by H. P. Munro
Erin turned towards the friendly voice and smiled at Ruby Gale. The town’s nurse put a comforting arm around Erin’s shoulders. “This little one can charm the birds from the trees, literally. What you got with you today?” she asked Erin.
“Just Baloo, he’s in my jetpack.” She wriggled around until she could put her hand into the backpack and secure the small field mouse that’d been happily asleep in its cozy burrow. “You want to hold him?” She held the mouse out to Charlotte.
Virginia Grace moved quicker than Erin thought possible as her arm shot out catching Erin’s forearm. “She doesn’t want to touch it; it could be riddled with diseases.”
Erin brought her hand back and rubbed the spot where Mrs. Grace had caught her. She looked over towards Charlotte, who’d yet to speak since her mother’s arrival, and now had a look of horror on her face. Erin felt Ruby move from her side to stand between her and Virginia. She only made out half of what Ruby said to Mrs. Grace, something about hands, but whatever it was Virginia Grace’s face drained of color, which given the layers of makeup on her face was a feat in itself.
It was only years later when Erin heard Ruby giving Matt Sullivan and Peter Crawford a ticking off for damaging something with their horseplay, that she understood what Ruby said that day. Being a relative newcomer to Grace Falls, Erin never had the phrase said directly to her, not that she would ever have given Ruby cause to. But many a resident of the town had heard the words ‘These hands were the first to touch you, and they’ll be the first to put you back in line.’
Ruby turned back to Erin with a broad smile on her face. “Now, young Dolittle, my granddaughter, and grandson have just moved here”—The smile on the older woman’s face wavered slightly, but she seemed to rally herself with a nod of her head— “and Lord knows they could do with a friendly face right now. So why don’t you come on over and play with Alex and Alan. You’ll take right to Alan, ’cause we all call him Bear.” She turned back to Charlotte and her mother. “Charlotte, you’re welcome to come over too.”
Virginia opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to change her mind about whatever she was going to say. Instead, she smiled a smile that reached nowhere above her lips as she thanked Ruby for her offer, but explained she was just taking Charlotte to St Anton for a tennis lesson.
“See you later?” Erin whispered hopefully to Charlotte when Virginia Grace turned to leave.
Charlotte glanced in her mother’s direction making sure she wasn’t paying her any attention before nodding quickly, turning on her heel, and skipping to catch her mother.
Ruby looked down at Erin and shook her head. “That girl is going to cause you nothing but trouble, little ‘un. I hope you know that.”
Erin shrugged. “She’s my best friend.”
Erin sighed as she slotted the photos back into the book. She mused that had she paid more attention to Ruby Gale’s warning that day she wouldn’t have had her heart broken into a million pieces years later. But then, for every time that Charlotte allowed her mother to ride roughshod over her, there were the sweet times when it was just them.
Hours after she’d run into Charlotte in town, she found herself back on their rock waiting for her. Knowing for some reason Charlotte would appear. She hadn’t to wait very long before Charlotte arrived, out of breath and still wearing the outfit she’d had on earlier.
“I knew you’d be here,” Charlotte said with a grin.
Erin shrugged as if it were nothing.
“I’m sorry about what happened earlier, my mama is…” She screwed her face up as she tried to explain her mother. “Well, she’s hard to get along with.” Charlotte frowned, dissatisfied at the description which failed to capture her mother entirely. “My daddy says that he doesn’t think she likes anyone very much.” She giggled as she repeated her father’s muttered comment, made when he didn’t think anyone was listening.
“You hurt my feelings.” Erin tucked her head against her shoulder and crossed her arms.
Charlotte rushed forward and pulled Erin into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, I would never want to hurt you. You’re my best friend.” She let go and stared into Erin’s hazel eyes. “I know, we’ll make a signal so that even if my mama doesn’t let me speak to you, you’ll always know that you’re my best friend forever.”
Erin’s spirits perked up. “Like a bat signal?”
“Exactly.” Charlotte nodded. Her forehead crinkled as she thought hard about what the signal might be. “I know!” she yelled, jumping up and down with excitement. “You know how a chain has links, and they go together?”
Erin nodded, jumping in time with her friend.
“Well, we’re like that. Two links that make a chain.” Charlotte clapped her hands together. “It’s perfect. So our signal is this.” She made a loop with her thumb and forefinger and placed her other thumb and finger through it, closing the chain.
Erin copied the signal. “Like this?”
“Exactly like that. This is our signal. That no matter what, we’re unbreakable.”
Erin felt a warm tear trickle down her cheek at the memory. She looked down at her hands in her lap. She’d no idea when during her reminiscing it had happened, but her fingers were now looped through each other making a chain.
Chapter Seven
Charlotte exhaled in frustration when she saw the incoming call to her cell was from Molly. She swiped the screen the answer the call. “Where are you?”
“I need to know that you’re not going to hate me.”
Charlotte looked around the busy restaurant they were due to meet in and frowned. “Have you got held up at work? It’s a Friday. Even lawyers are allowed a little fun on a Friday.” She could hear Molly take a few deep breaths before answering.
“Not exactly.”
Charlotte’s frown deepened at Molly’s words.
“You see, you know how you told me to delete your profile and cease and desist from all online dating activity?”
“Mmmmm?” Charlotte could feel her temper start to flare at what she anticipated was coming next.
“Well, I didn’t exactly delete it…or stop. In fact, I got chatting with a lovely woman. Her name’s Sophie, she’s an accountant, and she should be sitting at the bar wearing a red dress.”
The line was dead before Charlotte could respond. She looked at her cell phone and growled. “I am going to kill you, Molly.”
Scanning the bar, she saw a woman with short dark hair wearing a red dress, her eyes nervously darting around the room until they settled on Charlotte. Plastering a smile on her face, Charlotte walked towards the bar. “Hi, are you, Sophie by any chance?”
The woman looked relieved. “Yes and you’ll be, Charlotte?”
“I am. Look there’s something you should know, I—”
“It’s okay.” Sophie placed a hand on Charlotte’s forearm. “Your friend Molly came clean. I know it’s not been you that I’ve been chatting to.”
Charlotte let out a relieved breath. “Oh thank God. I was wondering how I was going to explain why I had no idea what we’d spoken about.”
“Well now that’s out of the way we can spend the time getting to know each other a little better,” she said, her eyes blatantly roaming up and down Charlotte’s slender frame.
Suppressing the need to gulp, Charlotte sat down and waved the bartender over to order.
***
Charlotte tapped her fingers waiting on Molly picking up the phone. Before Molly even had the chance to utter a greeting, Charlotte spoke.
“Molly, you in danger girl.”
“I am? Why? How’d your evening go?”
“Really lovely.”
“Really? That’s great.”
“Yeah, we had a few drinks and then stayed for dinner. The conversation was flowing. The food was lovely. Sophie was great fun, and we had a lot in common.”
“Why do I hear a but in there somewhere?”
“Well I like big butts, and I cannot lie.”
; Molly snorted. “Okay, out with it. What happened?”
“Remember that time you set me up with the woman with narcolepsy and she kept passing out during dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that was a better date!”
“Why? I thought you just said you had lots in common.”
Charlotte laughed without humor. “Oh we did, in particular, we had Tina in common. During a chat about disastrous relationships, Sophie mentioned a woman she’d slept with, who told this sob story about her partner not understanding her or fulfilling her needs as she was more interested in work than her. Imagine my surprise when Sophie casually mentions that the poor woman who sought solace between her legs was in a relationship with someone who owned a chain of gyms!”
“Oh God, I am so sorry. I would never have—”
“I know.” Charlotte ran her hand through her hair in frustration. “Now will you leave it alone? I think we’ve proven that your record as Cupid is flawed.”
“Absolutely, no more I promise.”
“You have your fingers crossed don’t you?”
“Err…Nope.”
Charlotte laughed as she hung up the call, knowing her friend was lying. She’d deliberately kept her tone light in an attempt to hide from Molly how unnerved she’d been when she realized the connection with Sophie.
Although it had been two years since she’d ended things with Tina, she’d spent a lot of time reflecting on why she’d allowed herself to settle for that relationship. Finding Tina with another woman in their bed hadn’t been a revelation. Charlotte had been aware of her cheating for years. It was only the fact she no longer had plausible deniability about it that resulted in her kicking Tina out.
That was the reason she’d spent hours in therapy, to understand why she’d allowed herself to be used in that manner. In the end, it hadn’t taken a therapist to work it out, Charlotte knew the reason…Erin.
The guilt she felt over leaving Erin and cutting off all contact was still as fresh today as when it happened. The wounds were still there, raw and angry, and nothing she’d done since had come close to soothing them.
The music on her iPod changed and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time after Time’ started to play. She picked up the remote to change the song as was her habit. The tune held too many memories, and the words were too close for comfort most nights. However, tonight she paused. Tonight she would allow the memories to come.
“You are going, and I won’t speak to you about this again.” Her mother rose from her chair and walked towards her.
“But I don’t want to go to a different school. I want to go to school with my friends.” Tears flowed down Charlotte’s reddened cheeks. Her mother’s unexpected announcement had shaken her to her core, and she’d spent the past hour pleading with her mother to change her mind.
Virginia shook her. “You are a Grace. You are not one of these town children. They are not your friends. When you’re older, they will no doubt be employees. You need to recognize that you are above them. You will go to this school and you will learn your place. Then you will go to college, and we will find you a man we think suitable to take over the business affairs from your father.”
Charlotte’s twelve-year-old brain almost melted as her mother casually laid out the plans for her future, as if she had no say in the matter. From an early age, she’d accompanied her father to the yard and listened intently as he explained the family business. When he decided to expand, she’d stood proudly beside him while the first hunting lodge was built. It had always been a thought of hers that she would be the one to take over from her father, and that was why he was investing such time in her, showing her each process at the lumberyard in painstaking detail.
“Did you hear a word I said?”
Her mother’s voice interrupted her train of thought and brought her back to her current plight. She was to be sent to a different school than her friends. As far as she was concerned there wasn’t much else her mother could say that would inflict as much pain.
“I said, they’ve given us a list of the things you’re to take, so we’ll need to go shopping as their winters are nothing like ours.”
Charlotte blinked in confusion. “What do you mean their winters are different? Where am I going to school?”
Virginia Grace huffed irritably. “Massachusetts. I knew you weren’t paying attention.”
Charlotte felt a lump form in her throat. She thought the pain of going to another school was bad enough when she thought it was another school in the county. Now the realization she was going to be sent across the country was almost too much to bear. She looked at her mother with all the pain in her heart visible on her face.
“I hate you, and I will never forgive you for this.” She spun on her heel and sprinted from the room before her mother had a chance to respond.
Her only desire had been to get out of her mother’s presence, and she ran without thought. However, she wasn’t surprised when she found herself at Erin’s Rock. Sobs racked her body at the realization she wasn’t going to be able to spend time here with her friend.
She’d no idea how long she’d sat on the rock shielding her face as she cried, only that at some point a white rabbit was placed on her lap and freckled arms encased her in a tight hug.
Chapter Eight
“Good afternoon everyone and thank you to Miss Roosevelt and all of you for letting me come to your class to speak to you today.” Erin looked at the expectant faces of Grace Falls Elementary School’s third-grade class and took a breath.
Animals she was good with, but children were a whole different kettle of crawfish. “So I’m here to talk to you about caring for animals. I’ve brought my dog Cooper with me today to help out.” She looked down towards Cooper, who was laying resting his head on his paws on the floor.
“So first up, how many of y’all have a dog?”
A half hour later and Erin was completely at ease. Her presentation was over, and she was hosting an impromptu Q&A session with the children.
When Teddy approached her about coming to her class to speak, Erin had been wary on two counts. Apart from Jessica, she didn’t have a lot of experience with kids. Besides a conversation with Jessica was like speaking to an adult a lot of the time. The second thing that made her apprehensive was the fact Teddy asked her at all. Despite having known Claudia Roosevelt since they were both kids, Erin always got the impression she’d done something to piss Teddy off, but for the life of her she’d no idea what it could be.
Seeing Lewis Mack’s hand waving in the air, Erin called on him. “Lewis, what’s your question?”
“My mama says puppies and kittens come from Virginia. I wanna know whether she’s talkin’ ’bout Mrs. Grace or the state, ’cause I’d like a puppy and I need to know who I should be goin’ to.”
Erin looked to the back of the class where Teddy was perched on an unused desk quietly stuffing the sleeve of her sweater into her mouth. Sensing she was on her own, Erin focused her attention on Lewis.
“Well, Lewis, regardless of where puppies come from, I think that’s a question you should be having with your mama, ’cause I’d imagine she’d have an opinion on you having a pet.” She flashed a smile at the class, deciding then and there her Q&A session was over. “I should go let you get on with your studies. Thank you again for asking me.”
She grabbed Cooper’s leash and made a quick exit while the children clapped their appreciation. Once outside the classroom door she started to laugh loudly, stopping when she heard the door open and close beside her. Teddy stood in the corridor her eyes glistening with tears of mirth.
“Oh my God, how did you ever keep a straight face?” Teddy asked between peals of laughter.
“I just kept thinking about what would happen if Lewis ever asked Virginia Grace. Mack would have a heart attack. I’ll tell you this though, it was damned hard!”
“But it would almost be worth it to have seen both their faces. I should get back in and start getting t
hem packed up. Thanks again.” She shook as if to compose herself before disappearing back into the classroom leaving Erin standing in the halls of the elementary school she’d attended, still giggling.
She could almost visualize ghosts of the past and hear their voices echoing down the halls. Marion Mack, or Marion Sinclair as she was then, her hair a mass of thick dark curls sticking out in various directions, standing with her hands on her hips as she dictated to everyone within earshot. Matt Sullivan and Peter Campbell horsing around with Bear Milne. Hovering close by were Alex Milne, Ruth Anderson, and Claudia Roosevelt. The twosome of Ruth and Teddy had enveloped Alex when she and her brother moved to Grace Falls, in the summer following their mother’s death. As ever, standing next to Erin was Charlotte, surveying all that surrounded her with the composure that seemed inherent in the Grace family.
Cooper’s impatient nudge to her leg brought her back to the present day. She scanned the corridor once more, the color and images in her mind replaced by reality.
The bell rang loudly as she stepped out into the sunshine. She spotted Alex standing with Mack, waiting on their children’s exit from school. They usually let the kids make their own way home. However, comments about Alex and Maddie’s relationship had flared up again. Although Jessica was able to rise above it, Lewis, Mack’s son, in his self-appointed role as her protector found himself in trouble again for replying with his fists.
Alex was immediately on her knees to greet an equally excited Cooper. “Hello, handsome,” she cooed rubbing his ruff. “Have you enrolled in school now too?”
“We were just doing a talk on pet care.” Before she could say anything to Mack, Jessica and Lewis appeared at her side.
“Hey, Mama.” Jessica knelt down to join her mom with Cooper. “We learned lots today, and I got to show the class how to make Cooper sit and lie down.”
“Did you?” Alex watched her daughter warily, knowing today’s lesson would no doubt lead to a ‘wannadog’ campaign for the next few weeks.
“Oh, Dr. Hunter.” Jessica squinted up into the sunshine. “I sorted Lewis out. He knows now it’s vagina and not Virginia.”