The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (20 page)

That got her. “How come she never said anything?”

“Oh, you know Maude, always hiding her light under a bushel.”
Like someone else 1 know.

Something long buried flickered to life in Finch’s eyes. “I got a B minus in English my sophomore year.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“I didn’t get all the homework in on time, but then I wrote this paper on
Silas Marner
my teacher must’ve liked. She gave me an A.”

Laura smiled. She didn’t remember the first thing about the book she, too, had slogged through in high school, but was all of a sudden grateful to good old Silas.

That reminded her of something else: transfer records. Finch would need them to enroll.

I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
For now it was enough that the sun was shining, the sky hadn’t fallen, and on this beautiful Saturday in July they could have been mistaken for any mother and daughter setting out on a shopping expedition.

In front of Lickety-Split she nodded hello to a couple she knew from Lost Paws. Inez and Sue were herding their children out the door—two little boys, each with a dripping cone. One adopted, the other Sue’s by artificial insemination.
It takes all kinds,
Peter used to scoff. But Laura marveled at the endless invention of families—like pictures that appear to be one thing until you look at them closely and see something entirely different. Sue and Inez’s children, aside from being adorable, seemed as well adjusted as any.

“They’re gay, right?” Finch asked when they were out of earshot.

“As far as I know,” Laura said. “They don’t advertise it.”

“And that’s okay?”

“Okay in what sense?”

“I mean…people around here are okay with it?”

Laura shrugged. “Sure. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

Laura glanced at Finch out the corner of her eye. Was this her way of asking if she’d fit in, too? A girl all alone in the world, with no past and seemingly no future, who might not have been welcome elsewhere. Laura longed to reassure her but didn’t want to scare her off.
One step at a time…

They rounded the corner onto Espina Lane. Rusk’s—the closest thing in Carson Springs to a department store—occupied what had at one time been several adjacent storefronts. In business nearly as long as Delarosa’s, it was still owned and operated by the Rusk family. Laura pushed the door open, and they stepped into its air-conditioned coolness.

The interior was basically unchanged from when she’d been a child: menswear and ladies apparel at either end; shoes, belts, handbags, and jewelry forming the center aisles. In the children’s department upstairs there was an old-fashioned scale for determining sizes, and on Tuesdays and Saturdays you could bring your kitchen knives to be sharpened in the housewares section downstairs. In the toy department at Christmastime, old Avery Lewellyn, dressed in his Santa suit, welcomed children onto his ample lap.

“Why don’t we start with boots?” Laura suggested.

The shoe section was in back. Sturdy-looking lace ups and loafers lined wooden racks along the wall. A foot measurer—a relic out of Laura’s childhood—sat on a floor scuffed by generations of children’s feet. There was even a full selection of riding boots, ranging from English to cowboy.

“Can I help you?” Laura looked around to find Andie Fitzgerald walking toward them. Andie broke into a grin. “Laura, hi! I didn’t know it was you.” She glanced curiously at Finch.

Laura remembered when she used to baby-sit for Gerry’s kids. Andie had been a handful, not because she was spoiled but because the questions never stopped. Why is grass green? What makes stars shine? How do fish breathe? Seeing her now—her green eyes shining and black hair bouncing at her shoulders—Laura felt a rush of affection.

“I didn’t know you were working here,” she said.

“Neither did I, until Mom told me she was cutting off my allowance.” Andie rolled her eyes, but didn’t seem too bent out of shape. “I guess she figures when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” She smiled at Finch. “Hi, I’m Andie.”

“Hi.” Finch idly examined a shoe, making an elaborate pretense of not looking her way. Andie, in her neatly ironed skirt and blouse, the St. Ann’s medal from her confirmation hanging from a silver chain about her neck, might easily have given her the wrong idea—that she was from another planet—if not for the six tiny earrings in each ear.

“Finch is staying with me,” Laura said.

Andie didn’t probe. “Lucky you.”

Finch seemed to relax a bit. “Laura’s teaching me how to ride,” she said shyly.

“Really? Cool.”

Laura had given Andie lessons, too. Like Finch, she’d been a natural. “As a matter of fact, that’s why we’re here,” she said. “We’re looking for a pair of riding boots.”

“What size?” Andie was suddenly all business.

“Eight and a half,” Finch told her.

Andie disappeared into the back room, returning several minutes later with an armful of boxes. She lowered them onto the floor, and pried the lid from the topmost one. “Here, try these first. They’re my favorite.” Finch was seated in one of the chairs, unlacing a grubby sneaker when Andie said offhandedly, “Listen, I’m off tomorrow. If you’re not doing anything, maybe we could go riding.”

Finch frowned, staring at a point just past Andie’s shoulder. Laura held her breath. Then Finch said, “Yeah, sure. That’d be cool.” She glanced uncertainly at Laura. “If it’s okay with you.”

It was all Laura could do not to cheer. “Are you kidding? You’d be doing me a favor—not to mention the horses.”

And that was it. When Laura returned from a preliminary exploration of the ladies’ sportswear section, the two girls were chatting easily. She sent up a silent little prayer of thanks.

An hour later, shopping bag in hand, Laura and Finch set off for the Tree House. They were strolling past the Quill Pen when they bumped into Tom Kemp on his way out the door. He was carrying a shopping bag containing a gift-wrapped box.

He held it aloft. “My secretary’s birthday. I got her a box of stationery. How’s that for originality?”

“I’m sure she’ll love it,” Laura said.

“Let’s hope so.” He smiled. “How’ve you been, Laura?”

“Working too hard, as usual,” she said. “You remember Finch?”

“Sure. From the wedding.” He spoke as if Finch having crashed it were no big deal. In that instant Laura caught a glimpse of what he must have been like as a kid—the kind who volunteered to take out the trash and mow elderly neighbors’ lawns. He gestured toward their shopping bags. “Looks like you two have been busy cleaning out the stores.”

“We worked up an appetite, that’s all I know,” Laura said with a laugh.

“How’s your mom? I haven’t seen her around lately.”

Laura felt her mood shift as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun. “She’s fine.”

“Give her my best, will you?” He seemed suddenly ill at ease. Had he caught wind of the gossip? Tom glanced at his watch. “Well, I’d better be going. Pressing date with the barber.” He winked, heading off up the street.

Laura watched him go, feeling oddly wistful. If Sam had fallen for Tom instead, none of this would be happening. She thought of the bombshell her mother had dropped on them last night, which Laura was still struggling, unsuccessfully for the most part, to absorb.

Sam had asked them over for dinner—Laura and Alice and Wes—waiting until the table was cleared and the dishes stacked in the dishwasher before gathering them all together in the living room. “I have something to tell you,” she’d said. Though she’d looked drawn, her eyes had been clear with purpose. “But first, I want you to know this isn’t a topic that’s open to discussion. However you feel about it, you’ll just have to adjust.”

Laura had braced for the worst.
They’re engaged.
What else? Ever since New York, her mother had seemed withdrawn and preoccupied. Not exactly the blushing bride to be, but given the circumstances what could you expect?

Laura glanced about. Her sister wore a dawning look of horror, while Wes merely looked concerned and maybe a little apprehensive. No one could have predicted what came next.

“I’m having a baby,” Sam said.

Laura recalled only bits and pieces of the ensuing uproar. She was dimly aware of Alice weeping, and Wes doing his best to calm her. While Laura merely sat there, numb.

Then something had stirred in her. A monstrous envy, green and dripping, rising from the blackest jungle of her heart.
This is all wrong,
she thought. God had gotten it wrong somehow.
She
ought to have been the one making such an announcement. Hadn’t she spent years trying? Subjecting herself to countless doctor’s visits and one painful procedure after another. Only to be told, in the end, that she’d never have children of her own. Wasn’t that why Peter had left? Now he and his new wife were having a baby…and her mother…
oh God
…it was too awful.

Laura had been sick about it ever since, but this morning had managed to push it from her head. Determined not to let anything spoil this day, she’d eaten breakfast, gone about her chores, even stopped next door to lend a hand to her neighbor Anna Vincenzi whose mother had fallen and couldn’t get up. Until her chance encounter with Tom Kemp had brought it rushing back.

Finch, seeming to sense the shift in mood, touched Laura’s elbow. “Thanks,” she said. “You didn’t need to buy me all that stuff.”

Laura roused herself, smiling. “No need to thank me. You earned it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You help out around the house. You feed and water the horses and muck out stalls,” Laura went on in the same matter-of-fact tone. “If anything, I owe you.”

A corner of Finch’s mouth hooked down. “I’m a lousy cook.”

“You’re trying. That’s the important thing.”

Laura didn’t belabor that particular point. The girl’s culinary disasters were the joke of the household. The night before last she’d attempted creamed tuna over rice, only had run out of rice and used instant mashed potatoes instead. Hector had teased that they could’ve hung wallpaper with the resulting mess. Even Finch had had to laugh.

Now she said, “I think I’ll stick to reheating pizza.”

Laura winked. “Don’t worry. Maude secretly loves that she’s the only decent cook we’ve got.”

They were at the Tree House, sipping ice tea in the shade of the live oak, when Finch asked cautiously, “Um, Laura? If something was wrong with Maude, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“I hear her crying in the night sometimes.”

Laura hesitated. She hadn’t meant to exclude Finch, only to shield her. Didn’t she have enough of her own to deal with? “I gather she hasn’t said anything to you about Elroy.”

“Who’s Elroy?”

“Her son.”

“I didn’t know his name. I only saw the picture of him on her dresser.” Finch, folding her straw wrapper into tiny squares, glanced up with a frown. “He doesn’t look anything like her.”

“He doesn’t seem to have inherited her nature, either.”

“Is he the reason Maude’s upset?”

Laura sipped her tea thoughtfully. On the far side of the patio, the cafe’s owner, David Ryback, was deep in conversation with Delilah Sims. Delilah, beautiful in a wan sort of way with her pale skin and soulful eyes, her long black hair draped about her shoulders, was nodding as if in sympathy. Laura wondered if it had anything to do with David’s son, eight-year-old Davey, in the hospital for the umpteenth time. If what Laura had heard rumored was true, the strain had left some cracks in David’s marriage as well. Noting the cozy familiarity with which Delilah laid a hand on his arm, Laura wondered if she’d played—or was about to play—a part in it.

She looked back at Finch. “He’s been after Maude to move in with him.”

“Is she going to?”

“I hope not.” Laura shook her head. “She lived with him before she came here. And from what little Maude’s told me, I gather it wasn’t exactly a bed of roses.”

Finch’s expression hardened. “A real asshole, right?”

“I haven’t met him—but yeah, that about sums it up.”

Laura grinned, feeling her mood lift somewhat. Her mother was pregnant, and she might be on the verge of losing Maude, but here she was on this fine summer day sitting down to a meal, and a moment of candor, with this girl who’d been so unexpectedly dropped into her life.

“I hope she decides to stay.” Finch spoke with fierce conviction. “She belongs with us.”

Us?
Did that mean Finch intended to stay as well? Laura hoped so, for she’d come to the same conclusion: The girl belonged with her. At first she’d resisted it—not wanting to leave herself open to yet another hurt—but now something rose in her, something so fragile a mere breath could scatter it.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said.

Hector was hosing the corral down when Laura pulled into the yard. He dropped the hose and pushed open the gate, ambling over to greet them.

He ran a finger over the Explorer’s dusty hood. “How’d it go?”

“We got everything we needed.”

Finch had darted off into the house, laden with shopping bags. It wasn’t just Hector; she was skittish around men in general. Like the other day with Doc Henry. The crusty old vet had been out to look at Punch, and when he’d spoken a bit too abruptly, she’d jumped as if spooked.

“So I noticed. From what I could see it looks like she plans on staying a while.” He peered at Laura from under the brim of his hat. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m not sure of anything.” She sighed, nudging the car door shut. “The only thing I know is she needs a home, and at the moment this is the only one available.”

“That you know of.” He spoke mildly, but she caught the note of caution in his voice.

She told him about Andie, and how the two girls had clicked. And about touring the museum after lunch, where Finch had been fascinated by the wooden plow on display, one that had been used by Laura’s great-grandfather to till the field for the valley’s first orange grove.

“It’s like she can’t get enough,” Laura said. “I know how it seems like she’s pushing us away. But I have a feeling she wants to belong.” She gave a crooked half smile. “If you’re right, and I’m biting off more than I can chew, it wouldn’t be the first time.”