Finders Keepers

by Catherine Palmer

  “Are you ashamed?”

  He shrugged. “Obviously, my birth was considered a deep, dark, ugly secret. Maybe there’s a reason for that.”

  “Zachary, Grace wasn’t married when she conceived you. Of course she felt ashamed. I’m sure her parents were horrified. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the man you are today.”

  “Doesn’t it?” He lifted his head and eyed her.

  “Not to me.”

  He nodded. “It’s a new concept, though. I spent years trying to accept the fact that my parents had written me off when the house got too crowded. Now I find out I was illegitimate.”

  “No one can choose the way he comes into this world, Zachary. Your mother’s sins don’t change who you are. You’re legitimately loved by God. Unconditionally forgiven. Completely accepted.”

  As though this was almost too hard to hear, Zachary walked out of the parlor and into the foyer. “I’m going to keep this property,” he declared, turning to Elizabeth. His eyes blazed. “Phil Fox and the city of Ambleside aren’t going to get one particle of dust, not one splinter. Nothing. This place is mine.”

  Without another word, he stalked outside. Elizabeth stared after him. What did he mean? Was he going to keep the mansion standing? Or did he just intend to salvage the property?

  She hurried after him. He was already fiddling with his keys, and the moment she exited, he locked the front door. “Zachary, I hope you’re planning to save the house,” she said as he strode past her.

  “It’s in lousy shape.” His voice was gruff.

  “I realize that, but …”

  She slowed, realizing that he was headed for her own porch. Dear God, this man is so confusing! Elizabeth lifted her head to a patch of brilliant blue sky framed with green oak leaves. Please give me your words and not my own. I don’t know how to talk to him. I don’t know what he needs. I care about him, Father … no, I love Zachary … but he frustrates me so much!

  “Are you coming?” he called. “I need to get into your store.”

  Shaking herself from her prayer, Elizabeth ran across the grass. “Zachary, it’s Sunday. You know I don’t do business on Sundays.”

  “I want my family Bible.”

  Breathless, she stepped up onto the porch. “It’s right there on that little table where I—”

  The table beside the wooden swing was empty. Confused, she searched the other furniture on the porch—a pair of old wicker chairs, a bamboo cart, a small table. Certain she had been reading the Bible as she sat on the swing only the day before, Elizabeth frowned.

  “Maybe I put it back on the counter in the shop,” she said. “I’d been keeping it there earlier, so maybe out of habit—”

  “Mommy, are we going to eat the gobbler?” Nick asked, coming out onto the porch. “Oh hey, Zachary! Did you come over to our house to have dessert with us? Mommy made a gobbler out of apples. Gobblers are my favorite food of all.”

  Zachary smiled. “More than hot dogs and bean burritos?”

  Nick pondered this. “But I don’t like pizza,” he said solemnly. “Not at all.”

  “Nick, sweetheart,” Elizabeth said, touching his cheek to help him focus on her face. “Have you seen that old Bible I used to keep out here on the porch?”

  The boy’s face flushed instantly with guilt. “That old Bible?”

  “Grace’s Bible. The one you took to the park in your backpack.”

  He began to breathe heavily. “You like to read it on the porch, don’t you, Mommy?”

  “Yes, I do, but now it’s not here.”

  “I think that sometimes you keep that Bible on the counter inside the shop.”

  “Did you put it there, Nick?”

  “I’m not sure … but I think I … maybe I did … or maybe not.”

  “Nick, good grief, you ought to know if you moved the Bible. I’ve told you not to touch it anymore. It’s very old and fragile.”

  Irritated, she walked through her living room and down the hall to the door that connected her apartment to Finders Keepers. She could hear two pairs of feet behind her, one firm and masculine, the other practically dancing with nervousness.

  She switched on an old beaded lamp and made her way through the familiar clutter of antique cupboards, trunks, and rocking chairs. It didn’t take long to recognize the smooth, polished surface of the old glass counter. She could see nothing on it but her cash register.

  “Nick?”

  “Could I go to Magunnery’s house?” he asked breathlessly. “We could play in her tepee, and I won’t even mind if I don’t get to eat the gobbler. Not at all.”

  “Nick.” Elizabeth put her hands on her hips. “Where is Grace’s Bible?”

  “Oh, bother,” he whispered.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Well, I thought that … I thought … I didn’t mean to …”

  “Didn’t mean to what?”

  “To … to …”

  Elizabeth knew from experience that this could go on for hours. The more nervous Nick became, the less he was able to speak clearly. She supposed the abuse he had received in the Romanian orphanage had terrified him to such a depth that any confession of wrongdoing was all but impossible.

  “Did you move the Bible?” she asked as gently as possible.

  “I think I did,” he said in an almost inaudible voice. “But maybe not. No, I don’t think so. But I might have.”

  “Is the Bible in the shop?”

  His green eyes flicked around the room. “Umm … ummm …”

  “Did you hide the Bible?”

  “No.” He shook his head violently, clearly thankful that this truth could be told. “No, Mommy, I didn’t hide it.”

  “Nick,” Zachary said, crouching down to face the boy at eye level. “I was hoping to take the Bible home with me to my apartment. Do you know where it is?”

  Nick gulped audibly. “It’s not here.”

  “And so … where is it?”

  Another gulp preceded a guttural moan. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Whatever you did is OK,” Zachary said. “Just tell me where you put the Bible.”

  Nick wrung his hands, glanced at his mother, swallowed three times, and finally mouthed a whispered sentence. “I gave it away.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “Nick, whom did you give the Bible to?” Elizabeth set her hands on her hips and glared at her son. “Do you remember who it was?”

  The little boy squared his shoulders. “I don’t like that Bible.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. That Bible was not yours to give away. You weren’t even supposed to touch it. Now who has it?”

  “That Bible made you mad at me in the park.”

  “Only because I’d told you to leave it alone, and you disobeyed me by putting it in your backpack.”

  “It made Zachary mad, too. I think the Bible made him mad at you, because he threw it on the porch swing, and I saw him do it. It was not a good Bible. It gave us all trouble. I wanted to cut it up with my scissors and burn it in the fireplace or throw it in the toilet and vanish it forever.”

  “Nikolai Hayes!” Elizabeth tried to control her fury. The old Bible contained the only family record of Zachary Chalmers’s birth. It was part of Grace’s legacy to her son. Her heart’s deepest feelings had been written onto the margins of its crinkled pages. If Zachary were ever to have any hope of understanding his mother, he would need her Bible.

  “Nick,” she said, “did you cut up the Bible?”

  Guilty yet filled with resolve, he avoided this mother’s eyes. “That Bible was bad.”

  “It was not bad. It was Grace’s Bible, and I want to know—”

  “I’m not talking about the other Bibles in our house, Mom! Those are the good ones, and we take them to church and read them at night. I like those Bibles. But that one of Grace’s was bad, Mom, and you should be happy I got rid of it.”

  “Well, I’m not happy with you. I’m not happy at all.
”

  She looked across at Zachary. He was standing, hands in his pockets, looking as glum as she’d ever seen him. “I’m not sure we’re going to get a straight story,” she told him. “I’ve been through this kind of thing with Nick before. Sometimes I just can’t understand the logic he uses before he acts.”

  “He’s told you the logic behind what he did. He saw the Bible as the source of trouble. So he got rid of it. Makes sense to me.”

  “But it might still be around here somewhere, if we could only get him to tell us what he did with it.”

  “Elizabeth,” Zachary said, “your son was right. He saw the truth. That Bible opened a can of worms in my life. I wish I’d never seen the Chalmers family tree. I was better off believing I’d been dumped by my parents. At least that situation was concrete, something I could get fixed in my mind and deal with. Now, all I’ve got is a mystery about some Southern belle who sat around on a gold settee and drank tea while her servant waited on her.”

  “But that’s not nearly all there was to Grace!”

  “It’s all I need to know about the woman. All I want to know.”

  “There’s no mystery to Grace. She was wonderful and kind, Zachary. She cared about everyone in this town. She did all she could …”

  “The mystery is not just my mother. Who was my father? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Why didn’t they marry? Too many unanswerable questions. I’ll do better if I just forget the whole thing.” He reached down and gave Nick’s hair a rumple. “Don’t worry about the Bible, kiddo. Your mom likes to look backward and hold onto the past. Maybe she even wants to live in the past a little bit, but I learned a long time ago never to do that. The past is gone. It doesn’t matter. I’ve always headed forward with my life. And that’s what I’m going to do now.”

  “Forward?” Nick asked. “Which way is that?”

  “Good question.”

  “Mrs. Wrinkles taught me under, over, inside, outside, upside down, through, around, beside, beyond …”

  As Nick puzzled over what Zachary had said, Elizabeth knelt and drew her son into her arms. She knew very well what Zachary meant. He was moving on. He would leave the past—including her and Nick—behind him in his quest for a future. Though her heart was breaking, she knew she must concentrate on neither past nor future. Nick was the present, and right now her child needed her.

  “Backward is there,” Nick said, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder. “So forward is …” He pointed out the window of Finders Keepers. “Are you going away, Zachary? Are you going to leave us?”

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was the gentle thudding of Nick’s heart against his mother’s ear. She knew all too well the pain that this loss would cause the little boy. Somehow he and Zachary had connected from the very beginning. Nick had chosen Zachary to be his father as surely as Elizabeth had once chosen a small, green-eyed Romanian boy to be her son. Such bonds of the spirit were hard to break.

  “I’m going back to my apartment,” Zachary said. “Thanks for showing me around the mansion, Elizabeth. And for telling me about Grace. And thanks for all the rest of … of everything.”

  She shut her eyes and nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  As Zachary’s footfalls echoed through the shop, Elizabeth snuggled her son close. Her frustration and anger with the child seeped away in the sweet boyish smell of his hair and skin. His small fingers began to play with her hair, lifting it up and letting it fall. From the moment God had given her this child, Nick had loved to play with her hair, touching and smoothing and letting it comfort him.

  “Mommy?” he said as he picked up two handfuls of her dark hair and pressed them against her cheeks. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I want you to learn to obey me, sweetheart,” she said. “But even more important than that, I want you to know that no matter what you do, I’ll always love you.”

  “Always?”

  “Always and forever.”

  “Backward and forward?”

  “You bet.”

  He leaned over and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. “Mommy, why does Zachary always go to his apartment? Doesn’t he have a real home anywhere?”

  Elizabeth considered the rambling old house across the lawn, the tidy but half-furnished apartment down the road, the series of foster families, the trailer park.

  “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think Zachary has a place he would call a real home of his own. I don’t think he ever has.”

  “I wish we could adopt him to be in our family. Then you could put your arms around him and love him forever and always, backward and forward.”

  “Well,” Elizabeth said, “Zachary is a grown-up, and I don’t think he wants to believe that anyone ever loved him—or that anyone could love him now. I really don’t think Zachary wants to be in a family, Nick.”

  “That makes me very sad,” he whispered against her neck.

  “Me, too, sweetie. Me, too.”

  Zachary walked down the last three steps in the narrow corridor and pushed open the glass door that led out onto the square. He breathed in a chest full of fresh air to cleanse his lungs of the musty, dusty pall that clung to his office upstairs. It was going to be good to move out of those cramped quarters above Sawyer-the-lawyer’s offices and into his own brand-new work space.

  As he passed the stores that lined the square, he felt once again the sense of jaunty joy that had given a spring to his step for the past three weeks. He was a man with a plan. His new mission had given him direction and purpose. From the moment he’d figured out the path he was to walk, he had moved forward with all the jet propulsion of a rocket. Nobody and nothing could stand in his way.

  And the reason for his inner certainty came from the best place of all.

  The night he’d left Elizabeth’s place, he had gone home in a funk that wouldn’t lift. Unable to sleep, he’d meandered out onto his balcony, and after a while, he’d begun to pray. It wasn’t just random praying either. This had been a focused, intent discussion with the Christ to whom he was surrendered. By the time dawn began to send its pink mist across the river, he knew what he was supposed to do.

  It was right. It was a plan. And with God’s help, he would accomplish it.

  “Hey there, Zachary Chalmers!” Pearlene Fox called. She leaned on her broom and gave him a wave. “Long time no see. We’ve missed you in church. Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  “Taking care of business.” He crossed the street toward her. “I spent the last couple of weeks in Jeff City.”

  “Did you? Well, I’ll swan. I hope you’re not thinking of moving back there after that last council meeting and all. I know folks are all up in arms about the mansion these days, and Phil thinks he’s got himself a big enough wave to ride all the way to elections.” She rolled her eyes. “As if parking was the be-all and end-all of everything in this town.”

  “I read in the newspaper that parking is the main topic on tonight’s council agenda.”

  “Parking, my foot. Everybody’s gearing up to talk about the fate of that old eyesore over there. You want to know what I think? I think there’s nobody but Phil Fox himself who gives a rip about the parking situation in Ambleside. I think what everybody wants to talk about is Chalmers House. Who’s going to wind up with it, what’s going to happen to it, what ought to be done with it—you name it. That place has got folks speculating up one side of the street and down the other.”

  Zachary nodded. He’d heard more than an earful about it himself. “I guess people have to talk about something.”

  “In this town? Boy howdy, that’s for sure.”

  He chuckled. “Pearlene, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I ought to. I got myself into a peck of trouble by giving Liz a copy of that old town charter. Phil like to killed me. Not really, of course, but he was hoppin’ mad. Hoo, was that man steamed!”

  “This one shouldn’t cause you any pro
blems. It’s about Elizabeth Hayes.”

  “Liz? What about her?”

  Zachary tried to steel himself. He knew he was speaking to the queen bee in the gossip hive of Ambleside, Missouri. Once he told her his concerns, his personal business would belong to the town. But no one could help him better than Pearlene, so he’d have to risk it.

  “Well,” he began, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Elizabeth for … for a while now. Maybe a week or more. I’ve called her house, and I tried the shop. She’s not answering. I thought I’d drop by and check on her, but maybe you know what’s going on.”

  “Of course I know what’s going on. Why didn’t you ask me before? Liz and Nick went on a vacation.”

  “A vacation?” Zachary felt as though the sun had just been knocked slightly off-kilter. Elizabeth Hayes didn’t take vacations. She didn’t like change. She wanted security and home and the sameness of Ambleside. She was supposed to be right where Zachary had left her last—dependable and certain.

  “Liz finished that big Jeff City contract she was working on,” Pearlene explained. “You know those three houses she was furnishing? Apparently they liked what she did so well, they gave her another contract. She told me she’s going to be doing good to keep her shop open and work on that second contract both. I suspicion she’s going to have money flowing in like summer rain in a leaky basement. There was a time when I figured Liz would marry the first man who came along and could offer her and Nick some financial security. But not anymore. No, sir. She’s making her own way in this world, and I’m sure proud of her. Anyhow, Liz finished her first contract about the same time Nick got done with summer school, which, by the way, turned out real good according to Liz. He’s adding double-digit numbers now, did you know that?”

  “Double digits,” he said blankly.

  “And he’s been reading almost at grade level, which Liz says is better than everybody expected. She’s just as tickled as she can be.”

  “But … about the vacation. Where did she go?”

  “Florida.”