Things Remembered (17 page)

“As much as I like that she's worked hard to keep a strong relationship with Cindy, it scares the hell out of me to think of her trying to be a full-time mother again. She doesn't have it in her, Ray. If she tries, Cindy's going to come out the loser.”

“What makes you think that's even a possibility? You've got custody. If Linda tries to move in and take over, tell her to take a hike. The law's on your side.”

“You're right. I don't know why I'm obsessing on this.” At least he'd gotten her out of the house. He'd called Susan between giving a litter of boxers their puppy shots and telling a teenager the dog he'd grown up with had cancer and needed surgery and likely wouldn't live more than six months longer even if everything went well. She'd agreed to let Linda use the second floor of the preschool, but not before he'd told her about his date with Karla.

“You seeing that gal again?” Ray said.

That made twice in one morning that he'd been asked about Karla. “I'm thinking about it.”

“You like her, huh?”

“She's all right.”

“She's got to be more than all right if you're seeing her again.”

“Actually, she's the perfect date. She's here for a couple of weeks and then she's gone for good. We can go out and have a great time and there's no chance it's going to turn into anything serious.”

“Famous last words.”

“You've already lost one bet this week.” Mark took a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sat back in his chair.

“Which is why I wouldn't take you on about this unless I thought it was a sure thing.”

Mark went back to his sandwich. The way he figured it, he had a lot of years ahead of him listening to his friends try to shuffle him off to the altar. It made no more sense to let them pull his chain about this than it did to let on he knew the difference between red and white wine.

Sitting in the parking lot of what was now her second-favorite coffee shop, Karla stared at her cell phone, steeling herself for the call she should have made first, just to get it out of the way. Jim had been easy, hardly able to contain his excitement at being asked to stay on at the shop another week and a half, even promising to send a fresh supply of coffee for their Thanksgiving dinner. Heather was so happy she'd started crying the minute Karla told her why she was calling.

Grace answered on the first ring. “I'm on my way out, so make it fast,” she said breezily.

“It's Karla.”

“She died,” Grace said dramatically.

The statement threw her. “Who died?”

“Grandma. Isn't that why you're calling?”

“Grandma's fine. I'm calling because I want you to come up for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Grace laughed. “You can't be serious. You know I always have Thanksgiving with my friends. Grandma gets Christmas—at least she does when I can get the time off.”

“Time off? From what?”

“That was mean.”

After finding the canceled checks, Karla was feeling mean. “I want you to make an exception this year. Heather is coming and I'll be here. Anna would like all of us together.” It was tempting to add “this one last time” but she didn't want to use emotional blackmail on Grace. She wanted her to come because she recognized it was the right thing to do.

“We've already made plans,” Grace insisted. “Everyone is counting on me, I can't let them down.”

“Bullshit,” Karla said, losing the temper she'd sworn she would keep. Going all the way, she threw out a threat. “You either change your plans or I call my credit card company and cancel your insurance.”

“You wouldn't do that.”

“The hell I wouldn't. I'm tired of everything going your way. It's time you started giving a little in return.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

Euphemism for “give me some time to come up with a better excuse for doing what I want to do.” “That's not good enough.”

“What is it you want?”

“Your body at Anna's dinner table on Thanksgiving day.”

“Jesus, what did she do, promise you the house?”

“Don't mess with me on this, Grace.”

“All right, all right. You win. Satisfied?”

“I'll send you a plane ticket.” She wasn't going to let Grace back out at the last minute because it was too dangerous to drive in valley fog—the excuse she'd used when Heather had tried to have a family Christmas at her house six years ago. Of course the fog could ground flights, too, but at least she'd know the excuse was genuine.

“Do you have any idea what a zoo the airport is on holidays?”

“No. And I can't imagine why you would either.”

A long silence followed. “You know, there are times you can be a real bitch.”

She'd long suspected the circle of friends Grace used for an excuse to get out of things was no more real than an unpaid rent bill. “Unless you're through asking me for favors, I'd be careful what I say if I were you.”

“Don't you think it's a little late to be playing the tough big sister role? I know exactly what's happened. You went up there to tell Grandma you weren't interested in her money and then you saw how much it was and changed your mind. You screwed up and stayed away from her all this time and now you're in a panic because you think she's not going to leave any of it to you. Well, I'm not going to let you take your mistakes out on me. I'll be there for Thanksgiving, but I'm not coming because you asked me to, I'll be there for Grandma.”

How was it Grace could put on a performance like that and not get a job acting? “Check your email for the ticket in a couple of days,” she said with finality.

What about money for a rental car,” Grace added hastily. “If I have to come up, I might as well visit some of my friends while I'm there.”

“I'll pick you up at the airport, and if any of your friends are still around and available, you can use my car to see them.”

“You're treating me like a little kid.”

Finally, something Karla could laugh about. Grace had demanded her way, thrown a tantrum when she didn't get it, whined that she wasn't being treated fairly, and insisted Karla foot the bill.

“What's so funny?” Grace demanded.

“It's not worth talking about. I have to go. If you haven't gotten the ticket in a couple of days, call me. Otherwise I'll see you in two weeks.” She hung up before Grace had a chance to answer.

“Did you find the money?” Anna asked, patting her freshly coiffed hair for the third time since leaving the shop. “I saw that you'd put the canceled check box back in the closet.”

She'd heard what Anna said, but it took a second to connect. The traffic on Douglas Boulevard was even heavier on Saturday than it was in the middle of the week, and she was having a hard time with landmarks. “Oh, yeah—I've been meaning to tell you about it.”

“I'm sure the bank will be happy when—”

“It isn't the bank's money, Anna, it's yours. Or I guess you could say it's mine, depending on how you want to look at it. I never cashed the checks you sent to me that year for Christmas and my birthday. I didn't even look at them, so I had no idea the one was for as much as it was.” Normally, when Anna couldn't get out or couldn't think of something to send for a present, she sent a check—for twenty or twenty-five dollars. While the birthday check that year had been the standard twenty-five dollars, she'd sent two that Christmas: one to repay the six hundred dollars Karla had given Grace for books for school, the other for $1,201.59.

“Where did you get that kind of money?” Karla had told herself she wouldn't ask because it was none of her business, and there it was, almost the first thing out of her mouth.

“I sold the house. It was to one of those companies that doesn't take possession until you die or until you have to move into a nursing home. I took some of it in cash to pay for Grace's last two years in school and the rest in monthly payments for as long as I live. School didn't turn out be as much as I thought it was going to be, so I divided what was left between you three girls for Christmas that year.”

“You mean you took a reverse mortgage?”

“That's it.”

No wonder she hadn't found the deed. It hadn't even occurred to her that the house could have been sold. She knew what it meant to Anna, what it had always meant. “You love your house. How could you have sold it?”

“It seemed like the most reasonable thing to do at the time. I could have taken a loan against the house, of course, but there was no way I could make the payments. I figured one way or another, I was going to lose the place—this way, at least, I got to stay.”

As frugally as they'd lived at Anna's, there should have been more than enough money from their parents' estate to see all three of them through college. Month to month they'd lived on Social Security, both Anna's and their parents'.

“You need to get in the other lane,” Anna announced. “The restaurant is coming up.”

At Anna's request, they were going back to the Italian restaurant where they'd eaten with Susan. Mark and Cindy met them at the door. Karla tried to blame the warm flush of pleasure she felt at seeing Mark again on the unseasonably hot day, but then he looked into her eyes and smiled, and it was useless to try to pretend what she was feeling was anything but what it was.

“I'm glad we're finally getting a chance to visit,” Mark said to Anna when they were seated at the table. “It seems like all we ever do is exchange a few words in passing. You may not know this, but you're one of Cindy's favorite people. She's talked about you since she started going to Susan's.”

Anna smiled at Cindy. “I talk about you, too.”

“What do you say?”

“That you can climb a tree faster than any little girl I've ever known and that you make beautiful pictures.”

“Do you tell people I can read?”

Anna's eyes widened in surprise. “You can? I didn't know. When did this wonderful thing happen?”

“I dunno.” She looked at Mark. “When did it happen, Dad?”

“She's been reading for about a year now,” Mark said. “I'm not sure when she started, it just seemed to happen. Susan's been working with her the last few months, and she's really started to take off.”

“My mom's home,” Cindy announced, ready to move on to something else. “She's staying at my school, so I get to see her every day. Sometimes she even sleeps with us.”

Mark let out a mental groan. To explain would give the living arrangements too much importance, but letting it go would give Karla the wrong impression. “Linda's in town while her band is working out some problems. Since she didn't know how long it would take, Susan offered to let her stay upstairs at the school.”

“We met,” Karla said. “In passing, that is. She was on her way out the door when I dropped by yesterday afternoon.”

“She didn't say anything.” Unusual for Linda; she didn't miss much. But then how could she have known that Karla was the one he'd taken out? Cindy didn't know, and Susan was the last person to tell Linda something like that.

Karla smiled. “I must not have made much of an impression.”

“Impossible.” He'd meant the flattery to be exaggerated but the inflection was all wrong. Instead it came out sounding sincere, spoken the way he felt, rather than the teasing way he'd intended.

“We didn't spend much time together, but Linda seems very nice,” Karla said.

There was an implied question in the statement—why would two nice people who obviously still liked each other, who were the parents of a wonderful child, choose not to raise that child together? “She's an incredible woman.” He turned to Cindy, caught her chin in his hand, looked her directly in the eye, and said, “Who just happens to be the mother of an incredible little girl.”

Cindy had been drawing on the paper tablecloth with the assortment of crayons left by the waiter and was impatient at being disturbed. “You say that all the time.”

“Only because it's true,” Anna told her.

The waiter came for their order. When he returned an hour later to ask if anyone wanted dessert, Anna's lack of interest in her food was obvious by her barely disturbed lunch. Mark surreptitiously noted the effort she made to hide how tired she was and came up with an excuse to leave long before he would have liked.

He and Cindy waited with Anna while Karla got the car.

“Thank you for lunch,” she said. “I hope we can do it again before Karla has to leave. She's staying longer than she first planned, you know. Until after Thanksgiving.”

It was everything Mark could do to keep a straight face. The old gal might be on her way down for the count, but she wasn't past a little matchmaking. “No, I didn't know. I'm glad you told me.”

Karla pulled up in front of them. Mark helped Anna into the car, bent down to say good-bye to Karla, and took Cindy's hand before crossing the parking lot to his Jeep. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Cindy when he had her belted into the car.

“We should get some ice cream.”

He grabbed her leg and gave it a shake as if checking to see if it were hollow. “About Karla.”

“She's funny.”

“Funny how?”

“The way she looks at you—like she likes you a lot.”

“You think so, huh?”

“
Daaaad,”
she said in a singsong, impatient voice. “Can we please get our ice cream now?”

Mark got in the car and took Sierra College Boulevard to the Dairy Queen. Two dates and he was still interested—a first since his divorce. No, it was more than interest he felt for Karla. He was intrigued. Her words, her actions, her silences were like a trail of bread crumbs in the forest, impossible not to follow. The farther he went, the more he wanted to go.