Happiness Key (11 page)

“Wait just a minute.” She held him tighter. “Who are you running away from?”

“Nobody!”

“School’s not out yet, is it? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in class somewhere?”

“You heard of homeschooling?” he yelled.

For a moment Tracy wondered, then she shook her head.
Nobody
had the patience to homeschool this kid. Even the most committed parents would need school hours to regain their equilibrium.

“I don’t see a mother or father coming up behind you,” Tracy told him.

“They let me off. I’ve got, ummm…tennis lessons.”

“Not during school hours you don’t,” Tracy said, making an educated guess. “They don’t teach youth tennis until later in the afternoon.”

“Let go of me!” He looked over his shoulder again and struggled harder. Then he turned and kicked Tracy in the shin.

She yelped, dropping her hands to hold the abused leg while hopping up and down on the other one.

Gladys Woodley came charging out of the rec center. “Bay Egan! Don’t you move! The school just called. They’re looking all over for you.”

The kid looked as if he were going to run again; then he sagged. The sagging was followed by a flood of words he shouldn’t know, much less repeat.

Tracy stopped hopping and grabbed him again. “Cut that out this minute. Where do you think you are? In an R-rated movie?”

“How’d they know where I was going?” Bay asked the older woman.

“Oh, let me see…. Maybe because you’ve done it before?” Gladys said.

“I’d have made it, too, if
she
didn’t stop me.”

Tracy looked at Gladys and shrugged. “I had a feeling something was going on.”

“You have a sixth sense for misbehavior.” The other woman signaled that she was going back inside, and Tracy knew she was going to call the school. Somebody would be here to pick the boy up soon. Tracy was to detain him.

Tracy turned back to her new charge. “Why did you run away, Bay? That’s your real name? Bay?”

“Baylor.” He said it as if he were daring her to make fun of him.

“Yeah, Bay is good. It’s that last-name-for-a-first-name thing everybody’s doing. Tough luck. Anyway, look, school’s almost out, right? I mean, just a few more days, if I’m correct.”

“So?”

She let go of him, but her weight was poised on her toes, just in case she had to grab him again. “Well, if you run away now, somebody’s going to punish you, right? I mean, they always catch up with you.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me on that. And from what I can tell, running away’s not your strong suit.”

“I don’t have a suit on!”

“I mean you’re not that good at it. So why don’t we get you back to school, and you hang in a couple more days. Then, when summer comes, you’ll be free as a bird. Otherwise, the powers that be—”

“Be what?”

“Be your
parents,
that’s what. They’re not going to trust you to do what you’re supposed to do. And they aren’t going to let you out of their sight all summer. You’ll be inside reading little kids’ books and coloring, while your friends are outside playing soccer and swimming here at the center. Got it?”

“You think I don’t know all this?”

“I have no idea, but it seems pretty dumb to lose out on a great summer just because you’re sick of school.”

“I hate school. My teacher hates me.”

Tracy could imagine that. She’d only been with the kid for a few minutes, and he was already on her hit list. She studied him for a moment. He had sun-streaked brown hair, eyes a similar golden brown, fat cheeks and a pout. His shirt had a rip at the hem, and one sneaker was untied, the shoelace so shredded it would never form a bow again.

“Do your parents know you’re unhappy?”

“My dad says to write down all the bad stuff my teacher says. So I do.”

Tracy understood. “Let me guess. Your teacher found it this morning. What was your father going to do with it?”

Bay shrugged.

Tracy suddenly realized something. “Mrs. Woodley called you Bay Egan. Are you related to
Marsh
Egan?”

“He’s my dad.” His tone said, “What of it?”

Tracy could hardly believe it. Marsh and Bay. How
charming. Was there a swamp or a sandbar hiding around the corner? And what had Marsh Egan planned to do with his son’s list? Sue his teacher, the way he was suing the Army Corps of Engineers?

Gladys returned. “Come inside, Bay,” she said, holding out her hand. “The librarian’s on her way to pick you up.” She looked at Tracy. “They drew straws. It’s her free period.”

Now Bay only looked glum. “She hates me, too. Just because I put a stupid book in the water fountain.”

“I can take over from here,” Gladys told Tracy, motioning for Bay to follow her inside. “Thanks for your help.”

Tracy thought it was odd that only minutes ago she’d said the very same thing. She was glad she and Gladys Woodley were more or less even now. She had a bruise on her shin to prove it.

After a successful afternoon of painting, Tracy went outside to stare at a failure. In the scheme of things, useless towers of tile were nothing. Compared to the humiliation of her divorce, the desertion of friends and family, acres of fire ants and mosquitoes nobody wanted to buy—not to mention her crying jag at the rec center that morning—the towers were nothing. Maybe she could glue shells to the tiles and sell them at the beach flea market. She could make endearing little landscapes, coquina seagulls flying toward scallop shell suns. If she started now, she might be finished with the stacks by the time she was ready to draw Social Security. If there was anything in her account.

Tracy stared glumly at the tile. When she’d picked up the two additional installers’ estimates, her morning had gone from bad to worse. If she paid either man to tile her floor, one of her tenants would find her lying on it, toes curled, eyes staring into eternity. She would leave a note
explaining that she had starved to death, while the installer grew fat off her savings account.

She would
not
explain how to find her family. She and Herb could thumb their noses together from the grave.

A more experienced penny pincher would have known to price installation before buying the tile. She had been so proud of finding a bargain, but she’d still been thinking like a princess. Snap her dainty royal fingers, and the tiles would simply find their way to the floor, snuggle in perfect alignment and affectionately ooze grout in every direction. She hadn’t given the realities a thought, but even if she had, she would never have guessed just how much installation would cost.

“How hard can it be?” she asked out loud.

The tile didn’t answer, which was one bright spot in a dreary day.

She was contemplating whether to look for additional estimates when she heard a vehicle slow outside her cottage. Hoping it was Lee, she rounded the side and saw a newish pickup. She prayed an apologetic tile installer had mistakenly added a zero to his final total. But the cargo bed wasn’t filled with a workman’s tools. She saw fishing rods, a plastic cooler, collapsible canvas chairs.

When a little boy tumbled out of the passenger seat, springing off the running board like a gymnast on a trampoline, she exhaled sharply. Catching sight of her, he came to a halt, and his eyes narrowed.

The driver’s door slammed, and Tracy was pretty sure who was going to appear. She had less than a moment to inhale and prepare.

“Miss Deloche.” Marsh Egan, clad in what looked like the same cutoffs and a T-shirt that read Every Day is Earth Day, went to stand beside his son, slinging his arm around the boy, who was now squirming uncomfortably.

“So, what’s it this time?” she asked. “Did I leave bruises when I detained Bay this morning? Are you planning to work that into a court case against me?”

“Bay…” Marsh looked down at his son, who didn’t look up to meet his father’s eyes. “You know what you have to do.”

“I still don’t see why.”

“Because it’s the right thing. And we do the right thing in our family.”

“Yeah? Tell Mom that.”

Tracy was watching Marsh, and in the fading light she actually thought she saw him flush. Was there really something on God’s green earth that could make the man lose his confidence?

“Bay,” Marsh said, just a bit more sternly.

“SorryIkickedyou,” Bay slurred in a low voice.

Tracy wasn’t sure what to say. The boy
wasn’t
sorry. He looked sullen, even angry. He scuffed his toe in the dirt like a kid who was afraid if he didn’t do something with his foot, he was going to kick somebody.

“Thank you, son,” Marsh said.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” Tracy said, “but what exactly did you thank him for, Mr. Egan? That wasn’t an apology. It was a computer-generated message.”

Before Marsh could answer, she moved closer and bent down so she was on Bay’s level, resting her hands against the fronts of her thighs. “Listen, I know I short-circuited your plans this morning. But get over it, okay? You’re a kid, and I stopped you from doing something that would make your life a lot worse, even if you don’t see it right now.”

“I would have made it to
freedom
if you hadn’t been there.”

She pictured his little body hurtling through razor
wire. She made certain not to smile, although for a moment, it was hard. “Trust me, while I was limping around all afternoon, I was wishing I’d been somewhere else, too.”

“I didn’t kick you that hard.”

Tracy pulled up the leg of her khaki pants, and pointed to a black-and-blue spot the size of an egg. “Want to see your handiwork? Or should I call this your footwork?”

Bay shrugged out from beneath his father’s arm and came closer to peer at her leg. He bit his lip, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’m trying to teach him some manners,” Marsh said in a tone that made it clear he thought Tracy was interfering.

“Do it somewhere else, okay? I’d love an apology, only not this one.”

Marsh started to say something, but Bay interrupted.

“I didn’t kick you that hard.” He paused. “I didn’t
mean
to kick you at all. But you got in my way.”

“I know. I kicked somebody myself this morning. Metaphorically, that is.”

“What does meta-forkly mean?”

“Metaphorically. It means I didn’t use my feet, I used words.”

“Did you apologize?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not used to it. Kind of like you.”

“I shouldn’t have kicked you.” He narrowed his eyes again. “And you shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”

“Thanks for the first part. When you grow up, come back and thank
me
for the second.”

Bay rolled his eyes. “Fat chance.”

“Well, now that we all know where we stand…” Marsh said.

Tracy straightened. “So, are there more of these little charmers at home? Baby Inlet? Little Estuary? That last has a catchy ring to it. Estuary Egan. I bet you’ll have to fight off the boys with a baseball bat.”

“Bay, get back in the truck. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Surprisingly, the boy did as he was told. A few seconds later something distinctly country came roaring from the truck’s speakers. Tracy pictured any and all nearby fish heading straight out to sea.

“He looks like you,” Tracy told Marsh over the wailing. “Only more presentable.”

“You have kids?” Marsh asked.

“I had excellent birth control. Condoms work pretty well, too, I hear. I suggest you give them a try.”

“Raising kids isn’t as easy as you seem to think.”

“I don’t think anything about it. Don’t want them. Not even sure I like them.”

“I can see why. They do compete for attention.”

She smiled her sweetest. “It was so nice of you to drop by. Do it again in, say, a century?”

He turned away, as if he were planning to get back in the pickup. “I’m sorry he kicked you,” he said. “He was just having a bad day.”

She stared at Marsh’s back; then she stepped forward and wrapped her fingers around his arm to stop him. “I’m
sorry?
A bad
day?
A bad day is when a kid doesn’t make a goal in soccer. It’s when his teacher curtails his playtime because he didn’t turn in his homework. That’s a bad day. This kid of yours has a bad
problem.
He runs away, he can’t control his temper, he uses physical violence when he’s frustrated. He needs help a lot more than I needed an apology.”

He faced her, and she dropped his arm. Gladly.

“You don’t know anything about it,” he said.

“I know what a well-adjusted kid looks like.” She lowered her voice, although there was no chance Bay could hear them over Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy, Breaky Heart.” “I hope you’ll think about getting him some help. Bay’s really a cute kid, but he won’t be in a couple of years. And you’ll be so busy bailing him out of jail, you won’t have time to chain yourself to anything.”

“Not a parent, not a psychiatrist, not an expert,” he drawled.

“Your loss, not mine. I’ll stay out of his way.”

“You do that.”

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to stay out of
mine?
”

“What are the chances, Miss Deloche?” This time he did round the truck. She stepped back, and in a moment, the pickup was a cloud of dust on its way back to town.

Inside the house, Tracy slapped together her usual dinner, a handful of this, spoonfuls of that. To forget Close Encounters of the Egan Kind, she spent the next hour on the Internet trying to find a cheap handyman who could do everything. A local company called Handy Hubbies fit the bill, but the man who answered told her they usually left tile up to the experts, and he wouldn’t be able to get her an estimate until the end of the week.

She wondered exactly what the hubbies were handy with and made an appointment for one to look at the repairs on Wanda’s cottage. They settled on Thursday and a time. None of her other phone calls were that successful.

Tracy turned off her computer and stared out the window. At some point between the Egans’ happy little visit and her frustrating computer session, the sun had gone down. She poured herself a glass of wine and turned on the news. Two hours later she woke to a reality show.
A British nanny was trying to teach a couple to parent a little boy who looked like a younger Bay, and she had slept through everything leading up to it.

She shuddered delicately, rose and went to stand in the doorway. The rest of the night stretched in front of her. Even though the windows were open, the house smelled like paint. She wondered where she could go to get away from it. Shopping had always been her stress reducer, but these days she wasn’t even comfortable spending money on a movie.

Beyond the house, a man was walking in the direction of the bridge that led to town. She recognized Ken Gray, and it wasn’t the first time she’d seen him on the road at night. She wondered what was up with that, although if she was married to Wanda, she would get out whenever she could, too.

Whatever the tale, she now had a golden opportunity to apologize to Ken’s wife. She hadn’t told Wanda she was sorry for subjecting her to everything that had happened at the park. Wanda had just tried to help Tracy find Herb’s family. And she had been more or less right about Tracy’s lack of manners. As much as Tracy hated to face it, she did have a tiny problem with the way she talked to people.

Getting an appointment with Handy Hubbies was a good excuse. She could pop over, tell Wanda they were coming, mention that she couldn’t hire the help she needed for her own place, but she was going to make sure Wanda was taken care of. Then apologize quickly and get the heck out of there.

She played that over in her mind, decided it might just work, and went to make herself presentable.

When she left the cottage a few minutes later, a soft breeze cooled the air and night noises had begun in
earnest. She hoped the deepest, loudest croaking from the direction of the bay was a frog with bronchitis and not an alligator. She knew alligators lived there, had seen them at a distance before she headed quickly in the other direction. But she could only live with Florida’s wildlife if she didn’t have to think about it.

When she reached Wanda’s door, she rapped sharply, waited, then rapped again. She was about to head home when she thought she heard Wanda call “come in.” Opening the door, she followed the sound of Wanda’s voice into a room painted a vivid orchid. The cushions on sixties rattan furniture were covered with some of the most eye-torturing prints Tracy had ever seen. Wanda was doubled over on one of them, an arm clutched over her abdomen. When she saw Tracy, she stood up and thrust a telephone at her.

“You talk to him.” The bewildered Tracy grabbed the phone just before it hit the floor, and Wanda, white-faced and moaning, took off. In a moment Tracy heard a door slam, then the unmistakable sound of Wanda ralphing up everything she had eaten in the past decade.

Tracy swallowed in distaste and thought she ought to leave, and fast, then remembered the telephone.

She stared at it, perplexed; then she put it to her ear. “Hello, umm… Who is this? May I help you?”

She listened for a moment. She could feel her own eyes getting wider and wider.

“You want me to do what?” she demanded. “Are you kidding me? Do it to yourself, you disgusting pervert!”

Wanda figured if anybody had a right to get back at the Deloche woman, it was her. Of course, being so sick she nearly puked up her toenails hadn’t exactly been a prelude to good sense. One minute she’d been talking away,
feeling just the teeniest bit wonky, and the next she was turning herself inside out. She wasn’t sure what possessed her to hand the telephone to Ms. Deloche. Maybe she’d kept her sense of humor, if nothing else.

Now she wasn’t feeling like somebody who had a laugh or anything else left inside her. On the bright side, with nothing there to worry about anymore, she could stay put on the sofa a while, and watch the room twirl around and around. It was kind of entertaining.

“You’re running a sex line?” Tracy came in with a bag of frozen corn and more or less dropped it on Wanda’s aching forehead. “There, that ought to help.”

“Just hit me with a sledgehammer, why don’t you?”

“I’m considering it. A very large sledgehammer.”

“I’m not running anything.”

“Then who was that disgusting creature? And why did he tell me he wasn’t paying to be talked to that way?”

“He’s a man with a sense of humor. You got one, too?”

“Not tonight.”

Wanda supposed that was only fair. She adjusted the corn so it covered as much of her forehead as possible. The cold almost felt pleasant, and the throbbing eased a little. Thinking about it, she realized that her landlady wasn’t going to leave until she explained. And Deloche hovering there all night was not a pretty picture.

She sighed. “I’m not running anything. I just do a little work for a friend, that’s all.”

“Phone sex?”

“More like phone romance.”

“I’m sorry? You call that romance? What he asked me to do wasn’t one bit romantic.”

“Oh, he was just pulling your leg. It’s called Get Seduced.
S-E-D-U-C-E-D.
That’s the number. And the
old farts are channeled to me, if you want the truth, ’cause
I
understand them.”