Mr. Elliott Finds a Family

by Susan Floyd

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Beth Ann said shortly. To be fair, not painting had nothing to do with Carrie at all.

  “Caroline was my wife.”

  “Carrie was my sister.”

  She stared at him and watched his face grow closed before it relaxed and he gave her a small smile, the clench of his hand belying his calm.

  “Let me have the chance to get to know Bernie.”

  “You can’t have her.” Beth Ann felt a chill shimmy down her spine. “And you’d crush me in court.”

  He took a deep breath and looked at her again, and Beth Ann saw pure raw pain in his eyes. He said quietly, “I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me on this, but I wouldn’t dream of taking her from you. I just want to know Caroline’s daughter. So what do you say?”

  “You won’t tell Glenn about the—” Beth Ann said, jerking her head toward the letter in the garbage.

  “Won’t tell me what?” Glenn asked as he walked through the swinging door carrying Bernie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “CHRISTIAN’S OFFERED to Bernie- and Iris-sit,” Beth Ann informed Glenn, but she stared into Christian’s face, wondering if she could trust him about something as small as the letter from the hotel.

  He gave her a nearly imperceptible nod and Beth Ann felt a tiny rush of relief flood through her.

  “Really?” His eyebrow raised up. “When did this happen?”

  “Just now,” Christian said easily.

  Beth Ann watched Christian position himself between them. Surprisingly, she didn’t find his show of authority overbearing, but rather oddly endearing. Almost as if he was trying to reassure Glenn he would take good care of them while Glenn was gone.

  Beth Ann hoped Glenn would grasp the complexity of the situation and just accept it rather than become the protective big brother.

  Beth Ann said, her voice perky, “He wants some time with Bernie.”

  Glenn nodded his head, his eyes still on her. You sure, Bethy?

  Beth Ann nodded.

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Okay. Then I’m outta here. Come give Pop-pop a kiss goodbye, Bernzie.”

  Bernie’s eyebrows puckered. “No! Garden!”

  “Pop-pop’s got to go to work.”

  “No werk. Garden.”

  “We’ll go to the garden when I come back.”

  “No go bye-bye, Pop-pop.” Bernie’s little bottom lip quavered as she slung her arms around Glenn’s leg and wailed.

  Christian watched enviously and wondered if Bernie would ever wrap her arms around him to prevent him from leaving. Beth Ann gently extricated her daughter and lifted her up. The wails subsided to whimpers.

  “She has a problem with separation,” she explained.

  “No go bye-bye,” Bernie moaned.

  “I’ll see you soon, Bern-bern,” Glenn assured her with a kiss on her cheek.

  “No go bye-bye.”

  “Breaks my heart,” Glenn said with a glance at Christian.

  Beth Ann gave Glenn a quick kiss. “Time to make your escape.”

  “Noooo!” Bernie sobbed as if her heart was breaking when Glenn slipped out the front door.

  Christian watched helplessly.

  Beth Ann smiled at his discomfiture and said, “She’ll be over it in a minute. Her sadness rarely lasts very long.” She paused, midrock, her hand rubbing Bernie’s back and added, “You don’t have to do this. There’ll always be another show.”

  Christian couldn’t stop staring at the two of them. Bernie laying her head on Beth Ann’s shoulder, her finger in her mouth, the residual hiccups of her distress racking her small body.

  “I need to do this.”

  “Well,” Beth Ann said a tad gruffly. “I guess you should probably go get your stuff. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for you to pay for a hotel when we have plenty of space here.”

  WITH CHRISTIAN GONE, Beth Ann took Iris and Bernie to tend the garden. She stood with them, thinking about the implications of what had just happened. What in the world had possessed her to ask him to stay? Wasn’t she inviting some sort of disaster on herself? On Bernie?

  “Look me, Mommy! Look me!”

  Beth Ann looked up and gasped, as Bernie, quick as lightning, had made her way through the beans and was trying to climb through a small hole in the shed.

  “Bernie, come on, sweetie. We need to help Nana with weeding.”

  “Weeding. Weeding.” She wriggled and came out of the hole, butt first, then tripped. Beth Ann’s heart was in her throat, especially as Bernie’s head came dangerously close to smacking the corner of the shovel propped up against the shed.

  “Bernie!”

  “I okay. I okay.” Bernie chortled and immediately got up and toddled toward Iris.

  Beth Ann watched Iris teach Bernie the right way to weed the furrows of beans, laughing when Bernie ignored her and pulled on the tender stalks, taking with her the entire plant. Iris praised Bernie’s effort and directed her to another patch of weeds, which Bernie proceeded to clear with vigorous hands, most of the leaves landing on the ground rather than in Iris’s refuse basket.

  Beth Ann suddenly wanted to capture what she was seeing. And even though she primarily focused on landscapes, the urge to depict this moment was powerful. Much more compelling than the landscapes she ignored in the attic. It was odd because this would require her to do two things she wasn’t very good at—drawing people and capturing a scene live, not from a reference photo. As Iris and Bernie conversed, Beth Ann took the opportunity to run up to the attic and snatch her sketchbook, making sure she only left Iris and Bernie for a few seconds.

  Although Iris was having a good day, it wasn’t wise to rely on her for any period of time. Beth Ann rushed back, laden with a terrible sense of dread that the small indiscretion of leaving the two would result in a fall by Iris or Bernie. The dread was only reinforced by the horror stories of toddlers drowning in two inches of water or the elderly lost for days wandering up and down roads. It was impossible, but Beth Ann knew in her heart of hearts the only safe thing was to keep an eye on both of them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  When she returned, her worst fears were not confirmed. Her two charges had moved on to weed around the adolescent tomato plants, Iris pointing out the new flowers and the small fruit just beginning to grow. Bernie pulled off the flowers she saw and chuckled as Iris scolded, telling her there would be no tomatoes if there were no flowers. Iris was forever a teacher.

  Beth Ann smiled, as she tried to capture the arc of Iris’s back and the movement of Bernie’s stubby legs. She felt a little sadness that Carrie wasn’t here to see this. She shook herself. But then, Carrie wouldn’t have found the same joy in what she saw. Her hand moved rapidly, trying to define the differences between Iris and Bernie. The end of life and the beginning of life.

  She frowned, and where was she?

  Caught in the middle, not middle-aged, but feeling as if her life wasn’t hers anymore. No life to call her own, no place to process the awareness of how physically arid she’d really become. Christian’s masculinity nearly overwhelmed her, his size, the depth of his voice, the shuttered emotion and hurt behind his cool eyes. She wanted to run from him and at the same time, she wanted to embrace him, to be as close to him as she could get. She shook off the sense of a small, newly heard cry of wanting. She concentrated on the lines that she sketched. All her time belonged to the two precious individuals before her, who were giggling at some shared joke. The wanting would have to wait.

  She drew Bernie in profile. After her depressing attempt at art yesterday, it surprised her that she even felt compelled to pick up the sketchpad and realized with a small tinge of guilt that she was looking forward more to Christian’s company than the opportunity to immerse herself in painting. Don’t count on it. She didn’t even know whether Christian would be able to stick it out.

  Beth Ann reflected on Christian. He seemed to be as thoughtful as Carrie was thoughtless. More c
areful, more prone to study detail. More like herself. Carrie’s flamboyance was contagious, but she was a hard individual to know. She kept things locked away, selfishly guarding the most secret parts of herself. As she’d grown older, Carrie had become even more closed. Beth Ann thought that was why her sister had relished cruising so much. During her pregnancy, she’d talked nonstop about the wonder of being in a different place every night, at how, even when she was sleeping, she was never in the same place. But what it really meant—Beth Ann realized—was that no one was ever around long enough to discover the truth about Carrie.

  After Carrie had graduated from high school, she’d left, never intending to come back. Staying in Mercy Springs when she was pregnant ate away at her patience. Beth Ann suspected it was not simply the sameness that scraped at Carrie’s nerves; it was being trapped in the cage she’d thought she’d escaped from.

  “Pitty,” Bernie said, bringing her a weed with a blue flower on it.

  “Thank you. It’s very pretty.”

  “The weeds are just springing up,” Iris said, walking slowly with the heavy basket.

  Beth Ann hurried to take the basket and then dump it in the garbage. Weeds didn’t compost well. They all started back to the house, Bernie running ahead to climb the stairs and try to open the screen door.

  “Is Glenn coming back?” Iris asked.

  Beth Ann shook her head. “No, Glenn’s gone to Fresno. But...”

  “But?”

  “But Christian offered to stay with Bernie, so I can paint. What do you think about that?”

  Iris looked at her serenely. “A better question is what do you think about it?”

  “It’s okay. Bernie seems to like him well enough.” She bit her lip and looked away. “What about you? Do you like him?”

  Iris was silent a long time. “I like him very much.”

  “How can you know that? You only met him this morning,” as far as you remember, Beth Ann added silently.

  “I see it in his eyes. He’s looking for Carrie and he’s hoping he’ll find her here.”

  Beth Ann shook her head. “He’s not going to find her here. She left a long time ago.”

  Iris nodded in agreement. “She left him a long time ago, too.”

  IT TOOK CHRISTIAN a little longer than he expected to gather up his things and check out of the hotel. He got caught in a cryptic conversation with Max who wanted to the know the details about Caroline’s child. Max was persistent when he wanted to be and Christian had learned to be equally evasive. After all, they’d known each other since they were seven, when the smaller Max, brand new to their boarding school, had challenged Christian, by then a veteran, to a fist fight. The fight hadn’t lasted long enough to determine a victor, but their subsequent posterioral discomfort, compliments of the headmaster, cemented their grudging respect. They became uneasy friends, an intimidating pair of, well, bullies, until Christian was transferred to military school.

  They rediscovered the benefits of collaboration at Yale, this time in conquering not boys smaller or less skilled than they, but women. Christian and Max were almost opposites, although equally handsome, equally charismatic. Christian was dark with silver eyes, Max, fair, with eyes the color of a rich malt brew. Christian was silent, controlled and rich as Midas. Max was affable, boyishly attractive and had a flattering nature that seduced more than a few women. Together, they made a formidable team, neither feeling any qualms about capitalizing on their combined charm. Both broke several dozen hearts by the time they graduated.

  Max’s strength was in investments, but he had agreed to be Christian’s right-hand man when Christian’s grandfather had decided it was time to retire. Their success with the company—moving it from an era of typewriters and dictaphones into the age of computers, faxes and the World Wide Web—had reaped them both great rewards. Greater wealth hadn’t changed Max, nor his attitude about women. He still was essentially the same Maximilian Riley, thirsty for the thrills of the romantic chase, bored within days of the capture.

  When they’d met Caroline, Christian had long outgrown the need to accumulate women like trophies. He’d admitted that for the most part he and Max had acted like pigs and that much of their friendship was based on a mutual understanding that women were nice distractions, but not very essential. That fact hadn’t really changed—Christian had simply grown weary of the amount of work necessary to meet new women and had settled on Caroline. He’d loved her in his own way and she’d certainly benefited from their marriage.

  But this situation with Beth Ann and Bernie and Iris felt different. He didn’t feel like talking to Max, allowing Beth Ann’s household to be a target for Max’s biting wit. As succinctly as he could, Christian had let Max know it was going to take a little longer to iron out this deal than he had anticipated. He’d then promised to call in about a month and let him know what had happened.

  When Christian arrived at the house, it was unusually silent, but the front door was wide open. He peered into the house and then tapped on the door lightly. “Hello?” he called.

  “I’m in the back,” Beth Ann called in response.

  He placed his luggage inside the front door, then walked around the back. Beth Ann was in the middle of hanging the laundry on two wires that ran between the old oak tree and the house.

  “Hi,” he greeted her.

  She smiled and he noticed she looked really tired.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Napping.” She glanced at her watch. “They should be out for another hour or two. I’m just taking the opportunity to get some laundry done. These are your sheets and towels.” She whipped the bottom sheet out and Christian automatically caught it. It seemed as if it were the most natural thing in the world to help her. He felt the damp sheets, smelled the clean smell of freshly washed laundry. He reached into the bag that hung across her shoulder and fished out two clothespins.

  “Dryer broken?” he asked, with nothing better to say. For some reason, his ability to come up with scintillating conversation had deserted him entirely. He was too distracted by her graceful movements, as she worked at her mundane task.

  She shook her head. “No. Too hot. If I dry something, it heats up the whole house. Good for winter time, but miserable in the spring and supermiserable in the summer. It’s warm today so these should dry in no time.”

  She gave him the end of the flat sheet and together, they hung it up. Then they hung a series of Bernie’s T-shirts and sweats. He reached for another pile and Beth Ann said hastily, “Thanks, but I’ll do those.”

  “You’ll get done a lot quicker,” he commented and picked up a few of the articles.

  She snatched them away from him. “That’s okay. I’ll hang them. You can go unpack your stuff.”

  He looked at her strangely, but as her face turned bright red, he nodded and walked toward the house.

  “Take my bedroom,” she called. “It’s the one on the right when you walk in. The bottom drawer is empty, so if you want you can put a few things there.”

  Christian raised a hand and then discreetly looked over his shoulder as he walked into the house. He realized with a smile that she was old-fashioned enough not to let a man hang her underwear.

  He picked up his bags and walked to her room, suddenly wondering if she and Glenn were lovers, then surprising himself by how much he didn’t want that to be true. He ventured in, slightly uncomfortable. Like the living room, her bedroom was purely feminine. She’d chosen pinks and yellows, but it wasn’t a little girl’s room. It was a woman’s room, with a woman’s taste evident in the wallpaper and wall hangings. Her four-poster bed was antique cherry, hand carved and high. A pale pink matelassé coverlet lay smooshed to one side, the bed bare of sheets. He imagined that during the fall and winter months, she would replace the coverlet with blankets and perhaps a quilt that was much more substantial. Christian grinned when he saw well-used cherry wooden steps. If she didn’t have steps she would have to pole-vault into the b
ed each night.

  He studied the photographs she had artfully hung around the room and a large watercolor that was visually appealing if not very sophisticated. He picked up a photo of Beth Ann and Glenn with another man, all three smiling. It looked as if it was taken in college. Behind them, her old truck was piled high with furniture and whatnot. Maybe art supplies. Christian couldn’t tell. Putting the photo down, he turned his attention to the other objects in the room. There was some more of Bernie’s art, a piece of jewelry here and there. He opened the bottom drawer and the stiff smell of cedar washed toward him from the small blocks scattered on the bottom. He quickly unpacked his few possessions, going to the closet to see if there would be any chance of hanging up a few pairs of slacks and shirts. If she was anything like her sister, all the closet space would be completely used. Eventually, Caroline had needed another closet down the hall.

  To his surprise, Beth Ann’s closet was relatively empty, though he did spy a pile of dirty laundry hiding inconspicuously in the corner. He counted four dresses and two very nice, very tailored suits. She also seemed to have just two pairs of dress shoes. He hung his shirts and slacks next to hers, liking the way they looked together. Side-by-side. As if that was the way they were supposed to be. When he finished and went to the living room, Beth Ann was there, too, flipping through a trade magazine for watercolorists.

  She looked up when he walked in and put the magazine aside.

  “I want to thank you again for doing this. You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t have to. But it would be nice to get to know Caroline’s family. Hey, that looks good—”

  Beth Ann glanced at the iced tea in her hands. She rose hurriedly. “I’m sorry. I should have asked if you wanted some.”

  “Sit down,” Christian ordered her. “If I’m going to be watching Bernie and Iris, I should at least be able to fix myself a glass of iced tea.”

  Beth Ann sipped at her tea, and listened to him walk around, trying to get used to his light step. He walked quietly, gracefully for a man so tall. She heard three or four cupboards creaking before she heard him open the freezer for ice and then the refrigerator. A moment later, he was back.