Baby, I'll Find You

by Jennifer Skully

  “I don’t think there’s anything in the rules,” Jami said, because now she knew they were joshing her, “about extorting tiles out of another player for dictionary spellings.”

  “Do you always play by the rules, dear?” Betty asked, one brow arched in a very Star Trek Spock-like manner.

  “Of course.”

  This time they all stared at her, even Sonya, as if Jami had revealed that she believed virgin sacrifice was a perfectly acceptable pagan ritual.

  “Always?” Isadora whispered.

  “Well...” Suddenly, what had been funny a few moments before wasn’t so funny. Worse was admitting the truth aloud. Playing by the rules was something she would have thought she’d be proud of.

  “What’s the fun in playing by somebody else’s rules?” Sonya asked, speaking for the very first time.

  Jami had played by everyone else’s rules her whole life. Her mom’s, her sisters’, Dick Head’s, Leo’s. It had gotten her fired, dumped, and demoralized. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. When was she going to start making up her own set of rules to live by?

  When was she going to start having fun?

  Betty snatched the tile out of Maisy’s fingers.

  “Now what’s the dictionary say?” Maisy demanded.

  Betty smiled. “It’s not in here.”

  “You bitch.” Then Maisy grabbed back the tile and laid down an S, H, and I above the T, giving herself credit for the double-letter score Betty had already gotten—which also wasn’t in the rules.

  On the game went, while Jami pondered rules, and if it was cheating when you created your own set to suit yourself, as long as you declared it to everyone else. She pondered so hard, she had to get up and retrieve the spinach dip from the kitchen.

  They were actually down to the last six tiles in the bag and Sonya was winning, when Isadora’s phone rang.

  “You should have shut the thing off,” Betty grumbled as Isadora jumped up to answer.

  Betty shook the bag of tiles—several times and loudly—while Maisy worked through the mushroom caps. “They’re getting cold.” She held the plate out for Jami. “Can’t waste them.”

  Jami couldn’t stomach one more bite.

  And they all eavesdropped on Isadora’s call.

  “Oh honey-baby, I’m so happy you called.” Isadora twirled the phone cord in her hand. She didn’t have a cordless, just an old-fashioned princess phone with a decal of Tom Jones’s face in the center of the rotary dial. “How’s work?”

  Jami assumed it was her son.

  “Ohhh,” her voice wavered. “That’s too bad.”

  “The bum never calls her unless he wants something,” Betty muttered. “Bet it’s money this time.”

  “It’s the wife,” Maisy added softly. “She’s the one who gets him to do stuff like that.”

  “Well, yes, I remember that account,” Isadora said, her voice weak and lacking her usual exuberance. “Your daddy put the money there for your children...” Twist, twist went the phone cord, round and round Isadora’s finger. “Well, I know you don’t have children. But you’re only thirty-five—” Isadora gasped. “Tubes tied? But doesn’t she know that can’t be undone?”

  “Well, we knew that was coming,” Betty muttered. “Now she doesn’t even want to have his children.”

  “Please, honey, can’t you talk her out of it...no, no, no, you shouldn’t have the vasectomy instead...you know I can’t go against what your daddy wanted you to use that money for...” Isadora closed her eyes and sniffed loudly enough to be heard over the phone.

  “Don’t give him the money,” Betty said under her breath. Jami heard it only because she was reading the woman’s lips.

  Poor Isadora. It was terrible when children called only when they wanted something, and on top of it, the poor dear was going to get an earful from her friends when she hung up. You should have said this, you should have done that. The word should should be stricken from the language. It was always an I-told-you-so kind of term. Jami heard it from her own mother a lot.

  “I’ll heat up the mushroom caps.” That way she wasn’t eavesdropping as well. It was one thing for Isadora’s friends to know all her problems, quite another for a virtual stranger to be privy, even if she was a tenant.

  “Yes, dear, you go fill the awkward silence with a little comfort food,” Maisy granted her.

  God, they were a pack. In Isadora’s brightly lit kitchen, she flipped on the oven and shoved the leftover mushrooms onto the cookie sheet.

  When she returned, Isadora was sitting down, wiping surreptitiously at a tear that slid down the side of her small snub nose.

  “Well, so much for grandchildren,” she said, all signs of the sniffles gone as she scanned her tiles, then flanked an R, A, and P to the C in clitoris.

  “They can be a pain in the butt, and they get horribly spoiled,” Maisy added. “Your turn, Jami dear.”

  Jami contemplated the packed board. Everywhere she looked, she was blocked by one letter or another. Now her only option appeared to be asshole. Hmm, that could be Isadora’s son. Or Leo. And not bad on points, either.

  “And let me tell you,” Betty intoned, “how much they take you for at Christmas, not to mention birthdays.”

  “Yeah,” Maisy agreed.

  “Yeah,” Sonya joined in.

  Whoa. Sonya had spoken again, though her voice was a little crackly from lack of use.

  “Not only that, when they’re babies, they smell bad.” Maisy huffed and leaned over to look at her twin’s tiles.

  “They smell bad when they’re older, too,” Sonya added in that same crackly voice.

  Nothing like sticking together. When her mother’s friends got together, nine times out of ten, they all started with “I told you so.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “There’s something wrong with that kid.”

  Cole looked at Andrea over Frank’s shoulder. Her hair hung in strings, and she slumped so badly she appeared an inch shorter. Maybe two inches. Had she been like that yesterday afternoon when she arrived after school? Cole couldn’t remember. Yeah, yeah, he’d been mired in his thoughts after his own voice had lashed out at him from the sound system. But that was yesterday. He’d put all that emotion behind him. Today, he didn’t give a damn what CD Jami played.

  Jami, however, let Frank choose, and so far they’d been doing an Animals marathon.

  “Go talk to her,” Frank mumbled.

  Cole snorted. “Andrea’s your employee, you talk to her.”

  “But then it’ll sound like I’m saying her work sucks. It’s better coming from you.”

  “But I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with her. She looks like a normal inscrutable teenager to me.”

  Although Andrea wasn’t your garden-variety sulky teenager. She was never talkative or exuberant, usually somewhat expressionless, even disinterested. Which was sad for a kid. Cole had tried not to pay enough attention to form an opinion.

  “She doesn’t have her sketchbook with her,” Frank persisted. “She always has that thing with her, so go ahead tell me there’s nothing wrong.”

  “There’s nothing wrong.”

  Frank bared his teeth. “Come on. Admit I’m right.”

  Damn. The man could act like a teenager himself. “All right, she looks a little...” Cole tipped his head and watched her.

  Andrea pushed a wet cloth around the counter. Slowly, swirl after swirl, to the point where the surface was either clean or she was simply smearing sticky soda marks. It took her ten seconds to realize someone was at the window in front of her. After writing up the order, she punched the register keys, and when taking the money, she didn’t say a word. Andrea was at least polite if not overly effusive. She stepped from one counter to the other and hung the ticket on the rack, again without a word.

  Cole dropped two burgers on the grill to fill the order.

  “All right,” he said, “she looks a little listless. And you’ve got two shakes to make. St
rawberry and chocolate.”

  Instead, Frank lifted the fry basket out to let the oil drain. “So talk to her for me.”

  “Frank, you talk to her. It’s not my business.” Not that it was Frank’s business either.

  “I know. We’ll get Jami to do it.”

  “Christ, you sound like those old Mikey-likes-it commercials. I’m not gonna do it,” he mimicked, “well, I’m not gonna do it either. I know, let’s get Jami to do it.”

  “Huh?” Frank stared blankly.

  “Forget it.” It wasn’t worth explaining. “Just butt out.”

  “But what if Andrea’s being abused?”

  “Frank, you’re losing control of your bodily functions here. She might simply be upset about a bad grade.” Cole flipped the burgers. The high-school students were filling the parking lot, and pretty soon they wouldn’t have a moment to talk. Thank God.

  Frank went off to make his shakes, but Cole had a feeling he wouldn’t to let it alone. Pete arrived, Kelly came back from her break, and the place started jumping.

  Was there something wrong with the kid? Frank was right, she never went anywhere without her sketchpad. Not one day in the four months she’d worked here.

  Still, Frank was an old worry-wart. If Ruby sneezed, he took her to the vet. Between the after-school horde and the dinner rush, he saw Frank slip into the office. Cole had visions of him talking Jami into calling Child Protective Services over a missing art pad.

  You couldn’t bring the hammer down on a whole family just because someone had a bad day.

  Then again, did you just downplay it when something was up with a kid? The back of his neck started to ache. A really bad pain. He could hear Stephie whining at him, all the abrupt changes in her behavior, the sudden combativeness. All the signs he’d simply ignored because he was so close to finishing the CD. If he hadn’t downplayed her mood swings...

  He bagged the last order and took it straight to the window, leaning past Andrea to hand it out.

  “Everything okay here?” he asked as yet another satisfied customer walked away.

  She looked at him as if were a giant slug. “Yeah.”

  “You look a little tense.”

  She shifted her gaze left to right. “I’m not tense.”

  “Feeling under the weather?”

  “No.”

  “Hey,” crabbed the next kid in line outside the window. “Can you take my order? I’m in a hurry.”

  Cole ignored him. “‘Cause if you’re not feeling good, Frank would let you go home,” he said to Andrea.

  She frowned. “Am I screwing up the orders?”

  “No.” He spread his hands to make sure she got it, then repeated himself. “Nooo. We just”—he gulped—“care about you.”

  She was finally looking at him, eyes wide, as if he’d completely deluded himself into thinking he was some sort of superhero ready to swoop down and save her. He rushed on to explain. “What I mean is, if you’ve got anything you need to talk about, you can always talk to Jami.” Ah hell, why’d he go and say that? Then he caught the scent of charcoaling burgers. Oh man, did he sound like an idiot or what? So he hightailed it back to his grill.

  Later, when he went out to the dumpster with a load of trash, he found her sketchbook laying on top of the garbage heap.

  * * * * *

  “So now you’re dumpster diving?”

  Jami meant it as a joke, but Cole dropped the scrap of garbage so fast, an expression of horror staining his features, that perhaps she had caught him dumpster diving.

  “What are you doing out here?” He looked at her with a narrow-eyed gaze that accused her of spying on him.

  She looked at her watch. “I’m done for the day.” Scraping a lock of hair that had blown across her face, she pointed at the SUV parked by the back fence. “And there’s my car.”

  Cole closed his eyes a moment, then drew a long breath and finally let it out. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound quite that bad.” He bent to scoop up the trash he’d dropped.

  She could see it now. An art pad with a burgundy cover and stickers all over it. Just like the one she’d seen Andrea carrying, probably the same one Frank had been using as an example of what was wrong with the poor girl. He’d been into her office—okay, it was his office—three times since Andrea arrived after school, to tell Jami that there was something up with the girl and a woman’s shoulder was definitely in need.

  Yet when Jami tried to talk to Andrea, the teen had avoided her by claiming work. Not that Jami thought her behavior meant anything serious.

  But this... “You found that in the trash?”

  Cole nodded and brushed some bun crumbs and a gross-looking ick off the cover.

  “It’s Andrea’s sketchbook, isn’t it?”

  He nodded again, staring at the pad as if afraid it might bite his head off if he opened the cover.

  “Why do you think she threw it away?”

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head slowly.

  “Should we look in it?”

  Tipping his head, he scanned her face, his gaze coming to rest on her lips, then he held out the book to her.

  She put up her hands to fend it off. “I can’t do it. I hardly know her. You do it.”

  The corner of his mouth curled. If it was a smile, it was a sad one, and his eyes suddenly seemed a limpid blue, like a wounded animal that was looking up at you for help. Then he shook his head, slowly, a defiant tilt to his chin. No way was he going to invade Andrea’s privacy. His outstretched hand said he expected her to do it. Like Frank expected her to talk to Andrea. As if it was her job because she was a woman.

  She realized Cole hadn’t uttered a word since he’d apologized. It was the oddest sensation that she’d known exactly what was going through his mind without him saying a thing.

  “If you want me to do it, you have to ask me out loud.” It was scary to feel so in tune with him, reminding her too much of the words from one of his gorgeous songs.

  His Kahlua-and-cream voice sliding over her like warm alcohol over ice, he said, “What if she’s drawing mutilations and guillotines and weird stuff? I think we should know.”

  She laughed. “I thought women were the melodramatic ones.”

  “It’s the silent ones that get into big trouble,” he said, but something flickered in his eyes, a tiny spark of...humor?

  “Now you’re just plain ridiculous.”

  “Comes from Frank. He’s all worked up.” He hefted the pad in the air. “But he is right, this book was precious to her, and it’s a bad thing that she threw it away.”

  It touched her that he’d noticed how attached a teenage girl was to a simple pad of paper. Frank, too. Most men had to be hit over the head to notice a haircut or a dress or the million things a woman did to make herself feel good.

  “Open it,” she whispered. There might be a clue. Or Andrea had spilled soda all over it and gotten herself a new one.

  Cole turned to the first page.

  “Oh my God,” she murmured with barely more than a breath of sound, moving close to his side to see.

  A dragon in flight. Just a pencil sketch, but the details—the softened lines, the sheer number of tiny scales, the eyes—brought the mythical creature to life. She could almost hear the shush of its great wings beating against the air.

  “It’s beautiful.” Raising a finger, she traced the dragon’s sloping tail.

  Cole flipped the page. A woman stretched a bow, flames shooting out from a cocked arrow. A short leather skirt wrapped around her waist, setting off her powerful thighs. Xena. Or Athena the goddess. No, Athena wasn’t the huntress. Who was? Jami couldn’t remember.

  Each turn of the page revealed another fantasy creature, a world of mythological proportions. No wonder Andrea had talked about a book-cover artist. Her own drawings were good enough to adorn a book.

  “She’s good, isn’t she?” Cole uncovered another drawing, this one incomplete, a faerie in a glade. The character was al
most done, but Andrea had still been working on the background.

  Good didn’t begin to describe Andrea’s creations. They were genius.

  “That’s the last one,” Cole said, fanning through the rest of the pages. “I saw her working on the faerie yesterday.” He stared at the drawing a moment longer.

  Though the cover was stained with grease and food scraps, the book itself was intact. Nothing had spilled on the drawings. There was no obvious reason to throw it out.

  “Maybe she got rid of it because she didn’t like how the faerie was turning out,” Jami suggested.

  Cole shook his head, speaking again without words. Until he finally looked down at Jami. Her heart beat faster, and suddenly she smelled him. Not the grease from the grill or the aroma of garbage or the dumpster behind them, but Cole. Like fresh laundry that had hung out in the sun all day and made you want to rub your face all over it.

  Then, as if he didn’t have even a hint that she’d forgotten all about Andrea, he said, “She could have torn out the page and started over. She didn’t need to throw the whole thing out.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” She dragged her gaze and mind back to the faerie. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “Then again,” he murmured, “maybe it wasn’t as good as what she saw in her head.”

  She longed to ask him if that’s how he’d handled a lyric or a note or a phrase that wasn’t working for him. Just tossed it out with the rest of the garbage?

  The back door slammed open, banging the outside wall.

  “What the hell are you doing out here, Cole?” Frank stood in the doorway, legs spread wide, hands jammed on his hips, tattoos fairly jumping on his arms.

  He wouldn’t scare a flea. Despite his booming voice and menacing smile, he was a pussycat. Although he’d certainly gotten Mr. No-Neck to hustle off to McDonalds and Happy Kids’ Meals. You had to know Frank better to truly appreciate that he was like Ruby, all yip and no bite.

  “I’m coming.” Cole closed the pad, handed it to Jami, and skirted round her, his back to Frank. “Maybe she does need to talk.” He took a step back. “Friend to friend.” Another step. “Woman to woman.” Two more steps and he was almost at the back wall. “She gets off work in a little while, and she usually takes the bus home, but maybe you could accidentally on purpose see her going to the bus stop and offer her a ride.”