Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek (3 page)

Judd still hadn't finished all of the fencing, and it was al ready starting to snow some. If he waited any longer, the ground would be frozen too far down to dig fence holes. That's why he was at the hard ware store today get ting nails and talking to the old men by the stove.

Judd watched the old men as they smiled at the kids now.

Jacob nodded slowly as he looked at Amanda. “I saw your mama when she brought you and your brother here. She stopped to ask directions. You're right, she was pretty, too.”

“My mama's going to come back and get us real soon,” Bobby said.

Jacob nodded. “I expect she will.”

Judd gave him a curt nod of thanks. Barbara had asked for a few days, but Judd had figured he'd give
her a week. By now, she was at least two months over due to pick up the kids.

Judd hadn't told the kids he'd contacted the court that had is sued the restraining order their mother had flashed in front of him and asked them to help find her. Fortunately Barbara had listed him as her next of kin on some paper they had. The court clerk had called every women's shelter between here and Denver and hadn't located Judd's cousin.

Judd had had to do some persuasive talking to the clerk, because he didn't want to mention the kids. He figured his cousin needed a chance to come back for them on her own.

“She's just hurt her hand so she can't write and tell us when,” Bobby added confidently.

“I expect that's right. Mail some times takes a while,” Jacob agreed, and then added, “but then it only makes the letter more special when you do get it.”

The older men shifted in their seats. Judd knew they were all aware of the troubles Amanda and Bobby were having. They might not know the de tails, but he had told his land lady, Linda, back in the beginning of September that he was watching the children for his cousin for a couple of weeks. By now, every one in Dry Creek probably knew there was something wrong.

Even if he was a new comer, he would be foolish
to think they hadn't asked each other why the kids were still here. Of course, the old men were polite and wouldn't ask a direct question, at least not in front of the kids, so they probably didn't know how bad it all was. They probably thought Barbara had called and made arrangements for the kids to stay longer.

“Speaking of letters, maybe we could write a letter to the new woman and tell her we all want a bakery more than a ballet school,” Charley finally broke the silence with a suggestion.

“We can't do that,” Jacob said with a sigh. “You don't write a letter to some one who's right across the street. No, we need to be neighborly and tell her to her face. It isn't fair that we let her think she'll make a go of it here with that school of hers.”

“Well, I can't talk to her,” Charley said. “I'm the one who promised her everything would be fine.”

“Too bad
she
wasn't the one who was deaf,” one of the other men muttered.

“I'm not deaf. I had a bad connection is all,” Charley said. “It could happen to any one.”

“Maybe
he
could go talk to her,” the other man said, looking up at Judd. “He seems to hear all right.”

Judd felt his stomach knot up at the idea. “I got to count me out some nails. I'm building a fence.”

He walked back to the shelves that held the boxes of nails. Amanda and Bobby trailed along after him.
Judd looked down at Bobby. “Why don't you take your sister and go across to the café and put your order in for some of that cocoa? Tell Linda I'll be along in a minute.”

The Linda who ran the café was also his landlady. She was renting him the Jenkins place, with an option to buy come next spring. Judd had saved the few thousand dollars the state had given him when it settled his uncle's estate and added most of the other money he'd got ten to it for the past six years.

He'd started out working as a ranch hand, but the wages added up too slowly for him, and so he'd spent the next couple of years on the rodeo circuit. He'd earned enough in prize money to set him self up nicely. Right now, he had enough money in the bank to buy the Jenkins place, and he'd al ready stocked it with some pure bred breeding cattle. He could have bought the place out right, but he wanted to take his time and be sure he liked it well enough be fore he made the final deal. So far, the ground had been fertile and the place quiet enough to suit him.

Judd watched Amanda and Bobby leave the hardware store be fore he reached into the nail bin and pulled out an other nail. Fortunately, the older men had given up on the idea that he should talk to the new woman. They probably realized he'd botch the job.

Outside of talking with Linda at the café and smil
ing politely when Mrs. Hargrove had delivered the books the school had sent him when he'd decided to homeschool the kids, Judd hadn't had a conversation with a woman since his cousin had left the kids with him. Well, un less you counted the court clerk he'd talked to on the phone.

Judd never had been much good at talking to women, at least not women who weren't rodeo followers. He had no problem with women at rodeos, probably because
they
did most of the talking and he al ways knew what they wanted; they wanted a rodeo winner to escort them around town for the evening. That didn't exactly require conversation, not with the yelling that spilled out of most rodeo hang outs in the evening.

As long as his boots were polished and his hat on straight, the rodeo women didn't care if he was quiet. He was mostly for show any way—if he was winning. If he wasn't winning, they weren't that interested in talking to him, or even interested in being with him.

The few temporary affairs he'd had with rodeo followers didn't leave him feeling good about him self, so eventually he just declined invitations to party. By then he was counting up his prize money after every rodeo any way, with an eye to when he could leave the circuit and set him self up on his own ranch.

In those years, Judd hadn't known any women out
side of rodeo circles, and he thought that was best. Judd never seemed to know what those women were thinking, and he didn't even try to sort it all out. He liked things straight for ward and to the point. The other kind of women—the kind that made wives—al ways seemed to say things in circles and then expect a man to know what they meant. For all Judd knew, they could be speaking Greek.

Judd had a feeling the new woman in Dry Creek was one of that kind of women.

No, he wasn't the one to talk to her about what she was doing here, even though he had to admit he was curious. She sure knew how to hang a sign in that window.

L
izette shifted the sign with her left hand and took a deep breath. It had taken her the better part of three days to get the practice bar in place along the left side of the room and the floor waxed to a smooth shine. She still had the costumes hanging on a rack near the door waiting to be sorted by size, but she'd decided this morning it was time to put the sign she'd made in her window and start advertising for students.

She could still smell the floor wax, so she'd opened the door to air out the room even though it was cold out side. At least it wasn't snowing today.

Lizette had bought a large piece of metal at the hard ware store yesterday and some paint so she could make her sign. The old men sitting around the stove in the store had obviously heard she was set ting up a business, because they were full of suggestions on how she should make her sign.

Of course, most of the words centered on the Baker part of the school's name, but she couldn't fault them for that. She was heartened to see they had so much enthusiasm for a ballet school. If this was any indication of the interest of the rest of the people in the community, she just might get enough students to pull off a modified Nutcracker ballet for Christmas after all. She'd even assured the men in the hard ware store that no one was too old to learn some ballet steps. In fact, she'd told them that lots of athletes used ballet as a way to exercise.

The old men had looked a little dismayed at her comments, and she wasn't surprised. At their age, they probably didn't want to take up
any
exercise program, especially not one as rigorous as ballet. “You'd want to check with your doctor first, of course,” Lizette added. “You should do that be fore you take up any new exercise pro gram.”

The men nodded as she left the hard ware store. All in all, they'd been friendly, and she wasn't so sure she wouldn't get a student or two out of the bunch. And if she didn't get any students, at least she'd got ten some good neighbors. One of them had al ready been over to check on the smoke coming out of the small kitchen off the main room when she'd been baking some cookies earlier and had for got ten they were in the oven. He'd even offered to bring her over some
more flour if she was inclined to continue baking. He'd expressed some hope of a cherry pie.

The chair Lizette stood on gave her enough height so she could lift the sign and hook it into the chain she'd put up to hang it with. The sign had a white back ground with navy script lettering.

Lizette planned to take a picture of the sign later and send it to Madame Aprele. She wasn't sure she'd tell her old teacher that she didn't have any students yet, but she could tell her that the school was al most ready for classes now that the practice bar was in place. Lizette had planned to use a make shift practice bar at first, because she couldn't afford a real one. Madame Aprele had surprised her by sending her one of her own ma hog any bars. Her old teacher had shipped it be fore Lizette left Seattle, and Linda, next door in the café, had kept it for Lizette until she arrived.

Lizette had called Madame Aprele, thanking her and insisting that she accept payment for the equipment. It would help enough, Lizette explained, if she could just pay for the bar over time. She didn't add that she had no need of charity. Madame Aprele agreed to let Lizette make payments if Lizette promised to call her with weekly up dates on her school.

At first Lizette was un comfort able promising to call Madame Aprele, because she knew her mother would disapprove. But then Lizette decided that what
ever problem there had been between her mother and Madame Aprele, there was no need for
her
to continue the cold ness.

Twenty years ago when Madame Aprele had bought the school from Lizette's mother, the two women had been friends. But, over the years, Jacqueline spoke less and less to Madame Aprele until, finally, her mother wouldn't even greet the other women when she picked Lizette up after ballet class.

At the time, Lizette didn't understand why. Now she wondered if her mother didn't look at Madame Aprele and wish her own life had turned out like the other woman's.

Not that there was any thing in Jacqueline's life to suggest she wished for a different one. Madame Aprele had been born in France in the same village as Lizette's mother. Both women had studied ballet together and had left France together. Lizette's mother had be come more Americanized over the years, how ever, especially after she'd started working in the bakery.

As Lizette's mother be came more conservative in her dress, Madame Aprele be came more outrageous, until, in the end, Lizette's mother looked al most dowdy and Madame Aprele looked like an old-fashioned movie star with her lavender feather boas and dramatic eye makeup.

 

Lizette stepped down from the chair just as she saw two little children cross the street from the hardware store. The sun was shining on the window so Lizette could not see the children clearly, but she could tell from their size that they were both good prospects for ballet.

Lizette didn't know how to advertise in a small town like Dry Creek, but she supposed she could ask about the children at the hard ware store, find out who their parents were and send them a flyer.

When the children passed her door, they stopped. The little girl was staring at something, and it didn't take long for Lizette to figure out what it was. The sun light was streaming in, making the Sugar Plum Fairy costume sparkle even more than usual. Lizette's mother had used both gold and metallic pink on the costume when she'd made it, and many a young girl mistook it for a princess costume.

“If you go ask your mother if it's okay, you can come in and look at the costumes,” Lizette said. She doubted things were so casual in Dry Creek that parents wanted their children going into strange stores with out their knowledge.

The girl whispered something in the boy's ear. He nodded.

Lizette had walked closer to the children and was starting to feel un easy. If you added a few pounds
and took away the scared look in their eyes, those two kids looked very similar to that snap shot she'd seen several days ago. She looked up and down the snow-covered street. There were the usual cars and pick ups parked be side the hard ware store and the café, but there were no people out side except for the two children. “Does your mother know where you are?”

Both children solemnly nodded their heads yes.

Lizette was relieved to know the children had a mother. Their father hadn't looked like much of a parent, but hopefully their mother was better.

“Our mother won't mind if we look at the dress,” the boy politely said after a moment and pointed in side. “That one.”

The rack was very close to the door and Lizette decided she could leave the door open so the children's mother could see them if she looked down the street. Really, if she moved the rack closer, the children could touch the costumes while they stood out side on the side walk.

Lizette pushed the costume rack so it was just in side the door. “The pink one is my favorite, too.”

Lizette watched as the little girl reached out her hand and gently touched the costume.

“That's the dress for the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker ballet,” Lizette said.

“What's a ballet?” the boy asked.

Lizette thought a moment. “It's like a play with lots of costumes and people moving.”

“So some one wears that dress in a play?” the boy asked.

The boy and Lizette were both seeing the same thing. The little girl's face was starting to glow. One moment she had been pale and quiet, and the next her face started to show traces of pink and her eyes started to sparkle.

For the first time, Lizette decided she had made the right decision to come to Dry Creek to open her school. If there were more little girls and boys like this in the community, she'd have a wonderful time teaching them to love ballet.