From the expression of utter innocence on his face, I deduced that Rob did, indeed, want something, but had decided now was not the right time to ask me.
Just then Spike lunged toward the forge, barking wildly. He hated all large mechanical objects, but seemed to feel a particular antipathy for my forge. Perhaps the faint roaring noise it made sounded like growling to him. We’d built his holding pen after the third time he’d nearly flambéed himself while trying to attack the forge.
“Go find something his own size for Spike to pick on,” I said. As Rob and Spike sauntered out, I thrust the rod back into the forge for the third time. Should I start heating another rod or two? It was more efficient to have several pieces going at once, working on one while the others were in various stages of heating. No, I decided I’d rather work up to a good rhythm before I started to multitask. After all, I had all day. Michael was at the college, attending more of the interminable faculty meetings that filled the weeks before Labor Day and everyone else who wanted me for anything would just have to take “I’m busy” for an answer.
I pulled the rod out, picked up the cross peen hammer, and began the next—and nearly final—step of leafmaking: the precise strokes that flattened the iron and gave the impression of the veining that ran through the leaf. Again, I managed the job in a single heating—I was definitely in good form today. I held up the leaf and was nodding with satisfaction when—
“Oh, Meg! Thank God you’re here! I need your help!”
I jumped and accidentally hit the leaf with my hammer. The metal was in that awkward stage, still hot enough to cause third degree burns, but not hot enough to be flexible. The leaf cracked off and dropped to the ground, landing on a few leaves and bits of straw that sizzled when it touched them. I grabbed the dipper and doused the area before looking up at my newest interrupter.
I saw a petite, plump woman with short, blond hair in a pixie cut, wearing jeans and a pale blue t-shirt with a faded Caerphilly College logo. She looked vaguely familiar, but it took me several embarrassingly long moments of gaping and peering to come up with a name.
“Karen?” I said finally. “I didn’t recognize you with the new haircut.” The last time I’d seen her, she could sit down on the end of her long, thick, wavy blond mane. The fact that she’d gained a good thirty pounds since our last meeting didn’t help with recognition either.
“Oh, I know,” she said, ruffling the hair with a sheepish look. “Ever since I had Timmy, I just couldn’t seem to find the time to take care of it.”
I nodded. Odds were Timmy was also the reason for the thirty pounds, not that I was going to mention it. Just because I was currently winning the diet battle didn’t mean I couldn’t understand someone who was having a harder time.
“And then when Jasper ran out on us, I decided the hell with it. I’m going to make things easier for me, and never mind what some man thinks of my hair.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. Jasper had run out on Karen and baby Timmy? Had I forgotten that, or had it been longer than I remembered since I’d seen Karen?
Apparently I didn’t do a very good job of concealing my surprise.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” she said. “But right now—could you do me a big favor?”
“Sure,” I said. “If I can.”
“Could you take care of Timmy? Just for a little while? I need to do something without him along. And my day care lady had to go out of town yesterday because of a death in the family and there just isn’t anyone else I can trust. Don’t worry; he won’t be any trouble; he’s a little angel. Wait; I’ll show you.”
She dashed out the door and then returned, pushing a large stroller. A blond toddler was asleep in it. His mouth was stained with chocolate and he was clutching a small green blanket and a ratty black stuffed toy.
“Isn’t he adorable?” She smoothed a lock of his hair that hadn’t been out of place.
Yes, he was adorable. Of course, he was also fast asleep. Even Spike looked adorable while asleep. And it must have been longer than I thought since I’d last seen Karen. Timmy was much bigger than I expected. At least two years old. Maybe three if he was small for his age. My youngest nephew was twelve now, but I remembered what he and his siblings had been like at that age. Angelic wouldn’t exactly be the word I’d choose to describe them.
“I know it’s an imposition,” Karen said. I looked up to find her staring at my face with an expression of desperation, almost panic. “There just isn’t anyone else I can trust. Meg, please, take care of Timmy for me.”
“Of course,” I said. “But what’s going on, anyway? You seem—”
“Timmy, honey!” Karen said. I glanced down to see that Timmy had awakened.
“You remember Aunt Meg, don’t you, Timmy?” Karen cooed.
I didn’t think it likely, myself, and Timmy didn’t waste much time trying to place me. His bright little eyes were already busily exploring the surroundings and he was squirming as if the rest of him couldn’t wait to follow.
I glanced around and felt a sharp twinge of protective anxiety about my workspace. “Let’s go up to the house,” I said. “This really isn’t the best place to turn a kid loose.”
“Good idea,” Karen said. The protectiveness on her face was aimed at Timmy, but at least we saw eye to eye about the fact that Timmy and my blacksmithing tools were not a match made in heaven.
“Let me shut things down here and I’ll join you,” I said. As Karen wheeled Timmy out, I turned off the gas to my forge and looked from it to my still depleted stock of merchandise.
“Just for a little while,” I said, echoing Karen’s words. I allowed myself to feel a moment of resentment that something was interrupting me just as I was finally settling down to do some real work.
But a shriek from outside broke into my moment of self pity, and I rushed out to see what was wrong.
Two
“Don’t worry,” Dad was saying. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Karen wasn’t still shrieking, but she was clutching Timmy with a fierce grip and staring at Dr. Blake, who had a six-foot green snake draped over his shoulders. Timmy, now released from the stroller, was staring at the snake with rapt attention. For that matter, so was Karen, but she didn’t look nearly as happy as Timmy did.
“It’s an Emerald Tree Boa,” Dad said. “They’re not poisonous. They grab their prey and swallow it alive.”
Karen clutched Timmy a little harder.
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Blake said. “She rarely eats anything larger than a squirrel. And she ate only two days ago. She’s still busy digesting that meal.”
“And she lives at the zoo,” I said. “Why is she digesting over here instead of in her own pen, and how quickly will she be going home to digest in peace and quiet? You know how Mother feels about having snakes around the house.”
“She’s having a very difficult shed,” Dad said. “We need to help her through it, so we brought her over here to keep an eye on while we’re working.”
“Of course, if you suffer from ophidiphobia,” Blake said. “That’s—”
“I know—fear of snakes,” I said. “No, I have no problem with reptiles, but if you value your tree boa, I’d keep a good grip on her. Because I bet Timmy would love to play with a snake—”
“’nake!” Timmy echoed.
“—and do you have any idea how rough toddlers are on things?”
“No, Timmy,” Karen said. “Ouch-ouch-ouch! No snake!”
“Want ‘nake!” Timmy muttered, a little rebelliously. In fact, I saw him take a deep breath, as if he had a lot more to say on the subject and didn’t plan to let anyone interrupt him. Fortunately, Dad and Dr. Blake swung into action and provided a distraction.
Dad picked up a large cotton sack, dampened it with a watering can, and held it open so Dr. Blake could insert the snake. The snake writhed quite dramatically, so it took several tries before they finally got her into the sack.
“What’s that you�
�re putting her in?” I asked.
“Snake bag,” Dr. Blake said, as he tied the top of the bag. “The moisture will help loosen the skin, and as she writhes around in the bag, the friction of the coarse material will help rub it off.”
The snake was still thrashing about quite energetically inside the bag, which bulged and flowed like a giant brown canvas amoeba.
“What if she gets out of the bag?” Karen asked.
“Don’t worry—we’ll put her in a safe place.”
Dad had finished tying a double knot at the mouth of the bag, and Dr. Blake took hold of the other end and helped him carry it to the safe place—our newly completed and as-yet empty hot tub.
“Michael and I were planning on using that,” I protested. “He’s having a long day of meetings and he’ll need to relax when he gets home.”
For that matter, I had been looking forward to a good soak to ease the sore muscles I’d planned on having after a day of hard work. And while it didn’t look as if I would be getting much blacksmithing done, I still might end up with the sore muscles, depending on what kinds of trouble I had to haul Timmy out of.
“If the boa’s still here when Michael gets home, you could always move him to one of your bathtubs,” Blake said, over his shoulder. He was striding off, already focused on his next project.
“I hope you weren’t planning to bring a bunch of snakes over here,” I told Dad. “Because Karen was going to leave Timmy here with me for a little while, and I don’t think she’d feel all that comfortable if the place is going to be swarming with snakes.”
Of course, while I wasn’t fond of snakes, I would feel more philosophical about their presence if they made Karen change her mind about entrusting little Timmy to my care.
“Oh, no,” he said. “No other snakes; and we’ll only have this one here for a few hours. And don’t you worry,” he added, turning to Karen. “I’ll make sure Dr. Blake doesn’t bring over any dangerous animals.”
“Or birds or reptiles?” I asked.
“No dangerous creatures at all,” Dad said. “Timmy, would you like to meet the llamas?”
He held out his hand. After inspecting him for a few moments, Timmy decided that Dad was okay. He threw his green blanket over his shoulder like a serape and toddled off, with one hand in Dad’s and the other clutching the stuffed animal. Which I’d decided was probably a cat.
“He’ll be fine with Dad for a few minutes,” I said. “Now what is going on with—”
“That’s great!” Karen exclaimed. She turned and began walking briskly—almost running—toward the front of the house. I jogged along, trying to keep up. “As soon as I get back, I’ll tell you all about what I’ve been doing for—my goodness, it must be a year or two since we’ve really had a chance to talk!”
She reached the opening in the hedge and stopped for a moment, looking slightly nervous. Then she stuck her head out and gazed in both directions before venturing out from behind the hedge. Her reluctance to leave the shelter of the shrubbery let me catch up with her.
“Look, is there anything particular I should know? About taking care of Timmy, or—”
“Of course,” she said, digging into her suitcase-sized purse and pulling out a thick wad of paper. “I almost forgot to give you this. It’s got everything you should need—meals, nap schedules, his pediatrician’s name and number—just in case of emergencies.”
I took the papers and blinked with surprise. Timmy came with a fatter instruction manual than most appliances. And did she keep this care and feeding guide around all the time in case of emergencies? It wasn’t the sort of thing you dashed off in five minutes. If she had done it especially for me, then dropping by without notice to entrust me with Timmy wasn’t exactly a sudden, last minute decision.
“I left everything you should need in your front hall,” she said. “And you can call if you have any questions. My cell number’s there. Oh, Meg, you can’t imagine how grateful I am!”
She gave me a quick hug, climbed into a battered sedan so old it probably qualified as a classic car, and drove off at least ten miles per hour above the speed limit.
“Now that was odd,” I said, to no one in particular. “What was she so worried about?”
I scanned the landscape. Since we lived fifteen miles outside the tiny college town of Caerphilly, Virginia, there weren’t generally a lot of pedestrians on hand to observe our guests’ comings and goings. Nor did our road see a lot of cars. We were sandwiched in between Seth Early’s sheep farm, across the road from our house, and the farm Mother and Dad had recently bought, which surrounded us on the other three sides. If you kept driving beyond our house, you’d pass three or four other farms, a small ramshackle motel that had been converted into furnished apartments, and a largely empty offsite storage establishment before the road dead-ended a few miles away at Caerphilly Creek. Not exactly a landscape that made most people nervous.
I was turning to go back to the house—or more likely, back to the pasture, to make sure Timmy was enjoying playtime with the llamas—when my cell phone rang. It was Michael.
“I’m sure you will be shocked to know that this year’s incoming freshmen have no memory of a life without cell phones and personal computers.”
“And they have no idea that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings,” I said.
“You’re behind the times. These days they have no idea McCartney was ever in a band at all.” He was trying to sound cheerful, but his voice had that slightly frayed quality it usually had when he’d been spending too much time in small rooms with his fellow faculty members.
“Take heart,” I said. “Won’t being tenured give you the freedom to play hooky from a lot of these summer indoctrination sessions next year?”
“But that’s next year. And it’s assuming I get tenure—”
“Which you said was looking good.”
“But it won’t happen till spring. It doesn’t help much when you’re immersed in the minutiae of academia. But speaking of immersing, I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to relaxing in the hot tub this evening.”
Dad had said the boa constrictor would only be there for a few hours. What were the odds she’d still be there when Michael got home? Should I mention the possibility?
And for that matter, would Timmy still be around? What exactly did Karen mean by “just a little while?”
“Meg? Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Remember how disappointed you were that all my nieces and nephews were visiting their Australian grandparents this summer? How you said summer wasn’t really summer without having some kids around to help you enjoy it?”
“Meg! Are you trying to break the news that you’re—”
“No,” I said. “But knowing how you feel about kids, I thought you’d be pleased that at the moment we have a loaner child. A two-year-old, or thereabouts. He might still be around by the time you get home.”
“That’s great!” he said. “Wait till you see how much fun the farm is for a toddler!”
“If Timmy’s still around, you probably won’t have much time to loll in the hot tub this evening,” I went on. “So I suppose it’s okay that Dad and Dr. Blake are storing a boa constrictor in it at the moment.”
As I’d expected, there was a brief pause before Michael answered.
“Obviously you’re having a much more interesting day than I am,” he said. “With all that going on, dare I hope that you might arrange to have some kind of emergency this afternoon? Something that would urgently require my presence?”
“I could plan on it if you like.”
“Two o’clock would be ideal. That’s when they start our diversity training session.”
“I’ll see if I can work up a good case of ophidiphobia by two,” I said. “That’s—”
“Fear of snakes, I know,” Michael said. “Later, then. Love you.”
I was a little distracted as I hung up. I had spotted someone lurking in the bushes at t
he edge of Seth Early’s sheep pasture—not in itself alarming, since Mr. Early often lurked there himself. I wasn’t quite sure if he was lying in wait to capture the thieves he believed were just waiting for the opportunity to steal his sheep, or to catch a glimpse of my cousin, Rose Noire, with whom he was smitten. I paused a moment to wave when he popped over the hedge again, and then spotted an unfamiliar figure running away.
Definitely not Seth Early, who was tall and lanky and almost always encased in denim. This lurker was short and stocky and wore a dark blue or navy track suit with a white stripe down the pants seam. Not the best choice for doing surveillance, since the white gleam of the stripe let me track his progress as he scuttled along behind the hedge and then disappeared over a small hill.
How odd. I opened my cell phone up again and called Mr. Early. Who was his usual taciturn self.
“Yeah,” he said, by way of a greeting.
“Hi, this is Meg Langslow,” I said. “I just wanted you to know that some guy was lurking in your pasture. He seemed more interested in watching our house than your sheep, and he ran away when he realized I’d spotted him, but I thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks,” Mr. Early said, with a hint of genuine warmth in his tone. “I’ll check the perimeter. Let me know if you spot him again.”
“Roger,” I said. “And let us know if you learn anything.”
“Right.”
I felt a little guilty—I didn’t really think the intruder had designs on the Early sheep. But it never hurt to be careful, and Mr. Early seemed to enjoy checking the perimeter. His bark was worse than his bite, especially since Chief Burke had forbidden him to carry around his shotgun, so he wasn’t any danger to innocent pass-ersby. And odds were the man I’d seen was innocent—a shy birdwatcher, or a motorist whose bladder couldn’t last till the next service station.
But just in case he was watching our house . . . what if it was Jasper, or someone he had hired to do surveillance on Karen? Karen really hadn’t told me much about her marital status. Was she divorced, or merely separated, and was there some kind of child custody battle? I knew from talking to my cousin Horace, who worked for the sheriff‘s office in my hometown, how nasty custody battles could get.
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