Decorating Schemes

by Ginny Aiken

  I scoffed. “Stupid, right? Other days all I could do was scream my rage out at God. How could he let it all happen to me? How could he let a baby happen?”

  The memory of those days reached up and pulled on me, dragged me back toward the pit where I’d lived those agonizing days. But something deep inside me resisted. I couldn’t go there. Not again. I’d fought too hard to drag myself out.

  A sob broke in my throat. “Then there were the days when I thought about the child itself. I didn’t want a child, certainly not his child, but in the end I couldn’t hate the baby... my baby.”

  This time Tedd waited me out. When my thoughts slowed their dizzying whirl, I said, “When I began to bleed... well, that’s when I knew I wanted my child. But by then it was too late.”

  Tears filled my eyes again, sad tears, not hot and angry like the earlier ones. “He stole so much from me... I lost so much. First my trust, my faith, my innocence. Then my child. For a while there, I wanted to die.”

  Another wave of stifling darkness hovered just a finger’s length away, but it didn’t consume me like it had back then. I had survived.

  “I guess God had a different plan,” I told Tedd. “And maybe this is why I’m still around. So that I can make sure this baby doesn’t wind up like its mom.”

  “Do you think God wants you to risk drawing the killer’s attention for the sake of that child?”

  “He wouldn’t want me to ignore the danger the baby’s in.”

  “How do you know it’s in danger?”

  I burst from the chair and leaned over her desk. “Where is it, Tedd? Who has it?” I stared until she met my gaze. “Who’s feeding it? Clothing it? Loving it?”

  “Talk to Lila, Haley. It’s her job to find out.”

  “Sure. I’ll talk to her. Then she and her Smurfs can go and arrest Dutch. That’s what they’re ready to do, just like they did to me. And no matter how scared I am, I’m not sure he’s guilty of anything—other than being a hardhead who argued and lost to someone who wanted to do business the dirty way.”

  Tedd gave me a mild smile. “I like you better when you’re mad. Not like you were the other day, so scared you turned yourself inside out. Your anger tells me you’re closer each day to that healing we’ve talked about.”

  I slapped my hands on the top of her desk. “I’ll tell you what’s going to really help me heal. When I can hand that baby to someone who’ll care for it, that’s when I’ll be able to breathe again.”

  “You know you can’t go back.”

  “I know. But I can go forward.”

  “I don’t think this is the best thing for you to do.”

  “It may not be the smartest, but it’s the only thing I can do.”

  “There is another thing you can do.”

  Her tone of voice rubbed me wrong. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  Another smile. “Probably not. But I’m right. And you’ll agree—someday.”

  I took a long, deep breath of fresh air. “Hit me with your best shot, Doc.”

  “You’ve got to come to grips with your lack of trust.”

  When I went to object, she held out a hand. “Hear me out, will you? I know trust is a precious gift, and no one should fling it around like fairy dust. But you also can’t go forward if you continue to hold yourself apart. You’re part of the human race, one of God’s children, and you have to find the good in those you meet.”

  “You want me to see Christ in everyone.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, guess what? That’s just not possible. After Paul raped me, there was no shred of Christ to be found in him. And nothing you say can change how I feel about that.”

  “That’s true. I can’t change how you feel, but the Lord can. And the only way he will is if you start to flex your trust muscle.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m allergic to exercise—other than Tyler-style workouts, that is.”

  “It all comes together in a neat package—if you let it. It took a great deal of trust to let Tyler, a big, powerful man, flip you and kick at you, especially back when you were still so raw.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Then maybe you better start. And you better get ready to trust some more.”

  Uh-oh. “What’s in that squirrelly brain of yours?”

  “You’re the one who gave me the idea in the first place. You plan to go to the scuba shop tomorrow, right?”

  I nodded and gave brief thought to flight.

  “Well, there you go. You’ll just have to sign up for classes while you’re there.”

  “What? Are you nuts?”

  “I’m perfectly sane. I don’t know any other activity where you have to trust flat out. You have to put your life in your teacher’s hands. Your teacher will control your air, how long you’re underwater, how well you learn to handle yourself in another world”

  What I should do is trust my instincts a whole lot more. What I also should’ve done is gotten out while the getting was good, not stayed to listen to a therapist in need of therapy herself. “And you seriously want me to do that? To let some stranger decide whether I breathe or not?”

  “Why would that stranger not want you to breathe?”

  “Why did someone want KC dead?”

  “Someone had a reason for that. Feeding a postpartum woman blood thinner took some planning. Someone had something against her. A scuba teacher would want you to stay safe and alive. It’s not good for business if you kill your students, you know.”

  “Okay. All right. You have a point.” I gave it a thought, but I couldn’t see my way clear. “I’ll pass.”

  “You can’t let fear run the rest of your life, you know.”

  “It’s not running my life now.”

  “Sure it is. That’s why you won’t agree with me.”

  “I won’t agree with you because I’m not crazy.”

  “So prove me wrong. Take a scuba class.”

  I stood to leave. “Nope.”

  “I dare you, Haley.”

  Even with my eyes scrunched shut, I could see Tedd taunting me. I knew perfectly well what she was doing. She really did know me well. There was that little character flaw I never let anyone see, not even Tedd. She just knew what made me tick. I’ve never been able to walk away from a dare.

  But this one? This one I could turn down. “I’m outta here—”

  “I dare you.”

  “No way.”

  “Dare.”

  I crossed to the threshold, wrapped my hand around the doorknob. “I’ll keep you up on my snooping.”

  “I dare you, Haley Farrell. I dare you to prove me wrong.”

  I whirled. “Why are you doing this to me? I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. And your therapist.”

  “You’re a lousy therapist. You’re fired.”

  “You can’t fire a friend.”

  “I can walk out on one.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  I groaned. She had me there. I couldn’t. I returned to the chair. My body melted, all my oomph burned in the heat of our argument. Still, the thought of going deep into the ocean, my ability to breathe dependent on a tank of air filled by a stranger, was so foreign I couldn’t get my head around it.

  But Tedd had dared me. And something inside me urged me to do it, to show her I could do the scuba deal and still know I had to watch my back. I could trust Tedd most of the time, Bella some of the time, and Dad and Midas all of the time. But the rest of the world?

  In a pig’s eye!

  But I could trust God. “Okay, you want me to play Jacques Cousteau? Fine. I’ll do it. But that won’t prove a thing. Other than whatever doesn’t kill me—”

  “Will only make you stronger. My point precisely.”

  I’d walked right into that one. “You win this hand. I’ll do what you want me to do. But don’t blame me if I drown or something.”

  “You won’t.”

  “
Good, because I’m going to come up with something so awful, so scary, for you to do that you’ll know exactly what you put me through.”

  Tedd was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Remember who you’re talking to. I’ve already walked every mile in your shoes.”

  And she had. She also had been raped. She knew how hard it was to come back. There was nothing more I could say.

  “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  “God bless you, Haley.”

  “Thanks.” I opened her office door and took a deep breath. “I’m going to need it.”

  Sometimes I love Tedd. Others times I want to shake her.

  Today I wanted to shake her.

  I stood outside the waterfront strip of shops, staring at the one with air tanks, wet suits, rubber fins, and hoses and gauges of all shapes, colors, and types displayed in the huge front window. Asking questions took a certain amount of nerve, but that wasn’t my problem.

  I’d given Tedd my word, but I’d rather eat ground glass than enroll in a scuba diving class.

  There was no way I wanted to take a class—that was sure. Could I even do it? Was I capable of giving control to someone I didn’t know?

  Out of nowhere, the words of a song I’d recently heard on Christian radio came to mind. “God is in control,” the woman had sung. If I didn’t believe that, then I was sunk—figuratively as well as literally.

  I didn’t have to trust a teacher at the diving school. I had to trust God.

  “You got it,” I said, my eyes on the partly cloudy sky above. “You’re the boss, and I really hope you see that air goes through that air thingy once I go down. I’m counting on you.”

  As usual, God didn’t answer, but I took the slight clearing over me as a positive sign.

  I reached for the handle on the glass door, but it swung out toward me. An oldy-moldy Beach Boys’ tune blared out with enough decibels to knock me on my backside—but I held fast. Two guys in sleek wet suits, both in their late teens or maybe early twenties, came out, their faces animated.

  “Man,” the blond one said. “I knew there was good stuff down there.”

  The redhead laughed. “No joke. And it’s old, dude.”

  “Yeah, I hear they’re at least a hundred years old.”

  “That’s awesome. And they’re in awesome shape.”

  “Bet they’ll sell for a fortune.”

  “For sure. That’ll buy a lot of dive time, you know.”

  “Can you believe Tom’s luck? Man! I wish I’d gone down with him. Then maybe I could cash in on a bit of his loot, you know, talk him into sharing the wealth, dude.”

  Hmm... loot... that would sell for a fortune... and about a hundred years old...

  They could only be talking about one thing. It’d been splashed all over the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A local diver had made a major find when he explored the coast of nearby Edmonds. The antique glass bottles of various shapes, colors, and sizes were considered an absolute treasure, and the antiques community in the Pacific Northwest was all abuzz.

  I had no idea the dive shop in my backyard, so to speak, had sponsored the dive that made the find.

  My grin spanned from ear to ear. Wild Tasmanian devils couldn’t keep me from that shop now. “Look out scuba people, Auctioneer Haley is on her way.”

  The scuba shop couldn’t have felt more foreign had it been parked out on Mars. The Beach Boys and their little Deuce Coupe threatened my hearing, and the stench of rubbery, vinyly, plasticky stuff made me long for a pair of nose plugs—which they didn’t seem to sell. Nothing was familiar.

  Well, I did recognize air tanks and wet suits from TV shows and movies. And there aren’t many people in the civilized world who don’t know what swim fins and masks look like. But everything else in the shop overwhelmed me. Hoses, gauges, wicked-looking knives, weird guns, and other gizmos littered the front window and the glass shelves at the checkout counter.

  Then I saw them.

  The bottles.

  “Ah...” No wonder the papers had been full of raves. “Hey there!” The guy with a shaved head, somewhere in his early twenties, gave me a smile. “Like our latest find?”

  I approached the table in the right corner of the crowded shop, my eyes on the brown, clear, green, and blue bottles, most of which, unless I was horribly off the mark, were worth in the vicinity of fifteen hundred dollars apiece.

  “Love it,” I said, a finger on a fabulous cobalt one. “Did you find them?”

  “Dude, I was on the dive, but it was Tom Pitney who found them.”

  “Do you know what he wants to do with them?”

  “He wants to sell them, but he hasn’t made up his mind how.”

  Oh yeah! “Maybe I could help him with that. You see, I own Norwalk & Farrell’s Auctions, and we could get him top dollar for the collection.”

  The guy crossed his massively muscled arms over the bikini-clad woman on his purple tank top. “You and a thousand others, lady.”

  Bummer. “I guess he must have been contacted by every major antiques dealer in the west by now. I’m surprised he hasn’t done anything about them yet.”

  “Well, Tom’s been... um... well, a friend of his died recently, and he’s, like, been dealing with that. Dude’ll get back to diving and his bottles when he’s ready.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about his loss.” Could it be KC? “I’d like to leave you my business card anyway. I can wait until he’s ready. Losing a loved one’s a rough deal.”

  “I don’t know about a loved one,” he said, discomfort on his face. “He was her dive buddy. You know, ’cause she’s kinda young and had to dive with someone older. They’d become good friends.”

  My heartbeat sped up. “I lost a very close friend last year. It was hard, and it’s taken me a long time to deal with the pain.”

  “Yeah, well, people don’t come here to talk about dead people. Can I help you with something?”

  He had no idea how much he’d already helped. “I recently—” no need to tell him how recently “—became interested in scuba and am thinking of taking lessons. I was told you guys were pretty good.”

  “The best. Hey, I’m Max Higgins, and I, like, run the shop for Stingray two or three times a week.”

  “Stingray, huh?”

  “The owner’s name is Raymond Jones. Not exactly a stellar name, you know?” He winked. “So the dude likes Stingray better. I would too.”

  “Stingray it is. Tell me about scuba, Max. Why should I spend the time and money?”

  “Aw, dude, it’s everything. There’s nothing else like it on good ol’ planet Earth. See, it’s, like, a different world in the world. There’s no noise, it’s not crowded, you can just sit and watch the sun and clouds move across the sky from under the water, or you can go find fish...”

  I let him ramble, only half in tune with his State of the Scuba Union address. The bottles on the table had a grip on my attention, and my hands just itched to go and really check them out. I’m not as good as Ozzie at actual appraisals, but I can tell when something’s worth my time.

  With about forty of them covering the tabletop, I figured these would fetch somewhere in the vicinity of sixty thousand dollars—definitely worth my time. And then there was the connection to KC. That was something I had to pursue.

  “Listen, Max. You sold me.” He didn’t need to know on just what. “Where do I sign on the dotted line, and when does the next beginner’s class start?”

  My interruption startled him. “Uh... yeah, dude. Here. This is our latest schedule. Check it out.”

  A quick scan of the bright red flyer revealed a full roster of lessons. One could scuba dive anytime between sunrise and sunset, weather permitting. I noticed instructors’ names listed by the lessons, and Max’s appeared beside the skilled level classes.

  “I’m impressed,” I said. “Since it seems you’re an expert, I wonder if you ever teach know-nothings like me.”

  “Sometimes, but Stingray’s had Tom te
aching newbies for a couple of months. He’ll probably be your instructor.”

  “I thought you said he was so broken up he wasn’t diving these days.”

  “Well, not since KC died, he hasn’t, but, like, he’ll come back to teach his lessons for sure. He needs the bucks to pay for school.”

  Bingo! “KC? Is that the poor girl who died at the doctor’s house?”

  Max’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah... she was a friend.”

  “Did you know her too?”

  “We all did. She was a regular here since she did her bubbler gig a couple of years ago. She snorkeled a whole bunch for a while too. She got her junior certification after that, and when she turned fourteen, she decided to go for her open-water certification. Stingray was working with her on that. She was real excited when she did great on the academic stuff you have to do before each dive.”

  “So was Tom her boyfriend?” Sometimes it pays to act dumb.

  “Naw. She was, like, dating some kid from her school. But Tom’s not that old either, nineteen, and he had it bad for her. But she just didn’t even notice anyone, and she was younger than Tom. Besides, all she ever wanted was to dive.”

  “That is sad.” I had probably pumped Max to his max, so I pulled out my checkbook. “How much to enroll? Do I pay for the lessons up front? And what kind of equipment do I need? Can I rent?”

  Max took me through the enrollment process in no time, and then his eyes gleamed again. He gestured toward the gadgets and gizmos. “You’ll learn all about the gear on your first lesson. That’s when the fun starts. And all you’ll need to bring is a swimsuit. Your first lessons will be in the pool out back.”

  “A pool? Not the ocean?”

  “Not right up front.”

  I couldn’t hide my relief. “That’s great! I can handle that.”

  Max’s expression told me he’d heard more than I’d want him to. “Dude. You sure you want to do this? Diving’s not like collecting stamps. Either you’re serious or you’re out. We can’t have idiots on a dive. Everyone’s life depends on everyone else who’s down there.”

  My stomach flipped. “You’re right. It’s serious business, and yes, I do want to do this. It’s just that it’s new for me, and I’m not ready for the ocean.”