Life is Sweet (13 page)

Chapter 10

Matthew did his best to mentally prepare for birthday day. He got up early, jogged on Nicole's treadmill, and ate a healthy breakfast. If anything required Wheaties, it was chaperoning a dozen eleven-year-old girls.

He arrived at the stables with Olivia well before the appointed hour, but Becca was there already, arranging chairs under a big tent set up between the farmhouse and the barn. The temporary enclosure was festooned with balloons and crepe-paper swags. They had planned to put up those together, so she had obviously been there awhile. Maybe Cal had helped her, a possibility that annoyed him more than it should have. As he and Olivia walked up, Becca was swatting Cal's hand away as he reached inside a bakery box.

“I have a day of hard work ahead of me,” Cal complained.

“Yeah, and speaking of hard work, shouldn't you be doing some now instead of cadging snacks?”

“Hi, Becca, hi, Cal!” Olivia said, interrupting them. She'd been to Butternut Knoll only once—she'd insisted on checking it out personally—but she already looked perfectly at home.

They wished her happy birthday, and Cal pointed to the helmet that Olivia had been wearing nonstop since it was purchased. “Nice one.”

“Becca helped me pick it out when Matthew took us to the city last week.”

It was impossible to miss Cal's faltering smile. Or the way he glared at Matthew. Some unresolved feelings there, Matthew guessed. Becca didn't seem to notice, though.

“What else do you need me to do, Bec?” Cal asked.

“Nothing. You're just loitering at this point. And Lulu and Crackers still need to be saddled.”

“Oh!” Olivia rushed to Cal's side. “I can help you. I want to learn to put on a saddle. If you show me how, I'll do the work for you.”

“You've said the magic words,” Becca deadpanned.

After those two left, Matthew approached the table and peeked into the boxes. One held a very large strawberry cake with HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLIVIA written in multicolored block letters. The other, marked G
LUTEN
-F
REE
, contained some kind of brownies.

“Can I just make a wild guess?” he asked before he could talk himself out of it. When she looked at him curiously, he continued, “The divorce was your idea.”

She drew back. “What makes you say that?”

“Cal. He acts more like a guy on the verge of proposing than an ex-husband.”

Her lips quirked into a wry smile. “An expert on how men act before they pop the question, are you?”

He remembered his own unsuccessful results at proposing marriage to Nicole. “Sorry. None of my business.” He shook his head. “I'm not sure what my business actually is today. You've done everything. It looks great.”

“Thanks—it didn't take long. Now all you have to do is hang out with whatever moms decide to show up and stay instead of doing a drop-off and run.”

“That doesn't sound very arduous.”

She arched a brow. “You obviously haven't been around moms much.”

It didn't take long for him to realize that she had a point. The party guests all drove up in a frantic ten-minute period. Most of the parents opted to drop their daughters off and collect them later, so Matthew was busy promising to keep their children in one piece. Fingers crossed. It was a miracle that no one had gotten lost or had forgotten to bring or e-mail the permission slips required by Cal. He'd been dreading the possibility of a kid being dropped off without one and not being able to participate.

His parental reassurances were conducted to the sounds of laughter and joyous squeals behind him. Eleven-year-old girls had the tendency to greet each other as if they had been separated for months instead of days. Their joy was charming but earsplitting.

The only party guest who wasn't greeted by squeals and laughter was Monica Minter, who arrived in a gargantuan truck pulling a horse trailer. The girl stepped out of her shiny mammoth carriage in impressive equestrian regalia—polished black riding boots up to her kneecaps, jodhpurs, a red jacket over a button-down shirt with a tie, and a black riding helmet. The kind Olivia had decided was too fancy.

The birthday girl hurried over to greet the newcomer, her expression a perfect mix of awe and envy. These only increased when a man—the Minter groom?—strode around to the back of the trailer, opened it, and led out a black gelding with a white star on his muzzle while another man, presumably Mr. Minter, caught the moment on his camera. The horse's coat shone with health and indefatigable grooming, and its long, feathery tail twitched as gracefully as a woman showing off her silky, full-bodied locks in a shampoo ad. Matthew didn't know much about horses, but when Olivia stared with parted lips at the horse and exclaimed the word, “Beautiful,” he couldn't help but agree.

The Minters stayed—Mr. Minter to video every moment his daughter was on Allegro, and Gayle Minter to sit back and watch them in satisfaction. Another mom introduced herself as Meg Jentz, but Matthew felt he already knew her. He and Meg had been e-mailing back and forth all week about allergens—animal, airborne, and food-related. Meg had concerns that she voiced to Matthew in such voluminous, gruesome detail that she made Nicole seem like the most laissez-faire parent ever.

Heretofore, he'd never understood the instant, irreversible damage that could be done by cat dander, gluten, dairy, nuts or ingestion of anything that had ever had contact with any part of a nut, or how pervasive these substances were. By the end of three e-mail volleys, he was somewhat certain that no one at the birthday party would be exposed to mollusks, but that was about all. He'd had to refer Mrs. Jentz to Becca for reassurances that her daughter would not die during the course of the birthday party. Becca had obviously made the brownies for Deirdre Jentz's benefit, although when Deirdre arrived, EpiPen dangling around her neck in a needlepoint pouch, Meg Jentz bore a carton of brown rice milk and gluten- and nut-free fruit bars. “Just in case,” she said, looking doubtfully at the specially prepared brownies.

For the first thirty minutes, the girls sat in the stands next to the training ring while Cal conducted a horse basics and safety lesson. Becca was with the kids while Matthew stayed back at the tent with the two moms.

“Poor Monica,” Gayle Minter said. “She must be bored out of her mind. She's known how to behave around horses since she was able to stand up.”

Meg Jentz shook her head. “You can never be too safe. I just wish they had told me there were cats around. I'm sure I saw a stray darting around a few moments ago.”

“That's a barn cat,” Gayle said. “Cats are essential around barns. They keep the mice and rat populations down.”

“Rats?” Meg's thoughts no doubt turned to bubonic plague.

“Cats or rodents—pick your poison,” the other woman said gruffly.

Meg didn't look comfortable having to pick. “Isn't it dangerous to have all these smaller animals around the horses? I mean, if they get skittish . . .”

Gayle snorted. “From the looks of the plugs in this barn, they would be too bored to notice. Not exactly spirited, these horses.”

A muttered “thank God” passed Meg's lips.

Gayle's observation was accurate. Aside from Harvey and Allegro, most of the horses brought out for the girls looked as if their nerves had been deadened by riding circles around a training ring for years. Like Meg, Matthew found this comforting. The parents might have agreed not to hold the stables or him liable for any disasters, but he still preferred that everyone be alive at the end of the day.

“Some of the big horses make me nervous,” Meg said.

“Allegro is perfectly tame. Spirited, but tame. You just have to know horses.” Gayle swung on Matthew. “Do you know horses?”

“No, I just rode once or twice at camp.”

“Camps!” Gayle harrumphed in disgust. “That's usually what makes people dislike riding. The sad animals at places like that have no pepper in them. They might as well put kids on sawhorses.”

“Pepperless sounds good to me,” Meg said.

“That's not the way to raise a competitive child.”

“I don't want Deirdre to be competitive—at least, not at this. I just want her to live through it.”

“Oh look—they're mounting up,” Matthew said, glad for the distraction, even if it meant having to stand next to anxious Meg. The woman seemed to hold her breath for the entire half hour that her daughter circled the ring on the stable's oldest, gentlest mare. When Cal and Becca led the kids to begin the short trail ride, it was all Matthew could do to keep Meg from tagging along in her minivan. He finally persuaded her to return to the tent.

“Monica's going to have a fit if they don't allow her to jump a fence or two,” Gayle said.

“Jump?” Meg's eyes widened. “Surely not.”

“Hardly worth putting Allegro in the trailer for this kind of thing.”

“Don't worry,” Matthew assured Meg.

The panicked woman drew back. “It's easy for
you
not to worry. Olivia's not your daughter.”

At that moment, his teeth could have ground granite into talcum power. Yet he couldn't deny the truth of the statement. “I'm still concerned about her. Very concerned.”

“Yes, but it's not the same,” Meg insisted.

And to think he'd felt sympathetic toward her. Now he wanted to shove a fruit bar up her nose.

Gayle eyed him in understanding. “Of course you're concerned. What if something happened to her while Nicole was away? That would be a mess.”

“Awful,” Meg agreed.

“Nothing can tip a shaky relationship like troubles with kids,” Mrs. Minter said. “I actually read that. Somebody did a study. Family problems cause more stress to relationships than money.”

“Maybe if a relationship is shaky . . .” He meant to add more, but the almost-pitying looks the two women were aiming his way cut him off.

He frowned. How could they know his relationship to Nicole was shaky?

These ladies couldn't know that Nicole hadn't wanted to be with him during the weekend she had come home. Or about Bob. For that matter,
he
didn't know about Bob. Bob was just an uneasiness scratching somewhere at the back of his mind. Yet, looking in the women's eyes, he began to feel he'd missed a huge clue.

Someone might point to Nicole's monthlong absence as all the proof he needed that the relationship was on the rocks, but she was only gone because of work. A business trip. Matthew didn't want her to pass up opportunity for his sake. Plus, Nicole had left Olivia in his care. If that didn't show love and trust, what would?

“You're just the babysitter,”
Olivia had said.

Maybe even she knew something he didn't.

The riders eventually returned, traveling in a tight line. Only when Olivia shot him a look, puffing her cheeks before a tired exhale, did Matthew see any sense of strain from the birthday girl. Other than that, everything seemed as it should be, although later he wondered if he was too distracted by his Nicole problem to have been paying attention at all.

Becca waved at him on her way to the barn. They had agreed in advance that she would help Cal deal with the horses after the ride while Matthew kept the festivities rolling beneath the tent. Lighting the candles proved to be the biggest challenge he faced that day, as a cool autumn wind blew in just about the time the kids came back. But the girls all crowded around, creating a windbreak, and he successfully performed his lighting duties. The kids sang, and Olivia had no trouble blowing out all the candles. Matthew didn't wonder what she'd wished for—Olivia's heart's desire was the world's most open secret.

The girls chattered away at volumes that made Matthew instinctively back away to a more peaceful corner of the tent. The party seemed to be on autopilot, so he could sit back and relax a little. The end was in sight. His focus remained mostly on Deirdre Jentz munching desultorily at her fruit bar as her longing gaze strayed to the others wolfing down cake.

Someone plopped down in the folding chair next to him. Matthew looked over and then did a double-take. Cal grinned at him. “How's Mr. Mom?”

Matthew smiled back. In the past month, he'd received similar ribbing from some of his more unimaginative coworkers. “Ready to do a victory dance,” he said. “I'm glad everything worked out today. Thank you—I think Olivia's having a great time.”

“She's a natural,” Cal said with an appreciative nod in Olivia's direction. “Her and that other one.”

“Monica?” Matthew guessed.

Cal laughed. “Oh sure. She's a champ.” He nodded to Deirdre. “But that one was having the time of her life.”

She wasn't now. Her mother was practically in her lap, monitoring every bite that crossed Deirdre's lips.

So far Cal hadn't struck Matthew as an incredibly earnest person, but he didn't seem to be someone who just said whatever he thought another person wanted to hear. “So Olivia seems like a natural around horses?”

“Oh yeah. I can tell. Some kids take to it like water bugs to a bathtub. That's Olivia.”

Matthew sat up straighter. A man who compared a girl to a water bug definitely wasn't just currying favor. He wished Nicole were here. Maybe she'd understand that riding wasn't just a whim with Olivia.

“Becca said she was the same way,” Cal said.

Matthew nodded, still thinking about Nicole. Maybe he could get Mr. Minter to post some of his birthday footage of the whole group so Nicole could see Olivia in action.

“Does she mention us?” Cal asked.