Roses in Autumn (21 page)

Laura’s sleep-fuzzed mind followed along obediently, not really taking it in: Kansas City, the project that was to put them over the top, the project that had to have Marla’s money. She sat up so abruptly she and Tom almost bumped heads. “Oh, Tom, that’s wonderful!”
Kansas City? The deal off?
“Then you don’t need Marla’s money!” She lunged forward and threw her arms around him. “Now I understand what you’re saying. I thought this was just business—that it didn’t have anything to do with
us.
But you’re telling me everything is great now!”

“Wonderful? Great?” He unwound her arms from his neck. “Don’t you understand anything?”

“I understand this is a direct answer to prayer. The whole barrier to our happiness just crumbled like the Berlin Wall.”

Tom gripped her shoulders. Hard. “Laura, the much despised Marla’s money is all that is keeping Marsden and James out of bankruptcy proceedings.”

“OK. I’ll take the bankruptcy.”

Tom flung himself off the bed. “You may get your wish. Or you could take up mugging like your friend. Or go on the street with Janelle.” He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Ha. That would be an irony for Miss Fridgidaire.”

Laura put her hands to each side of her head. The pounding ache was back with a vengeance. “How can you say that? How can you be so heartless? So insensitive! You don’t care about people at all. Not about Kyle and Glenda or Darren or—or me either. You’re just a glorified, walking, talking, computerized bank statement! No wonder we haven’t had sex for months. Here I thought it was all my fault. But no woman can make love to a—a machine!”

“Machine.” His voice was cold, his eyes hard. “Is that what you think?” He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her down on the bed. “I’ll show you just how this machine works.”

Chapter
18

Laura moved stiffly around the room as the early streaks of sunrise glistened on the window. She would like to write in her journal. The incredible happenings of these past days should be recorded. But she felt a restlessness that wouldn’t let her sit still long enough to write. She gently rubbed the back of her head. The swelling was almost gone now. Unless she did something silly like jumping up too fast, there was almost no pain. The pain was further down. Pain and a strange kind of ache that was mingled with longing. A homesickness that didn’t have anything to do with going home.

Laura looked at her open suitcase, gaping like a hungry mouth. This was it. Their last day in Victoria. The last day of their failed honeymoon. She should be packing. They were going to make their final tourist stop at Fable Cottage, which was about halfway to the airport, then on to the latest flight out to connect with their Seattle-Boise plane. And that would be that.

The waters would close over all that had happened here. And they would struggle on as before. Well, not quite as before. But she’d already been over that ground, and it was a dead end. She didn’t really want to think about what she was going home to. So she turned her thoughts to Gwendolyn and Kevin.

She couldn’t stay in Victoria to help Glenda and Kyle, but she could bring about a happy ending for her fictional hero and heroine. At least she hoped she could. Sometimes fictional characters could be almost as difficult to maneuver as real people. They could take on a mind of their own and weren’t about to be rushed—or to listen to her omnipotent advice. And in this case she was singularly devoid of advice anyway. She opened a drawer, pulled out a handful of lingerie, and plunked it in her case.

Tom yawned and stretched, then sat up with a big grin on his face and ran his hand through his hair. “Wow! What a good night of sleep. Must have been all that—” One could see the memory of the night before come on in his mind like a light in the room. He sank back against the headboard. “Oh, Laura. Last night. I’m sorry. I—I don’t know what to say—”

Laura shook her head. “Don’t apologize. A fight always takes two.” She didn’t want to talk about the fight. Or about what came after. Her thoughts were far too confused to verbalize, anyway. Still she wanted to talk. Talk about anything but last night. Tom, breathing hard, his hands sweaty like …

She dug around in her mind for some neutral ground they could discuss—something she could hold out as a kind of peace offering. Then she remembered. “Oh, I almost forgot. I saw something interesting the other day when I was driving around. Strange, really. There was this big housing development being dismantled.”

“Dismantled?”

“Well, I don’t know what you call it—like being put in cold storage or moth balls or something. Anyway, all these executive types were there closing the place down—hauling off tools and lumber, everything. I didn’t know if you’d be interested or not, but I wrote down the telephone number …”

“Yeah, I might be interested.” He glanced at the TV set. “I wonder when the local news is on. There might be something about it.”

“I bought a newspaper yesterday—no, the day before. Or before that? I can’t remember—” She looked around the room, frowning. Oh, there with the stuff she had dumped from her bag just before they discovered Darren’s note. Somehow it seemed weeks ago.

It didn’t take Tom long to locate the article on the real estate page—it was the top story complete with a photo. A major construction company in Victoria, which currently had three developments underway, had filed a bankruptcy petition the day before. All crews were being pulled off the sites and the projects were all going back to the bank. “This sounds great. Our plan is perfect for REO stuff, and banks hate to have Real Estate Owned property on their books. Where’s that phone number?”

Laura listened to Tom’s telephone conversations with one ear while she continued packing mechanically. He made his way through several bank officers, asking questions, giving brief explanations, and jotting figures on long yellow pads before he placed a call to Phil.

Apparently Phil wasn’t in. Tom sat there, tapping his pen as he ran calculations in his head. “Shouldn’t you be packing?” Laura finally asked. “We were going to stop at Fable Cottage, remember?”

Tom looked up from his figure-covered notepaper. Laura could read his mind as clearly as if it flashed in neon lights. He wanted to suggest she go on alone, and they’d meet at the airport. But second thoughts reminded him of her accusations last night. “Yeah, guess I’d better.”

A very glum Laura sat on the floral Chippendale love seat, running the toe of her shoe over the pale green carpet and staring morosely at the useless fireplace.
Silly to have a fireplace that doesn’t work—just makes you miss a crackling fire all the more. Just as silly as an unsuccessful honeymoon. Better not to have tried than to long for the crackling fire.

Tom called for the bellboy. A minute later the phone rang. “Well, if they’re too busy to carry our bags down, we’ll do it ourselves.” Tom strode toward the phone. “After all, we carried them up.”

Yes, a lifetime ago that was, Laura thought. That bedraggled young woman who struggled into the room on that storm-tossed night with her arms full of suitcases and her head full of dreams—could that possibly have been her?

But the call wasn’t from the bell captain. “Oh, hello, Phil. Thanks for returning my call—they said you wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day …”

Laura moved to answer the knock at the door. The brown and beige uniformed man began loading their bags on his cart. Laura knew how long Tom’s business calls could take, so she would go ahead and do the checkout routine.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us.” The clerk in a cheery tartan jacket pulled out Mr. and Mrs. James’s paperwork.

“Yes. It was lovely.” Then Laura looked across the lobby where the first sitting for early tea was being prepared. “But we never had tea here.”

“Well, you must come back. Afternoon tea at the Empress is one of Victoria’s most hallowed traditions.”

“Yes, I know. We just never seemed to be able to work it in.” It didn’t really matter. There had been far more important things that they hadn’t managed either. It didn’t seem that anything much mattered now.

“If you’ll just sign here, please.” The lady held out the pen.

“Wait a minute. Don’t sign anything yet.” Tom pulled the pen from Laura’s fingers and handed it back to the desk clerk. “We’re staying. There’s business to be done in Victoria.”

“Tom! We don’t have to leave?”

“No way. I’ve got an appointment with a vice president of First Provincial Bank over dinner this evening. But there’s plenty of time to see that cottage thing this afternoon.” Tom tipped the bellman and issued directions to have their luggage taken back upstairs, then ushered Laura out to the car.

With every step her spirits rose another level.
Reprieve, reprieve, reprieve
, was all she could think. One last chance to reach Tom. One free afternoon before it was back to business. And yet she held out little hope. She was too tired. She had tried too many times and failed. She didn’t need another failure.

“Drop in on a Dream,” Laura read the slogan of Fable Cottage and winced. She had spent much of the past few days seeing her dream slip through her fingers. She was no longer so sure about the value of holding to dreams. Yet when they traveled the wooded country lane, reminiscent of almost every English TV show she’d ever seen, and then at the end the blue, sun-sparkled waters of Cordova Bay spread out before them, Laura did sense the dreamlike quality of the place. “Look, even the doghouse has a thatched roof.” How refreshing to see that—for some people at least—dreams did come true.

Their walk through Fantasy Forest took them past the private retreats of woodland dwarfs busy at whatever pleased them most. Gnomes frolicking on a water wheel beside a stream bank covered with clumps of mushrooms, begonias, and impatiens while bright blossoms floated in the water; child-sized elves harvested the rewards of a magical mine and emerging from the shaft on a jewelladen cart; dwarfs fished at the old swimmin’ hole. Laura smiled at the elf fishing in a leaky boat held afloat on the back of a giant green frog.

“Ribbit.” Laura jerked around. Tom? Was it possible? Once upon a time, a long time ago, Tom had mooed with cows, croaked with frogs, and chirped with birds. But she had lost hope that that once-upon-a-time Tom still lived. She was sure the little boy she loved had been strangled with a mathematical formula. Yet Tom had ribbited.

They entered the dream world together as the flowers that surrounded them in the pond and grew so riotously on the hills of the woods reflected their laughter. Here the viewer could be as childlike and carefree as the elves and gnomes who inhabited the place. Kyle had said something about the importance of keeping in touch with the child within oneself, but Laura had paid very little attention to the concept. Was this what he was talking about?

And then the light, freehearted voices of real children floated up the path.
What a wonderful place for children.
And with the thought Laura suddenly felt awkward and out of place. And a little guilty for taking up her adult-sized space in this world of childhood visions of innocence.

The next view, however, reminded them that there could be threats to peace even in an enchanted forest. The path rounded to the hut of the wicked witch with a Boarder Wanted sign in her garden. Yes, there could be dangers in living for a dream. But rewards too.

They went on to the top of the path and exited from Fantasy Forest. And there before them, at the far side of a rolling emerald lawn, the sun shining on its numerous, thatchedlike, high-pitched gables with eaves dipping almost to the ground, was the house that proved that even the real world could be built on dreams. There stood the real-life family home that had been built with dreams and love and imagination.

“Perhaps they were inspired by Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Tom said.

“Yes, maybe. I can just hear them; the husband would say, ‘I’d like to live in a house like that.’ And his wife would say, ‘Me too, but not Elizabethan. I’d rather live in a storybook—like every fairy tale I’ve ever read.’ And the husband would be quiet for a bit and then say, ‘Why not?’”

Just past a splashing fountain Laura stopped openmouthed at the whimsical beauty of an enchanted tree, a flower with every variety and color of blossom imaginable. “Our favorite apple tree was dying, so we hung flowering baskets on it to brighten the days,” the sign explained. A dead tree had been turned into a thing of fascinating beauty. It seemed that with love, vision, and humor any situation could be turned to good.
Hmm.
Laura boggled at her own thought.

They entered the barrel-shaped door, one of the hallmarks of the house, and were greeted by the guide. “It took 11 years to build the cottage, and the family lived here 10 years with their two children.”

“Imagine how children must have loved living here.” Laura self-consciously pulled her hand away from her abdomen.

The guide took them from room to room where the real-life family had lived in their fairy-tale surroundings: Under the arch of the walk-through fireplace, into a kitchen like the one Snow White must have longed for when she cooked for the Seven Dwarves, to the picture window in the living room with its view clear across the blue, blue bay to the San Juan Islands.

Laura ran her hand over the mirror surface of the redgold wood of the coffee table, glistening in the light from the window. “I’ve never seen such a polish on furniture.”

“The owner did that all himself,” the guide said. “He made the furniture from our local yellow cedar and hand rubbed it with—I can’t remember how many—coats of beeswax.”

“It’s all so wonderful. Why did they ever leave?”

“At that time the cottage was visible from the road, and sightseers just wouldn’t leave them alone. At first they tried opening their home to tourists for a couple of months in the summer, but that still didn’t satisfy the demand, so finally they sold it as a public attraction.”

Laura walked from the house slowly. “What a shame they couldn’t just live here and enjoy their dream.”

“But some dreams have to be shared.” Tom took her arm on the uneven path.

“What would Victoria be without its dreamers and their buildings?” Laura mused. “Just think, Butchart Gardens, the Old England Inn, Craigdarrogh Castle, and now Fable Cottage—all were built as private residences.”