“What happened?” Tisha asked.
“I saw something,” Jillian said. “I have three stacks that have to do with places, so I thought I’d start a separate line for those. Have you got any places?”
“I think so.”
Jillian winced as she watched Tisha look through her blue labels. At least half of them were not offset, leaving the labels out of sight.
“Remember, like solitaire.” Jillian pointed to her offset stacks.
Tisha handed her a half dozen pages clipped together under a city label. “I knew this was here without playing some dumb game.”
“But I wouldn’t have seen it if you weren’t here,” Jillian said.
“Okay, fine. Whatever.” Tisha rearranged her clipped groups of papers so the blue labels were all visible.
“What’s this?” Jillian carefully removed one of Tisha’s stacks and flipped up a few pages to find one of her handwritten sticky notes in the middle of the pile. “This should be a separate group.”
“Whatever.” Tisha snatched the papers back. “I’ll make another label.”
“Are you sure the rest are appropriately separated?”
“Well, I guess since you found one little mistake, I’d look pretty stupid if I claimed I was sure there weren’t any more.” Tisha pushed back from the table and reached for her Italian soda.
“It’s easy for small things to slip by.” Jillian swallowed back a stream of thoughts before they left her mouth. “But the work is full of details, and we do have to be accurate.”
“Fine. I will check every single pile I’ve done so far.” Muttering, Tisha took her entire line of blue labels into her lap. “But it’s just a bunch of old papers. Who really cares?”
Jillian’s hackles raised. “I care. This is my work. And right now it’s your work.” If you didn’t want it to be your work, you shouldn’t have shoplifted.
“It’s too little too late. You can’t find any of these families. Even if you did, the parents who lost their kids are long dead. Most of the kids are too.”
“We don’t know that.” Jillian evened out her tone. “We don’t know what kinds of holes have been left in families for generations because they don’t know what happened to the children who were taken from them. We might still bring peace to someone.”
“What difference does it make?” Tisha began laying her blue cards on the table again, properly this time. “My family was rich once, and look at us now.”
“What do you mean, your family was rich?”
“Rich. Had money.”
“What kind of business was your family in?”
“I don’t really know. It was a long time ago.”
“Maybe I could help you find out. Clearly I’m a history nerd.”
“No thanks.”
“I’m actually pretty good at digging around in the past.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just like none of this matters.”
Jillian stood, stepped over the trail of piles leading into the living room, and found the small stack of yellow folders sitting on the purple ottoman.
“Do you see these?” she said.
“Yeah. So now we’re switching back to folders again? You never said anything about yellow.”
“These are the ones I found already,” Jillian said. “And the families do care. It does matter.”
Tisha reached for her soda.
“Sophie Ballard’s little sister, Talia, didn’t remember the first family they had, but Sophie did.” Jillian thumped the folder. “And she held on to those early memories, how her mother loved the color green and didn’t like apples and sang lullabies like an angel. She knew her mother was doing the best she could on her own with two little girls and would never, ever have given them up. Something happened when their mother wasn’t there. She whispered those stories to her sister when they went to their new family. At least they got to stay together. And she told them to her children and grandchildren over and over. Do you know how I know all that?”
Tisha shrugged.
“Because I found Sophie. Her mother is gone now, but she married again and had other children who knew they had two older sisters out there somewhere, and they’re thrilled to know Sophie and her little sister. After a lifetime of feeling lost, it means the world to Sophie to be found.” Jillian pointed to the dining room table. “Sophie was in those piles. Being careful matters, or we’ll lose people like Sophie all over again.”
“Well. That was a speech.”
Jillian exhaled. “I’m just trying to explain the work so you know you’re doing something that matters.”
“Sorry.” Tisha slurped her soda in a distinctly unrepentant manner before replacing it on the sideboard and going back to the piles, head down. “You know what? I never once in my life played solitaire. No one ever taught me.”
Jillian swallowed hard. “Maybe I can teach you.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Just don’t.” Tisha snatched up another blue sheet and attacked it with a marker. “I hate it when people placate me.”
“I need to make a phone call,” Jillian said. “Excuse me.”
“Whatever.” Tisha clipped a new stack and placed it with exaggerated deliberation perfectly offset from the last one.
Jillian managed to keep her stride at a normal pace until she rounded the corner into her office and closed the door. She paced as she waited for Nia to pick up.
“I cannot do this. Why do I have to go through this?”
“What happened? Did Drew call? He’s not backing out, is he?”
“Backing out of what?” Jillian stilled her steps.
“This thing that the two of you never quite define,” Nia said.
“No, he did not call.” Jillian resumed pacing. “And we’ve only known each other a few weeks. You don’t define anything that fast. Why would you ask if he called?”
“Because you sound so upset. What else would it be?”
“Tisha Crowder, that’s what. You have to talk to her.”
Nia laughed so hard that Jillian pulled the phone away from her ear.
“I don’t think she wants to talk to me,” Nia said.
“I didn’t ask her to talk to you,” Jillian countered. “I asked you to talk to her.”
“All the difference in the world.”
“You know how to talk to sulking teenagers!”
“Even you are observant enough to see that I gave up guidance counseling for innkeeping.”
“You can moonlight.”
“Jillian, my friend, you underestimate yourself.”
“She pushes my buttons.”
“Count to ten. Snap a rubber band on your wrist. Rock up on your tippy toes. There are strategies.”
“I know. And mine is calling you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Nia said. “Have you called Drew?”
“Why would I call Drew about Tisha?”
“Not about Tisha specifically. Just about how you are.”
Jillian dropped into a chair and fiddled with an uneven pile of folders on her desk. “I’m trying not to. He did call the other day to cancel my visit to the ranch this weekend. He has a chance to do some sort of gig.”
“I see. And that means you can’t talk about anything else?”
“Nia, stop it! You call me for help and I help. I call you for help and you help. That’s how we roll.”
“I think I’ve known you long enough to have an interest in your love life. Stop trying not to call him. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“What about Tisha? Are you extorting me?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Are you sure this is going to work?” Nia repaired the end of her long dark braid, twisting it into subservience with a tight red band and letting it hang forward over one shoulder.
“Not in the least,” Jillian said, “but that’s why you’re here.”
“
Against my better judgment.”
“You’re having coffee at the Canary Cage.” Jillian tapped Nia’s latte mug. “It’s an ordinary thing for us to do together. Just be cool.”
“You’re the one losing your cool.”
Jillian scowled and sipped her own latte. By temperament she was not much of a gambler. The worst that could happen is she would dash home at the last minute and risk not getting there before Tisha, but it was Friday and her father was working at the house. He could let Tisha in, pick some random conversation topic, and keep her there until Jillian hightailed it up the street. For just such a scenario, she’d brought her small SUV rather than walk the mile down Main Street.
“Well, there you go.” Nia picked up her latte as her eyes drifted to the coffee shop door.
Tisha left her green bike leaning against the front window and entered, walking directly to the counter.
“The usual?” Joanna Maddon asked.
Tisha nodded, and Joanna moved to begin assembling the soda.
“Here’s your opening,” Nia murmured.
“Yep.” Jillian breathed through her words. “Here goes.”
She got up from the table and brightened her face. “Tisha! Hi!”
The girl turned her head. “What are you doing here?”
Jillian chuckled. “Having coffee, of course. You remember my friend Nia.”
Tisha gave a small nod.
“Nice to see you again,” Nia said.
“Aren’t we working today?” Tisha looked back at Jillian. “Your father will kill me if I lose any more hours this week.”
“My father is not the murdering type, I assure you. Why don’t you sit with us?”
“So we’re not working?”
“Yes, we’re working. But we can sit for a few minutes and go back to the house at the same time.”
“I was just going to get my soda and go like I’ve been doing.”
“I was thinking about ordering breakfast. I’m happy to treat you.”
Tisha rolled her eyes. “I already ate. My great-grandma—she has a thing about it.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“She burns the toast.”
“They don’t burn the toast here. You could even have a bagel. We could just relax for a few minutes. The piles aren’t going anywhere.”
Tisha glanced at Nia. “I’m not hungry.”
“Raspberry Italian cream soda.” Joanna set the drink on the counter, and Tisha snatched it up.
“Although you didn’t give me any notice that we were changing the schedule,” Tisha said, “I will rearrange my day for your convenience. If I come an hour later than usual, will that be enough time for you to have breakfast?”
“I don’t have to order breakfast,” Jillian said. “We’ll just go back to the house now and get to work.”
“No, by all means, eat.” Tisha gestured expansively toward the table where Nia still sat. “Do what you came here to do, except the part where you and your friend think a plate of eggs will bribe me to listen to some pseudo-lecture about living up to my potential.”
“It’s just breakfast.”
“Obviously it’s not.”
“It can be.” Nia’s voice came from the table.
Tisha shook her head, her pink hair swinging. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Her nose was back in her phone before she reached her bicycle.
Jillian and Nia watched her set the soda on the brick ledge that ran across the front of Canary Cage so she could text with both thumbs.
“I suppose she’s arranging to go hang out with some friend and kill an hour complaining about the wacko boss who offered to buy her breakfast.” Jillian slumped back into her chair.
“Don’t worry,” Nia said. “Her friends are not your friends. Your reputation is safe.”
“Very funny.”
“Besides, you hardly ever leave your house, so you can just lie low until the whole scandal blows over.”
“Ha ha. You’re so helpful.” Jillian watched through the window as Tisha picked up her drink, mounted her bike, and pedaled off. “She ought to wear a helmet. Isn’t there a law or something?”
“The great state of Colorado does not deem this issue worthy of legislating.”
“You’re just full of jokes. Did you see her? She’s barely holding the handlebars because she has that stupid drink in one hand and her phone in the other.”
“Jillian, are you listening to yourself?” Nia sipped her latte, her lips turning up at the corners.
“You can sit there and grin at me with that foamy mustache you don’t even realize you have,” Jillian said, “but in an hour, I have to be ready to spend three or four hours with her again.”
“Isn’t there anything she can do where you don’t have to be in the room the whole time?”
“Only if I want to take it all apart later and do it all again myself anyway.”
“She might get better. She’s plenty smart.”
Jillian threw up her hands. “That’s the thing. We can all see she’s smart.”
Joanna paced out from behind the counter and planted her feet at their table. “Seems to me you’re the one who needs to smarten up.”
“What do you mean?”
Joanna rolled her eyes just the way Tisha sometimes did. Something told Jillian she’d had plenty of practice. Joanna was only four years older than Tisha.
“You put up with that sass?” Joanna said. “Obviously you two thought you could casually run into her here. Lame move. She called that one. But you said you didn’t have to order breakfast and could just go home and work, and what happened?”
Jillian puffed out her breath. “She dressed me down, and I’m still sitting here in a breakfast place.”
“That’s right,” Joanna said. “She walked out of here with the upper hand. Now I know a workaholic like you has plenty to do at home, but I recommend you let me bring you eggs and toast so you can eat while you figure out your next move. That girl is trouble.”
“We’ll have two orders,” Nia said.
Joanna stuck her head into the kitchen and called to her uncle to cook and returned to the counter to get the coffee machines hissing and steaming again for a pair of customers.
“I’m twenty-eight,” Jillian said. “When did I become old and lame?”
“Well, there you have it. It sneaks up on you.”
At the table next to them, an older man scraped back his chair. “Don’t ever label a child as trouble.”
Jillian and Nia turned their heads toward him.
“Dave Rossi.” He extended a hand, which they shook. “Retired high school history teacher, recently relocated to your lovely mountain town.”
“Welcome to Canyon Mines,” Jillian said.
“I agree with your sentiment,” Nia said. “I’m a former guidance counselor. I avoid labels like that too.”
“I have a feeling Jo recognizes something of herself in that girl,” Dave said.
“Do you know Joanna?”
“A little. I moved here to be near my daughter and granddaughter, but I took a part-time job in Motherlode Books. I see Jo coming and going since she moved into her apartment upstairs. We chat in passing sometimes.”
“Your teacher instincts tell you something?” Nia said.
Dave chuckled softly beneath his gray mustache. “Enough to believe Joanna’s parents might have had some sense of relief when she moved from Chicago to work for her uncle here. Now she’s talking about California someday.”
“But she just moved into an apartment,” Jillian said.
“A girl can dream,” Dave said. “LA. The city of angels.”
Joanna came out of the kitchen with two plates. “Did you decide what you’re going to do about Raspberry Italian Cream Soda?”
“We thought we’d start by calling her by her name,” Dave said.
“You’re in on this now?” Jo set the plates down in front of Jillian and Nia.
“Probably not much I
can do,” Dave said, “but I couldn’t help overhearing earlier.”
“I’m sure it was hard not to,” Jillian said. “I didn’t mean to get loud.”
“Raspberry Italian Cream Soda was the loud one.” Jo pulled cutlery wrapped in napkins from her apron pocket to add to the table.
“Tisha,” Nia said. “Maybe Mr. Rossi here didn’t know her name, but the rest of us do.”
“Call me Dave. I’m glad to have her name. Tisha. Unusual.”
Nia picked up her fork. “Something in my brain tells me formally it’s Letitia.”
Dave gave a small grunt. “Well, the traditional names are coming back, but that one doesn’t quite fit this girl.”
Jillian surveyed the perfectly scrambled eggs—not too runny, nowhere near rubbery, and still steaming—and the golden toast placed artfully beside a small fruit cup. She hadn’t had much appetite to begin with, and the conversation-turned-confrontation with Tisha had chased the remnants away.
“You might as well eat,” Nia said. “You’re here, the food’s hot, and you won’t have a chance to eat when you get home.”
“I’ll refill your coffee,” Jo said, “and then I have to take a break.”
Jillian glanced around. No line formed at the counter. Satisfied customers curled their hands around mugs and breakfast pastries. Joanna left a pot of coffee on their table, tossed her apron over a chair, and dashed out the door just as a part-time barista came through.
Clark emerged from the kitchen. “Where’s Joanna?”
Jillian shrugged. “Said she was taking a break.”
“Again? It’s barely nine thirty, and this is her second break since we opened at six.”
Clark pinched his eyes together beneath his gold-rimmed glasses. With his gray hair pulled in a ponytail, he looked more like an annoyed librarian than the relaxed former hippie he espoused to be.
“But she comes back, right?” Jillian tore off a piece of toast and dipped it in the eggs.
“Not fast enough. She won’t let me see her new place, even though it’s right across the street. But she needs to do her decorating on her own time. Maybe I’ll dock her pay and see how she likes that.”
What You Said to Me Page 8