Norah's Ark

by Judy Baer

  Then the telephone rang.

  “Toy Shop, can I help you?” His expression slid from faintly cordial to surly in a nanosecond. “Can’t. Dad’s out. No. Don’t. I don’t want…” He then resorted to a series of one-syllable grunts as whoever was on the other end of the line took over the conversation. When he slammed down the receiver it was clear his cordial phase was over.

  Without another word, Nick nodded at the now-brooding boy, took me by the arm and steered me outside.

  “What do you think that was about?” I asked once we were clear of the doorway.

  “Hard to say. He’s not a happy kid. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  “Do you think Annie is right? I don’t want to point any fingers, but…”

  “Is he responsible for all the things that have turned up missing lately?”

  “I don’t want to think he took the check out of my mailbox, but…”

  Nick looked down at me with those intense, mesmerizing blue eyes. “I’ll take care of it, Norah.” He paused. “I’ll take care of you.”

  I’ll take care of you.

  The words stayed with me for the rest of the day. In fact, I made up an entire fantasy around them involving me, Nick and Sarge, who had, for my daydream, turned pure glistening white and wore a flashing silver saddle to match Nick’s new clothes. I don’t dream small. If I’m going to be carried off by a knight in shining armor, the guy definitely needs a white horse.

  Unfortunately the lovely fantasy only made me feel guilty as I watched Joe come and go from the Java Jockey. I’d promised myself to give him a serious chance in my life and he hadn’t even gotten his own flight of the imagination. I tried to make one up to match the one I’d concocted about Nick, but the closest I could come was Joe on the back of a donkey in the Andes looking like Juan Valdez and drinking Colombian coffee.

  Winky is the guy demanding most of my time. He’s taken it into his head to exercise his vocal cords by making the most hideous screeching noises. When he’s not shrieking, he’s blurting all the bawdy words he’s ever learned and cackling delightedly at his efforts. Otherwise, he sits on his perch mumbling to himself, having a secret conversation with his armpit.

  At closing time, I wandered over to Auntie Lou’s as she was giving her sidewalk a final sweep for the day. “Are we on for Sunday? Church and brunch? I’m taking Saturday off so I won’t be seeing you around. Shall I come by about nine?”

  To my surprise, Auntie Lou looked at me with such an expression of love and gratitude in her eyes that it nearly took my breath away. “You’re a good girl, Norah. I wish you were my daughter.”

  Impulsively, I put my hand on her arm. “Then consider me such. Or at least a sister—we’re all children of God, you know.”

  She took my hand and held it tightly. “Whether you like it or not, Norah, you’re all I have.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’m all she has.

  “Bentley, I can’t get it out of my mind.” Bentley and I were face-to-face across the patio table on my deck. He sits there sometimes, rump on a chair, paws on the wrought-iron filigree of the table, listening to me. I know he’s listening by the way he cocks his head and his one black ear goes up attentively. Sometimes his expression even changes as I talk. And when I mention the word veterinarian, he growls.

  I know I’m wacky over this dog, but Bentley represents all that’s both wrong and right with people and pets. What kind of person considers it acceptable to abandon, injure or torment anything vulnerable?

  It’s easy for me to get on a soapbox about this. I suppose that’s why I love Bentley so much. He obviously—from the scars on his sturdy little self—has had some of the worst kind of treatment, yet he’s still a creature full of love and hope. Fearful as he is of anything new, he keeps trying and learning. There are people who shall remain nameless who could take congeniality lessons from Bentley.

  Nick, however, is not one of them. He, I’m discovering, is about as congenial as they come. He’s quiet but not aloof, solid but not stodgy. It’s weird of me to say this, but I feel safe with him. Not that I’ve ever felt unsafe, but he has that effect on me. Nick, like Bentley, is becoming one of my favorite people.

  But today I don’t have time to wax eloquent about my fanciful thoughts of Nick, because I have too much to do—like getting ready for a riding lesson. I’ve changed clothes three times since my shower. My most slimming, and snuggest jeans didn’t allow me to lift my leg more than a foot off the ground—not nearly enough to get me astride a horse and my baggy jeans are not the most slimming things on the planet. After I’d tried on a third pair, the kind that ride below my waist and make the flesh around my hips look like the overflow on the top of a cupcake I accepted the fact that I was not going to be glamorous today any more than I was going to suddenly become tall and leggy. I would just have to look like someone going to muck out stables.

  When Nick arrived he was wearing denim jeans and a T-shirt, too, but it all looks better on him. I can’t even remember the last time I fussed or worried over how I looked. Lilly would be proud that I’d started to care if I impressed anyone with my looks or not.

  Mulberry Farms, a horse boarding facility tucked cozily into several wooded acres, is as pretty as its name. As we walked through the main barn I noticed that many of the horses have box stalls with padded flooring and their own trainers. Some even had their own wardrobes.

  “What’s this?” I held up an oddly shaped piece of stretchy plaid fabric. “And this?”

  “A hood and a fleece-lined turnout. And that’s a regular stable blanket.” Nick moved along a wall displaying foreign-looking equipment. “Martingales, breastplates, curb straps, lunge lines, tail bags…”

  “Tail bags? Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”

  Nick’s horse Cocoa, however, is fairly modest in her needs—she eschews a box stall and her only wardrobe is a well-polished saddle and some impressive tack. She is also tall. Very tall. Especially when you are five foot four and plan to climb gracefully onto her back sans a ladder or even a stirrup.

  “It’s good to get the feel of a horse riding bareback,” Nick assured me as I eyed her shiny, slippery-looking back. “That’s how I learned to ride. Hop on and I’ll lead her around the arena for you.”

  “Hop? Do I look like a grasshopper to you?”

  “Just get a handful of her mane and swing yourself up. Here, I’ll help.” Nick bent to give me a leg up. I imagined myself a graceful nymph floating lightly onto the horse’s back. My reality was slightly different. As I clung to a hank of the horse’s mane and flailed my right leg around I realized that I have structural flaws that prevent me from doing the splits while hanging midair. I oozed down the side of the horse like a glob of grape jelly sliding down a wall. Twice. Then Nick took matters into his own hands and hoisted me into place in the least ladylike manner possible. I felt his handprints burning on my backside as he calmly handed me the reins.

  Now I could float around the arena like that nymph of my imagination…not. Cocoa’s wide, slick back offered little in the way of grips and her spine beneath me felt as if it had been sharpened on a whetstone. With every step I slid to one side or the other until I finally gave up on the reins, leaned forward and hung on to her neck for dear life.

  Then she actually started to move out.

  “Nick…ouch…I don’t…eoww…think…aurgh…this is…ooowww…working.”

  “You’re doing fine. I didn’t realize you’d never been on a horse before, Norah. You should have told me.”

  “Don’t…ouch…carousels count?”

  “Just relax. Feel her move. Be aware of her shifting weight as she walks. It will help you later when there’s a saddle under you.”

  I would have wiped the grin off his handsome face, but I didn’t dare let go long enough to do it. After a few minutes I realized I was enjoying the rocking motion, the warmth seeping into my legs from her sun-heated coat and the smell of fresh-cut hay that seems to be her s
ignature scent. I closed my eyes, tightened my grip, ignored the pain and tried to enjoy the moment.

  “What are you doing, falling asleep up there?”

  “As long as I can avoid having her backbone slice me in half, this is nice.”

  “Want to try her under a saddle?”

  “Is she tired of me yet?”

  “Hardly. She barely realizes you’re there. You’re a featherweight compared to me. Slide down and I’ll toss a saddle on her.”

  Nick’s idea of “tossing” a saddle is different from mine. What he’d really meant was “I’ll teach you to saddle this horse even if it kills you.” And it almost did.

  “I had no idea saddles weighed so much,” I gasped, the stirrup clunking me in the head for the third time as I tried to lift the saddle onto the horse’s back.

  “That’s as light a saddle as I have, Norah. If you want to be a rider, you’ll need to know how to do this.”

  “Who said I ever wanted to do this again?” I gritted my teeth and shoved. A cinch slapped me in the face.

  “Just wait. You will.”

  The only one not frustrated by the whole affair was the horse, who was gazing patiently into the distance as if she had clumsy, incompetent riders do this to her all day long.

  I love this horse.

  I was still waxing eloquent three hours later while we sat in the shade of a huge umbrella drinking iced tea and Cocoa had fled to the back of the pasture faster than a getaway car at a bank heist.

  “I want one. Just like Cocoa only a little narrower. I feel like I’ve been doing the splits all afternoon. And shorter, too. How tall is this horse?”

  “About sixteen hands,” Nick said.

  I lifted my own hand. “Like this?”

  “There are about four inches in a hand.”

  “Whatever. I’ve fallen in love.”

  “I can see that, Norah. Love becomes you.”

  I was taken up short by that comment, but when I looked at Nick I couldn’t read anything out of the ordinary in his expression. “It does?”

  “Life becomes you, Norah. You have a knack for getting the most out of every moment, don’t you?”

  A pleased blush heated my cheeks. “Thank you. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. I do love life. God is good, Nick. I take pleasure in every bit of His creation.”

  He studied me without speaking. Finally he lifted his hand and brushed a stray curl off my cheek. “I envy you that.”

  “What do you mean? You enjoy life.”

  “In my work I see a lot of the dark side, too. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes.”

  I thought of how it must have been for him before tranquil Shoreside as a detective with the narcotics division. Dark, indeed.

  “But that’s in the past, right?”

  He looked away. “Most of the time. At least when I’m awake it is.”

  “And when you’re sleeping?”

  “You can’t do much about your dreams, now can you?”

  He shifted slightly and the jagged scars on his arm seemed to make him wince.

  “Is this what you dream about?” I gestured toward his injured arm.

  His eyes flickered before he smiled. “Less and less all the time.”

  “What happened? Can you tell me?” I didn’t realize until I’d asked the question that I was leaning forward, holding my breath.

  “Happened on a drug bust. It was a bad time for me.” He drew a deep breath. “I nearly bled to death before anyone could get me help.” His expression darkened at the memory. “It was about that time that I realized I’d better be square with my Maker.” He smiled grimly. “So one good thing did come out of it.”

  “A very good thing.”

  “That’s what I try to remember—and to forget the rest.”

  Clear enough. Conversation over. Subject closed. I didn’t need any further direction to see that this was a subject Nick did not like to dwell on.

  Okay, so maybe it’s not just the horse I’m a little in love with.

  I scooped up Bentley and took him for a twirl around the living room. He sighed and went limp knowing that trying to squirm out of my arms when I was in a dancing mood would only make me cuddle him more tightly.

  “He is so sweet, Bent,” I crooned. “You’re going to love him. We’ll have to have him over soon.”

  Granted, people may have been institutionalized for less than planning a dinner party with a dog but he was the only one available.

  Until Lilly stopped by, that is.

  “You look happy,” she said without preamble when I opened the door. “I’m glad one of us is.”

  “Hello to you, too.” Before I could stand back she breezed by me like a trade wind.

  She was already in the kitchen getting chocolate syrup out of the refrigerator and digging ice cream out of my freezer. Without a word she concocted from canned pineapple, strawberry preserves and two overripe bananas, a couple of wicked banana splits.

  “Do you have any whipped cream in a can?” she asked as she stood in the cooling breeze from my refrigerator door.

  “No, but I have the shaving cream I use on my legs, will that do?”

  “Nuts? We should have nuts.”

  “We are nuts, Lilly. You, at least.”

  “Here it is.” She pulled the whipping cream from the back of the refrigerator. It was as though I’d never spoken or maybe didn’t even exist.

  Fortunately for Lilly, I’d stocked up on maraschino cherries only last week, so her creations were complete. She finally seemed to realize I was present when she carried the banana splits to the table and pushed one toward me.

  “Trouble?” I asked. “You never come here and make banana splits, malts, sundaes or root beer floats unless there’s trouble.” Lilly doesn’t keep anything fattening in her refrigerator. If I had my refrigerator stocked the way she does, I’d be a waif. I’d certainly be too bored to eat anything she purchases.

  “I haven’t heard from Connor.”

  “Were you expecting to?”

  “I don’t see why not! We had a lovely time….” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Not a peep.”

  She seemed to relax.

  “I just don’t get it, Norah. He should…others do…I don’t understand!”

  I’m great at playing fill-in-the-blanks where Lilly is concerned. “He should be more attentive and considerate? Other men call you when they leave town? You don’t understand why he doesn’t fall all over you?”

  “It sounds rather crass when you put it that way, but yes. I’m not used to being ignored!”

  “Lilly, if Connor were behaving like most men do when they meet you, would you like him as much as you do now?”

  “I…of course…I think so…sure.”

  Probably not, I thought. If he’d fallen all over her, her conquest would have been complete and she’d feel obliged to leave him in her wake and move on. Lilly the Conqueror, like Napoleon or Attila the Hun.

  My heart goes out to her. Connor has her all wound up in knots like a pretzel. Maybe she actually does like him for other reasons than that he seems to be playing hard-to-get.

  “Lilly, forget about him. You know how sailors are, a woman in every port. You can’t go crazy because there are one or two men on the planet who don’t fall head over heels for you the first time they meet you.”

  She thrust her spoon into her ice cream so forcefully that I thought the whole thing would go flying. Bentley did, too. I saw him jump to his feet and ready himself to catch the ice cream as it fell.

  “I can’t help it. I don’t know what it is, but he feels right for me. And if he doesn’t reciprocate, I don’t know what I’ll do!” She stamped her foot on my kitchen floor.

  “You can’t make someone love you, Lilly. Not if they don’t want to.”

  “But I want him to! It’s different this time. It really is.”

  I have no idea if Lilly is in love or in love with th
e idea of being in love. Either way, she’s worked herself into a state. It took not only the banana split but half a jar of fudge ice-cream topping and three-quarters of a bag of chocolate chips to calm her down.

  Imagine, then, my shock and surprise when Connor Trevain showed up on my doorstep only a half hour after I’d packed Lilly off to her own apartment.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What are you doing here?” That was a little abrupt to be a warm and friendly greeting, but I wasn’t feeling all that benevolent toward Connor after Lilly’s visit.

  Connor seemed oblivious to my coolness and strolled into my house as if he belonged there.

  He is one good-looking man. I seem to forget that when he’s not around. It’s that “out of sight, out of mind” thing, but the minute he comes back into view I am surprised anew at his good looks. I can hardly blame Lilly for getting twitterpated around him. I’m not much better.

  Bentley, who had obviously thought we were done with guests for the evening, trotted into the room carrying my bedroom slippers in his mouth. It’s his sign that he wants me to go to bed so he can cuddle with me. Some days he has my slippers in his mouth from morning until night. How can you not love a dog like that?

  He skidded to a halt at the sight of Connor. I could hear a low rumble building in his stocky chest. Bentley doesn’t like strangers, men in particular. Connor looked at the dog and dismissed him entirely.

  “Nice place you have here. Great location. Nice view of the lake.”

  “Thanks. I like it.”

  What are you doing here? I got a cold chill thinking how close he and Lilly had come to crossing paths tonight. That would have hurt Lilly terribly.

  Then, to my amazement, Connor turned and took my hands. “I had to come by and tell you that I’ve missed you this past week.”

  “Me?” When did my voice begin to sound like a squeaky dog toy?