Carry Her Heart (4 page)

He was no Fox Mulder.

We watched a bunch of
X-Files
over the winter, and sometimes I called him Fox. He pretended to find it annoying, but I thought he kind of liked it.

I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t do his job, either when he was a cop, or now.

Really, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Maybe that’s why I wrote YA books—young adult—rather than hard-core mysteries.

Or romance.

Yeah, romance was definitely not a genre I should pursue.

I laughed at the thought.

“There you go again, Pip.” Ned looked amused.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to.” Things occurred to me at the oddest times—thoughts tumbled over thoughts. Inspiration collided with facts.

“So, what did I say that amused you this time?” Ned asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing. I was just thinking that if I ever decided to change the type of books I write, I probably shouldn’t look at romance because, after all, they say writers should write what they know.”

His amusement cleared and gave way to his serious look. “There’s someone out there for you. Maybe you’ll meet him tonight. Mela and I could help you look for him.”

Save me from that kind of help from Ned Chesterfield. The only thing worse would be Mela helping. She still didn’t like me, but I think she’d finally realized I wasn’t a threat to her relationship with Ned.

“Oh, there was someone for me. Once.” I shrugged, not wanting to explain that someone was an infant. “You know, the one that got away.”

It was very close to a lie. After all, Amanda didn’t get away. I gave her away. But puh-TAY-toe, puh-TAH-toe.

“There are other fish in the sea,” he said.

I shook my head. “Not for me. I’m a goldfish, happily swimming in my own bowl.”

Like my patient who asked me for that first story, I now knew that all good stories started with
once upon a time
. And once upon a time, I’d thought that someday I might marry and have more children, but that was just a story I told myself because the truth of it was, I wouldn’t. I mean, what if Amanda came and found me? She’d see the children I kept after giving her away. That was a kind of pain I wouldn’t give to anyone, especially not to the child I loved.

Ned smiled indulgently. “Just wait until you meet
him
. That guy who’s meant for you. As soon as he comes along, you’ll change your tune.”

He gave a wave and started toward his house, then turned around. “I’m going to get changed for your shindig. Maybe it’s time for you to put away your work and get ready, too?”

“Was that a subtle way of saying my hair needs taming?” I often thought that if my hair was well behaved, being a redhead wouldn’t have been too bad, but to have wild hair that had a mind of its own added insult to red-haired injury.

“No,” Ned said with a chuckle. “It was a subtle way of reminding you that you can’t go to a gala event—especially when you’re the host—wearing holey jeans and a T-shirt that says, ‘
Abernathy’s Rules
.’”

I looked down and realized I’d thrown on one of Belinda Mae Abernathy’s promotional T-shirts. “You’re probably right.”

“I always am,” he assured me.

I snorted my response. Still, I did get up and head inside. Two hours later, I was primped and polished, as my mother liked to say.

To be honest, my version of
primped and polished
was very different than her version. I knew she’d be at the fund-raiser tonight and she’d be dressed to the nines. I was satisfied with my current six or maybe even seven.

After all, when you lived your life dressed barely above a two, dressing to the sixes or sevens makes for a perfectly acceptable score.

It took me all of ten minutes to drive from my eastside home to Erie’s bay. Erie, Pennsylvania is a small, big town. Or a big, small town. I’d used both descriptions in my middle-grade books. And though either way was contradictory, I thought both described Erie to a T. The city on the shore of Lake Erie had somewhere around a hundred thousand residents, but I could drive from my eastside home to the west side of town in fifteen minutes.

So, it only took me and my dressed-to-the-sevens self ten minutes to get to Bayfront Convention Center. And that was with after-work traffic.

Amanda’s Pantry’s fund-raiser was in the ballroom. The first year, it had been in the convention center’s smallest ballroom. This year, the biggest.

I walked in an hour before the big event began. We’d done Amanda’s annual fund-raiser here since the first one, and the staff had the setup down to a science.

The large tables were set with ten chairs and place settings. The centerpieces were gorgeous. They were mainly silk forget-me-nots with white roses. The forget-me-not was the flower I’d chosen to use on the Amanda’s Closet logo.

I’d always thought that forget-me-nots were not only beautiful, but also resilient. They grew in a well-tended garden as well as in the wild.

My mother and father were the first guests to arrive. They’d supported Amanda’s Pantry since its inception. Mom was a school district superintendent and Dad was an English professor at a local college. The doctors George, I jokingly called them. I thought Great-grandmother Rose would have been impressed.

My mother, whose once-red hair had faded to a steely gray, was indeed dressed to impress and pointed at her name tag, which read
Dr. George
. “Really, Piper, Tricia would have been fine.”

I laughed. “I say if you’ve got it, flaunt it.” I led them to the head table. “You two are up front.”

Mom’s table included a few of the principals from her schools. They’d done a district-wide fund-raiser for Amanda’s Pantry. We had hundreds of gently worn coats, hats, and gloves to distribute from the food pantry for the coming winter. We called the offshoot Amanda’s Closet.

“Thanks, honey,” Mom said.

“Thank you. I—”

I didn’t have a chance to say more than that because people started to arrive. I positioned myself at the door and greeted everyone. The first year I instituted the name tag rule and in retrospect it was a godsend. Most of the people who came out for our annual dinner were people I saw once a year.

Let’s face it; writers who spend most of their time in holey jeans aren’t the type to mingle with the city’s elite. But my parents ran in educational circles, and slowly local businesses and the political hierarchy had become involved with Amanda’s Pantry.

Some of the people were easy to identify and put a name to the face, some not so much. The mayor had been coming to our events since before he was mayor, along with city council members, the chief of police, his deputy chief, and captains. There were representatives from the fire department and water authority, too.

We’d been so lucky that each year there were more and more people who supported us and came out to the event.

This year, Ned’s law firm had come as well.

I smiled at the thought, knowing full well that the attorneys Ned worked for certainly didn’t think of themselves as working at
Ned Chesterfield’s law firm
, but in my mind, the firm was his. It was all about perspective.

I stood next to the door for a half hour, thanking people for coming, pointing to the bar. Helping direct them to the appropriate tables.

Ned came in with Mela on his arm. He looked great in his suit, and Mela looked gorgeous . . . and knew it.

Ned shot me a grin that said he was already teasing me in his mind. “You tamed it.”

I shook my head, and I swear that strands of my hair popped out of my bun just to mock me as I said, “I tried.”

Ned laughed and kissed my cheek.

Mela smiled at me, but beneath her upturned lips, I saw something else. It was a look that said she was staking her claim. She wanted to be sure I understood Ned was hers. We’d made a truce of sorts. She tolerated my friendship with Ned but sent me little reminders that he was hers.

If she’d asked me, I’d have assured her that I didn’t need her reminder.

And beyond that, I might have mentioned that I was pretty sure Ned wouldn’t want to have any claim staked on him.

But she didn’t ask and I didn’t offer.

We had a weird relationship, Mela and I. She was always very nice to my face, but beneath the smiling facade, her dislike was palpable, and I also knew there was nothing I could do to change that.

She simply couldn’t or wouldn’t believe that I didn’t have designs on Ned.

I wasn’t sure what I could do to make her feel better about it, other than ignoring him, and I wasn’t going to do that. He was a good neighbor. We were friendly, but certainly not best friends. But I’d grown accustomed to, and looked forward to, our talks and our occasional
X-Files
nights. Visiting and teasing Ned had become a welcome part of my daily routine.

He was the kind of neighbor I could call at midnight if I heard something bumping outside . . . or worse, something bumping inside.

Ultimately, I decided that it was Mela’s problem, not mine, and simply tried to be nice.

“You look lovely tonight, Mela,” I said, meaning it.

Her smile remained in place, as if she’d glued it on and didn’t dare let it slip because if she did, her true feelings would explode from her tight grip on them.

“You look . . . uh
good
, too, Piper.”

She’d made sure there was the slightest hesitation as she searched for the thesaurus-worthy word
good
. I was sure Ned hadn’t noticed it, but I had. I knew that had been Mela’s intent.

Mela gave me a regal nod before practically dragging Ned toward the bar.

Ten minutes later, the heads of Ned’s firm—Josiah and Muriel Johnson—came in. “Piper, it’s so nice to see you again,” Muriel said. We’d met at a backyard picnic at Ned’s over the summer.

She did a group introduction to some of the other people from the firm. They didn’t say if they were other lawyers, aides, or what. I simply smiled and thanked them all for coming and went back to greeting guests.

By the time everyone arrived, I was already exhausted.

I went to a writers’ conference once and attended a workshop that talked about extroverts versus introverts. That’s when I discovered that I am absolutely an introvert who can put on an extrovert mask long enough for an event like this. But I knew tomorrow, I’d be drained.

As I had that thought, Liz, a reporter from the newspaper, asked if she could talk to me a minute. I pasted a smile on my face, hoping it wasn’t as brittle looking as Mela’s had been, and that it was extrovertish enough to cover my inner introvert and said, “Of course.”

Liz asked about Amanda’s Pantry and I recited some of our statistics. And then she asked, “Can you tell me about the Amanda you named it for?”

I nodded. “I’ll be covering that in just a minute in my very short speech.”

She laughed. “Great. If I have follow-up questions, I’ll catch you later?”

“Sure,” I told her.

Over the years I’d been asked that same question time after time. Who was Amanda?

No matter how many times I answered it, how many ways I answered it, it was still my most frequently asked question. I knew it was my own fault, but I wouldn’t have named the food pantry anything else, because it, along with so many other facets of my life, was for Amanda . . . for her.

Two television news cameras were setting up in the back and the band was set up on the stage. That was good news. Though I hated being on television, I knew that the pantry would probably receive a few more donations because of the coverage.

I was up.

I made my way to the stage, tucked another stray bunch of hair behind my ear, and adjusted the microphone.

“Hello, everyone. I think I greeted all of you as you came into the ballroom, but in case you snuck in through the kitchen,” the audience chuckled, “I’ll say welcome again. For those who don’t know, I’m Piper George. I want to thank you for coming out tonight to support Amanda’s Pantry.

“I’ve been asked countless times,
Who is Amanda
? As a matter of fact, someone asked me again tonight.”

I found Liz at the newspaper’s table and she smiled and gave me a nod.

“Some have accused me of dodging the question, but that’s not it at all. I’m happy to tell you all exactly who Amanda is.”

Liz couldn’t have known this would be my speech, but her question was perfectly timed. I’d answered this question to individuals since Amanda’s Pantry opened four years ago. I’d opened it the same year I’d quit working and started writing full time.

Eventually someone noticed that all my dedications since my very first Belinda Mae book was published were also dedicated to Amanda. So now, I’d tell them.

“Amanda is every child who’s going to bed hungry because there’s nothing to eat in her house.

“Amanda is every child who is cold because she doesn’t have a proper coat to wear in Erie’s harsh winters.”

She was that little girl at the grocery store back when I was in college.

And she was the daughter I’d given up to another family
.

I thought those parts, but didn’t say them. It’s not that my daughter was a secret, but since I’d given her up, I only had my memories of her—my hopes and dreams for her—and my love to hold on to. Those things were too precious to share with anyone else.

So I simply continued my speech, sharing Amanda’s Pantry’s announcement.

“Giving those children a name seemed to make the issue of hunger more real. I could tell you that according to Feeding America, 15.9 million children in the US live in food-insecure households. They live in homes where going to bed hungry is not only possible, but probable. That number is staggering. And it’s easy to believe that one person can’t make a difference. So spouting that number, then asking for help seems as if you’re asking people to toss pennies into a deep well that has no bottom to it.

“Or, I can tell you that
Amanda
will go to bed hungry tonight without your help. Helping one child seems possible.”

After that little girl in the grocery store, I became more aware of people who didn’t have enough food, and the thought that it could be Amanda in that situation haunted me. “So Amanda is every one of those 15.9 million children. She is every child who needs a winter coat. And she is every child who faces a difficult time in school because she doesn’t know how to read, or doesn’t read well.