The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (31 page)

The first thing Alice noticed when she pulled in was the yellow pickup parked alongside their mother’s Honda, a stack of lumber jutting from its tailgate. She found a spot in the shade, under an acacia hung with pods, and switched off the engine. Laura, who suffered from hay fever, promptly sneezed.

“Bless you.” Alice handed her a Kleenex.

“Thanks.” Laura sneezed again, then blew her nose.

They exchanged a solemn look. This wasn’t going to be easy, Alice thought. Not because she was here to give their mother a piece of her mind, but just the opposite. She’d come to listen and hopefully learn. Which might be the hardest thing of all.

They climbed from the car and started up the walk. From inside came the pounding of hammers and high whine of a power saw. The front door stood open, and sunlight lay in pale oblongs over the partially laid floor. From Laura’s description of what it had looked like before, Alice couldn’t believe how much had been accomplished in so short a time. Tom must be on intimate terms with half the town council to have gotten permits so quickly.

She stepped inside, her heart quickening. All around were signs of construction. Piles of sawdust and scrap ends of lumber, tools and sawhorses, a paper sack spilling nails. The living room was small but cozy, with double-hung windows and a brick fireplace. Alice had expected something a lot more run-down. But this…well, it was certainly livable.

She picked her way around a pile of lumber. “Is Mrs. Kiley around?” she yelled to one of the workers over the whine of the saw.

“Allá, en la cocina!”
He yelled back, gesturing toward the doorway on her left.

In the kitchen she found their mother deep in conversation with the contractor, a bandy-legged little man in sawdust-speckled jeans with a carpenter’s pencil stuck jauntily behind one sunburned ear. Sam glanced up with a look of surprised pleasure.

“Girls! I wasn’t expecting you.” There was nothing in her voice to suggest any tension between them. “Carl, these are my daughters, Laura and Alice.” She gave Alice a small, tentative smile.

In the few weeks since Alice had last seen her, Sam had blossomed. It wasn’t just that she was beginning to show, she looked younger, almost…luminous. Alice felt oddly excluded, which didn’t make any sense. If anyone should feel shut out, it was her mother.

Laura glanced about, remarking, “I can’t believe how much you’ve done.”

“It looks like more work than it really is,” Sam said. “Overall, the place is pretty sound. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.” They followed her down the hall into a large, sunny bedroom, originally two small ones with the adjoining wall knocked out. “This,” she said with a sweeping gesture, “is mine.”

Alice felt her stomach drop out from under her. It was all so surreal. Was she really here, in this strange house, being shown the bedroom her mother and Ian might be sharing?

“It certainly is…airy,” she said.

She didn’t dare ask which room was the nursery.

“It faces east, so I’ll get the morning light. You know how much I love waking up to sunshine.”

Sam stood at the window, gazing out at the yard with a secret little smile. Its grass and shrubs were a jungle, but the view of the mountains more than made up for it. Off in the distance Alice could see Toyon Ridge, with the snowcapped Two Sisters Peaks just beyond.

“Nice closet.” Laura wandered over to peer into it. “You’ll have plenty of room for all your stuff.”

“I won’t need much,” Sam said. “Most of it’s going into storage.”

“The furniture, too?” Alice asked.

“The bulk of it stays put. I’m sure Mr. Roellinger will take good care of it.” Sam turned away from the window to smile at her. “If he doesn’t, he’ll have Lupe to answer to.” She didn’t seem the least bit bothered that
she
wouldn’t have the use of all those lovely antiques, most of which had been in the family for generations.

What about us?
Alice wanted to cry.
Are we going to be left behind, too?
She thought of the family albums with photos of her and Laura growing up. They’d probably be put into storage as well…to make room for ones filled with snapshots of the baby.

“I can’t imagine you anywhere but at Isla Verde,” she said.

There wasn’t a hint of regret in the look Sam gave her. “I
will
miss it in some ways. But you have no idea how much work it was. Now I’ll be able to afford a full-time property manager. Believe me, it’ll be a relief.”

“You never said anything before.”

“Why complain when you have so much else to be grateful for?”

“You could have prepared us, that’s all.”

“Prepared you for what?” Sam spoke lightly, but with a new firmness. “Did either of you ask how I felt when
you
moved out? Or when you got married?”

Alice eyed her in astonishment. She’d expected to find her mother overwhelmed, maybe even a little distraught. But standing before her was a straight-backed, clear-eyed woman who wasn’t giving an inch.
My God,
she thought,
do I even know this person?

She ran her finger along a sill coated with plaster dust. “You haven’t said where Ian fits into all this.” She spoke with the careful precision of the hammers pounding down the hall.

Sam’s gaze slid away. “We haven’t made any plans yet.”

“Well, if I were you,” Alice went on, “I wouldn’t count on him for Thanksgiving.” She didn’t know where this meanness was coming from. Hadn’t she come to make peace? “Wes can tell you what he’s like—flaky and irresponsible. Why do you think he was sent away as a teenager?”

“Alice…” Laura spoke warningly at her back.

Sam stepped away from the window. A shadow fell over her face, and she looked all at once her age—a woman nearing fifty. “I think I know him a little better than you do.”

“The way you knew Daddy? My God, you didn’t even know about this
house.
”

Sam regarded her intently. Her gray-green eyes were cool, her mouth curled faintly in irony. “I thought we were discussing Ian.”

Alice felt the world shift a little, and she was suddenly unsure of her footing. “I just meant…” She faltered.

“If anyone was irresponsible, it was your father.” Sam, wearing an odd, faraway expression, smoothed an edge of rose-patterned paper that was peeling away from the wall. “You didn’t know, did you? All those hare-brained schemes and sure-fire investments that never amounted to a hill of beans. That was your dad, too.”

There was a low buzzing in Alice’s head, like a swarm of angry hornets. She edged back a step, her foot coming down on something wobbly—a loose board—and reached for the wall to keep from stumbling. “Dad wasn’t like that. You’re exaggerating.”

“Why would I do that?” Sam shook her head sadly. “What would I possibly have to gain?”

“It’s not fair.” Alice began to tremble. “He isn’t here to defend himself.”

“No, he isn’t,” Sam said, not without a touch of regret.

Alice felt a sharp pain in her palm, and pulled her hand away to note dispassionately that it was bleeding. She must have scratched it with a nail, except oddly, she felt no pain. “Okay, maybe he made a few bad investments. That doesn’t change the fact that he was a good father.”

“Yes, and don’t we have the pictures to prove it?” A bitter note crept into her mother’s voice.

Alice glanced at Laura, who looked as bewildered as she did. “What are you saying?”

Her mother’s hard face was almost more than she could bear. “Did you ever wonder why your father is in every family photo and I’m in almost none? Who do you think was taking all those pictures?”

Alice had never thought of it one way or another. All she’d ever seen was what was
in
those photos: Dad cuddling them on his lap, helping build sand castles, holding them up to see into cages at the zoo. It had never occurred to her to wonder why her mother wasn’t in them as well.

But that didn’t prove anything. “If Daddy was really like that,” she said with a casual cruelty that left her breathless, “why make the same mistake with Ian?”

“Appearances aren’t everything.”

“What do you
really
know about him?” Alice pushed on, her head ringing with the hammer blows from down the hall.

“I know he sees me for who I am, not for who he wants me to be.”

Alice faltered. Was that what she’d been doing—holding her mother to an impossible set of standards? Maybe, but whose fault was that? All Alice’s life hadn’t she promoted the image of selfless wife and mother?

“How long do you think he’ll stick around?” she asked in a voice that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside of her. “How many snapshots will
he
be in?”

Sam shook her head sadly. “Oh, Alice. What’s made you so hard?” The house had fallen momentarily silent, and as she stepped toward them, Alice heard the faint crunch of plaster. “Is it Wes?”

Alice shot back, “This has nothing to do with Wes. Just because Ian is his son, the only son he’ll ever have—” She broke off, then thought,
Sooner or later I’m going to have to tell them.
“All right, you might as well know. We’re not having kids.” She frowned at Laura, who was looking at her aghast. “It’s not what you think. It was my decision as much as his.”

But all at once that wasn’t how it seemed. The looks on her mother’s and sister’s faces told a different story, that of a young bride coerced into giving in to her much older husband. Alice, feeling suddenly unsure of herself, abruptly wheeled. “I’ve seen enough,” she said. “Come on, Laura, I’ll drive you back into town.”

Hours later she arrived home to find her husband tinkering with the grill. Master of the Universe meets Mr. Fix-It. She smiled at the picture he made, crouched on the patio in his shorts and T-shirt, one arm thrust up inside the barbecue—a brick behemoth big enough to roast a skewered pig—while blindly groping behind him for his wrench.

She picked it up and handed it to him. “Why not just call a repairman?”

“For one thing, we’d wait two weeks for what I can do in two minutes.” He gave the loose nut a few turns with the wrench, grimacing the way men do: the universal male at work. “For another,” he said through clenched teeth, “they’d charge two hundred for a two-dollar part.”

“We can afford it,” she said.

“The point,” he gave a final twist, “isn’t whether or not we can afford it.” She knew what he was going to say even before he said it: “The point is not to get taken.”

Alice’s thoughts returned to her father. She’d known only his fun-loving side, but what if her mother was telling the truth? Was she supposed to think less of him now? She’d spent a good deal of the afternoon driving about aimlessly, pondering that very thought…only to conclude that, Rock of Gibraltar or no, her dad had been worth two of any other father.

“Are we barbecuing tonight?” She kept her voice light so Wes wouldn’t know she’d been crying.

“I picked up some steaks while you were out.” He brought his head up, wiping his greasy hands with a rag she recognized as an old pair of her panties.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I forgot.” It came back to her now: She’d promised to stop at the store on her way home.

He flashed her his just-left-of-center grin—the one she imagined the Red Baron had worn streaking across the sky in his World War I Fokker. “No big deal. I figured you had enough on your mind.”

She felt tears just below the surface. How long since they’d sat down to a romantic dinner? Since they’d made love? As she gazed down at him, crouched on his heels with that damn pair of panties in one hand, a wave of longing swept through her.

“I’ll make the salad.” She’d started toward the house when she felt Wes’s hand close about her ankle. He caressed it lightly with his thumb, smiling up at her lazily.

“All taken care of,” he said.

“Wine?”

“Chilling in the fridge.”

“Looks like you’ve thought of everything.”

“Almost.”

Wes slipped off her mule and began stroking her instep, sparking a flash of heat that left her trembling. Alice pulled her foot from his grasp and took a small backward hop, catching hold of the chaise longue. In the pool below, her reflection shimmered like the slow dissolve at a movie’s end. She didn’t know why she was so upset with Wes; what had he done to deserve it?

“I’m going inside.” Her voice was small and tight.

Wes caught up with her as she was pushing open the sliding glass door. “Alice, what is it? What’s wrong?” He caught hold of her, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her around.

Then they were in the den, Wes’s den, all manly leather and inlaid teak, where the computer was always on and the fax machine forever humming. She wrenched away so abruptly she lost her balance and plopped into the chair against the wall, an enormous leather club chair that reminded her of nothing so much as an oversize catcher’s mitt.

She looked up at him. He seemed to tower over her. “I stopped at my mother’s new house on the way home.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t what I expected.”

They both knew the house was beside the point. Wes eyed her closely, crossing his arms over his chest. His faded gray T-shirt from the Iron Man Triathlon in which he’d competed back in 1976—when she was only one year old—seemed to mock her.

“How did your mom seem?” he asked.

“Not what I expected, either. She…” Alice paused, struggling to put it into words. “She seems at peace. Like she doesn’t give a damn what any of us thinks of all this.”

“What about Ian? Where does he fit in?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure she does.”

Wes sighed, leaning back against his desk. Flying toasters floated across the computer screen at his back. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out.”

Alice’s head had begun to throb. Had he remembered to pick up Advil? “It’s funny,” she said, screwing a thumb into her temple. “My mother seems to be under the impression that
we’re
not exactly rock solid.”

Wes eyed her quizzically. “What would make her think that?”

“I told her there wouldn’t be any grandchildren.”

“I see.” He looked tired all of a sudden. “I guess it always comes back to this, doesn’t it?”