Moonlight Masquerade

by Jude Deveraux

  Sophie got out of the Jeep, but she didn’t know what to do. She watched as Colin cut the arrow that held the man and Reede caught him as he fell. The woman still had her hands on the man’s shoulder.

  As Sophie went to the table she heard Reede quietly giving orders to Colin and the woman. It seemed she was a retired nurse and Reede was using her expertise.

  Sophie was wondering how the man had been shot. Was it an accident? Someone playing with a bow and arrow? Or had it been with malicious intent?

  She looked at the table for a bow. Instead she saw a stack of paper plates and three packages of hot dogs. There were paper cups with cartoon characters on them. Kids! she thought and spun around. Under some trees was a green minibus with the name of a Williamsburg church on the side of it. It looked like they’d taken advantage of the warm day to have one last picnic before cold weather set in.

  She walked around the table to stand behind Reede. “How many children are here and where are they?”

  Reede looked at the nurse.

  “Eight,” she said. “They were really scared when Jim was hit and they were screaming, but I couldn’t leave him. I told them to hide until I came and got them. But I can’t . . . ”

  “Sophie, could you—” Reede said but she cut him off.

  “I’m on it.” She was genuinely pleased to have something to do. Turning, she looked back at the woods. They began just a few feet away and the pine trees were so dense she couldn’t see but a few feet into them. There were no children in sight.

  She wanted to ask their ages but the adults were so busy that she didn’t. How could she round them up when she was a stranger? In the center of the table was a bag of potatoes and beside it was an old paring knife, the blade worn down, the handle rough from many washings. There was also a metal spoon with a narrow tip, and she took that. On the ground was Colin’s open toolbox. “Could I borrow these?” she asked as she held up a rattail file and a couple of small screwdrivers.

  “Sure,” Colin said as he looked at Reede, but he just shrugged. He had no idea what Sophie was up to.

  She took some potatoes and the tools into the woods. It was cool in there, certainly too cold for the children to be in there alone. There wasn’t a sign of any of them. No doubt they’d been traumatized by seeing an arrow that had to have flown across the table, hit the man, and pinned him to the tree. That their other guide, the woman, couldn’t get him down must have further frightened them.

  Part of her thought she should call out to the children, but then what? Chase them down? Just her and eight kids? It would never work. It would either frighten them more or entertain them so much that they’d make her chase them up the trees.

  Instead, she was going to do what she’d done when Lisa was little and would run away and hide.

  Sophie found a clearing in the woods, close to the campsite, sat down on the cold ground, and leaned back against a fallen log. She moved slowly, listening, but she heard nothing. She put the potatoes and tools beside her and picked up one of each.

  “I’m a sculptor,” she said loudly into the silence, and the word gave her a feeling of purpose. It had been a long time since she’d called herself that.

  “Do you know what that means? I was given a gift when I was born. I see shapes and I can form clay or stone or in this case potatoes to look just like them.”

  As she spoke she was cutting the potato by chunks, her hands working quickly.

  “I have a sister who is much younger than I am and when she was little I made her laugh by cutting all her food into funny shapes.” Sophie held the potato up so if the children were near they could see it. “This is going to be a rabbit. My sister Lisa loves rabbits and she had one when she was little. She called it Annie and she wanted me to make all her food into rabbits.”

  Behind her, Sophie heard leaves rustling and to her right she thought she saw movement. But she didn’t look. She just kept carving as fast as she could. And thinking.

  “You should have seen my little sister’s plate for every meal. I had to make everything into a rabbit. The pancakes were easy and mashed potatoes were a breeze, but how do you make applesauce look like a rabbit? Know what I did?”

  She waited in silence, carving quickly, but not answering her own question.

  “What did you do?” a little girl asked.

  Sophie looked at the child, saw the fear in her eyes, and smiled. “I made two round puddles of applesauce, put in raisin eyes, and pieces of carrot for ears. But . . . ” She paused as another girl and a boy quietly came close to her. Sophie lowered her voice. “I was afraid the bunny would wake up and eat his own carrot ears.”

  The children laughed. They were about six years old and seemed to be glad to feel safe again.

  “Is Mr. Jim okay?” a child asked.

  “Yes,” Sophie said as she set the potato rabbit on the log beside her.

  “Bet you can’t make a dragon,” a boy said from her left.

  “Are you kidding?” Sophie said. “If they gave out awards for potato dragons, I’d get one. Get me some little sticks that look like fire coming out of his mouth so I can make a real dragon.”

  One by one, seven children tiptoed toward her and sat down on the ground and watched. She finished the dragon, stuck a branched stick in for fire, and the children moved closer.

  “Who wants a bear?” Sophie asked, and they all said yes. Finally, the last little boy, the eighth child, came out of the woods and sat down to watch.

  When they heard an ambulance with a siren coming down the road, two of the boys started to get up. “Sit!” Sophie said, and her look made them sit back down. Until she was sure there wasn’t some crazy killer out there, she planned to keep the children where she could see them—and keep them calm.

  The siren got very loud and it wasn’t easy to keep the children near her, but Sophie did it. She offered her potato sculptures as prizes to whomever could build the best house for it out of whatever they could find in the woods. Besides, the abnormally warm day was cooling off and the children needed to move around. “But you can’t leave my sight!” she said emphatically.

  They heard the ambulance doors slam and the siren was turned back on. They all glanced in the direction of the sound but they could see nothing. Sophie wondered if Reede and Colin and the gray-haired lady had gone with the ambulance, and if so when would they be back?

  But minutes later Reede stepped around a tree and stood there for a moment, taking it all in. All eight of the children were there and they were busy constructing things out of twigs, leaves, and even rocks. They were all asking Sophie questions by the dozen, such as how to tie things together when they had no string.

  Sophie stepped away to go to Reede. “How is he?”

  “He’ll be fine, thanks to Sue’s quick thinking.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Reede grimaced. “Colin thinks it was too much beer and some hunters. He’s looking for them now. They might not even know what they’ve done.” He nodded to the kids. “I’m going to take them back in the bus to the church in Williamsburg. I can drop you off in Edilean.”

  “No,” she said, “I’ll go with you. We better get them out of here. In spite of the warm day, it is November.”

  “What are those things on the log that the kids are looking at?”

  Sophie smiled. “Nothing important. Just potato animals.”

  She followed Reede as he walked the few feet to the log and picked them up. There was a rabbit, a dragon breathing fire, and a bear with a pebble that vaguely looked like a fish in its mouth.

  “Sophie, these are wonderful,” he said, looking at her.

  “So who wins?” a little boy asked.

  “Everyone,” Sophie said. “By this time tomorrow I’ll give each of you a sculpture of your favorite animal. Only I’m going to do them in clay so you can keep them forever. Right now we’re going to ride back to Williamsburg on the bus and . . . Are you ready for this? Dr. Reede is going to drive! Do you think
he knows how to do that? And if the bus starts coughing, what do you think he’ll do?”

  “Give it a shot!” a boy yelled.

  “Some medicine,” a girl said.

  “Ha!” Reede said. “If there are any problems I’m going to make all of you get out and push the bus.”

  The children looked wide-eyed for a moment, then started squealing and running around.

  “Sophie,” Reede said softly, “thanks for doing this. If Sue hadn’t taken care of Jim he might have bled to death. She couldn’t look after the kids at the same time. And if you hadn’t been here . . . ” He trailed off. “Anyway, thank you.”

  “I enjoyed it. Doing this made me remember some things.”

  “Your sculpture?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was the driving force in my life when I was growing up, and during college I thought of nothing else. Jecca and Kim and I were like Roan and thought we were going to set the world on fire with our art.” She was laughing at herself.

  “Instead, you’ve just set a bad-tempered doctor on fire. Hey kids! Last one in the bus doesn’t get to sit next to Miss Sophie.”

  All of the children started running at once. The two older boys grabbed the potato sculptures without slowing down.

  Sophie shook her head at him. “You should have said that the last one in has to sit by me.”

  “Ha!” Reede said with a derogatory snort. “You have a knack for making people fall in love with you. It’s certainly worked with me. Hey you two!” he yelled. “Don’t eat raw hot dogs. They’re full of bacteria.” When the children didn’t obey him, he said, “And frog guts. Yeah, eat the bread and chips. Carb load.” He looked back at Sophie. “I think they found cupcakes. You ready for a ride with eight sugared-up monsters?”

  As Sophie walked behind him to the picnic table, she was thinking about his remark about love working for him.

  Reede took a cupcake from a box and bit into it. “Make that nine sugar fiends,” he said, smiling at Sophie in such a naughty way that she laughed.

  They got all the children on the bus, and on the trip back they took turns sitting by Sophie and telling her what animal they wanted. Reede, in the driver’s seat, pulled an old notebook and pen out of a compartment on the door and passed it to Sophie. The children’s ideas about their carvings had become so detailed she had to sketch them and put the child’s name on the picture.

  By the time they got to the church and the anxiously awaiting parents, each child had been to Sophie twice. Simple animals had turned into intricate pieces. “And I want its mane to fly out to the back like it’s leaping,” one boy said of the horse he wanted. “The eyes have to be big and the neck long.” A giraffe. “Sweet. Nice,” a girl said of a koala bear.

  Sophie thought of the restaurant she was opening and that she wouldn’t have time to do things like this, but the truth was that she’d rather carve anything than make tuna salad sandwiches.

  It seemed that the phones had been busy since Mr. Jim had been shot by an arrow and when they got back to the church all the parents wanted to ask Reede about what had happened. As they surrounded him, Sophie stepped out of the way.

  “Did you do this?”

  She turned to see one of the mothers, the dragon on her outstretched hand. All of the little critters had sat on the dashboard on the way back. “Yes.”

  “This is wonderful,” the woman said. “I’m Brittany’s mother.”

  “Ah yes, she’s ordered a giraffe.” Sophie explained her promise to the children and how they’d made their orders and she’d sketched them out.

  “And you can make them in clay?”

  “Sure,” Sophie said. She started to explain about her degree in art but she didn’t say anything.

  “We went to a zoo this summer and one of the giraffes leaned over the fence, clasped its teeth down on my daughter’s ponytail, and pulled. I nearly fainted in horror, but Brittany and my husband laughed. And he got a great photo of it. Since then she’s been obsessed. Her room has giraffe wallpaper, a bedspread, and about twenty stuffed giraffes.”

  “What a lovely image,” Sophie said and looked at the little girl. “You have a pen and paper? I’ll give you my e-mail address and would you send me a copy of the photo?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, her eyes alight. Someone called and she waved her hand. “I have to go, but it was wonderful meeting you. We were afraid our children would return traumatized, but all they can talk about is Miss Sophie and the animals she carved. Thank you. I think that what you did blocked out that awful thing they saw. It would give me bad dreams, much less a child.”

  Her words were complimentary, and Sophie realized that it was the first time in a long while that her own actions had made her feel good about herself. For years now it had been men’s feelings that had determined her mood. If her male boss was coming on to her, she felt bad. If Carter’d had a fight with his father and was grumpy, she was sad. If Carter’s father was out of town and he was happy, so was she. When she’d been alone with Reede in the little room high up in the house, she’d felt great.

  “You have an odd look on your face,” Reede said as he came to stand beside her. He’d finally escaped the questioning parents. “Care to share your thoughts?”

  She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d just come to the realization that nearly every woman reaches at some time in her life. “No,” she told him. “I was just wondering how we’re going to get home. Your car is still in the forest.”

  Reede knew that wasn’t what she’d been thinking about. “Heather called to tell me she and her husband are going out there to get it and to clean up the site. Someone will give you and me a ride home. I’m staying in the Gains house tonight, the one you looked at with Al’s wife. Want to stay with me?”

  “No,” she said and she meant it, not because she was angry at him, but because she had to do some things for herself. She needed to get her feet on the ground before she reconnected with a man. She stood up straighter. “Thank you, but no.”

  Sixteen

  “We have to do something,” Heather said into her cell phone as she held onto the door of her husband’s pickup. “Really! I mean it. We have to stop this before it begins.”

  “I don’t understand,” Betsy said. “Didn’t you say that Dr. Reede lifted Sophie and put her into the Jeep? That sounds like things are going well.”

  “You think so? Roan McTern spent all day with her yesterday and bought her everything she needs for that restaurant. And he’s telling people that he’s going to be Sophie’s sous chef. He’s going to be spending fourteen hours a day with her! Roan is a big, good-looking man and if I weren’t married—” She broke off as she looked across the seat at her husband, Bill, who was rolling his eyes.

  “I’m open for suggestions,” Betsy said. “Let me know what to do and I’ll do it. The whole sandwich shop thing has been a surprise to me. Did Sophie say anything to you about wanting to open a restaurant? I know she made dinner for the doc, but that’s different from cooking on a big scale.”

  “All I know about her is that the doc is crazy mad for her and that she made that little sculpture out of clay for him. We should have asked Kim more about her.”

  “Give her what she wants,” Bill said.

  She frowned at her husband as she said, “Please don’t interrupt. This call is important. If those two break up, Dr. Reede will be in such a bad mood I’ll have to quit.” She went back to the call. “So, Betsy, maybe we can say we couldn’t get the apartment together so she has to stay with the doc.”

  “She couldn’t go to a B&B or back to Kim’s empty house?” Betsy asked.

  “Give her what she wants,” Bill said louder.

  “Please!” Heather said in frustration. “I’m trying to talk to Betsy about something that will affect all of us.” She went back to the phone. “How about if tomorrow one of us helps her cook?” Bill stopped the truck at the campsite, opened the door, and got out while Heather stayed on the phone. “We have t
o come up with a way to get them together so they . . . ” As she watched her husband begin to fill a garbage bag with the leftovers from the picnic, she thought about what he’d said. “Betsy, you know where you got that clay for that little sculpture of Dr. Reede?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you call them and get more delivered to the studio at the back of that house he rented? And some tools? Get whatever kind they use to carve clay.”

  It took Betsy only seconds to understand what Heather was saying. She looked at the clock. “The store’s still open and I know a guy in Williamsburg who’ll go there and get whatever we need and deliver it to us. It should be here in two hours, tops.”

  “This might work,” Heather said as she watched her husband cleaning up the campsite. As she hung up she remembered reading somewhere, probably in all the useless info on the Internet, that if a man wanted to turn on a woman he needed to use a vacuum cleaner now and then.

  True or not, the memory of the words “give her what she wants” may have been the key to getting Dr. Reede and Sophie together—and those words had come from her husband.

  She went to stand on the other side of the table from him.

  He didn’t glance up. “Hand me those plates, would you?”

  When she didn’t respond, he looked at her and was pleasantly surprised by the gleam in her eyes. With a one-sided smile he dropped the bag, walked around the table, and took her in his arms. They made love on the cool forest floor. They wouldn’t know for a few weeks, but their desire for a family was at last going to come true.

  One of the fathers drove Reede and Sophie back to Edilean. The two men sat in the front while Sophie took the back. She wanted to think about what she needed to do, but as she thought, it all seemed overwhelming. What on earth had made her tell eight children that in just twenty-four hours she’d make animal sculptures for them? Out of clay? Why didn’t she just stay there and cut some more potato figures for them?

  But she knew the potatoes would wrinkle and the children would be upset. So she’d said she’d make more permanent figures for them. After what they’d been through, they deserved them. But where was she going to get the clay? How would she pay for it? Ask Roan for the money? Reede?