Donna shook her head fast. Her hands hit the keys with deliberate strokes. “I was too young when you were born. You’d have to speak with someone older.” She put a long line of dashes on the screen to separate what was already there from what was coming. “Was Judd really angry?”
She looked up to see Chelsea say, “Furious. He feels that I deceived him, that I’m deceiving the whole town. He’s insulted. He’s convinced that I’m ambitious and manipulative. I acknowledge that I haven’t made the best decisions, but the last few months have been difficult. What with my life in Baltimore coming apart, then my involvement with Judd, which I did not plan, then trying to juggle the work in two separate offices, getting Boulderbrook finished, and the phone calls—“ She threw a hand in the air and looked away. “Too much.”
Donna touched her arm, then the keyboard. “What phone calls?”
“They come late at night. Two or three in a row. First silence, then the muted sound of children’s voices, like someone had a tape recorder in the hall outside the school cafeteria during lunch.”
“How often?” Donna asked aloud.
“Several times a week. I try to ignore them, but they keep coming. Someone is trying to spook me, and that someone is very persistent. It’s the persistence that makes me uneasy.”
Donna could understand it. “Does Nolan know?” she asked.
Chelsea made a face. “They’re only phone calls. I hate to make a big thing of them. I’m sure that’s exactly what whoever is making them wants.”
“Nolan should know.”
“They’re not dangerous. Just annoying.”
But Donna felt strongly about it. Turning to the computer, she typed, “Nolan is a good man. He’s able, and he’s discreet. He stops by here a lot. Would you mind if I tell him?”
“But what can he do?”
“He can keep an eye on Boulderbrook. He can keep an ear out for word of someone who might resent your being here.”
Chelsea tossed a sad glance toward the ceiling. “Half of Norwich Notch resents my being here.”
Donna put an arm around her. “Not true,” she said in a way that even she knew was emphatic. “They’re envious of you.” She looked at Chelsea’s stomach again. “So am I. I loved being pregnant.”
Chelsea brightened at that. “Did you have an easy pregnancy?”
Donna nodded and turned to the computer. “Joshie was wonderful from the minute he was born. I’d have had others if things were different.”
“Your hearing?”
“My husband.” She immediately backspaced to erase the last and typed, “Are you planning to have the baby here?”
“Yes. At home. With a midwife in attendance.” Chelsea looked as startled by the words as Donna was. She suddenly laughed. “I hadn’t thought about that before, but it’s what I want.”
“It doesn’t scare you?”
“It terrifies me, but just think of how rewarding it’ll be!”
Donna was always slightly in awe of Chelsea when she said things like that. She had a sense of adventure, a sense of daring. Some of it was a by-product of self-confidence, some of sophistication. Now Donna understood that some also came from rootlessness. Not knowing who she was made Chelsea unfettered and free.
Donna knew just who she was. She was a Farr, and a Plum before that, and she was getting tired telling herself how wonderful it was. She wanted some of the freedom Chelsea had—not that she would ever leave the Notch, because Joshie was here and he was the light of her life, but she wanted to go out to lunch sometimes, or down to Boston, or over to Portland. She wanted to have her friends to the house occasionally without being made miserable. She wanted to color the gray strands out of her hair without being told she should be proud of her age. She wanted to run with Chelsea.
Mostly she wanted to be able to climb into bed at night without being mauled.
She wished she were half as brave as Chelsea was. Then again, maybe not. Given bravery, plus a bit of foolhardiness, she might well do something that would shock the Notch far more than Chelsea Kane’s baby.
That thought lingered with her long after Chelsea left. Donna wasn’t out to shock anyone. But it struck her that she had a golden opportunity. Chelsea was her friend, and her friend needed help. If that meant Donna’s working closely with the police or running with Chelsea so that she wouldn’t be alone and exposed on the roads, so be it.
Bravery wasn’t an all or nothing affair. She had a little. Taking that little and the fifteen minutes that Matthew allowed her for lunch, when the noon bells pealed in the church belfry, she marched down the street to see Nolan.
A WEEK LATER OLIVER AND EMERY STOOD AT ZEE’S WINDOW. They held hot cups filled with coffee that had gone tepid, but neither seemed to notice. Their eyes were on the two women who stood talking on the front porch of Farr’s General Store, diagonally across the green.
“Don’t like what Donna’s doin’,” Emery warned Oliver in a low voice. “Neither does my boy. She’s different with that woman here. Matt says she goes running through the streets in the mornings now. You got to tell her to stop that.”
“I’m not tellin’ her a thing,” Oliver said.
“You’re her father.”
“And he’s her husband. Let him tell her. Me, I don’t have a problem with running.”
“She’s not your wife.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Fact is,” came a loud voice from the barber’s chair, “it doesn’t matter whose wife she is or isn’t. She spends too much time with Chelsea Kane. No good’ll come of it, I tell you. The woman’s corrupting this town.”
Oliver slid a dry look at the reclining figure being serviced by Zee. “Don’t hear you complainin’ about her money, George.”
“Nope. Her money’s good. That’s about all.”
“It ain’t all,” Oliver argued. “She’s getting work. We already had to take on more men. Ain’t that so, Judd?”
Judd, who was leaning against the wall nursing his own tepid coffee, said, “Yup.”
“More men hired means more money deposited in your bank,” Oliver called back to George, “and more money spent in your store,” he reminded Emery, “so you both better keep your mouths shut.”
Emery snorted. “That’s what we done, and look where it got us. She’s got our women lettin’ their hair curl and wearin’ sundresses ‘steada pants and skinny exercise things loud enough to turn you blind, and that’s not to mention Labor Day. Hear what she’s done to Labor Day?”
“Messed it all up,” shouted George.
Emery straightened his glasses, muttering, “Open house. Who needs an open house? You give her permission to have an open house, Ollie?”
“Permission ain’t mine to give. She’s the one puttin’ it on.”
“Well, we need an amendment to the social practices code,” Emery declared. “No one puts on an open house without first checking with the selectmen. D’you know she had the gall to hire Bibi to do a chicken barbecue with apple brown betty for dessert, so now Bibi won’t do apple brown betty for Labor Day Dessert? We always have apple brown betty for Labor Day Dessert.”
“Her Indian pudding’s better,” put in Judd. If Chelsea had asked him, he’d have told her the same thing. But she hadn’t asked him. She hadn’t had the chance. Since that Monday morning, he was steering clear of her. If their paths crossed at the office, their paths crossed. He wasn’t going out of his way to see her, and he sure as hell wasn’t seeing her at night. He was still too angry to feel any desire for her.
“Tell him about the inn,” George called in a voice muffled by Zee’s damp towel.
Emery said, “She’s booked every room in the inn, and a pack in Stotterville, too. Don’t know what we’ll do if any of us have visitors that weekend. Nothin’s left. I’m tellin’ you, Ollie, we’re gonna be overrun here.”
Judd amended what he’d just thought. He did want her. All he had to do was think of her and the wanting began, which was doubly infuriating. He had kn
own she was trouble. He should have listened to himself.
“Tell him about the firehouse,” George told Emery.
Emery said, “She told Hunter she needed her yard cleaned up before her open house, so he hired the guys who woulda been painting the firehouse. There’s our cheap labor”—he snapped his fingers—“gone. It’s like she’s directing a movie, only we got no parts.”
Not betrayed, Judd thought. Left out. She and her baby had their own little secret, and they hadn’t bothered to clue him in. He wasn’t part of it. He was excluded. Irrational, perhaps, but that was how he felt.
“I don’t like it, Ollie,” Emery went on. “You got to get rid of her.”
“I’m doin’ my best. I’m keepin’ ahead of the work. Come June, she’ll be gone.”
“June’s too long. Get rid of her now.”
Oliver’s voice jumped half an octave. “How’m I s’posed to do that?”
With the creak of old leather, George rose from the barber’s chair and said, “Open your mouth and tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
He wiped his face as he joined the others at the window. “Tell her to leave.”
“Can’t do that. She’s my partner.”
He narrowed his eyes in a way that lengthened his forehead, making his spiky gray hair look even spikier. “You like her.”
“I do not like her,” Oliver barked, “but she’s doing what she said she would. She’s bringing in work.”
“She can do that from Baltimore. Fact is, she doesn’t belong here. Look at her.” He stared in the direction of Farr’s a bit lecherously, Judd thought. “Still wearing those dresses that don’t even hit her knees. Know what they’re saying at the bar at the inn? They’re saying she’s got more’n one man pushin’ it down so’s he don’t show it at work, and I believe it. Any woman who shows off like that isn’t out for a handshake.”
“It’s a loose dress,” Judd said because it was his opinion that dirty old men shouldn’t go unchallenged. “Everything she wears is loose. How’s that showing off?”
“Her legs,” George said. “They’re bare.”
Oliver grunted. “So’re the legs of half the people in town this time a year.”
“Well, it isn’t their legs old Buck is stickin’ to,” George retorted. “I tell you, the dog’s got taste.” He bent to one side, still looking out. “ ‘Course, if he’d move a little, I could get a better look.”
“Lord sakes, George,” Emery complained, shaking out a fresh handkerchief, “you’re getting worse by the day. Listening to you, a person’d think you hadn’t seen a woman in weeks, but I happen to know that the new secretary you just hired—“
“I’m a widower,” George snapped. “I can do what I want.”
“Oh, I know that,” Emery said, all calmness and rosy cheeks as he removed his spectacles and began to polish the glass. “What I don’t know is what she’d see in an old geezer like you.” He tossed his head toward Chelsea. “That one sure as hell ain’t followin’ you around. Maybe that’s what bothers you.”
Judd wondered if it was true, but in lieu of answering, George turned to him with a confrontational look. “I told you what they’re sayin’ in the bar at the inn. Know what they’re sayin’ at Crocker’s?”
Judd finished off his coffee, crushed the cup, and lobbed it into the wastebasket. He folded his arms on his chest. “What’re they sayin’ at Crocker’s?” As if he didn’t know. He was there once a day, at least. No one said anything to his face, but he wasn’t dumb. He knew the talk. It was his business to know it.
“They say you’re porkin’ her. That so?”
“Nope,” Judd said.
“Like hell it isn’t,” Emery sputtered.
Oliver pushed out his lower lip and kept his eyes on Farr’s, while Emery furthered his case.
“Whole town knows where you’re going at night when Millie Malone comes to stay.” He guffawed. “God knows you ain’t doin’ it to Millie.”
George stuffed his hands under his suspenders and gave Judd a speculative look. To Emery, out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “Can see why she’d like him. Right size. Right age. I said that before, when we told him to keep an eye on her. Seems he’s done more’n that.” To Judd he said, “You’re playing with fire. Already been burned by one city woman. Looking to be burned by another?”
“I’m wiser,” Judd said.
“So was Leo, and look what happened to him. He was done in by a city woman, too. Never got over your mother leaving. I swear, the trouble he’s havin’ with his mind now can be traced right to that.”
Peeling his back from the wall, Judd drew himself to his full height. “Leo and I have done just fine.”
“Well, good,” George said, “but if you’re smart as you think, you’ll stop foolin’ with Chelsea Kane and start puttin’ her in her place. She wants to get business for the company, that’s fine. She wants to turn this town upside down, that ain’t fine. And if you can’t tell her that, there’s plenty who can. You keep it in mind, Judd.”
The cymbalists clicked out of their houses on either side of the clock, clapped their cymbals five times, then clicked back inside.
Judd looked at Oliver. “It’s ten-thirty. I have to get to the quarry. If you want me to drive you, you’ll have to leave now.”
“You listening, Judd?” George demanded.
Oh, yes, Judd was listening. He was also thinking about breakfast two mornings ago, when Nolan McCoy slid into his booth at Crocker’s and started talking. Someone was making strange phone calls to Chelsea—damn her hide for not telling him about that, either. He wondered if George knew anything about it, because what he’d just said sounded suspiciously like a threat. Judd wasn’t having anything to do with Chelsea, but if the calls continued, or if anyone dared harm her with the intention of scaring her off, they’d have to answer to him. He wasn’t having the possible damage to a helpless, unborn child on his conscience.
LABOR DAY IN THE NOTCH WAS A VARIATION ON THE THEME of the Fourth of July. Faces were more tanned now, legs more lazy. There was no parade, but there was a bicycle ride through town to raise money to fight muscular dystrophy, a fair highlighted by a contest for the largest zucchini, a frog race, a merry-go-round on the green, the summer league playoffs, and Labor Day Dessert, which was an evening free-for-all of pies, puddings, and cakes.
Chelsea was pleased with herself. She made it through without lapsing into a blue funk, which wasn’t to say she’d been deliriously happy, simply that she’d made it through. She had been lonesome. It was hard seeing families having fun together, and much as she viewed various groups with an eye toward which one she might belong to, she remained very much the outsider. The hardest part was seeing Judd play basketball and win and not being able to give him a victory hug, but she made it through that, too. She wasn’t a beggar where men were concerned. Her relationship with him had been unexpected and short-lived. She would survive it.
The open house, on the other hand, was a triumph from start to finish. Over the course of the weekend, no less than two hundred friends, colleagues, and potential buyers came to the Notch. Some made the trip in a day, others took advantage of the excuse to get a jump on the leafers in viewing the splendor fall made of the New England hills. The best of the colors was nearly a month away, but the first of the swamp maples had turned red, the first of the birches yellow. Whether into leafing or not, all who showed up for the open house had a wonderful time, if the amount of money spent at Farr’s, the level of laughter at the bar at the inn, and the buckets of barbecued chicken and apple brown betty consumed at Boulderbrook was any indication. Crowning the weekend were a dozen large orders for granite.
Oliver studied the work orders with satisfaction.
Judd hired another five men.
Chelsea ran with Donna at sunrise on what promised to be a bright September day. The air was fresh and brisk enough to leave their mouths in tiny white puffs. Likewise the landscape, which was more vib
rantly colored by the day, was stiff with an almost frost. They wore sweatshirts that would be tied around their waists by the time they finished and Lycra tights that covered their legs, and they ran with the extra spring to their step that the crisp air inspired.
It was the kind of morning that brimmed with optimism, the kind of morning when Chelsea felt that things were finally coming together for her at Norwich Notch. Boulderbrook was finished and lovely, decorated in a warm, homey style, with area rugs and quilts and macramé pillows and prints that she would never have dreamed of displaying in Baltimore but were fitting here. The arduous hours of phone calls and letter writing she had done in June and July were paying off in steady activity at the quarries and full utilization of the new cutting shed. Granted, Kevin refused to visit her, but she continued to call. She wasn’t giving up. Sooner or later he would realize that she loved him as much as ever.
She was four months pregnant and feeling strong, which didn’t mean that she was carrying on with the same spriteliness as before. She had gained eight pounds—still comfortably hidden under loose clothing—and felt every one, so she ran a bit slower and not quite as far. That was why running with Donna was perfect. Cydra, who had stayed with Chelsea at Boulderbrook for the open house weekend, teased her mercilessly when she fell behind. Donna was content with the slower pace, not that she wasn’t athletic. She and Chelsea were built remarkably alike. But she didn’t have the history of running that Chelsea did or, therefore, the endurance.
On this particular morning they ran side by side, near perfect shadows of each other. They headed in the direction of the traffic, although with the sun barely up there wasn’t much of that yet. Since Chelsea was the hearing one, she ran on Donna’s left and edged her closer to the shoulder of the road when a vehicle approached from behind.
She did that this time. From the rumble of its engine, she guessed the vehicle to be a truck, as most were at that hour. The rumble came closer, then closer still in a way that made Chelsea glance over her shoulder nervously. Stunned at how close to the side of the road the truck was, she gestured for it to give them room. It had the rest of the road to itself.
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 28