A tattoo of drumbeats sounded against the glass doors. Zeke straightened like somebody had smacked him. Mel started.
Out on the deck, a tall drink of a woman bounced from one foot to the other like she’d better find a bathroom—soon. She looked like a ditch-digger. Mud clung to her knees, her puce blouse had come untucked from her jean shorts, dirt was smeared across her face, and her apricot hair radiated around her face in shock waves. Oh, God. The redhead.
She cupped a hand and leaned against the window to peer inside. Spotting him, her face lit up. She lofted something, her generous mouth forming words he couldn’t hear. When he just stared, her smile turned to a scowl. She clobbered the door again.
Fans. His lifeblood, his nemesis, and this one was a crazy. Zeke recovered first and grabbed the drapery pull, shutting out the sight. The banging continued.
He edged Mel behind him on the sofa. “Roy!” he bellowed.
Swiping a forearm across his mouth, Roy barreled in from the kitchen. Planting himself flat-footed in front of the door, he slid it open a few inches and growled at the intruder.
“But I have a delivery for Mr. Van Castle!” The woman’s voice, clear as cold water, penetrated the drapes.
Roy’s voice rumbled.
“Look, Shorty, I have been through absolutely enough. First it was the dunderheads at the front desk—thank God, I know the concierge—then I had to wade through a stream where I completely ruined my shoes. I have so many chigger bites, I’ll be up every night for the next week scratching like a dog. I won’t—absolutely will not—have you stand there telling me Mr. Van Castle is busy.”
Both hands now gripped the draperies and yanked them apart, allowing determined blue eyes to peer at Jon over Roy’s head. His gaze moved to the thing she waved at him. A book… Memory kicked in. She was the bookstore lady’s sister. He sighed. “It’s okay, Roy—let her in.”
Roy stepped aside and the woman stumbled across the threshold. She righted herself and patted the top of Roy’s bald head. “Thank you, little man.”
Roy scowled. Dismissing him, she swiped at her dirt, then strode toward Jon. “Hello, Mr. Van Castle. I’m Mari O’Malley and I have a delivery for you.”
Bemused, he stood up.
“Oh, good!” Mel clapped her hands. “Daddy—look what she brought.”
Mari stooped and laid the book in Mel’s hands. “So this is who ordered it. I didn’t think some old geezer like your pop would want to read it, and I’d hoped it would end up with a pretty little girl like you.” She pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from her pocket, and offered them to Mel. “Well, madam, I’m glad we have that matter straightened out. Now, would you please sign here?”
Mel giggled again, a fluttery, joyful noise, and her dark eyes sparkled. “I’m so glad you came. I’ve been wanting to read these books for ages and, you see, Daddy’s books are kind of boring, so—” The end of Melanie’s tongue poked out as she wrote her name on the receipt, a receipt he’d bet Mari O’Malley had hoped he’d sign.
He watched them and an idea bloomed. If she checked out and wanted to, why not? Tina-the-Nanny hadn’t proved any great shakes at handling the kids and he hadn’t seen Mel this alive since she’d got here. He smiled.
“So, I got here just in time. Good thing.” Mari fingered the edge of Tom Clancy. “I saved you from having to read even one more page about—what?—submarines? Barf.”
Mel grinned up at her, and handed back the receipt. Mari rifled her hair, then turned blue eyes to Jon. China blue eyes. “It is a good thing, isn’t it?”
He realized his gut no longer ached. “Sorry—I seem to have forgotten my manners. Something to drink, Miss O’Malley?”
Across the room, Zeke eyed him and stroked his beard.
CHAPTER SIX
ON THE OPPOSITE end of the ribbon of water that wound through the hills forming Lake Kesibwi, Lil rummaged through the attic of her family’s cabin amidst the detritus left by four generations of her family. Nearby, her mother Zinnia prodded with a broom at some blankets just out of reach on top of a wardrobe. It was hot under the rafters, the air stale and misted by dust motes. The only light came from one overhead bulb and what could filter through a gauze of spiderwebs on the windows at either end.
Lil dipped into a cedar chest. “I wonder what’s taking Mari so long?”
“Don’t you worry, honeybunch.” A quilt collapsed over Zinnia’s curly salt-and-papper hair. Her glasses had skewed sideways, and she plucked them off and stuck them in the breast pocket of her overall shorts. Her torso had plumped with age, but she still liked to show off the legs she’d bestowed on her taller daughters.“You know how our Mari is.”
Lil wasn’t worried about Mari. She was wondering if Mr. Van Castle had withstood the assault Mari had likely launched, despite strict instructions to just drop off the book.
Lil straightened with an armful of sheets. Her gaze fell on the flowered linens that had covered her bridal bed. Resolutely, she averted her gaze. “How many beds do we need?”
“Seven. These’ll have to be aired out. We’ll need four twins—Mari can bunk with Patsy Lee’s three on the sleeping porch. And we’ll do up three doubles. One for Pop and me, one for you, and one for Patsy Lee and Hen—” Her mother’s easy humor crumpled. “Oh, Lil, sometimes I can’t hardly breathe, I hurt so much.”
Lil stepped toward her, but her mother sniffed and waved her away with a plump hand. “We’re not going to mope. I won’t have it. It’ll be fun having all of you here once we get this business settled, and Henry’d want it that way. Now, let’s get this done. Alcea and Stan’ll be here any minute. They’re bringing Patsy Lee and my grandbabies. Although I guess I shouldn’t call them that anymore.”
Zinnia’s “grandbabies” spanned Alcea’s ten-year-old Kathleen to Patsy Lee’s three, Daisy, Hank and Rose, spaced two years apart. Rose, at five, was the youngest.
Lil hesitated. “From what Mari tells me, it won’t be too long before you have a real grandbaby to hold.”
Zinnia’s looked guilty. “Ah, Lil. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just couldn’t find the right time, what with all the worry we’ve had since Henry passed, God love him. I know how you must feel, honeybunch.”
Lil picked up a blanket and shook it, sending up another cloud of dust. “The idea took a little getting used to.” She didn’t tell her mother she’d cried into her pillow the night Mari had told her. “But I’m happy for Patsy Lee, I really am. I just wish she didn’t have so many money worries.”
“We’ll figure it out—that’s what we’re all here for.”
Tires crunched on the drive. Moving to the window, Lil rubbed a hole in the grime. Beneath her in a clearing circled by woods, Pop puttered with the vining pink geraniums that spilled from pots on either side of the kitchen door. He held a battered watering can in his hand, and a fishing hat was perched on his head. He straightened and waved. From under a canopy of trees, a minivan jostled along the red clay drive between sweeps of black-eyed susans and day lilies Zinnia had planted eons ago.
Zinnia joined her. “There’s our Alcea now.”
Lil was surprised. Stan despised minivans. When Alcea had nagged for one to transport their daughter Kathleen, her friends and all Alcea’s committee supplies, he’d brought home a Lexus instead, then found excuses to drive it more than her.
Alcea, Patsy Lee and the four children piled from the car. Stan wasn’t with them. Alcea and Kathleen disappeared through the door. Patsy Lee and her brood swamped Pop with bear hugs. “What happened to their Lexus?”
“Well…” Zinnia’s mouth twitched. “Alcea sank it in the fish pond a couple weeks back. She says she lost control, which I don’t doubt a bit, one night when Stan was, uh, working late.” Lil stared at her mother, who stared back. Zinnia added, “Alcea’s teachers always said she was a creative problem-solver.”
Lil laughed. “I wish I could have seen Stan when she told him that car was full of pond muck.”
“Lo
rd-love-a-duck, it must’ve been a sight. I don’t think Stan’ll be ‘working late’ for a while.” Zinnia shook her head, eyes turning somber. “Not for a while. Poor Alcea.”
“Yoo-hoo!” Alcea’s voice rang out, and she appeared above the last riser, her usual proud expression in place on a face blessed by heaven, her gold hair twisted into a smooth knot. Two years older than Lil, she’d always been considered the most beautiful of the three O’Malley sisters with her molten brown eyes and patrician features. Kathleen, tall, slim and blonde, a twin of her mother at age ten, crowded behind her.
“Kathleen! You’re pushing me, sweetheart.”
“Sorry, Mother,” Kathleen said, and took a step back.
“Well, come on.” Alcea beckoned her forward with a manicured nail. “Can’t you see your grandmother and aunt need our help?”
Irritation had become a part of Alcea’s nature since her marriage. Lil exchanged a look with Zinnia, then helped her pile linens into Alcea and Kathleen’s arms. Picking up her own bundle, she followed her mother and sister to the stairs.
“Patsy Lee is getting the children settled. That Daisy! If Kathleen talked to me like that, she’d be grounded for weeks. I brought you some salmon salad; it’s in the refrigerator. I practically had to sneak it by Stan, he loves it so much. He says—” Alcea shouldered a fine sheen of sweat off her cheek. “Oh, who cares what he says? Lord, it’s hot up here, Mother. I don’t know why you and Pop don’t install central air.”
“Oh, we’re not up here much, honeybunch. The unit downstairs suits us fine.”
Behind them, Lil shook her head. After years of being Mrs. Stanley Addams III, Alcea had forgotten not everyone had her buckets of money.
They reached the kitchen. The one room had once comprised the entire original native stone cabin. Over the years, different O’Malleys had added rooms up and down and sideways until the structure now resembled a stack of books with log bookends on either side, all resting on a shelf that gave way to the wooded slope that led to the cove.
On the lakeside off the kitchen, the O’Malley men had built an odd-angled deck with a room below, screened in and lined with bunk beds. Lil’s great-grandfather had added bedrooms and an attic on top of the original cabin. Her grandpop had contributed the plumbing and wiring. One bookend housed a low room heated by a wood-burning stove where they gathered to read, talk and play Scrabble on rainy Memorial Day weekends. The other bookend contributed another two bedrooms and bath. Pop had built that end with Henry’s help when Lil was in middle school.
The entire ramshackle result was furnished with castoffs, garage sale finds and needle-work from every O’Malley woman, including a half-hearted wall-hanging Mari had stitched for Girl Scouts. Only sheer determination to get more patches than anyone else had seen her through. Patchwork pillows, curtains in primary colors, floral slipcovers and table doilies were scattered throughout. Nothing matched, everything went together.
Just as in her parents’ home on Maple Woods Drive, the heart of the place was the kitchen. When the deck was added, so were broad windows on the lake side, open to the dogwoods and redbuds flowering in the spring and now washing the room with light filtered by the trees that grew up through the deck.
The women crossed the hardwood floor, dumped their loads on a linoleum table pocked by long use and started sorting sheets and blankets. The window air conditioner rattled reliably, keeping the room tolerable. Trays of oatmeal-raisin cookies Zinnia had baked that morning rested on the counter. The scent of cinnamon lingered.
“Stan said he can get you a deal on central air, Mother. Brisco’s owes him a favor.”
“Yes, Father said—” Kathleen piped up, snatching a cookie while her mother wasn’t looking. Zinnia winked at her.
“Please, Kathleen, don’t repeat me.” Alcea frowned, but there wasn’t any force behind her words. She plucked at a blanket. “Um, in case you’re all wondering… Stan couldn’t come. He wanted to, he really did, but he’s just so busy at the bank.”
Lil’s hands stilled. Despite everything, she’d held out hope that Stan would agree to help Patsy Lee, but she should have known better.
Zinnia’s face mirrored Lil’s thoughts, but she said nothing. She piled sheets near the doorway that led to the bedrooms, plucked a straw hat off a hook and plopped it on her head. Its faded pink ribbon fell between her eyes. “Well. We’re all here then. I’ll go get Pop and we can get started. We won’t wait for Mari; no telling where that addle-brained child is, and I don’t think she’d be a lot of help anyway. I’d wanted her to be here, though, and I’ll tell her just that when I see her. Kathleen, honeybunch, you go on down to the sleeping porch with your cousins while we adults talk. Take some of those cookies and you and Daisy keep Hank and Rose busy with a game of Chinese Checkers.”
Minutes later, they were all seated around the table except for Zinnia. After pointing them at their places, she busied herself at the sink pouring a pitcher of sun tea.
Pop had relaxed his tall bulk into a chair at the head. He sported a rumpled, short-sleeved, plaid shirt that in no way matched his equally rumpled, green shorts, and he still wore his favorite hat, a few lures poked through its sides. In the past few months, new lines had etched around his mouth, but the fan of laughter at the corners of his eyes still dominated. His broad, callused hands, equally proficient at casting a line or changing a diaper, played with an unlit pipe as he waited for Zinnia. Stomach burbling with nerves, Lil still smiled. He might be at the head of the table, but he knew who ran the show. He looked around, caught her eye and winked.
Zinnia’s seat was reserved to his left, then Alcea, who’d served up a plate of cookies and placed a napkin just so in front of each person. The cookies were going untouched. Lil sat across from Zinnia’s chair. Patsy Lee was lowering herself into the seat on her right. Lil knew the seating arrangement wasn’t chance. She and Patsy Lee were in the hot seats. Zinnia always liked to face the current targets of her maternal concern.
She clasped her hands, trying to hold back anxiety, and wondered how many of these confabs they’d had over the years. She also wondered exactly what Zinnia might propose at this one. Both she and Patsy Lee could use some ideas that ranged beyond PicNic, but curiosity warred with a sudden perverse streak that didn’t want to do what anyone told her to do whether it was good for her or not.
Patsy Lee sighed as her weight shifted off her feet. She leaned sideways to slip off her sandals and her length of brown hair almost brushed the floor, a gentle sweep, just like her voice. “It feels so nice to sit down.”
Lil gave her a nervous smile. Resembling a bird with her wings of dark hair and round brown eyes, Patsy Lee had a plump robin’s body, and she favored loose, India-print, cotton dresses in the summer. It would be a while before her pregnancy really showed.
At Merry-Go-Read’s closing sale yesterday, Lil had told Patsy Lee with all the sincerity she could muster how pleased she was about the baby. Patsy Lee had accepted her congratulations, her soft eyes glowing with gratitude at Lil’s reaction. Lil was determined not to let any envy show.
Zinnia plunked the pitcher in the middle of the table and took her seat. “Everybody ready?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “Henry, rest his soul, was a dear, dear boy, but I’m first to say he wasn’t one for thinking any too far ahead. He’s left Patsy Lee in a pickle. Two mortgages on their old farmhouse, a store up to its tutu in debt, three babies, another on the way and no life insurance. Lil’s also out of a job. Well, we’ve had problems before and survived ‘em, so let’s see what we can work out of this mess. Your Pop and I have some ideas, but we’ll see what you all are thinking first.”
Everyone looked at the table.
Lil felt a flash of anger at her brother followed by a wave of guilt. Even in her numbed state, when she’d first entered Merry-Go-Read as an employee, she knew the store was in trouble. Knew, but didn’t much care. Henry had never had a head for business or, for that matter, work. He’d stumbled t
hrough every job Cordelia had to offer, from flipping burgers to a stint at PicNic, where he’d met Patsy Lee.
After PicNic, marriage to Patsy Lee and the birth of their first two children, Henry got a job at Stan’s bank. Henry couldn’t balance a till to save his life. Stan had finally edged him out, loaning Henry the money for the store and finding a clerical spot at the bank for Patsy Lee. She imagined Stan would have paid about any price to have Henry out of his hair.
Henry loved the store, the customers, the children and even sweeping the front walk in tandem with Paddy O’Neill, but he still couldn’t balance a till. Dipping into it had been his forte. If she was honest, though, she couldn’t blame only Henry for Merry-Go-Read’s demise and the pot of trouble he’d left for Patsy Lee. Lil had seen what was happening and had done nothing to stop it. She’d known he paid her an inflated wage, much more than her job was worth, but she’d never protested.
Sure, she suggested they offer gift-wrapping to pick up sales, and they did; delivery service, and they did. But when Henry balked at her ideas for a story-telling hour on Saturdays (saying it would interfere with fishing), and a monthly newsletter to their customers (because he’d rather spend evenings tinkering on his old Chevy), she stopped making suggestions. And she’d been relieved. Because even the idea of doing half those things had left her exhausted.
Face flushed, Patsy Lee finally spoke first. “Because we liquidated the inventory at the store and put the building up for sale, Stan’s lowered the loan payment.”
Alcea looked down at the table, and Lil wondered if Stan would do more.
Zinnia didn’t just wonder. “So will your husband do anything more?”
Alcea glanced up, face pink but chin high. “He said— He said to tell you he’s had some business reversals lately and our portfolio isn’t doing as well as he’d hoped and—and we have a lot of expenses, so…” Her composure cracked. “I did what I could, Mother, I really did. But he doesn’t listen to me. He—” She broke off and pressed her lips together.
SING ME HOME (Love Finds A Home - Book One) Page 6