It was just like them to send her flowers to mark the end of her weekly chemo treatments. She found the little envelope lying upside down, opened it, and read the card that had been inside. Then she read it again out loud. “To the best real estate agent ever! Thank you for selling our home. The Finleys.”

She gasped. “The Finleys? Tom and Susan Finley sent me flowers?”

She had not sold the Finley home. Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. She found the little envelope again and turned it over. She was right. The Finleys had not sent her flowers. They had sent them to Doris. Hurricane Doris. The Doris who was, at this very moment, having a body massage while Andrea was at work.

Andrea shut her eyes and gripped the sides of her chair, but she had the awful feeling the day was sliding fast toward disaster.

Determined not to be pulled into despair, Andrea had restored order to the paperwork that had been on her desk as well as Doris’s by midmorning. She had taken care of all the
things she had to do for Jamie’s last day and faxed a copy of the home-owners insurance certificate to Alex Boxley. She had even put the vase of flowers on Doris’s desk and stored the ugly artificial arrangement in one of the conference rooms.

When Jamie arrived, Andrea’s day began looking even better. She checked her watch and greeted him with a smile. “That makes it official. You’ve been on time every single day. I’d have to add ‘punctual’ and ‘reliable’ to that letter of recommendation I promised to write for you, if I hadn’t done that already.”

He blushed. “Thanks, Mrs. Hooper. I—I really appreciate how nice you’ve been all summer.”

“You make it easy,” she responded. “As a matter of fact, I have two copies of that letter right here.” She pulled two of the envelopes that she had paper-clipped together from the middle tier of the bin on her desk and handed them to him. “One is a sealed copy. Sometimes colleges insist on that. The other one isn’t sealed, so you can make a copy if you need one for your employer if you’re job-hunting next summer, or your counselor at school can make copies when you get around to applying to colleges. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

His blush deepened. “Thanks.”

“Have your Mom and Dad decided when you’re getting your skateboard back?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Not yet.”

“Tell them to read the letter, too. Maybe it’ll help.”

He dropped his gaze for a moment. When he looked at her again, he cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “I was wondering if I could ask you to do a favor
for me and for some of the other kids. I still feel pretty bad about what happened. You’ve been really nice about that. I really appreciate the letters of recommendation and all, and I’ll understand if you don’t want to help. I just…have to ask.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “Ask me what?”

“There’s a meeting a week from this Friday at seven o’clock. The town council is going to be talking about building that special section in Welleswood Park for skateboarders. I was wondering if you could come and if you’d speak up for us and say it’s a good idea.” He let out a sigh. “If you could. If not, well, we’ll understand.”

His words had poured out so fast, she knew he must have rehearsed them for days. She had received a notice about the town meeting, of course, and Jamie had mentioned it every day for the past week. She had suspected he was going to ask her to speak out in favor of the new skateboarding facility, and she was ready with her answer. “I wish I could attend,” she replied. “Unfortunately, I’ve been invited to my sister’s new beach house for that weekend and we’re leaving early Friday afternoon.”

He nodded stiffly. “Sure. I understand. My dad didn’t think I should have asked you.”

She grinned. “Well, once in a while, dads can be wrong. Not often,” she cautioned. She took another envelope form the tiered bin. “I’ve already spoken to several of the commissioners, but I’d like you to take this letter to the meeting and read it to everyone for me. Can you do that?”

He took the envelope and stared at it as if it were made of gold. “Yes, ma’am. Thanks, Mrs. Hooper!”

“I’m not sure how much it will help, but all we can do is
try to get all of you a safe place to use those skateboards of yours.”

“I think it’s going to help a lot, having our own place to skate, I mean,” he gushed. His shoulders relaxed as if he had shed a heavy burden. “What do you have for me to do for you today?”

“One errand, then you’re free for the rest of the day.”

“Just one?”

She nodded and handed him a fourth and final envelope. “I need you to take a deposit to the bank.”

“That’s it? You’re sure?”

“That’s it. The deposit ticket is inside.”

“I’ll bring the receipt right back, unless you want me to ask them to hold it for you like last time.”

“Sounds good to me.”

He caught her gaze and held it. “Thanks for everything, Mrs. Hooper. I mean it. You’re a nice lady.”

“And you’re a great volunteer. Now get moving. You know how long the lines get at the bank right before a weekend.”

She watched him walk out the door. She would have given anything to be at the bank when the teller opened the envelope, saw the check Andrea had made out to him for $1,000, and asked him to put his account number on the deposit ticket and endorse the check. She had already cleared her plan with his parents, who had only agreed to let Jamie accept the check if it was deposited directly into the savings account earmarked for his college education.

Instead, she turned her attention to the appointment she had with Bill Sanderson and prayed the man might be a whole lot less picky about the home he claimed he wanted
to buy in Welleswood. On the bright side, the celebrity status surrounding his misadventure had faded, and the shift from a negative thought to a positive one made her less apprehensive about their appointment today.

She started reviewing the fact sheets for the two properties they were scheduled to see today. After making some telephone calls to resolve a few questions she had, she put all of the information into an orange folder, a color that designated potential properties a client had expressed an interest in seeing.

“Some potential,” she grumbled. He was not going to like the first property, not that she did not try to convince him not to waste time visiting this one. The lot was too small, and there was not much either one of them could do about that. He was not going to like the second one, either. At least, he should not like it. It was a woman’s house, top to bottom, and definitely not a house for a middle-aged bachelor.

She ran her fingers through her closely cropped hair and glanced at the two desks, which were now neatly organized, just the way she liked them. The very thought of Doris sailing into the office, fresh from her body massage, while Andrea was out on a wild-goose chase with Mr. Bill “Fussy” Sanderson, inspired a groan. Unless she covered each desk with shrink-wrap, there was no way to stop Hurricane Doris from hitting, short of changing the locks on the doors and sandbagging both entrances.

“Lucky, lucky me,” she muttered. “I’m destined to spend the next month in Hurricane Alley unless…” She grabbed a sudden thought, found the catalogue for Office Genie and dialed customer service.

“Office Genie. This is Genie Cassandra. Is there an office problem I can solve for you today?”

Andrea sat back in her chair and relaxed. “Yes, I believe there is.”

I
f Bill Sanderson was not her only client and if she had not made a real fool of herself when he had returned to Welleswood, Andrea would have left him at the first property and told him to give Doris a call to see anything else.

She was that desperate.

Unfortunately, he was her only client at the moment. The memory of how she had treated him like a fugitive instead of a victim was still very fresh in her mind, and Doris had her afternoon already booked.

At the second property Andrea led him up the stairs from the finished basement to the kitchen. She wished she could simply walk away and leave him behind, but sooner or later, the owner would come home, and Andrea would have had some real explaining to do.

“Watch your head. The ceiling is still low,” she cautioned.

He waited until they were in the doll-sized kitchen before he stretched back up to his full height, which was a few inches over six feet. “That was…interesting,” he noted with a twinkle in his eyes.

She almost sighed, but held on to her patience. “As I said, the basement would probably not work for you.”

He glanced around the kitchen and shook his head. “You’re sure all the appliances are here?”

“They were custom-ordered. The refrigerator is here.” She opened a cabinet door to show him.

“I had a refrigerator larger than that in my dorm room at college.”

“For a lot of single, working women, especially women who don’t have the time to cook, this refrigerator works well. It holds most of the essentials, but not much more,” she countered. “There’s a microwave and a toaster-oven in a cabinet, too, and the range is countertop. The owner has done a great job of maximizing space.”

He grimaced. “That’s for sure.” He glanced at the countertop. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a two-burner stove before. I guess that was a custom-order, too. I’d never be able to cook much on that.” He inched past her to the bistro table and single chair and chuckled. “I wouldn’t even try sitting on that.”

She chuckled. “That’s probably a good idea. There’s not much else that would fit, though. Did you want to see the rest of the house again?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “All three rooms?” He chuckled. “I guess not. You were right. This house is much too small for someone my size. The location is so ideal I was thinking that if the lot was a little bigger than a postage
stamp, I could contemplate an addition. Are you sure that side lot doesn’t go with the property?”

“Definitely. I called to check that this morning.”

“And the owner isn’t willing to sell the lot separately?”

She shook her head.

“How did they ever get a permit to build the house on a lot this small in the first place?”

“They didn’t need one. The house predates all of the new laws.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It looks like you were right in the first place. This house isn’t going to pass muster. I guess we’ll just have to keep looking. Shall we make a date for Friday afternoon?”

She saw his eyes begin to twinkle and suddenly, his words took on a meaning that nearly knocked her off her feet. A date. He did not mean a date, as in “appointment.” She looked into his eyes and knew she was right. Call it woman’s intuition or just plain chemistry. He was making a “date” with her, as in a meeting between a man and a woman, as in “relationship.”

Great. He was the one client she had, and now it turned out he was a potential suitor? How absurd was that? How could she have been so blind?

The past few weeks replayed in her mind, as if rewinding a movie, and she realized why he had been so insistent on seeing properties that she knew would not interest him. He was making appointments not because he was interested in buying a house, but because he was interested in…her!

The idea was so ridiculous she almost laughed out loud. The man was a full decade younger than she was. He was
definitely not her type. She liked men…Wait a minute. She did not have a type. She did like men, but the idea of dating was in the back of her mind, behind weeding her gardens and way below surviving cancer. Most men probably would not find dating a woman with cancer at the top of their list, in any case.

“I’m sorry. I’m not making any appointments for next Friday,” she replied. “I’m leaving for a weekend at the shore. Shall we?” She left her card on the bistro table and led him through the living room and out onto the front porch.

While she looked up, he leaned against the gingerbread railing. “Oh. What about Wednesday? I could get a few hours off in the morning. Or Thursday afternoon would work.”

“I’ll have to check my calendar, but we really shouldn’t make a definite appointment until we know that there’s a house that’s come on the market that would be suitable.”

He followed her down the porch steps. “Actually, I was thinking maybe I should take another look at the house on West Walnut.”

She rolled her eyes, pasted a smile on her face and turned to face him when they reached the cobblestone walkway. “The West Walnut house? The one you said needed more work than Noah’s Ark if and when it was ever found? That house?”

“Did I say that?”

“You did.”

“Hmm. Maybe I did. What about the house on East Locust?”

“Sold,” she told him.

“And the house on Mulberry? I forget if it was East or West.”

“Sold, remember? That was the house you originally wanted, but you were…well…”

“Hog-tied and left to die, without water or food,” he supplied. Then undaunted, he went on, “Speaking of food, why don’t we continue our discussion of possible houses for me to see at lunch? There’s a great little restaurant in town. The Diner, I think. It’s close to your office so you wouldn’t have to walk far to get back to work.”

If Andrea had lunch with any man other than her brothers-in-law, that would be news. If she had lunch with Bill Sanderson at The Diner, a man so much younger than she, that would inspire more gossip than Andrea wanted to contemplate. It would also send the message that she was interested in seeing him on a personal level, which she was not.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she replied.

“What isn’t a good idea? Having lunch or having lunch with me?”

She winced and tossed caution to the wind. “For a man who has led me on one goose chase after another on the pretext of looking for a home, you’re certainly being direct, aren’t you?”

He laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty as charged. So what is it? Having lunch or having lunch with me?”

“Having lunch with you,” she blurted. Surprised by her own directness, she felt her cheeks warm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

He laughed again. “Being direct isn’t rude. You couldn’t be rude if you tried. And you did try, as I recall. The day I came back to Welleswood?”

Her cheeks got hotter. “It didn’t seem to work very well then,” she admitted.

“I’m a persistent man.”

“I’m a stubborn woman.”

“So I noticed.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to run. Call me next week and let me know which day works best for you,” he said. He left her standing there, mouth agape, while he got into his pickup truck.

“You still want me to take you to see houses?”

He grinned. “Unless you’d rather meet for lunch. Or dinner. That would work for me, too.” He threw his truck into gear and pulled away before she could answer.

Persistent, brazen man.

Andrea entered the Community Center for the meeting for the Shawl Ministry half an hour late with a headache that would have been called a migraine if she had had the mental wherewithal to name it. To make matters worse, Madge had begged off attending the meeting tonight, pleading total exhaustion after spending the day with a decorator for her beach house. Andrea had a bag holding a dozen skeins of green yarn that must have dated back to the 1970s and a pair of gold aluminum knitting needles hanging from one arm and Jane Huxbaugh walking on the other.

Who said life wasn’t grand?

She and Jane quickly found seats in the arc of chairs arranged in the center of the room, while Eleanor Hadley, the coordinator, spoke about their ministry. Andrea set her bag on the floor. She was disappointed in the low turnout. Only six women besides Andrea and Jane had shown up. She was
rather pleased, however, to learn that the Shawl Ministry was exactly that: a ministry where women of faith could gather together to pray and to knit shawls that would be given to folks in need of comfort. Each session would begin and end with prayers the members had written themselves, and each shawl would carry with it a prayer they would write especially for the recipient. All Andrea had to do was learn how to knit, something Madge had assured her the other women would be more than willing to teach her.

After a brief round of questions, the women broke for some light refreshments. Eleanor Hadley came to sit beside Andrea, while Jane wandered off to find the ladies’ room. “Thank you so much for coming tonight, Andrea,” Eleanor said. “I thought Madge was coming, too.”

Andrea dutifully made Madge’s excuses. “She said to tell you that she’ll call you tomorrow and explain.”

Eleanor patted Andrea’s knee. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something for quite some time. Now just seems the right time to me,” she said softly. “You remember Mrs. Calloway, don’t you?”

“I remember her as Auntie Lynn. She died a few years back, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Eleanor remarked with a smile. “She was a direct descendent of Mary Welles Johnson, you know.”

“The woman who founded Welleswood?” Andrea asked.

“Yes. Mrs. Calloway was her last direct descendent,” Eleanor added. “She lived on East Walnut. You know where the playground is now?”

Andrea nodded.

“That’s where her house stood. She had the most unbelievable gardens and a gazebo with a brass roof. She donated
the property to the children of Welleswood in her will. Eventually, her inheritance finally ran dry. She got behind in her taxes, and with only her Social Security check to live on, she was forced to consider selling the family home and moving into the senior-citizen complex.”

Eleanor paused to take a sip of punch. “Do you remember when your sister Sandra took out a home-equity loan on her house?”

Andrea shrugged her shoulders. “Vaguely.”

“Well, I helped her with the paperwork. Sandra had to tutor on Saturdays for a long time to pay that loan off.”

“She had to pay off her credit-card bills somehow,” Andrea insisted. “What’s that got to do with Auntie Lynn?”

Eleanor smiled. “Sandra had credit-card bills because she had taken cash advances. Lots of them. She had used the credit-card money to pay Auntie Lynn’s back taxes, then used the money from the home-equity loan for the current taxes and Mrs. Calloway’s living expenses until the day Mrs. Calloway died.”

Andrea’s heart skipped a beat. “I never knew that. Are you sure? Sandra would have told me or one of my sisters.”

“Actually, she never told me the whole story, either. I was the executor for Mrs. Calloway’s estate. I found the paperwork when I was going through her papers to get everything ready for the lawyer. Sandra was like that. She helped people without revealing it.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Andrea whispered, anxious to share this Sandra story with both Madge and Jenny. “Sandra was one-of-a-kind.”

“So are you,” Eleanor replied. “I know you’ve had a hard time getting around lately and you’ve barely recovered, yet
you’re still willing to volunteer your time to help others, just like your sister.”

Tears welled, but Andrea brushed them away the moment she spied Jane standing by the door with a look on her face that told Andrea in no uncertain terms that she was ready to leave. Andrea bid Eleanor a good-night, added a hug for good measure and escorted Jane outside.

She led her elderly companion to her car and held the door until she got inside. “Do you need help with your seat belt?”

Jane sent her a withering look. “Not as much help as you’re going to need learning how to knit. If you hurry, I can be home in time for my television show.”

Andrea did not bother asking what show. Keeping conversation to a minimum seemed to work best when it came to getting along with Jane. She simply closed the door and walked around the car. As Andrea was sliding into the driver’s seat, Jane said, “I was hoping Eleanor would keep the meeting short. I don’t like to go out late at night.”

After latching her own seat belt, Andrea started the car and headed toward Jane’s house. “Most people don’t,” she replied. She’d known from the other women’s expressions when Jane had walked in the door this evening that they were not particularly pleased that she had come, even if she was donating bags of yarn. “I suppose that’s why the members voted to meet in the afternoons at the Community Center.”

“Saturday afternoons,” Jane added. “That’s perfect for me, too. I wouldn’t want to give up volunteering at the thrift shop.”

“No. I guess more people are working now, too, and Saturday is better for them than a weekday.”

Jane guffawed. “You’re the only one young enough to work that showed up tonight. The rest of us are retired. We volunteer these days, which is just as well. You can’t trust young people today to do much in the way of volunteering. It’s the seniors who haven’t forgotten the value of helping others.”

Andrea listened to Jane’s comments with only half an ear while she made a mental note to thank Madge for suggesting the ministry to her, although she had serious doubts about her ability to learn how to knit. The Shawl Ministry had an old-fashioned, small-community feel to it that appealed to Andrea. With her own world in upheaval, she hoped the ministry would help to keep her grounded and focused on something other than her own troubles.

When she pulled up along the curb in front of Jane’s house, the elderly woman unlatched her seat belt before Andrea even slowed to a stop. “Go on up the driveway. It’s shorter for me to walk.”

“No problem.” She backed up, turned into the driveway and stopped just short of the walkway that led to the porch.

“Next time you drive me home, you’d better come to a full stop at the stop sign,” Jane grumbled, and let herself out of the car before Andrea had a chance to turn off the ignition.