Divine's Emporium

by Michelle L. Levigne

  Her house could be a great place to raise a kid. But someone had come in and trashed it already. He had peed and dumped on her mattress and then criticized her house. Who was he to talk?

  Then something struck her and she staggered out of the bathroom without watching where she put her feet.

  The vandal thought she was a slut.

  The message had been left for Jerry, just like the baby was left for Jerry, but both had landed with the wrong Jeri.

  Her hands and legs still trembled, but she went to the kitchen and got to work wiping out the denuded cupboards so she could put away her new dishes.

  The creep wouldn't come back and destroy all her lovely new second-hand things, would he?

  Jon-Tom answered that question an hour later, when he finally returned with plenty of soap and disinfectant, sponges, rags, window cleaner and groceries. He also brought new locks to put on the front and back doors, and a battery-operated alarm system to put on any windows accessible from the ground.

  "It won't go to the cops," he explained, "but it'll make a whole heck of a lot of noise, and the neighbors are great on this street. They'll come running and somebody'll call the cops. Nobody will get very far into your house, no matter what."

  She tried to smile, but her teeth started chattering. She couldn't even get out a "Thanks."

  "Hey, what's wrong?"

  He slipped his arms around her and guided her head to rest on his shoulder. Jeri shivered, but not from fear. She had been here, in Jon-Tom's arms, in her dreams last night. Reality was much better.

  "It's okay. That jerk won't be back. While I was out, I stopped to ask Stanzer if he'd help out. He's our local PI, and he's pretty ticked that someone would pick on you."

  "Not me," she finally managed to say. "I think it's the same person who dropped Junior on me. He thinks Jerry is living here. I don't think Maggie left her baby here at all."

  Jon-Tom's confused look was almost amusing. She reluctantly slipped out of his arms, caught his hand and led him to the bathroom. He swore, immediately muffling his voice, as if the sleeping baby could hear him. He pulled out his cell phone.

  John Stanzer showed up in ten minutes, making Jeri reflect on the benefits of living in a very small town.

  Stanzer walked around, studying everything, taking pictures of the bathroom and bedroom and what remained of the mess in the rest of the house. He asked questions. Lots of questions. When he had everything he needed, he called the police on his cell phone. Jeri groaned, thinking she would have to wait until tomorrow to start cleaning up her house.

  To her surprise, Stanzer rolled up his sleeves after he put his phone away. "What should I do first?"

  * * * *

  The sun was setting when Stanzer and Jon-Tom finished installing the last lock and alarm on Jeri's windows and doors. The smells of tomato soup, toasted cheese sandwiches and something chocolaty drifted on the cooling breeze. Jon-Tom's stomach rumbled, making both of them laugh.

  "Never seen you so angry before," Stanzer commented, as he stepped back and gave the window alarm an approving nod. "Not even when I refused to do that job for you."

  "This is different. Jeri didn't do anything to deserve this." Jon-Tom took a deep breath, reassuring himself that Jeri's little cottage smelled of pine and lemon cleaner, not some immature slimebag's idea of fun.

  "You scared her a little, with how mad you got a few times."

  Jon-Tom didn't like the way his heart skipped a beat at that idea. He'd scared Jeri? He was here to protect her, to take care of her.

  Jeri stepped out of the kitchen. "Are you almost done?" She had a towel tucked into her waistband in lieu of an apron, and a smear of what Jon-Tom hoped was chocolate frosting across her left cheekbone. Her feet were bare, and her hair was damp from the humidity. He remembered how she felt in his arms a few hours ago. What would she taste like when they kissed?

  He knew they were going to kiss, and soon. He had to get rid of Stanzer, though.

  "Done," Stanzer said. He tipped his head back and sniffed loudly. "Sure hope I'm invited to dinner."

  "I insist." Then she grinned. "Of course, I'm not too steady on my cooking yet, so you might want to take the easy out, if you have one."

  Tomato soup with rice and oregano, toasted cheese sandwiches with thin slices of ham and tomato, and brownies. Jon-Tom knew he was hungry, but that couldn't explain how good everything tasted. Stanzer agreed with him, repeatedly. Until Jeri laughed.

  "You two are going to drive me crazy." She opened up the door under the sink, pulled out the garbage bag, and took a cake mix box from it. "This is what you're supposed to be eating, not brownies. I can't even get a stupid cake mix right."

  "Poor little rich girl," Stanzer muttered. "Never learned how to cook."

  Jon-Tom expected Jeri to laugh more, but instead she went white and dropped the garbage bag all over the floor. He leaped out of his chair to help her.

  "He was just teasing," he said, and nearly pulled her into his arms right there in front of Stanzer, to comfort her.

  "You two have no idea how close to the truth..." Jeri forced a smile and shook her head. "Doesn't matter. I'm going to learn how to cook. I just hope it doesn't take until Junior needs lunches for school."

  The mental image of Jeri, Junior and him, together as a family, stayed with Jon-Tom all through the evening. He had a hard time shaking it because Stanzer went home soon after that revelation, leaving them alone.

  Jon-Tom helped Jeri put together the frame for her bed and carted her ruined mattress to the street. Fortunately, trash day was the next day. He could only be grateful Angela had insisted they take the mattress and box spring that fit the frame. Otherwise, Jeri would have nothing but the couch to sleep on tonight.

  Jon-Tom had other plans for it.

  * * * *

  Jeri finished putting sheets on her new bed, and came out into the living room. She nearly had a heart attack when she found Jon-Tom making up a bed on the floor. She had fashioned a couch with cushions on a narrow bed frame and covered it with multicolored throws. Now everything was haphazard.

  "Um, Jon-Tom, what are you doing?"

  He paused, looked at her, and then at the floor. A crooked grin lit his face.

  "Sorry. We've been working so smoothly together, I just figured you read my mind or something." He shrugged. "I'm planning on spending the night, to make sure the creep doesn't come back."

  "You think he will?"

  "Somebody is out to get you, because they think you're with Jerry."

  "Yeah, I'm a slut, keeping Junior in a dump." Amazingly, she managed a dry wisp of laughter.

  "So, maybe he'll decide to break in and take the kid. Then he can call the police, tell them you didn't report the kid being dropped on the porch, and now you've lost him, and really get you and Jerry in trouble."

  "Except Jerry isn't here."

  "If he was, I wouldn't worry."

  "I'm glad--I mean, I'm glad you're worried--I mean--" She took a deep breath and wished she could cool her face off. By about fifty degrees. "I'm glad you're here."

  "Yeah. Me too. And not because you're such a great cook."

  "I'm not a great cook."

  "Didn't hear us complaining, did you? By the way, no more brownies left. Me and Stanzer finished them off while you were giving Junior his bath." He winked and turned back to finish making his bed.

  Jeri wished she had some place better to offer him to sleep. The couch was too short for him to stretch out, but with the cushions lined up on the floor, he had enough length. He would be relatively comfortable, as long as he didn't roll over.

  "By the way, Stanzer thought about the creep taking the kid and reporting you to the police. He's stopping at the station on the way home, to let them know what's up."

  "Won't I get in trouble, anyway?"

  "Jerry asked us to take care of his son. According to that note, that's his son until someone tells us otherwise. Legal enough for me." He shrugged and paused in tucking
one of her multicolored throws into place over the cushions. "It's going to be okay, Jeri. I promise."

  Funny, how that stern look in his eyes, the solid weight of his voice, helped her sleep better than she had since she decided to get out of Dodge and start a new life.

  * * * *

  Jon-Tom woke before the sun, with dreams lingering in his mind, of Jeri smiling and cuddled in his arms, and children playing around their feet. He lay there on his narrow bed, imagining a life with her, until he realized he had built three rooms and a dormer onto the cottage in his daydreams. Time to get moving and give himself something else to think about.

  Jeri had liked his ideas about refinishing and sealing the floors, so he went out to his truck and pulled out the equipment he had picked up last night. He laid out the first coat of stripper, leaving her a wide swath of dry floor to walk on. That could sit and work all day while he finished two furniture orders.

  Jon-Tom grinned, thinking how nice it would be to work in here and hear the baby laughing and Jeri working in the kitchen, making dinner. Maybe it was ridiculous, making plans like this, but something told him she would like the idea. At the very least, if she made dinner, she wouldn't feel so obligated to repay him for all his work. That had almost caused trouble last night, when she started talking about paying him back for the cleaning supplies.

  Now, how to make sure Jeri and Junior were out of the house all day, so the stripper fumes wouldn't make them sick?

  That was easy enough. Divine's Emporium, Angela, and baby lessons. He wondered if Angela guessed what had happened and what would happen, when she made the offer to Jeri.

  For just a moment, it occurred to him how odd the casual, everyday coincidences that happened in Divine's Emporium might look to outsiders. But that was the thing--outsiders never noticed the uniqueness of Divine's. The wonders and coincidences and little miracles never happened for them.

  He was glad he lived in Neighborlee, and not some huge city where people lived at such a fast pace, they never noticed they were dying. Caryn hadn't realized that. Of course, Caryn had never noticed the magic of Divine's, either.

  Some of that magic must have been at work, because Jeri just laughed when she came out of her bedroom and saw what he was doing. She suggested getting Junior out of the house during the day by taking a tour of Neighborlee and visiting Angela before Jon-Tom could tell her his idea.

  Yes, things were working out better than he could have hoped. If he didn't live in Neighborlee and didn't believe in miracles, he would have been frightened by how everything seemed to fit together.

  What was he going to do when Jerry came for his son and he didn't have an excuse for spending time with Jeri?

  * * * *

  Three days later, Jeri realized she had fallen into a pattern. Waking to Junior's laughter, bathing and feeding him. She ate breakfast with Jon-Tom before helping him with the next step in refinishing a section of floor. It was an unspoken agreement that he worked on her floors to thank her for watching Junior. Maybe, she hoped, also because he wanted to spend more time with her. Once the floor was drying or the stripper was working, Jon-Tom headed for his shop and she took Junior to spend the day at Divine's and get baby lessons.

  Diane, Angela's clerk, was a perpetual student who adored vintage clothes as much as Jeri did, and she loved Junior even more. It seemed half the women in Neighborlee found an excuse to come to the shop and cuddle Junior. They brought baby food and baby dishes, toys and clothes their own children had outgrown, and offered advice. No one thought it strange she was taking care of a baby belonging to someone she had never met.

  Everyone had stories about Jerry and Jon-Tom growing up. Jeri liked the absent Marine father, the more she heard about him. She couldn't imagine him as someone who would abandon his pregnant girlfriend. That, combined with what Jon-Tom claimed about his friend, convinced her that Jerry hadn't known his Maggie was pregnant.

  She loved coming to Divine's Emporium, even if she didn't need baby lessons or something absolutely essential for the cottage. There was magic in the very air of the big old house. Wonderful things always happened there. Walking through the door of the shop, she always felt as if she left the world behind and stepped into another time and place. It was a safe, cozy feeling. She felt as if she belonged.

  When several women blessed her for taking responsibility for Junior, hugged her and told her she was never allowed to leave Neighborlee, Jeri choked on tears. When had anyone ever praised her for doing something just because it was right and good and helped someone?

  She laughed when her new friends told her how the Hollis family and the Harris family kept getting each other's mail for over twenty years. Jerry Hollis' old house was at 1751 Baker, and the old Harris house was at 1751 Bader, and the two streets backed up to each other. What made it truly silly was that Grandma Harris had been the Neighborlee Postmistress for nearly eighty years, and delivered her own mail wrong half the time.

  That was Neighborlee, Jeri decided. And she decided she would listen to and learn from these women, who treated her like someone they had known all their lives. She would never leave. She had finally found her home.

  The women who came to give her baby lessons all agreed that Jon-Tom was completely in character to watch out for his best friend's interests. Then the conversation drifted into Jon-Tom's personal life, and Jeri didn't know whether she should stop them or beg for more details.

  Jon-Tom loved kids. That much was obvious. His parents had fostered several dozen children at the big family farm on the edge of town, until they decided to move to Arizona after he graduated from college. That explained how he knew so much about children. He'd earned a degree in Early Childhood Education and occasionally helped out some friends who were running a daycare in the next county but wanted to set up in Neighborlee someday.

  His first love was woodworking, though, and it showed in the beautiful pieces he made. Jeri thought of the cradle and wondered why something made with so much love and creativity had been sitting in the shadows at Divine's, not being used by someone who loved children as much as Jon-Tom did.

  When a few women mentioned Jon-Tom's ex-fiancé, Jeri definitely didn't want to hear more. She tried to say so, and most of the women listened. A few insisted, however, on talking about the unlamented, generally disliked Caryn. Jeri got the impression Jon-Tom's ex had only cared about fashion and society, and had wanted to move to the big city with its fast pace and everything she desired at her fingertips.

  "She was an idiot, wasn't she?" she whispered as she put Junior down for his nap that afternoon. "And you know what's really sad?" She made her voice a sing-song to help the little boy relax and drop off to sleep. He smiled and cooed. "I was just as big an idiot as her, once upon a time. I thought I was in love. Yes, I was. I thought he was different, that he cared about real things. But when I asked Foster to help me break free..."

  She sighed and brushed curls off Junior's forehead. "I thought he loved me, but he wanted to be reasonable instead of running away. Sometimes you gotta run away instead of wasting your whole life negotiating and being civilized. What's so reasonable about letting people control your mind and turn you into a brainless doll without a heart?"

  "Who's Foster?" Angela said. Jeri had thought she was downstairs, ringing up a customer. After several days at Divine's Emporium, she'd have been more surprised if Angela didn't respond to her unspoken thoughts and didn't appear at the oddest, most unexpected moments.

  "Foster Alsworth is the biggest phony in the whole world. What's really ironic is that he showed me how fake I was, and I didn't like it. So I ran away."

  "I hear a broken heart in there."

  "Wounded pride and a lot of self-loathing. The girl I used to be wouldn't have cared one little bit what you thought of me. She would have asked for hand sanitizer if you ever asked me to touch someone else's baby, let alone feed him or change a diaper." Jeri exchanged a soft smile with Junior, just before he closed his eyes, sighed, and relaxed
into sleep. She turned to face Angela. "Foster was in love with the girl I used to be, and she doesn't exist anymore."

  "I'm sure Junior and Jon-Tom will both be very glad to hear that."

  "Oh, don't ever tell them. Please?" Jeri tried to smile through the panic that shot a bolt of ice through her chest. "I don't like her. I'm sure Jon-Tom would loathe her. Especially after what I heard about his ex."

  "All right. I won't tell him. But you need to."

  Jeri nodded, immediately pushing aside the entire idea of confessing her deep, dark, self-centered past to Jon-Tom.

  Maurice fluttered into the room to check on Junior. The two of them had worked out a truce. The baby wouldn't try to grab him and pull his wings off, and he wouldn't put the boy to sleep every time he flew by on his errands. He settled down on the baby's slowly rising and falling chest and watched Angela and Jeri leave the room.

  "Foster Alsworth, huh? How many bozos can there be in the world with a handle like that?" He patted the sleeping baby. "Feel the need for a showdown, to move things along? The sooner we get you a real mom and dad, the happier you'll be, you think?"

  * * * *

  Four days later.

  Jon-Tom's phone rang while he helped Jeri load Junior into the truck. He had been talking about showing his house to Jeri and renting a movie to watch, after they put another coat of stain on the floors. He grimaced, pulled it out of his pocket, and looked at the numbers on the display. His grimace turned stern as he flipped the phone open and answered the call.

  Jeri rested a hand on the baby, half-afraid the caller was Jerry, saying he was in town and coming for his son.

  Jon-Tom said little during the conversation, mostly grunts of agreement, ending with "We'll be right there." Then he closed the phone, put it in his pocket and climbed in the truck.

  They were halfway home before Jeri spoke. "Bad news?"

  "Stanzer's at your place. Got a call from Mrs. Dunsmoore. Some shady character skulking around outside. He's got the guy cornered." Jon-Tom sighed, his shoulders slumped, and he finally turned to look at her. "The guy claims he knows you."