The House on Sugar Plum Lane

by Judy Duarte

  When Mother held her for the very first time, she smiled and said, “You’re surely going to pay for your raising, Eleanor. This little girl is going to be strong willed. You mark my words.”

  I couldn’t agree more. In just a few short weeks, Barbie already knows her own mind, and I suspect that she and I are setting out on a journey that will be one sweet adventure after another.

  I’m eagerly looking forward to being a mother. My only regret is that Harold won’t be here with me to help me raise our little girl. I’ll love her enough for both of us, though. And I’ll cheer for each of her accomplishments—her first smile, her first step, her first day of school.

  I can hardly wait to see the world through her eyes.

  As a mother, Amy knew just how Ellie had felt. It had been fun to watch Callie pull herself up, to see her let go and toddle off on her own two feet before taking a tumble. To see the sense of wonder in her eyes when she spotted a butterfly flutter from its perch on a pot of geraniums on the back patio.

  Just as Ellie had, Amy had witnessed most of those precious firsts alone. But unlike Harold, who would have been with Ellie if he could have, Brandon had missed those moments by choice.

  Amy sat there just a moment longer, holding the torn journal and sensing the almost palpable presence of the young woman who’d written each heartfelt word.

  What she wouldn’t give to be able to meet Ellie, to share a cup of tea with her. But she’d have to settle for walking among her things, reading her words.

  As much as she’d like to continue sitting in the quiet of this particular bedroom, to study the pages of the torn journal, to hunt for the remainder of the book, she decided she’d better go downstairs and check on the kids.

  The movie, which she’d seen more times than she cared to admit, was coming to an end, so she took a seat in the recliner and watched until the closing credits began to roll. Then she walked Maria’s children home.

  Before she reached the front door, Maria stepped onto the porch and smiled. “Thanks for bringing them back. I was just coming to get them. Did they behave for you?”

  “They were great,” Amy said.

  “Mommy?” Sara tugged on her mother’s arm. “Can Callie come in and play?”

  “It’s all right with me,” Maria said.

  “Thanks, but that won’t work today. I have a few errands to run. And I also need to go to the grocery store so that I can go home and start dinner.”

  “Will you be back later?” Sara asked.

  Amy smiled at the child. “I’m sorry, honey. Not today.”

  Maria placed her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings, mija.”

  Amy nodded. “Have a good evening.”

  “You, too.”

  When they returned to the house, Amy told Callie it was time to pack up her toys.

  Moments later, they climbed into the car, and Amy started the engine. As they backed out of the driveway, Callie pointed toward Maria’s house, where a gray-haired woman, stooped with age, stood at the window and peered into the street.

  “That’s the lady who kept calling me Angel,” Callie said. “I told her my name, but she didn’t listen.”

  As Amy put the vehicle into Drive, she glanced back at the big bay window in time to see the figure turn away.

  “Who is she?” Amy asked. “Sara’s grandmother?”

  “I don’t know. But she was really old. Older than Grandma Rossi.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because”—Callie lifted her hands and washed them across her cheeks—“her face was all wrinkled. And she smelled like candy canes and medicine.”

  Grandma Rossi had been nearly forty when she adopted Amy’s mother, so she was getting on in years. But she was pretty spunky and sharp. She also wore stylish clothes and had an active social life, so it was easy to see how Callie might consider her much younger than she was.

  Still, it was impossible to guess who the old woman in the window might be. Maria had mentioned living with her aunt, who’d passed away a few years back. Was the woman another relative?

  The next time Amy saw Maria, she would have to ask.

  Chapter 9

  Callie came down with a sore throat on Friday, so Amy stayed home with her all weekend. But she was back to normal on Monday, which was good, since Amy had a doctor’s appointment.

  Ever since her mother had found the lump in her breast that had turned out to be malignant, Amy had been diligent about scheduling—and keeping—a yearly physical. And today had been the day.

  She wouldn’t get the official results from her Pap smear for a week or two, but her gynecologist had said that everything appeared to be normal.

  Callie was at the Goldsteins’ that morning, an arrangement Amy and Steph had worked out months ago. But she wouldn’t need to be picked up until later that afternoon. Steph was taking the girls to Roy’s Burger Roundup for lunch.

  So with a little time on her hands, Amy decided to stop by Sugar Plum Lane before going home. But it was more than a commitment she’d made to the landlord drawing her to the Rucker house.

  From the pink floral pattern on the china to the framed watercolors on the wall and the photographs that lined the mantel, Amy had gotten a solid sense of her biological great-grandmother. And she’d found herself intrigued by the woman who’d once lived there.

  As she pulled into the driveway, it was nearly twelve. She noticed that Eddie’s truck wasn’t parked anywhere in front.

  Had he left for lunch?

  She supposed it didn’t matter. He was a hard worker, and the yard looked better each time she stopped by.

  As she strode toward the front door and dug into her purse for the keys, eager to get started while she had a little peace and quiet, a meow tore into her solitude.

  She turned to the sound and spotted a white and calico-colored cat perched along the top of the fence. It appeared to be full grown but was on the scrawny side, and she wondered if it was the stray that Ellie had adopted.

  Probably not. Maria said they hadn’t seen it around in quite a while.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked the cat.

  It meowed again, this time in a long, drawn-out whine that would put a Siamese to shame.

  Amy wasn’t what you’d call an animal lover, but she started toward the fence, sensing something was out of sorts.

  The feline jumped down, landing in the yard belonging to the neighbors Amy had yet to meet.

  “Have it your way,” she told the animal. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

  She crossed the lawn, which was looking a little more green than brown these days—thanks to Eddie—returned to the front porch, and let herself into the house. But before going upstairs to the guest room in which she’d been working, she went to the kitchen, opened the pantry, and reached for the bag of Kitty Delight.

  Call her a softy, but she couldn’t help pouring some of the cat food onto a small dessert plate. Next she filled a saucer with tap water and took both dishes out to the back porch, where she left them for the cat.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing that she’d normally do; after all, the cat might not be a stray at all. But it seemed like something that would cause Ellie to smile and nod, if she were somehow able to look over Amy’s shoulder and see what she’d done.

  With her act of kindness complete, Amy returned to the house, headed upstairs to the room she’d been packing, and opened the closet door. As she removed the last of the boxes stored inside, she spotted a carton in the farthermost corner. She had to practically crawl inside to remove it.

  As she opened the lid of the black plastic container and peered at the contents, she couldn’t help mumbling her thoughts. “Now this is interesting.”

  Several black-and-white photographs had been scattered on top, one of which was a wedding picture.

  The bride—definitely Ellie—wore a dress rather than a gown. But she had a small veil on her head and held a b
ouquet of roses.

  She was ten or fifteen years older in this shot and didn’t seem to be anywhere near as starry-eyed as she’d been in the photograph with Harold, the one still displayed on the mantel. Yet she was smiling just the same.

  The groom, while not as young and handsome as Harold had been in his Army uniform, wore a dark suit and sported a white boutonniere in his lapel.

  A girl in her early teens stood beside Ellie. She was taller, but not by more than an inch or so.

  Was that Barbara?

  It had to be.

  She appeared to be scowling, though. Had she been unhappy about her mother’s decision to remarry? Or was she just displaying the attitude of a teenager who’d rather be somewhere else?

  It was hard to speculate.

  Amy continued to sift through the contents of the box until she pulled out a marriage license that declared that Clayton Ronald Emery and Eleanor Kathleen Rucker had been joined in holy matrimony on February 14, 1957.

  Valentine’s Day. A romantic choice, Amy thought. But Maria had said that Ellie’s second marriage hadn’t been happy, that it hadn’t lasted. Was that why she’d packed the evidence of it so far away?

  As Amy went through the plastic container, she found a doctor bill—several of them, actually.

  A pathology report.

  Malignant.

  A statement from Pacifica General Hospital.

  Anesthesia.

  Surgery.

  Discharge instructions.

  Mastectomy.

  Amy’s heart grew stone cold, and her fingers trembled as she realized that, like Susan, her mother, Ellie had found a lump in her breast.

  She sat silent for several moments, taking it all in, absorbing the pain—physical and emotional—of a woman she’d never met, a woman with whom Amy shared some of the same genetics.

  Those yearly physical exams would be even more important now.

  Amy took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as she pressed on, looking through the pictures and records her great-grandmother had set aside.

  She found more photos, including a birthday party of some kind—the balloons and the candles on the cake a dead giveaway.

  Barbara wore a happy smile that day, yet Ellie’s grin was clearly strained. Had she found the lump by then? Had she gone through the surgery yet?

  Amy scanned the photographs and found one of a fishing trip. Clayton was grinning from ear to ear as he lifted a string of several good-sized trout. Yet Ellie, who stood next to him, appeared to be staring off in the distance, oblivious to her husband’s pride at having snagged such a fine catch.

  Near the bottom of the box, Amy withdrew a legal document dated August 4, 1962.

  Eleanor Kathleen Emery, the petitioner, had been granted a divorce on grounds of mental cruelty and irreconcilable differences.

  For the longest time, Amy studied the items that had been stored in the box and considered the darkness they represented, the disappointment, the grief.

  Harold’s letters to his young wife, while sad and painful, had been tied with a satin ribbon and placed in the nightstand, within easy reach. Yet these memories, five years of Ellie’s life, had been relegated to a black container in the far corner of a spare closet.

  Had it been a conscious decision? A way to bury the painful past?

  Amy assumed so, and her heart, which had already gone out to the elderly woman she’d never met, ached all the more.

  What she wouldn’t give to have the opportunity to talk with Ellie. To tell her she would have loved to have had the chance to know her.

  At four-thirty, Brandon left the office earlier than usual, climbed behind the wheel of his car, and headed south on Interstate 5 to Del Mar.

  There were a hundred reasons he should have remained at work, should have brought dinner back to his desk so he could burn the midnight oil. But there was a better reason to leave and to return early in the morning. He needed to talk to Amy, and the pressing urge to do so had grown until he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  At first, when she’d moved out, he’d believed that, given time, she’d see reason. That she’d realize a lot of her misery had come with the loss of her mother. That her grief had magnified the problems in their marriage, problems that could have easily been worked through. But more than six months had passed, and things weren’t any better.

  In fact, they might even be worse, and Brandon was at a complete loss, which was really starting to play havoc with his career.

  He’d never lost focus before, never given less than a hundred percent to whatever case he’d been working on, but ever since Amy had walked out on him, it was a struggle to keep his mind on anything but her and Callie.

  What did she want from him?

  He’d never laid a hand on her that wasn’t gentle or supportive, never treated her with anything but respect. He’d worked hard and provided her with a nice house, a late-model luxury car, a closet full of expensive clothes.

  A lot of women would be happy to have Brandon as a husband. And more than one had let him know that she’d thought he was a good catch, that she wouldn’t mind being on the receiving end of a rebound. But Brandon didn’t want another woman; he wanted Amy.

  It was nearly five when he finally reached the complex where they’d first lived, the townhome where she’d recently moved in with their daughter.

  Rather than take a spot in visitor parking, which would have been an irritating reminder that he no longer belonged here, that he might not be welcome, he pulled along the curb in front of their unit and shut off the ignition.

  He didn’t see her car, but it was probably in the garage. She was a stickler for routine and was undoubtedly inside fixing dinner.

  It would be nice if she invited him to stay and eat. She was a great cook, and he’d lost about fifteen pounds since they split, finding himself tired of take-out and not interested in doing much cooking himself.

  On his way up the sidewalk leading to the front door, a light ocean breeze blew in from the Pacific and whipped a hank of hair over his eye; he raked it aside. For the first time in ages, he was struck with something akin to adolescent insecurity, yet he pressed on.

  Before he got a chance to ring the bell, Cookie started yelping, and moments later, footsteps sounded on the ceramic tile floor in the entry.

  When Amy swung open the door, holding the little dog that thought it was a Rottweiler, she looked prettier than Brandon had ever remembered, and his heartbeat kicked up a notch.

  “Brandon,” she’d said softly, as if completely taken aback at seeing him.

  The dog squirmed in her arms, its stub of a tail wagging like crazy. Cookie, he feared, was happier to see him than his wife was.

  “Is Callie here?” he asked, thinking it would be best if he spoke to Amy alone and wondering how he was going to orchestrate it.

  “She’s upstairs in her room. Coloring, I think.” Amy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, revealing a pearl earring. “I’ll call her down.”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  You can say that again. He probably ought to smile, to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t seem to swing it. “I need to talk to you.”

  She glanced at her wristwatch. Was she wondering what had provoked him to leave the office so early? Or did she have someplace to go?

  No, he caught the aroma of dinner cooking, and his mouth watered.

  As she stepped aside, allowing him into the house, the hint of a smile finally broke free.

  Score one for the home team, he thought.

  She led him into the living room and indicated he should take a seat. He chose the sofa, which meant she could have joined him if she’d wanted to, but she sat on the edge of an overstuffed chair instead.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I want you to come home,” he admitted. “And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to convince you that we can work things out.”


  “I don’t want to come home.”

  “Okay. So we don’t have to jump right back into something like that. But I’m willing to talk to a professional.”

  She studied him for a moment, then asked, “You mean a counselor?”

  He shrugged. “I hadn’t seen the value in it before.” But if it helped Amy to talk it out, to come to grips with whatever had her searching for peace and happiness…. Hey, desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “I think you’d find talking to a professional helpful,” she said.

  He blanched at the thought. Did she expect him to accept full responsibility for the split?

  That wasn’t fair.

  Sure, he’d left her and Callie hanging on occasion. But it had only been due to his drive to succeed at the office, to provide for his family.

  Did she have any idea how tough it was to grow up in a home where the utilities never got paid on time, where the electricity went off in the middle of a TV show? Or where a guy went in to take a shower and found that the only water, if it came out of the spigot at all, was cold? Where the pantry and the refrigerators were empty more times than not?

  Chuck Masterson had been a drunk, a loser, and by the time Brandon had reached high school, he’d made up his mind to bolt the minute he could. He’d vowed that if he was ever blessed with a wife and kids, they’d never have to worry about the bills being paid, that they’d always have their hearts’ desire. And, more importantly, that he’d never be an embarrassment to them.

  “If you want to make an appointment for us to see a counselor,” he said, “I’ll find the time to go.”

  “You’ll need to make the appointment yourself, Brandon. I’m not going to go with you. At one time, I would have. But I’m just not up for it anymore.”

  He opened his hands, stretched out his fingers, then rolled them into fists, trying to hold on to something just out of reach.

  “What good would counseling do me if we don’t have a marriage to work on?” he asked.

  “It will make it easier for you to have another relationship in the future. And it will help you relate to Callie better.”