Day by Day (26 page)

He grinned. “He’s got a real gun and handcuffs. Me and Brian wanted to get cuffed together, but Officer Joe said we had to wait a while.”

She laughed. “Wait for what?”

“Till after we had ice cream. Then he let us take turns sitting on his bike and we forgot to ask him again. Next
time I see him, I’m gonna remind him.” He tilted up his chin. “I wanna be a policeman when I grow up.”

“Like Officer Joe,” she added, grateful that the young officer had taken an interest in her grandson.

“He comes to our school sometimes and tells us stories. But when I’m a policeman, I’m gonna arrest all the bad guys and lock ’em up with handcuffs.”

“You really did like those handcuffs, didn’t you?” she teased.

He grinned. “But I like ice cream better. Do you think Gramps is gonna have ice cream on the plane tonight?”

“I doubt it. They usually don’t give the passengers ice cream. Maybe a small bag of pretzels and something to drink.”

His eyes lit with mischief. “Like soda?”

“Or coffee or tea or a glass of milk.”

“Milk and pretzels? Yuck!” He wrinkled his nose. “Ice cream and pretzels is better. Want me to show you?”

She laughed out loud. “We both brushed our teeth, remember?”

“We could brush them again.”

Still laughing, she got up from the bed and held out her hand. “Forget about being a police officer, Vincent. You’d make a fine lawyer.”

He scooted off the bed. “Do lawyers get to use handcuffs?”

“No. Now stop. Enough with the handcuffs!”

He giggled. “Wanna know something, Grams?” he asked as she took him downstairs for some ice cream and pretzels.

She held up her hand. “Only if it has absolutely nothing to do with handcuffs.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“I don’t think you’re so sad anymore.”

“Not anymore.” She hugged him to her, closed her eyes, and wondered if Lily would ever understand she was missing out on a very great blessing indeed—a blessing named Vincent.

Once she was certain Vincent was finally asleep, Ginger slipped downstairs at ten o’clock. Tyler’s plane was still in the air, so she left a message for him on his cell phone to call her back tonight, making it clear that it was not an emergency.

While she waited for him to call her back, she sat at the kitchen table and leafed through yesterday’s Sunday newspaper again. She tore out several ads for furniture stores likely to carry bunk beds. Her thoughts, however, remained troubled as she recalled her conversation with Vincent, along with her conversations with Lily and Tyler. Then an idea came to her—inspired and devious—and she set the paper aside. She rushed upstairs to the attic and rooted through some old papers until she had what she needed.

Prepared, yet uncertain whether or not Tyler would share her enthusiasm for her idea, she went back down to the kitchen. While she continued waiting for his call, she clipped coupons from the newspaper circulars to donate to the coupon box at church where members could help themselves to the coupons they needed.

When the telephone rang just after two o’clock, it startled her awake. She had fallen asleep at the kitchen table with
the scissors still in her hand. She tossed the scissors aside and picked up the telephone before it woke up Vincent. “Tyler?”

“I just got to my room and checked my messages. What’s wrong?”

“Lily isn’t bluffing.” She gave him a synopsis of her talk with Vincent. “That’s why we have to take her threat seriously,” she said when she finished.

“After what you’ve told me, I’m afraid I have to agree with you.”

“I don’t like being threatened, and I don’t like Vincent being used like a pawn, either. I’ve thought about what you said earlier, and I think you were right. Up to now, we’ve made it too easy for Lily, and I think we’ve let her manipulate us one time too many.”

“So what should we do?”

“We call her bluff and force her to agree to our terms,” she replied. “When you finish your meetings in Atlanta on Wednesday, is there anything at the office here that can’t wait for a day or two?”

“Probably not. Why?”

She drew in a deep breath. “There’s no reason to doubt what Vincent told us, but we need proof. I want you to go to Chicago,” she replied and outlined her idea which relied in no small measure on Tyler’s contacts in the security business. When he agreed, she gave him Lily’s social security number, all the old addresses for Lily she’d been able to find, the names of the babysitters Vincent had drawn, and the name of the school where Lily had said she had worked.

“That’s probably all I’ll need, but I’ll call you tomorrow night,” he promised. “I think we both need to think this
through very, very carefully. If we make a single mistake, we could lose our grandson for good. Are you willing to take that risk?”

She swallowed hard. “I love him too much not to try.”

B
arbara arrived well ahead of time for the meeting for the first Mother’s Day Breakfast.

Finding a table or booth at The Diner at one o’clock in the afternoon was a lot like finding an open pew in church five minutes after holiday services had begun. So, Barbara had arrived at noon, before the lunch rush. She spent the hour drinking coffee and reviewing her notes. She was so engrossed in her work, she only realized someone had joined her when she heard the whoosh of the red vinyl seat cushion across from her.

She looked up, expecting to see either Judy or Ginger, but it was an old friend who returned her smile. “Madge! I haven’t seen you in ages. How are you?” She laughed. “Forget I asked. You’ve got a great tan and look totally relaxed which means you must have gone south for the holidays.”

“We took Sarah to Aruba. After all the snow we had, I told Russell if I didn’t get these old bones good and warm
at Christmas, I’d never make it until spring.” Her gaze softened. “How are you doing?”

Barbara drew a deep breath. “This is a good day. Actually, most days are pretty good. I’m waiting for Judy and Ginger.” She pointed to the papers she had spread out in front of her. “We’re getting together to plan the Mother’s Day Breakfast for the PTA. I’m sure you know the drill. Do one good job for the PTA and you’re always asked to do another. Would you like to join us for lunch?”

“No, thanks. I can’t stay. I was just passing by on my way to the store when I saw you sitting here. I popped in to see how you were doing.” She glanced at the papers. “Are you sure the breakfast is something you want to work on? It’s awfully soon…”

With a sigh, Barbara leaned against the back wall of the booth. “When Pam called Ginger to ask the three of us, she had the same concern.”

Madge frowned. “Pam’s doing a great job as PTA president, but she shouldn’t have asked any of you to work on the breakfast. Sometimes I think my Sarah, who is only five, has more common sense than that woman.”

“I have to admit I was a little taken aback, at first, but now I think it might be a good thing for all of us. It’s not going to be easy, but I realized that one way I could honor Steve and his memory was to make this Mother’s Day very special instead of trying to ignore it. Working with Judy and Ginger helps me a lot because I know I’m not the only one who’s going to find the day…difficult.”

Before Madge could respond, the waitress arrived. “Sorry. It’s been busy. Can I get you something, Madge?”

“No thanks, Caroline. I’m not staying.”

“More coffee, Barbara?”

Barbara put her hand over her cup. “I’m good for now.”

“Give a wave if you change your mind,” she said and left to clear another table.

Before Madge left, she took Barbara’s hand. “Call me if you need anything. Help planning the breakfast. A sitter. Or just someone to listen. Promise?”

Smiling, Barbara nodded.

Madge’s seat was still warm when Ginger and Judy arrived together. They hung up their coats and slid across from Barbara. “Looks like you got started without us,” Judy noted.

Ginger giggled. “Good. I’m sure Barbara’s ideas are going to be a whole lot better than mine,” she teased and laid her folder on the table next to Judy’s, leaving little room for anything else.

Laughing, Barbara scooped up her papers. “I think we might need a bigger table.”

“We need lunch,” Judy countered. “I’m starving.”

Caroline immediately appeared with pen and pad in hand. “Do you want to know the specials?”

Barbara looked around the table. Judy and Ginger shook their heads. “Not today.”

They placed their orders and chatted throughout their lunch. By the time Caroline returned to clear away the dishes, the crowd of diners had thinned. “I guess I’ll go first,” Barbara suggested. “After I looked over the programs from the past few years, along with the notes made by the women who have organized the breakfast before us, I thought we might follow the same basic format, but with a few changes. Instead of Reverend Fisher starting with an in
vocation and a speech, I thought it would be nice if he did the invocation, but we asked his wife, Eleanor, to say a few words.”

Judy nodded enthusiastically. “She’s a mother and a grandmother and a very funny lady. She could keep the event from being too serious or too formal.”

“Do you think she’d be willing to do it?” Ginger asked.

“I think she will, but I’ll ask her,” Barbara offered and jotted down a note to call Eleanor Fisher. “The organizers, that would be the three of us this year, usually sit at the head table with Reverend Fisher, the PTA President, the school board president and the mayor, with all of their spouses, of course. I’d rather sit at a regular table with my family, especially with the twins being here now. How about you? Head table or family table?”

“Family,” they replied in unison.

Barbara wrote that down, too. “That means we’ll need a smaller head table.”

Ginger opened her folder. “Speaking of tables, we need a color scheme and flowers. The ladies who will be coming to the breakfast usually get corsages at church from the youth group, so I checked to make sure that’s still planned for this year and it is, so we don’t need to worry about it. We could save money and use the rolls of white paper tablecloths and add a little sparkle and color with fresh flower arrangements,” she began.

One by one, they discussed and settled almost every detail of the event, from tickets to the meal to organizing the cleanup until they had only two items left. They would not be able to set the final price of the tickets until they had each followed through on their assigned tasks. Ex
panding the event to include any woman who had nurtured a child in the past or was nurturing a child now was perhaps their biggest challenge, which was why they had left it for last.

Judy was the first to offer an idea. “I talked with Penny at the Towers.”

“You already said her daughter’s Girl Scout troop volunteered to be servers,” Barbara reminded her.

“Right, but I also asked her about the seniors, who are mostly women, by the way. Including them would be one way to expand the number of women who attend. Some of the seniors have children living in the area, but many of them don’t. A few have either outlived their own children or never had any. Penny thinks there might be thirty or forty seniors, at most, who might want to attend. She also said there’s money in the budget and she thinks the Commissioners might approve buying tickets for the seniors so they could all attend, if they wanted to, providing we could offer some sort of discount.”

“I don’t think offering a discount has ever been done before. At least I didn’t read anything like that in the notes,” Barbara responded.

“Me, either,” Ginger added. “But I don’t think that’s a problem. We’ll make up the money we lose in the discount by having more women attend.”

“Absolutely. I think you have a great idea, Judy.” Barbara cocked her head. “I’ve read a number of articles about programs in which seniors volunteer as tutors in the schools, giving them something meaningful to do and providing extra help to the children who need it. Involving the seniors at the Towers in the breakfast is a great way to intro
duce the idea that Welleswood’s seniors might be an overlooked asset to the schools.”

Ginger smiled. “Pam is going to love the idea.”

“She’ll probably take credit for it, too, but that’s fine by me,” Judy quipped. “At least we’ve got one good idea about how to make more women feel welcome at the breakfast.” She checked her watch. “It’s almost two-thirty. I really have to go. Candy’s been working on the computer at the salon all day, and I promised her I’d stop by after our meeting so she could show me what she’s done.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I really want to spend one more minute staring at a computer after arguing with one in class all morning.”

“You’ll get the hang of it soon,” Ginger reassured her.

“That’s what I’m hoping. Anyway, if you have a minute, Barbara, maybe you could come with me. I told Candy that you’d closed Grandmother’s Kitchen and stored your stock away. She said she had an idea that you might like.”

Barbara held up her hand. “I’m not sure I can handle anything more complicated than using the computer for e-mail or surfing the Internet or typing a letter.”

“That puts you way ahead of me,” Judy countered.

Ginger giggled. “I’m not even in the game. I don’t even know how to turn one on.”

“Candy gets so frustrated when I act like she’s speaking a foreign language. Maybe you can help translate a little?”

Barbara shrugged. “I could try, but I have to be at the school at three to pick up the twins.”

Judy turned her attention back to Ginger. “You’re welcome to come along.”

“No, you two go ahead,” Ginger replied. “The less I know about computers, the happier I am. It’s my turn to
pay so I’ll wait for the check and take care of it. Are we still planning to meet again next Monday? That might be too soon.”

Judy slid out of the booth and put on her coat. “How about two weeks from today?”

Barbara picked up her folder and grabbed her coat. “Same time, same place?”

Ginger nodded. “Done. Go on, you two. And have fun with the computer!” she teased as they hurried out of The Diner.

Walking the few blocks between The Diner and Pretty Ladies took less than five minutes. When they reached the salon, it took just about as long for the awkwardness between Barbara and Candy, who had not met again since the day Candy barged into the salon, to turn into enthusiasm.

With the three of them gathered around the computer behind the reception desk, Candy pointed to the computer screen. “This is the site I wanted to show you.”

On the screen, delicate gold letters set against a lavender background announced the name of an online store, Mandy’s Heirlooms, and a brief paragraph describing the store as the best place on the Internet to purchase antique ladies’ jewelry. Candy scrolled down the page to a list of offerings: rings, bracelets, watches, necklaces and earrings. “Pick one,” she urged.

Barbara shrugged. “Rings.”

With a click, another page opened with a list of available antique rings. Without asking, Candy clicked on the first one and yet another page opened, revealing the picture of a delicate pinkie ring, a description and the price.

“I’ve done a little shopping on the Internet, although mainly for books, so I’m familiar with how it works,” Barbara explained, hoping she would not hurt Candy’s feelings.

“Most people have, except for my mother, of course,” Candy replied.

“And I’ve survived quite well. Imagine that,” Judy teased.

Candy shook her head, but kept her attention on Barbara. “Mom told me you had to close Grandmother’s Kitchen since you can’t spend regular hours at the store anymore. I thought this might be an option for you.”

Barbara furrowed her brows. “What? A Web page?”

“An online store, like this one. They’re easy enough to set up. I e-mailed a couple of the stores I found, just for fun. You’d be surprised how willing some people are to share their experiences. Some of these business owners use the Internet to supplement their actual stores, but several of them have had so much success online with the worldwide market that they’ve closed their regular stores.”

“I—I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to set up an online store,” Barbara countered.

“You’ve got a computer, right?”

“One at home, which my husband mainly uses, and one in storage.”

“What about a digital camera?”

Barbara shook her head.

“Never mind. They’re cheap enough to buy. If you’re interested, I could help you set up your online store and you’d be back in business again, except you could run the business right from your home.” Candy paused, grabbed
a paper from on top of the appointment book and handed it to Barbara. “You might want to visit these sites to get a better idea of how to operate a business online. I checked them out. They’re pretty helpful.”

“Thank you. I suppose it’s worth a look,” Barbara said, her instincts telling her to seriously consider Candy’s idea.

“I’d want to talk it over with my husband before I go ahead with anything, though.”

Candy clicked off the Internet and returned to the desktop. “No problem. Mom, do you want me to leave the computer on so you can practice what you learned in class today or turn it off?”

“I thought you were going to show me how to keep track of the supplies on the computer.”

“I got an e-mail from the human resources department at a company in Center City. Someone saw the résumé I posted online, and he wants to see me at four o’clock. I need to go home to change and still get to the train by three-thirty at the latest.”

Judy’s eyes widened. “An interview? That’s terrific! Go ahead. Turn that thing off. Maybe I’ll just take the rest of the afternoon off and pick up Brian early from the after-school program.”

Candy shut down the computer. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll probably be home by six or so for dinner. Bye, Mrs. Montgomery. Call me if you have any questions,” she offered and rushed out of the salon.

“I guess we should leave and get to the school,” Barbara suggested.

After Judy locked up the salon, they headed down the avenue.

“That was really nice of Candy to spend all that time researching on the Internet on my behalf,” Barbara said.

“John mentioned something a while back about trying to sell some of the canister sets online, but I never seriously considered it. I like what Candy showed me so much I think I should make Grandmother’s Kitchen into an online store.”

When Judy stopped dead, Barbara turned to face her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing…Everything…” She twisted her hands together. “Look. I think it was great that Candy offered to help you, but I—I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. It’s one thing for me to take a risk and let her organize the salon’s business on the computer. She’s my daughter, and I’ll repay Ann if anything goes wrong. But…but if anything happened to you or your business…if Candy relapsed and abused the trust you put in her, I’d feel absolutely awful.”

“Somebody needs to give her another chance,” Barbara argued. “She certainly seems to know what she’s doing. She’s enthusiastic, motivated and—”