Heaven Preserve Us (2 page)

Still. There was something about him that gave me the creeps.

"I'm not going to tell you my real name. That's against the
rules here. I'm here to help you find someone to talk to. Are you
going to let me do that?"

"No! All I want to know is who-"

A finger came down on the disconnect button. I went from
staring stupidly at the phone to staring stupidly up at Philip. His
cousin, Jude Carmichael, stood slightly behind him. I hadn't heard
either of them come in.

"Should you have done that?" I finally managed.

"I could hear him yelling. He's a crank," Philip said.

I licked my lips, ambivalent about the intense relief I felt at the
timely rescue. "But what if he really needed help?"

Jude, his coat collar still turned up around his ears, shuffled his
feet and looked at the floor. In the brief time I'd known him, I'd
noticed that he did that a lot. When he spoke, I leaned closer so I
could hear his soft voice.

"Then he should have taken it. You don't have to put up with
abuse, Sophie Mae. Philip should have told you. Sometimes people
call in just to call in. They're lonely." He shuffled his feet again. I
had the feeling he knew about lonely. "Or they're weirdos. Like this
guy. His next call will probably be heavy breathing and obscene
language. He's just bored."

"Well, he better not call back here, then."

Philip bent toward me. "Tell you what, babe. It's your first
night. Your shift's almost over. Go ahead home."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. It's fine. My boy here can start his overnight shift early."

"That okay with you?" I asked Jude, since Philip hadn't
bothered.

Jude shrugged and tried a smile. "Sure. I forward the calls to my
cell and keep it on my night stand. It hardly ever rings." He pulled a
phone out of his pocket and started pushing buttons on the one on
the desk.

"I hope that guy didn't scare you off," Philip said.

"No, I'll be back," I said. "Friday, right?"

"That'll be great. We'll need your help. Friday night'll be hoppin'!" He made it sound like great fun, taking all those desperate
phone calls from people in horrible situations.

Woo hoo!

So that was volunteer work, I thought as I drove home a little after
nine. Not that Heaven House was likely to be the best example.
Philip Heaven, grandson of the famous, or more accurately, infamous, Nathaniel Heaven, had started Heaven House in Cadyville
over a year ago. Funded with money granted to the project by the
foundation created after the old man's death, it was a nonprofit
organization devoted to the community of Cadyville. What that
meant in practical terms was yet to be seen.

So far there was the helpline and a bunch of empty rooms.
Philip had programs planned for teens and the elderly, for job
training, for low-cost childcare and helping the housebound, and
even for the environment. It was a vague hodgepodge of good intentions. I'd heard several months before that he'd brought in his
cousin to help, but from what I could tell they needed more help
than Jude could provide.

The name was misleading, too, as most people assumed it was
a religious organization. But Nathaniel had been a died-in-thewool agnostic, and while the foundation didn't actually ban religious activities altogether, it was clear in the informational packet
provided to volunteers that the board would not grant funding to
any activity that wasn't open to people of any and all denominations or belief systems.

I pulled to the curb in front of the house I shared with Meghan
Bly and her eleven-year-old daughter, Erin. Jumping out of my little
Toyota pickup, I ran up the sidewalk. Rain spattered down for the
twentieth day in a row, and the temperature hovered around fortytwo degrees-typical weather in the Pacific Northwest in February.
The damp air smelled of rotting leaves and wood smoke.

In the foyer I shook like a dog, scattering the stray drops I
hadn't managed to avoid in my mad dash from the street. I waved
at Meghan as I passed the doorway to the kitchen on my way to
the stairs, breathing in the scent of freshly baked bread.

"Back in a sec," I called over my shoulder and climbed to the
second floor.

I poked my head into Erin's room. "How's it going?"

Meghan's daughter sat in bed, wedged in on one side by a stuffed
platypus and on the other by a big purple hippo. Brodie, Erin's aging
Pembroke Welsh Corgi, lay on his back, legs splayed open as he slept
by her feet. His right eye cracked open so he could peer at me upside down, then squeezed shut again. A textbook lay open on Erin's
lap, and she looked up from scribbling on loose-leaf notepaper
when I spoke. Her elfin features held pure disgust.

"I hate math. I hate algebra, I hate geometry, and I plan on hating trigonometry and calculus as well." She squinted blue-gray
eyes at me and shook her head of dark curls for emphasis.

"Trig? When do you start that?" Could be next week for all I
knew. She was in an advanced class and last year had blown by everything I'd retained from my English major's admittedly pitiful
math education. But trig? In the fifth grade?

"And proofs. I hate proofs, too."

I had no idea what proofs were. I went in and looked at what
she was working on. Drawn on the wide-ruled paper was a y-axis.
And an x-axis. Lines connected some of the points in the grid. I
still had no idea what proofs were.

"Looks like a graph," I said. "What are you supposed to be
proving?"

The look she gave me was full of pity.

"Okay. Well, I'm going to change my clothes and go talk to
your mom. So, er, g'night."

She sighed. "Goodnight, Sophie Mae."

I smiled to myself as I went down the hallway to my room and
changed into my flannel pjs. Erin was a drama queen. It would
only get worse as she morphed from tween to teen, but at heart
she was such a great kid I knew she'd make it through okay.

I just hoped Meghan and I made it through okay, too.

DOWNSTAIRS, I SLICED A hunk off the loaf cooling on the counter
and grabbed a jar of peanut butter and some homemade raspberry
freezer jam out of the fridge. Meghan raised one perfectly shaped
eyebrow at me as I settled in at our butcher-block kitchen table
and began slathering a thick layer of peanut butter on the warm
bread.

"What? I didn't eat dinner."

"Okay," she said, and turned back to the lunch she was packing
Erin for school. Meghan and Erin looked even more alike than
you'd expect from a mother and daughter, with identical glossy
dark hair, delicate bone structure and short, slight frames.
Meghan's eyes were a little brighter blue. I, on the other hand, had
little in common with the Bly girls. My hair was straight and
blonde and hung in a practical braid down my back; I'd been told
my green eyes were pretty, and sometimes I believed it; I was a little taller, and a little heavier. But who wasn't? Meghan couldn't
have weighed much more than a hundred pounds.

I sighed at that thought, then noted with triumph there was
already a peanut butter and jam sandwich on the counter beside
Erin's lunch bag. Ha! If it was good enough for her kid, it was
good enough for me.

"Is Erin doing her math?" Meghan asked, completely unaware
of my covetous feelings about her waistline.

"Yep. And loudly hating every minute of it."
"

I don't care, as long as she's doing it. She's been so obsessed
with studying for that spelling bee coming up that she's been neglecting it."

"There are worse problems than your child avoiding her math
homework because she's studying spelling words."

Meghan threw me a glance over her shoulder and turned back
to the big fat brownie she was encasing in cling wrap. "I know."
She shrugged. "I think I'd feel better about the bee if she weren't
doing it just because she's got a crush on Jonathan Bell."

I eyed the brownie. "Who's he?"

She turned around and rolled her eyes. "You are so clueless
sometimes. He's been over here studying almost every day after
school. They're spending too much time together."

"Meghan, they're eleven."

"Eleven is the new fifteen," she said.

"I don't get that. Then how can twenty-six be the new twentyone, with kids living with their parents until they're practically
middle-aged?"

She cocked her head. "Good point. We should talk to someone
about that."

"Damn straight," I said.

"How was the Helpline?" she asked.

"Um. It was okay. A little sad. Kind of boring. Until the end, at
least. This creep called and said he was going to kill himself, but
then seemed more interested in finding out my name than in slicing his wrists."

"Sophie Mae! You can't make fun of people who call in to the
Helpline."

"No, really, he was creepy. Philip hung up on him. He even sent
me home early. I think he was afraid I'd quit right then and there"

"Did the man who called get the number of someone to help
him?"

"I gave it to him, but I don't know if he wrote it down."

"Oh, that poor soul. I hope he's okay."

"Urn, yeah. Me, too." Which was true, of course. Never mind
that the main reason I volunteered at Heaven House was because
Meghan had talked me into it.

I changed the subject. "Have you decided what we should take
to the preserves exchange?"

"Oh, God, I'd forgotten. It's tomorrow night, isn't it?" She walked
to the pantry, opened the door and peered in. "We pickled extra asparagus last spring; it's cured almost a year, so it'll be just right."

"Okay, but leave some for us."

She turned around and gave me a look. "We'll make more in
May, you know."

"But a year, Meghan. You said it yourself-it's better after it sits
a while. And it's only February."

A ghost of a smile crossed her face, and she turned back to the
open doorway. "We have a ton of watermelon pickles."

"Watermelon pickles," I moaned. "I love watermelon pickles."

"We can make more of those next summer, too."

"Keep a few jars. Please, please, please?"

"God, you're worse than Erin. Of course I'll keep a few jars, if
only for you children."

"Hey-"

"Do you think we should whip up another batch of wine jelly
in the morning? Everyone loves to eat that with beef and lamb,
and it's done in a jiffy."

But I wasn't really listening. I was thinking about all the good
stuff we were about to have added to our pantry. The preserves
exchange was another project at Heaven House, though it was designed less to aid the community and more for the volunteers. It
was based on an old Cadyville town tradition. During the Depression, Cadyville High School had sponsored a preserved food contest for the senior girls. They canned and pickled and jellied frantically for weeks; whoever canned the most food won the
recognition of their peers and the kudos of a grateful town. It
probably didn't hurt much in the search for a husband, either.

And Cadyville was grateful because most of the food preserved
for the contest went straight into the kitchen of the local hospital
to feed the patients all year long. It sounded like a perfect setupthe hospital won, and the girls had a chance to compete in something meaningful, both in terms of charity and in terms of learning how to preserve food for their future families. Though, truth
be told, most of them were probably old hands at such things by
the ripe old age of eighteen.

Thirty is the new eighteen ...

Anyway, the preserves exchange at Heaven House worked in
much the same way, except we only exchanged among ourselves. So many of the volunteers at Heaven House were great cooks, and
this way we got to sample each other's home-preserved specialties.

Thaddeus Black would bring brandied peaches. Nothing like
those eaten with a little vanilla-bean ice cream in front of an applewood fire on a cold snowy night. Yum. I hoped his niece, Ruth
Black, would bring her famous blueberry conserve, perfect baked
as a tart filling in a shortbread crust. There would be dilly green
beans and bread-and-butter pickles and homemade sauerkraut for
the best Reuben sandwiches in the world or to stew with lamb sausage in the slow cooker all day. I'd heard rumors of relishes, beets,
marinated mushrooms and corn. If everything went as planned,
everyone would have well-stocked and varied pantries.