Whatever happened, he had to get to Divine's and see how Jeri felt about the baby.
Remembering what she'd said about furnishing the house, he drove his truck there, instead of walking the few blocks over.
John Stanzer, the town's one private investigator, was just coming out of the front door of Divine's when Jon-Tom arrived. They nodded to each other, but didn't speak. Jon-Tom had made the mistake of asking Stanzer to investigate Caryn when his ex-fiancé tried to clean out his bank account and leave town with a truckload of custom furniture. Stanzer made it a policy to avoid investigations into any kind of domestic trouble--even if the marriage was never formalized. Jon-Tom respected him for that, but at the time, he had been furious. The two were friendly now, but Jon-Tom suspected it would be a long time before they were friends again.
Inside Divine's, he found the baby lying on a blanket on the counter, and Angela leaning over him, making him giggle. A moment of pure panic knotted his throat. That counter couldn't be a safe place for a baby. But Angela was watching him, and nothing bad ever happened at Divine's Emporium. Jon-Tom suspected that if the baby were totally alone and rolled off the counter, he would slowly float down to the floor like a puff of dandelion fuzz.
"Well, you're just in time for the fashion show," Angela said, before she turned around. "What do you think, Uncle Jon?" She scooped up the baby and settled him on her hip.
Jon-Tom laughed, which made the baby laugh. He couldn't help himself. The little boy wore a white sailor suit, complete with a little flat cap.
"Hey, buddy, your daddy will just love that outfit on you." He tweaked the baby's nose, prompting giggles.
"So you got hold of Jerry?" Angela said.
"Yeah. He believes the kid is his, but he hasn't heard from Maggie since before he went overseas. It turns out her weird stepbrother has been running interference. Jerry's going to get some leave time and go find Maggie, see what's up."
"Maybe she's in the area."
"I suggested that. Jerry said he'd email me some photos, so I could start looking around, but he figures she probably dumped the kid and ran home." Jon-Tom sighed, trying not to hate the poor, mixed-up girl. Jerry didn't blame her at all, and was certain her psycho stepbrother had something to do with the baby being left on Jeri's front step.
"I should know by now not to doubt you." Jeri called, as she came down the stairs from Angela's quarters. "I love it. I'd never think to get it for myself." Laughing, she twirled down the aisle, holding out her arms. She looked like a butterfly, in a gauzy, multi-colored, kerchief-sleeved top and pristine white shorts. Her sandals glittered with gold, blue and green beads.
She stopped short when she saw him, and blushed a delicious shade of pink. It made Jon-Tom think of pink lemonade. And made him think of kissing her to see if she tasted like sweet lemons and strawberries. "I couldn't resist trying on all the great clothes Angela has."
"Sounds like a good idea to me." He cleared his throat, mostly to fight words that he hadn't let fall from his lips since he realized Caryn had been after his woodworking talent and growing reputation, rather than a white picket fence and a dozen babies. It felt oddly like betrayal now, to want to give those compliments and admiring words to Jeri, because they felt used and worn thin. Such words should be fresh and unused for her. "Umm, did you find any dishes or furniture or anything? I brought my truck."
"Our resident knight in shining armor," Angela said with that rich chuckle that always made Jon-Tom suspect she was poised to cast aside her adult dignity and descend to joyous mischief. "I hope you have a big truck. Jeri found everything she needs for her house."
"It's a small house, and I don't need that much," Jeri hurried to say. Her eyes sparkled.
He was glad to see she was comfortable again.
"It's amazing. I dreamed about how I wanted to do the house, and practically everything I wanted was here." She shrugged, offered a little laugh. "Who would have thought Divine's would have so much?"
"It's bigger inside than outside," he said, echoing an observation he had heard others make.
Caryn had hated coming to Divine's. She'd turned up her nose at the eclectic mix and called all the treasures junk. Or worse. Something that had felt cracked and dried inside him warmed and softened now, like soil in the springtime rains. He grinned at Jeri and she grinned back at him. Would she laugh or be pleased if he said she looked like a butterfly?
"Why don't we finish up the fashion show and have lunch?" Angela said.
"No, really, you've done too much already. I mean, you have a business to run," Jeri began.
"Sweetheart, it runs itself. Diane always gets here just about the time the afternoon rush starts. And with Divine's, that means more than two people in the store at one time." Angela handed Junior to Jon-Tom. "Why don't you take a seat and tell this little guy about his daddy, while we take care of packing up everything Jeri picked out?"
That sounded more than good to Jon-Tom. The warm, soft weight of the baby boy felt exactly right in his arms. Not too delicate, not damp or limp or too soft. He liked the smell of the baby, sweet with milk and powder and clean skin, and the faint cedar scent from the little sailor suit he wore, compliments of Angela.
He went upstairs to Angela's living quarters without having to be told, and settled down in the front room. Something about having those big, blue-gray eyes focused on his face made everything else around him vanish. He couldn't remember back to the time he and Jerry had been this little. He couldn't honestly imagine Jerry looking this sweet, innocent and trusting.
"Okay, buddy, what do you want to know about your old man?"
Jon-Tom lost all track of time as he rambled through memories. It was enough that the boy grinned wetly at him, and when he got restless, all it took was shifting him from one arm to the other, or bouncing him a little on his knees to make him happy. Jon-Tom didn't realize Angela and Jeri had arrived and got to work on lunch in the next room, until he told about the time he and Jerry got caught skinny-dipping by the high school girls' varsity swim team, when they were twelve. Laughter rang out from Angela's kitchen.
"Oh, very funny, just shred my fragile ego," he snarled in mocking anger. His face burned. "Traitor," he added, when the baby giggled and tried to snatch at his nose. "You were supposed to warn me when the ladies showed up, remember?"
"I hope you aren't giving him any bad ideas," Jeri said. She deposited a bowl of fruit salad on the table.
Angela brought in a platter of sandwiches and turned the conversation to Neighborlee. All the things Jeri needed to see, the simple fun to be had in the town during the summer. The lake in the park. The deer that came up the hill to graze in Angela's backyard. Hundreds of simple, small details. The joys of quiet, small town life and neighbors looking out for each other.
She embarrassed Jon-Tom, telling about the toys he made for the children's home, the children he gave part-time jobs to, to teach them a trade and a hobby to channel their frustrations and creativity into, and the classes he taught in woodworking at the high school and college level at Eden II.
He liked Jeri's admiring looks a little too much. He thought he had trained himself not to need a woman's approval, ever again.
When lunch was over, he found himself loading pieces of furniture into his truck without quite knowing how he got from Angela's table to the back of the store.
"You weren't kidding," he said, laughing, as Jeri helped him heave the drop-leaf table with its beveled edges into the truck, followed by six matching chairs with butterflies carved across the backs.
"Do you think I can get away with stripping off the old finish and just rubbing in tung oil? I mean, under all that glop, there's a beautiful wood grain." She paused a moment to run her fingers lovingly over the table top before wrapping old blankets around it for padding.
"Sounds like a plan." Jon-Tom liked the warmth of satisfaction that came from her words. She was a woman who appreciated natural beauty, so different from Caryn.
No, he r
efused to even think her name. She was out of his life.
Next came several apple crates of dishes. Muted colors and slightly varying styles, slate blue and burnt orange, pale yellow, avocado green, cinnamon. They were all the heavy, sturdy everyday kind that reminded him of the dishes at summer camp, and standing in line outside the dining hall in the dew and chill, smelling oatmeal and sausage cooking.
Jon-Tom froze when Jeri moved a paper grocery bag of more gauzy, brightly colored vintage clothes and he saw the cradle she had bought. He stared too long. He almost turned away.
"It's gorgeous, isn't it?" Jeri said quietly. She came back from checking on Junior, asleep in a third-hand car seat in the truck, and bent to gently brush her fingertips along the fanciful curlicues of vines and flowers carved on the spindles. "Angela offered to just let me borrow it, until your friend takes care of things with Junior, but..." She shrugged, blushing delicately again, and couldn't meet his gaze. "Something like this doesn't deserve to be just borrowed. It shouldn't sit in a store, even one as great as Divine's. It should be used."
"So..." He turned to heave a bag of linens into the back of the truck. "Are you going to give it to Jerry when he finds Maggie and settles down to play house?"
"No." She laughed and bent to pick up the cradle. It was light, easy to lift, because he had built it that way. Somehow, it hurt to see her pick it up, because she was so careful. Caryn had refused to touch it when he refused to sell it. "Kind of silly, huh?"
"Not much need for a cradle where you are." The words clogged in his throat.
"Right now. Who knows? Maybe I'll have kids someday. And when I rock them to sleep every night, I'll tell them all the fairy tales I never got when I was a baby." Jeri wrapped a sheet around the cradle slowly, as if reluctant to hide it from sight.
"I thought you didn't like kids."
"I don't know much about kids. Especially babies. I know they can't all be as great as Junior, but...well, if I don't have kids of my own, maybe I'll be a foster mother. Just for babies. After I've had lots of lessons from Angela and lots of practice with Junior." She shrugged and bent to pick up a box of all sorts of baking and cooking pans and pots and bowls and utensils.
"That sounds like a great job. Considering how much Junior likes you."
"How could anyone not be a great mother, with a cradle like that? They just don't make them like that anymore."
"Actually--" He stopped short, his face suddenly hot, when she stopped and looked him in the eyes.
"You made it, didn't you?" Her smile, her admiration, her appreciation for his hours of dedication, soothed away the rest of his pain. "Jon-Tom, it's the most beautiful thing I've seen in years. You should be proud."
"We're all proud of him," Angela said, appearing in the doorway. "He's had offers to go to lots of places and make four, five times as much money."
"Living in a big, smelly city and working for someone else," Jon-Tom said, with a grin. "No, thanks. I'm happy just like I am."
"Really?" Angela's smile turned sly. She slowly shook her head, as if she knew all the wistful thoughts and feelings that had been plaguing him. "Nothing you want in the whole world?"
"Well..." He glanced at Jeri.
She caught her breath and took a step back, as if she knew the image that flashed into his mind. Jon-Tom saw himself holding Jeri on his lap, kissing her. They were sitting in front of a fireplace in the farmhouse on the edge of town. A handful of children played around them, along with a couple dogs, maybe a few cats, on a snowy winter night.
That was Jon-Tom's idea of paradise.
* * * *
Jeri let out a cry of dismay when they pulled into her driveway. The screen door hung crooked, like someone had tried to yank it off the hinges. She leaped from the cab almost before Jon-Tom put the truck into park, and flew up onto the porch. When she shoved at the front door, it banged open without needing to be unlocked.
Someone had broken in. Why? A glance through the front window would show there was nothing to steal.
She looked around once she was inside. The intruder hadn't been a thief, but a vandal. Food, plastic plates, the folding table and chairs had been flung out of the kitchen and across the empty living room. Her few groceries had been opened, emptied, scattered and spilled. The old-fashioned refrigerator door hung open. Orange juice and milk cartons were ripped open and their contents spilled across the floor to mix with macaroni and dry cereal. Her bananas were smashed on the floor, smeared, brown globs in big, heavy boot prints. A rotten smell hung, fermented, heavy and sick in the air.
Jeri looked at the window over the sink, sure she had left it open at the top for ventilation. It was closed. She shivered despite the humidity. Someone had deliberately closed the windows to make it hot inside the house. Who could be so nasty? Who could be so thorough in destroying everything?
Actually, she knew quite a few people who would enjoy planning the destruction of her shabby little house, just for the fun of seeing her distress. The problem was, they were all hundreds of miles away. No one knew where she was, and they would never risk getting their hands dirty, literally and figuratively.
"Jeri?" Jon-Tom tapped on the screen door's frame. "You okay?"
"I'm...fine. Furious, but fine," she added, choking on the mixture of laughter and stomach-burning fury rising up from deep inside.
Jon-Tom whistled when he came in with the car seat cradled in his arms. He set Junior down on one of the few clear spots on the floor and set about righting her table and one of the chairs. The other one was mangled and bent, totally unusable.
Jeri couldn't take the mess or the smell in the kitchen any longer. She went down the short hall to her bedroom. The door was closed. Another shiver went up her back.
"Jon-Tom, could you--" How could she ask him to take the risk, in case the person who broke in was still there, hiding in her bedroom? Shaking her head at herself, vowing once again to live her own life, make her own decisions and take her own chances, she grasped the knob and turned.
The stench that rolled out of her hot, humid bedroom was unlike anything she had ever smelled before.
"That smells like you left something sitting in the diaper pail too long," Jon-Tom choked out, coming up behind her. He swore a few times, tripped over something, and finally got to the window to open the drapes and push up on the old-fashioned sash.
Her few Salvation Army sale clothes lay in heaps on the floor. The plastic milk crates she used as shelves were shattered into hundreds of pieces. Bedding had been torn off the bed, her sheets ripped. And an ominous yellow stain and a brown pile lay dead center of the mattress.
"Is that--" She gagged and took a step backwards. It didn't help against the stench.
"Yep. Looks like your burglar doesn't know what a bathroom is. What kind of a loony is this guy?" Jon-Tom muttered.
"How do you know a guy did this?" Jeri could name at least six relatives, all female, who would point out that if she chose to live in a shack that was only fit for a cat to use as a litterbox, it would be used as a litterbox.
"Name one woman who would take the time to squat on a mattress? Hate to tell you, but some guys never grow up, and they love to show off their aim, if you know what I mean."
She took another step backwards, fanning herself to try to dissipate the stench. "Why would anybody do this to me? I don't even know anybody in town yet, besides you and Angela. Did anybody hate the old owners of this house, and they don't know someone new moved in?"
"This place has sat vacant for the last five years. The folks on this street are the kind to bake you cakes to thank you for moving in, not try to drive you out."
"Oh. So that's why." Jeri felt her face heating. She had wondered why her new neighbors on each side had brought over cakes and cookies and homemade preserves the first two days after she moved in. So, that destroyed her only explanation.
"Well, let's get to work. You got a bucket in all that gear you bought today?" Jon-Tom grasped her shoulders and turned h
er to face the front door.
"No." Her face heated as they headed outside again. Well, honestly, why would she think of a cleaning bucket? She was barely used to doing her own laundry and washing her own dishes.
"You sure?" He reached over the side of the truck and lifted out a bucket.
Jeri could have sworn the bucket, scrubbing brushes and mop hadn't been there when she loaded the truck at Divine's. When she told Jon-Tom so, he just shook his head.
"Let me clue you in. When it comes to Divine's, you always find what you need, even if you weren't thinking about it at the time. Angela probably figured you'd need it, and threw it in when your back was turned." His grin got wider. "I don't suppose she threw some disinfectant and soap in there, too?"
It comforted Jeri a little when she checked the crates of supplies and discovered that Angela hadn't thought of everything. While she got to work sweeping with the broom she couldn't remember buying, Jon-Tom ran up to the closest grocery to get soap and disinfectant and anything else he thought of along the way, to help clean up the mess.
"I guess it's true, huh, Junior?" she muttered to the baby, when she paused after sweeping out the kitchen. "Whatever you need, you can find at Divine's. I certainly found my knight in shining armor there."
Junior blew bubbles at her. She laughed and wondered at the person she had been just a few days ago. How could she have ever wanted to get rid of the little boy? How did people without babies in their lives survive?
She tiptoed into the bedroom to avoid the wet smears all across the floor, and caught a glimpse of the message written on the bathroom mirror in her destroyed lipstick. Her laughter died, caught in her throat.
Great place to raise a kid. Get rid of the slut before the cops come.
Her mind stuck on the second sentence. What slut? What cops?
Fury took over. Her house might not feature in House Beautiful, but she kept it clean and she checked for bugs and she was getting all sorts of furniture and things to make it much nicer. She even had a cradle for the baby now. Jon-Tom was going to help her refinish the floors. She hoped to paint the walls and maybe learn to stencil.
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