Stamped Out

by Thayer, Terri

  April glanced Rocky’s way. Now she made the connection. Rocky was one of those Winchesters.

  Rocky shrugged. “Used to,” she said, her face impassive. April wondered why her father had given up the mansion. Was he dead? If so, why had Mrs. Harcourt inherited the house and not Rocky? This was awkward. She must have stepped right into some family drama.

  Tammy gave Rocky an apologetic shrug.

  Rocky said, “Aunt Barbara bought the place from Dad.

  Her dead husband, Harry Harcourt, left her plenty of money.”

  Suzi changed the subject. “Isn’t today Jesse’s birthday, Piper?” she said.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “June 14. I remember his birth like it was yesterday. I fell in love with him the first moment I set eyes on him.”

  Tammy said, “He’s out on bail, right? Are you doing anything to celebrate?”

  Piper didn’t answer but shot Tammy a withering glance. Tammy returned to daubing the edge of her page.

  Suzi said, “God, remember the night he was born? Your graduation party, Rocky? Jesse was born the day after we got out of high school. Well, the middle of the night, really.”

  April froze. It couldn’t be the same night. “When did you graduate?” she asked warily.

  Suzi said, “1993.”

  April had been just finishing her junior year. She’d heard about Rocky’s party that day. Everyone had. Plenty of kids crashed it. She’d been one of them.

  “I graduated high school in 1978,” Mary Lou said dryly. The others laughed. Mary Lou pointed to her daughter. “2005,” she said.

  Suzi ran her tape gun over a page and glued down a pretty swirly pink paper. “We almost didn’t get her to the hospital on time.”

  Mary Lou said, “Ahem. My daughter is listening. Your party stories are not meant for everyone’s ears.”

  Rocky did a long scan of Kit’s belly. “Your daughter looks like she’s had a few good times of her own.”

  Mary Lou smirked at Rocky. Kit came to her own defense.

  “Mom, really,” Kit said. “I’m twenty-one. Do you really think I didn’t party?”

  Mary Lou pointed a hole punch at her daughter. “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s me. I’m too young to know the truth about your high school years. You lived through it, I didn’t know anything at the time, and I don’t want to know now where you did your underage drinking.”

  “Nicole Munson’s basement,” Kit said quietly, her eyes twinkling. Her mother covered her ears. April laughed. Bonnie had had the same head-in-the-sand attitude.

  Rocky put a hand on Mary Lou’s arm. “Mary Lou, sweetie, I know this may come as a shock to you, but your daughter is no longer a virgin.”

  Everyone laughed, and Mary Lou stuck out her tongue at Rocky. That was enough to change the subject.

  “That’s enough talk about sex, drugs and partying. What did you all bring to share?” Mary Lou said.

  “Okaaay,” April said. She tried to remember the last time she did show-and-tell. It had to be Mrs. Whitebread’s third-grade class. Still, the process had to be the same.

  Mary Lou took out pictures and passed them around. “Kit and I have been painting furniture for the nursery. We cut stars and moons out of sponges and stamped the drawer fronts. It really came out cute.”

  The rest of the group murmured their approval, except for Piper. She kept her head down, only surfacing to blow embossing powder off her page. She gave Mary Lou’s pictures a cursory glance and went back to her project. Her arm was positioned in front of her page to ensure privacy. April wondered what she was doing that was so secret.

  Mary Lou looked to Tammy, who said she had nothing to show. Suzi passed around her garden journal again. It was clear her love of plants permeated her life.

  Rocky pulled out her portfolio. She handed out the papers she’d purchased, but a collage underneath caught April’s eye.

  “May I?” she asked, picking it up when Rocky nodded yes.

  The collection of stamped images on the page was thick and layered. April thought she saw a baby doll, leaves and a bird. She thought she saw a hammer. A ghostly image of a building was rendered, covered in brambles.

  “Is this yours? It’s wonderful,” April said, admiring the colors and the disturbing, three-dimensional quality Rocky had produced on a flat piece of paper.

  “Rocky sells her collages at Peddler’s Village,” Tammy said proudly. “She gets a lot of money for them.”

  “I can see why.” April moved the page closer. She recognized one image. “Is this the Castle?”

  “Yes,” Rocky said. “My aunt is getting rid of the Castle once and for all, so I’ve been doing a series on the building. That’s an old photo that I transferred onto organza.”

  “Oh, that’s why it looks so ethereal,” April said.

  “The Castle has always been an illusion,” Rocky said.

  The stampers were quiet. Rocky’s words were somber, so different from the teasing just minutes before. April didn’t know how to transition back to the stamping night that Deana had set up.

  “The collage is beautiful,” she said inadequately.

  Piper lifted her arm and began tapping her foot on the floor. She was clearly ready to show her project. Rocky pulled her collage from April’s grasp and gave Piper the go-ahead, with a frowning expression.

  Piper didn’t notice. She stood, holding her piece close to her chest. She turned it around slowly.

  “How do you like my ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card?” She smiled at April, ignoring everyone else in the room.

  April wasn’t prepared for what she saw and she had to swallow a gasp. The image was dark and sinister, nothing like its counterpart in Monopoly. Piper had taken the pretty tulip photo book and used a sponge to create a black-striped background on each page. She’d stamped delicate and wispy angels and dressed them in bright orange jumpsuits. Their wings were outstretched, but their hands looked oddly empty. In the spaces for the photos were pictures of a tow-headed boy, at various ages.

  April searched for an appropriate response. Rocky beat her to the punch. “Drama queen, thy name is Piper,” she muttered.

  “Be supportive,” Piper warned.

  “Great balance, Piper,” April said finally, resorting to critiquing the card and not the contents. “I like the way you used dragging for the background. And your handwriting is amazing. Are you a trained calligrapher?”

  Piper nodded. “I’ve studied.”

  “Classes by mail that she found on the back of a match-book,” Rocky said.

  “You should know. That’s where you got your art degree,” Piper said.

  April felt panic. Why hadn’t Deana told her there was such animosity between these women? Maybe Piper wasn’t usually this mean. It could be because her son had been arrested.

  Rocky was leaning back in her chair. She yawned loudly, fingering her ear as though to pop it. April could see these two were not used to sharing the spotlight.

  The last page in the book was a depiction of a cell. “Jesse, getting out of jail.” Piper held up the card for all to see.

  The image of the blond boy grinning into the camera was shocking against the dark jail cell.

  Great big tears gathered in the corners of Piper’s eyes, hanging there like dewdrops off a rain gutter. Despite feeling sorry for anyone whose kid was incarcerated, April suspected the tears were as authentic as Ken’s medicinal marijuana card.

  April felt that she had to say something. “Piper, great juxtaposition of images. Good use of irony.”

  “Irony, schmirony. This is my life,” Piper shot back.

  Rocky frowned at her. “Get over yourself, Piper. If you’ve come for sympathy, you’ve got the wrong group of girls. I believe it was my fence that your darling son drove his four-by-four through last winter.”

  Piper looked around for another victim. “Ask Tammy what happened to her first boyfriend, April. He left town in a hurry.”

  Tammy started to protest, but
Rocky stepped in this time. “Tammy’s had one boyfriend. Lyle. Stuff it, Piper. Pick on someone your own size.”

  Rocky picked up the project she’d been working on, dug out her car keys and stood. “Thanks, April, but I’m ready to call it a night. Come on, Tam, I’ll drop you off home.”

  April stole a look at the clock. It was only nine, but this stamping event appeared to be over.

  The rest of the group gathered up their cards and purses, studiously avoiding Piper’s gaze. Piper stood, tapping a pensive finger on her lips. She looked off into space. “April Buchert, right? I know that name.”

  Something in her soft voice caught the stampers’ attention and they stilled. Noises abated. Like a wolf pack, they waited for the strike.

  April caught her breath, steeling herself. She knew this moment would come. She just didn’t think it would happen so soon after she arrived.

  “Buchert. Now I remember. Didn’t your father leave his wife for a man?”

  CHAPTER 3

  April took her hands off the wheel to scrub at her eyes; she’d spent all night preparing for this morning’s meeting and she now felt gritty and a bit euphoric. After the stampers had gone, she couldn’t shake the bad feeling left behind. She’d wasted time fretting, waiting for a call from Deana that never came and generally not doing the work on the project until finally knuckling down after midnight.

  She made the turn off Main Street that would lead her deeper into the valley. The sample boards lay on the passenger seat. She couldn’t wait to show her work to the client. She’d had a creative brainstorm at about three in the morning, and now she was thrilled with the results.

  Piper couldn’t have known, but she’d said aloud what had been bugging April since her mother connected the Castle to the Mirabella mansion. She was returning to the scene of the crime. That job had led to her father leaving her mother.

  In her teenage April-centric world, she’d thought her parents’ marriage was fine. After all, they never fought.

  Instead, her father had been away a lot that spring, and Bonnie had saved all her venom for April.

  And then, her father ended the marriage and followed his heart. To Vince.

  Everything changed the day he left. April felt the sting of humiliation daily until she finally escaped to art school and California.

  The right-front tire hit the edge of the road, bringing her back to the present. April grabbed the wheel, heart pounding. The two-lane blacktop rose and fell over small rolling hills and snaked around wooded lots and farmland, following routes deer had laid out centuries ago.

  She passed the house where Samantha Eggar had stayed during the making of the move The Molly Maguires in the late sixties. People still talked about how sweet and beautiful she was, just the opposite of that Sean Connery, who had not stayed locally, preferring instead to be secretly limoed in and out of Allentown each day.

  The sun was out, dappling the verdant countryside. A hawk hovered just beyond the car, reluctant to give up its wobbly thermal.

  She caught a glimpse of three chimney pots and a slate roof. Suddenly, around a curve, Mirabella came into view. Built on a ridge, the Tudor hunched over the country club and surrounding homes like a vulture, the wings threatening to sweep lesser homes into its maw.

  The house disappeared as she turned onto the private road marked by a short metal sign with the Mirabella crest. As she drove, the road rose steadily. There were at least ten acres of grounds, mostly woods. The rich knew how to maintain their privacy—buy up all the surrounding land.

  The driveway curved to the left when the house came back into sight. To her right, she saw the rolling bluegrass of the golf course.

  She slowed and studied the façade. The siding was tan stucco studded with decorative half timbers. A brick walk led to a massive carved front door. Tudor wasn’t her favorite style, but she could appreciate the beauty of this house.

  A crow squawked. This was where she would be working the next few months. This was the place where she could lick her wounds and repair the damage done to her by Ken. Work was the balm for her soul.

  She always felt more comfortable in a stranger’s home than in her own.

  Following her father’s instructions, April went off the paved drive and followed a dirt-packed utility road past the stucco garage and matching garbage can enclosure. She pulled in next to her father’s pickup. He was standing on the first step of a brick porch leading up to a utilitarian door, hugging a clipboard to his chest. He was tugging on his bottom lip. “Hurry. Come on, let’s go,” he called out.

  April reached into the passenger seat for her sample boards. She knew it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. “Good morning to you, too.”

  “Hi, sweetie.” Vince, her father’s business and life partner, came from the truck and greeted her, a set of blueprints rolled under his arm. He had a broad, rubbery face that was friendly and open. He was nearly handsome, but his nose was a bit too big. The short sleeves of his blue oxford shirt showed off nicely tanned arms—a construction tan that probably stopped abruptly where his sleeves began. He was wearing the gold chain bracelet that April had helped her father pick out online for their last anniversary.

  He smiled and hugged her with his free arm. She leaned in and squeezed him back. It had taken years to get used to the idea that her father shared his life with another man, but she really liked Vince.

  “Don’t mind him,” he said to April, pointing to Ed. “He’s always like this on the first day of a new job.”

  April had thought they’d been on this job for months. What would she be doing if the rooms weren’t ready for the walls to be finished? She felt a glimmer of unease. She’d jumped on her father’s job offer so quickly. Now she couldn’t remember if they’d talked about the details.

  She stated her question. “New job? But I thought—”

  Vince said, “New phase, I should have said.”

  Protesting Vince’s earlier observation, her father commented, “I’m not like anything.” But his manner belied his words. He walked down the steps and back up them again. Pieces of nervous energy came off him like embers off a Fourth of July sparkler. Harmful, but only for a second. Bright, but no real danger.

  April gave her father a quick kiss. “It’s good to see you,” she said. The last time they’d all been together was when Vince and Ed came to San Francisco in February.

  “You too, hon. I’m glad you’re here,” he replied.

  Vince smiled at him, but Ed reverted to form. “Listen, about Mrs. H. Don’t look her in the eye.”

  April reared back, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. “What is she, royalty or a pit bull?”

  “Little of both,” Vince said. He and April shared a laugh, but her father wouldn’t budge.

  “She’s a very important client,” he said.

  “Come on, Dad. I’m a grown woman. I ran a successful design firm in San Francisco for ten years. I know how to present myself.”

  “Yeah, in California,” Ed grumbled. “This is the Commonwealth. We don’t do things like you granola eaters.”

  “Don’t worry, I traded in my Birkenstocks at the border,” she said dryly.

  Even frowning with worry, her dad was a good-looking guy. Age became him. Or maybe it was being with Vince instead of her mother. His crew-cut hair was silver. He was over six feet, with a barrel chest. Today he was wearing an argyle vest and pink shirt.

  Maybe she could tease him out of his mood. “When did you start dressing like a duffer?” she said.

  He looked down. “Like it? Vince bought it at the Presidio Golf Course when we were out there visiting you.”

  April punched his arm lightly. “So you do borrow Vince’s clothes? You’re practically the same size.”

  Vince winked at her, on board with her joking.

  “It’s my shirt,” Ed protested.

  “I always suspected,” April said. She tapped her teeth innocently. “There’s so much I don’t know about the gay lifes
tyle.”

  Vince said, “You probably know more about being gay than we do. We’re just living our life here.”

  April grinned. “Well, I did march in last year’s Gay Pride parade. It was a hoot. I walked right next to a guy with this giant pineapple over his—”

  Her father had heard enough. “Okay, April, not now. Mrs. H. could hear you.”

  Ed started for the door, but Vince put a restraining hand on his arm. “Before we go in, I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. Ed stopped, his brow furrowing even deeper. Vince indicated they should move away from the door, so they went down the steps and onto the lawn. A stone elf smiled at them from the flower bed. April hoped he was a portent of good luck.