by Delia Parr
Andrea sat back in her chair and relaxed. “Yes, I believe there is.”
Chapter Eighteen
If Bill Sanderson was not her only client and if she had not made a real fool of herself when he had returned to Welleswood, Andrea would have left him at the first property and told him to give Doris a call to see anything else.
She was that desperate.
Unfortunately, he was her only client at the moment. The memory of how she had treated him like a fugitive instead of a victim was still very fresh in her mind, and Doris had her afternoon already booked.
At the second property Andrea led him up the stairs from the finished basement to the kitchen. She wished she could simply walk away and leave him behind, but sooner or later, the owner would come home, and Andrea would have had some real explaining to do.
“Watch your head. The ceiling is still low,” she cautioned.
He waited until they were in the doll-sized kitchen before he stretched back up to his full height, which was a few inches over six feet. “That was…interesting,” he noted with a twinkle in his eyes.
She almost sighed, but held on to her patience. “As I said, the basement would probably not work for you.”
He glanced around the kitchen and shook his head. “You’re sure all the appliances are here?”
“They were custom-ordered. The refrigerator is here.” She opened a cabinet door to show him.
“I had a refrigerator larger than that in my dorm room at college.”
“For a lot of single, working women, especially women who don’t have the time to cook, this refrigerator works well. It holds most of the essentials, but not much more,” she countered. “There’s a microwave and a toaster-oven in a cabinet, too, and the range is countertop. The owner has done a great job of maximizing space.”
He grimaced. “That’s for sure.” He glanced at the countertop. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a two-burner stove before. I guess that was a custom-order, too. I’d never be able to cook much on that.” He inched past her to the bistro table and single chair and chuckled. “I wouldn’t even try sitting on that.”
She chuckled. “That’s probably a good idea. There’s not much else that would fit, though. Did you want to see the rest of the house again?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “All three rooms?” He chuckled. “I guess not. You were right. This house is much too small for someone my size. The location is so ideal I was thinking that if the lot was a little bigger than a postage stamp, I could contemplate an addition. Are you sure that side lot doesn’t go with the property?”
“Definitely. I called to check that this morning.”
“And the owner isn’t willing to sell the lot separately?”
She shook her head.
“How did they ever get a permit to build the house on a lot this small in the first place?”
“They didn’t need one. The house predates all of the new laws.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It looks like you were right in the first place. This house isn’t going to pass muster. I guess we’ll just have to keep looking. Shall we make a date for Friday afternoon?”
She saw his eyes begin to twinkle and suddenly, his words took on a meaning that nearly knocked her off her feet. A date. He did not mean a date, as in “appointment.” She looked into his eyes and knew she was right. Call it woman’s intuition or just plain chemistry. He was making a “date” with her, as in a meeting between a man and a woman, as in “relationship.”
Great. He was the one client she had, and now it turned out he was a potential suitor? How absurd was that? How could she have been so blind?
The past few weeks replayed in her mind, as if rewinding a movie, and she realized why he had been so insistent on seeing properties that she knew would not interest him. He was making appointments not because he was interested in buying a house, but because he was interested in…her!
The idea was so ridiculous she almost laughed out loud. The man was a full decade younger than she was. He was definitely not her type. She liked men…Wait a minute. She did not have a type. She did like men, but the idea of dating was in the back of her mind, behind weeding her gardens and way below surviving cancer. Most men probably would not find dating a woman with cancer at the top of their list, in any case.
“I’m sorry. I’m not making any appointments for next Friday,” she replied. “I’m leaving for a weekend at the shore. Shall we?” She left her card on the bistro table and led him through the living room and out onto the front porch.
While she looked up, he leaned against the gingerbread railing. “Oh. What about Wednesday? I could get a few hours off in the morning. Or Thursday afternoon would work.”
“I’ll have to check my calendar, but we really shouldn’t make a definite appointment until we know that there’s a house that’s come on the market that would be suitable.”
He followed her down the porch steps. “Actually, I was thinking maybe I should take another look at the house on West Walnut.”
She rolled her eyes, pasted a smile on her face and turned to face him when they reached the cobblestone walkway. “The West Walnut house? The one you said needed more work than Noah’s Ark if and when it was ever found? That house?”
“Did I say that?”
“You did.”
“Hmm. Maybe I did. What about the house on East Locust?”
“Sold,” she told him.
“And the house on Mulberry? I forget if it was East or West.”
“Sold, remember? That was the house you originally wanted, but you were…well…”
“Hog-tied and left to die, without water or food,” he supplied. Then undaunted, he went on, “Speaking of food, why don’t we continue our discussion of possible houses for me to see at lunch? There’s a great little restaurant in town. The Diner, I think. It’s close to your office so you wouldn’t have to walk far to get back to work.”
If Andrea had lunch with any man other than her brothers-in-law, that would be news. If she had lunch with Bill Sanderson at The Diner, a man so much younger than she, that would inspire more gossip than Andrea wanted to contemplate. It would also send the message that she was interested in seeing him on a personal level, which she was not.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she replied.
“What isn’t a good idea? Having lunch or having lunch with me?”
She winced and tossed caution to the wind. “For a man who has led me on one goose chase after another on the pretext of looking for a home, you’re certainly being direct, aren’t you?”
He laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty as charged. So what is it? Having lunch or having lunch with me?”
“Having lunch with you,” she blurted. Surprised by her own directness, she felt her cheeks warm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He laughed again. “Being direct isn’t rude. You couldn’t be rude if you tried. And you did try, as I recall. The day I came back to Welleswood?”
Her cheeks got hotter. “It didn’t seem to work very well then,” she admitted.
“I’m a persistent man.”
“I’m a stubborn woman.”
“So I noticed.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to run. Call me next week and let me know which day works best for you,” he said. He left her standing there, mouth agape, while he got into his pickup truck.
“You still want me to take you to see houses?”
He grinned. “Unless you’d rather meet for lunch. Or dinner. That would work for me, too.” He threw his truck into gear and pulled away before she could answer.
Persistent, brazen man.
Andrea entered the Community Center for the meeting for the Shawl Ministry half an hour late with a headache that would have been called a migraine if she had had the mental wherewithal to name it. To make matters worse, Madge had begged off attending the meeting tonight, pleading total exhaustion after spending the day with a decorator for her bea
ch house. Andrea had a bag holding a dozen skeins of green yarn that must have dated back to the 1970s and a pair of gold aluminum knitting needles hanging from one arm and Jane Huxbaugh walking on the other.
Who said life wasn’t grand?
She and Jane quickly found seats in the arc of chairs arranged in the center of the room, while Eleanor Hadley, the coordinator, spoke about their ministry. Andrea set her bag on the floor. She was disappointed in the low turnout. Only six women besides Andrea and Jane had shown up. She was rather pleased, however, to learn that the Shawl Ministry was exactly that: a ministry where women of faith could gather together to pray and to knit shawls that would be given to folks in need of comfort. Each session would begin and end with prayers the members had written themselves, and each shawl would carry with it a prayer they would write especially for the recipient. All Andrea had to do was learn how to knit, something Madge had assured her the other women would be more than willing to teach her.
After a brief round of questions, the women broke for some light refreshments. Eleanor Hadley came to sit beside Andrea, while Jane wandered off to find the ladies’ room. “Thank you so much for coming tonight, Andrea,” Eleanor said. “I thought Madge was coming, too.”
Andrea dutifully made Madge’s excuses. “She said to tell you that she’ll call you tomorrow and explain.”
Eleanor patted Andrea’s knee. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something for quite some time. Now just seems the right time to me,” she said softly. “You remember Mrs. Calloway, don’t you?”
“I remember her as Auntie Lynn. She died a few years back, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Eleanor remarked with a smile. “She was a direct descendent of Mary Welles Johnson, you know.”
“The woman who founded Welleswood?” Andrea asked.
“Yes. Mrs. Calloway was her last direct descendent,” Eleanor added. “She lived on East Walnut. You know where the playground is now?”
Andrea nodded.
“That’s where her house stood. She had the most unbelievable gardens and a gazebo with a brass roof. She donated the property to the children of Welleswood in her will. Eventually, her inheritance finally ran dry. She got behind in her taxes, and with only her Social Security check to live on, she was forced to consider selling the family home and moving into the senior-citizen complex.”
Eleanor paused to take a sip of punch. “Do you remember when your sister Sandra took out a home-equity loan on her house?”
Andrea shrugged her shoulders. “Vaguely.”
“Well, I helped her with the paperwork. Sandra had to tutor on Saturdays for a long time to pay that loan off.”
“She had to pay off her credit-card bills somehow,” Andrea insisted. “What’s that got to do with Auntie Lynn?”
Eleanor smiled. “Sandra had credit-card bills because she had taken cash advances. Lots of them. She had used the credit-card money to pay Auntie Lynn’s back taxes, then used the money from the home-equity loan for the current taxes and Mrs. Calloway’s living expenses until the day Mrs. Calloway died.”
Andrea’s heart skipped a beat. “I never knew that. Are you sure? Sandra would have told me or one of my sisters.”
“Actually, she never told me the whole story, either. I was the executor for Mrs. Calloway’s estate. I found the paperwork when I was going through her papers to get everything ready for the lawyer. Sandra was like that. She helped people without revealing it.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Andrea whispered, anxious to share this Sandra story with both Madge and Jenny. “Sandra was one-of-a-kind.”
“So are you,” Eleanor replied. “I know you’ve had a hard time getting around lately and you’ve barely recovered, yet you’re still willing to volunteer your time to help others, just like your sister.”
Tears welled, but Andrea brushed them away the moment she spied Jane standing by the door with a look on her face that told Andrea in no uncertain terms that she was ready to leave. Andrea bid Eleanor a good-night, added a hug for good measure and escorted Jane outside.
She led her elderly companion to her car and held the door until she got inside. “Do you need help with your seat belt?”
Jane sent her a withering look. “Not as much help as you’re going to need learning how to knit. If you hurry, I can be home in time for my television show.”
Andrea did not bother asking what show. Keeping conversation to a minimum seemed to work best when it came to getting along with Jane. She simply closed the door and walked around the car. As Andrea was sliding into the driver’s seat, Jane said, “I was hoping Eleanor would keep the meeting short. I don’t like to go out late at night.”
After latching her own seat belt, Andrea started the car and headed toward Jane’s house. “Most people don’t,” she replied. She’d known from the other women’s expressions when Jane had walked in the door this evening that they were not particularly pleased that she had come, even if she was donating bags of yarn. “I suppose that’s why the members voted to meet in the afternoons at the Community Center.”
“Saturday afternoons,” Jane added. “That’s perfect for me, too. I wouldn’t want to give up volunteering at the thrift shop.”
“No. I guess more people are working now, too, and Saturday is better for them than a weekday.”
Jane guffawed. “You’re the only one young enough to work that showed up tonight. The rest of us are retired. We volunteer these days, which is just as well. You can’t trust young people today to do much in the way of volunteering. It’s the seniors who haven’t forgotten the value of helping others.”
Andrea listened to Jane’s comments with only half an ear while she made a mental note to thank Madge for suggesting the ministry to her, although she had serious doubts about her ability to learn how to knit. The Shawl Ministry had an old-fashioned, small-community feel to it that appealed to Andrea. With her own world in upheaval, she hoped the ministry would help to keep her grounded and focused on something other than her own troubles.
When she pulled up along the curb in front of Jane’s house, the elderly woman unlatched her seat belt before Andrea even slowed to a stop. “Go on up the driveway. It’s shorter for me to walk.”
“No problem.” She backed up, turned into the driveway and stopped just short of the walkway that led to the porch.
“Next time you drive me home, you’d better come to a full stop at the stop sign,” Jane grumbled, and let herself out of the car before Andrea had a chance to turn off the ignition.
Andrea watched the woman climb the steps and let herself into the house before backing out of the driveway. Then, eager to end her own day, she headed for home.
All in all, the day hadn’t turned out to be too bad. She had ordered a new credenza for the office—with locks, and there was no way Doris would ever find the keys. Andrea had every intention to wear them on a chain around her neck if she had to, just to protect her paperwork.
Now wasn’t that just wonderful. On top of dealing with a cancer recurrence and treatments, hair the texture of a scouring pad, physical-therapy appointments three times a week, a new agent in her office who was taking most of her clients, a man who was interested in dating her, leading her on goose chases and a promise to take Jane home every week, Andrea was now going to have a bunch of keys hanging from a chain around her neck.
Madge would be thrilled that Andrea was finally going to wear some sort of jewelry.
At least someone was going to find something about Andrea’s life that made somebody happy.
Chapter Nineteen
By the third week in September, warm, sunny days were giving way to chilly evenings. Vacations were memories, captured in photographs to be arranged in scrapbooks, shared through e-mail with relatives or on videotapes that would provide entertainment over the winter months to come. Children were trading bathing suits and beach toys for new school clothes, backpacks and lunch boxes. The ritual of work, fall housecleaning and monitoring homework
was keeping the adults busy.
Most people had neither the time nor the inclination to spend a weekend at the shore, much to the relief of the folks who were residents of towns like Sea Gate.
Lucky folks. No, not lucky—blessed, Madge decided. She carried a tray of fresh fruit out to the beach where the last of her guests sat together in beach chairs. Russell had come home for the settlement in early September, but only managed to stay a few days before being summoned back to work. He hoped to be home next week, and Madge was anxious for him to see the house fully furnished. Drew and Brett had been able to spend four days at the new beach house, but both of her sons had left earlier that morning to catch flights home.
Fortunately, Madge was still surrounded by family. Her nieces, Katy and Hannah, were sitting in a pool of water the morning tide had left behind, making mud pies, under Michael’s watch, while Jenny napped with her hands cupped protectively over the gentle mound of her tummy. Andrea was still arguing with a pair of knitting needles that flashed reflections of the sun each time she attempted another stitch with the green yarn that lay in a tangled mess on her lap.
As Madge approached, Katy and Hannah squealed and raced to meet her with Michael close on their heels.
Katy arrived first and tugged on Madge’s arm. “Can I have some watermelon, Aunt Madge?”
“I want gwapes,” Hannah cried as she wrapped her little arms around one of Madge’s legs.
“Whoa, ladies! Give Aunt Madge a break,” Michael warned.
Madge grinned down at the upturned faces of the two little girls. Dressed in matching bathing suits, with dainty barrettes in their dark hair, their eyes shining with innocence, they were utterly adorable. They also soothed the tiny ache that still remained in Madge’s heart, even after all these years, for the daughter she had wanted, but never had. “Rinse off your hands first. Daddy will help you,” she urged.
“Clean hands first. That’s the rule.” Michael scooped up his daughters, one in each arm. “You can both have a snack, then it’s naptime.” He caught Madge’s eyes as the girls wriggled to get free and whined about taking a nap. “I don’t suppose you have any more fruit inside?”