The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel)

by Jump, Shirley

  “Probably scared them half to death is what he did, with that Grinch face of his.”

  Pauline laughed. “Okay, that might be so. But underneath the pointy nose is a decent human being.”

  “I’ll believe it when he stops torturing me with that devil music he plays late at night. Someone needs to put the world out of its misery and ram that saxophone up his—”

  “Greta!” Esther said. “Don’t say it.”

  Greta threw up her hands. “What is the point of being old if I can’t curse, and then blame it on dementia?”

  Pauline just shook her head, apparently deciding that the Harold Twohig conversation was a lost cause. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I’m working on this week’s column. We need to pick a letter to answer. And I’d like to give a status update on the first letter. People love that kind of thing.”

  “Oooh, is there news on the romance front for Luke and Olivia?” Esther said. “I just love a good happy ending.”

  “Nothing concrete yet,” Greta said. Luke and Olivia were moving as slow as mules in mud. Greta needed to find a way to light a fire under their butts. “I’m planning a little fact-gathering mission for later in the week.”

  “Here’s a good one,” Esther said, tugging a letter out of the pile. “Dear Common Sense Carla, my first grandchild is due in a month and my son and his wife are planning on naming the child after the town where the baby was conceived. How do I tell them this is tacky and offensive? Signed, Worried Grandma-To-Be.”

  Pauline got her pad and pen ready and looked to the other two for input.

  “Dear Worried Grandma-To-Be,” Greta began. “It could be worse. They could be naming the child after the position they used for conception. Suck it up, and give the kid a cute nickname. Like Buddy.”

  “I can’t write that,” Pauline said. “What will people think?”

  Olivia entered the morning room just then, heading for the assembled group seated by the entrance. They greeted her and Miss Sadie like long-lost friends, with happy smiles and excited chatter. Greta smiled. It was nice to see the way Miss Sadie and Olivia lifted the mood in this place. Why, it almost made it livable. The way the staff raved about Olivia, Greta was sure some place would want to snatch her up and pay her a better wage. This was why she had no time for Doc Harper’s silly tests. Her grandson needed a wife, and Greta couldn’t rest until she made sure he had one. This one.

  Greta spun back to the other women. “Ladies, we need to step up our game where Olivia and Luke are concerned. Time to implement plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?” Esther said.

  Greta chewed on her bottom lip. She thought of Luke, and how his face had lit when she and Olivia had shown up with the sandwiches. How he’d watched Olivia’s every move, hung on her every word. Luke was smitten, even if he didn’t realize it. Maybe if the two of them got a little closer, spent some quality alone time, Luke would finally realize that Olivia was the one for him. “I don’t know yet. But whatever it is, I think it better end up with the two of them doing the horizontal mambo. Because we all know most men think better with their—”

  “Greta!” Esther shuddered and waved a hand.

  “It’s true. And if they get a little cozy under the covers, Luke will finally wake up to the fact that Olivia is his soul mate.” Greta tapped the letter in Esther’s hands. “And nine months later, they can name my first great-grandchild Sand in Your Britches.”

  Esther shook her head. Pauline laughed so hard, one of the orderlies rushed over and asked her if she wanted oxygen. But Greta just smiled. She’d found the secret to healing her heart without one damned test from Doc Harper.

  It lay in healing her grandson first.

  * * *

  The pancakes had been a mistake.

  Diana had thought making chocolate chip pancakes, Jackson’s favorite, would be a good way to start off a Wednesday. But Jackson gave them a nonplussed half glance. “What, am I five? I don’t eat that crap anymore.” He shook his head, then headed out the door, adding a slam for a punctuation mark.

  Diana dumped the whole stack into the trash and sat down at the table, nursing a cup of coffee and wondering how on earth her happy-go-lucky toddler had turned into a disgruntled teenager.

  “I love you,” she said to the door, but Jackson was long gone, and the words fell on deaf ears.

  She headed in to work, and once the stream of patients and owners started, Diana got lost in the usual Wednesday craziness, starting with rounds with the overnight patients and then the slate of surgeries she had every week. She’d just finished her second spaying of the morning when Linda poked her head in the door. “Call for you on line two.”

  “Can you take a message? I’m in the middle of suturing.”

  “It’s the principal at Jackson’s school.”

  Diana sighed. “Okay. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” She finished stitching up the incision, then handed off the terrier to the other tech working with her. “I might be a minute, so wait before bringing in the next patient.”

  She washed her hands, then ducked into her small office next door to the surgery. The scent of alcohol hung in the air, mingled with the scents of dogs and cats. Two dogs in the kennels in the back of the building warred for loudest bark, but the shut door kept the sound muted enough for a conversation. Diana picked up the phone and pushed the blinking red button. “This is Diana Tuttle.”

  “Mrs. Tuttle, this is Rescue Bay Middle School. I’m sorry to bother you, but Jackson didn’t show up for school today, and since this is his fifth unexcused absence—”

  “What do you mean, he didn’t show up? I saw him leave this morning.” Alarm pitched her voice higher. Fifth absence? When were the first four? How did she miss this?

  “He didn’t arrive at school today. I’m sorry. As I said, since this is his fifth unexcused absence, we’ll have to have a meeting with you and him and the principal before he’ll be allowed to return to classes. He’ll need to sign an attendance contract before we let him return.”

  Diana mumbled agreement, thanked the school secretary, then hung up the phone. It took ten minutes to clear her schedule and get out the door, while calling and texting Jackson’s phone at the same time. There’d be several frustrated owners today, but for Diana, nothing came before her son. Nothing.

  They were all each other had, even if Jackson didn’t realize that.

  She drove home, slowly, gaze going left, right, looking for Jackson. By the time she entered her empty house, the alarm in her chest had bloomed into a near-panic. She got back in the car, checked her phone. Nothing. No response. She called him again, but her call went straight to voice mail.

  “Where are you?” she said, but of course, Jackson didn’t answer.

  Diana put the car in gear again, then wound her way through the tangle of streets that made up her neighborhood. As she turned onto the main street, her phone rang. She grabbed it up and pressed the green button. “Hello?”

  “Diana, it’s Olivia.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to talk. I’m . . .” She didn’t want to dump her personal life on a person who was still essentially a stranger and someone who had no business knowing about Diana’s personal problems. “Busy.”

  “I know, and I apologize for interrupting your day, but I stopped at my house, well, at your mother’s house and—”

  “I don’t really want to hear any renovation stories right now.” The words came out of Diana, sharp and biting.

  “I’m not calling about the house.”

  Diana peered around the corner of Shell Lane, then whipped her attention to the left, to the park behind the elementary school. “I’m really busy—”

  “I think your son is here.”

  Diana sat up, slowed the car. “What did you say?”

  “There’s a boy here and he says he’s not leaving because this is his grandmother’s house. He wouldn’t talk to me, and I, well, I assumed that he was your son, so I called you.”


  Diana exhaled, and nodded. Relief eased her shoulders and her grip on the steering wheel. Thank God, Jackson was okay. “Yes, he’s my son. I’ll be right there.”

  A few minutes later, Diana swung her car into the driveway of the house that was still, and maybe always would be, her mother’s house to her. She parked, but instead of getting out of her Honda, she hesitated for a moment, half expecting to see her mother out in the yard, filling the dozens of bird feeders that still hung from the trees, or crossing the well-worn path from the house to the shelter, her arms filled with bags of dog food.

  But then the image cleared and reality struck her hard. The house, falling apart at the seams and flanked by building supplies. The shelter, a tattered shell of a building empty of the animals that had once found refuge there. Now the sister Diana had never wanted lived there, putting her own stamp on every square inch.

  Diana sighed, then strode forward. Olivia came out of the house and down the steps. As she headed down the walkway, Diana couldn’t help but think again how much her older sister resembled their mother. It was like seeing the young pictures of Bridget, the one from Diana’s childhood. Exuberant, energetic, happy.

  “Where’s Jackson?” Diana asked.

  “Hanging out in the shelter. I tried to—”

  “You let him stay in that decrepit building?” Diana marched forward, waving at the aging frame, the holey roof. “It could come down at any minute. Why would you let him stay there?”

  Olivia swung in front of Diana and parked her fists on her hips. “First of all, I didn’t let him do anything. I found him there. Someone, and I suspect it’s Jackson, has been going in and out of the shelter for a couple weeks. And when you see him, you’ll see why.”

  “What do you mean? What is he doing in there?”

  “Follow me. You’ll see.” Olivia smiled, then started forward.

  They ducked inside the animal shelter. Diana paused while her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Dust motes floated in the sunshine streaming through the holes in the roof. The musty scent of disuse hung in the air like a sad cloak.

  Diana heard the sounds first, familiar noises that told her what had drawn her child into the building. Soft barks and yips, coupled with the quiet, calming murmur of her son, came from around the corner, at the back of the shelter where the kennels were. “Hey, no, you can’t do that,” Jackson was saying. “Be nice to your brother. There. Enough for you and him.”

  Diana glanced at Olivia. “Puppies?”

  Olivia nodded. “I don’t think they’re more than a few weeks old. Jackson has been here, I bet, pretty much every day, checking on Mom and her babies.”

  The two women turned the corner and went down the hall. Sunlight dappled the floor and washed circles of gold onto the concrete floors, and glinted off the kennel gates. At the far end, in the shadows of the shelter, was an open kennel door, held in place by a large rock. The tail end of a blue plaid blanket that Diana recognized as the one she kept in the guest bedroom peeked out from the corner of the kennel.

  Inside, three gold and brown puppies scampered around a thin, exhausted-looking female lab mix. A half-empty bowl of dog food sat in the corner. In the center of it all was Jackson, far enough from Mom that he didn’t seem a threat to her, but close enough for the puppies to climb all over him.

  Here was the reason he had skipped school. The reason why he hadn’t told her where he was going. The reason why she was missing a bag of dog food and a blanket.

  Jackson glanced up, saw Olivia and his mother, and scowled. “Why did you call her?”

  “She’s your mother.”

  “You’re supposed to be in school today,” Diana said. “What are you doing here?”

  “She’s too weak to go out and get food,” Jackson said, pointing to the mother dog. “Someone needed to take care of her.”

  “I could have done that if you had told me about the puppies.”

  Jackson’s face set in that stone mask that said he didn’t like being called out on a mistake. “I can take care of them. They’re my dogs.”

  “Jackson—”

  “I’ve been taking care of them, Mom. For weeks. You didn’t even notice. And if I told you about them, you would have taken them somewhere. They might have ended up dead. At least here, I know they’re okay. And I know they’re going to live.”

  Diana bent down, scootching forward a little at a time, her hand out, nonthreatening, until the mother dog raised her snout and nuzzled the open palm. She kept her voice low, calm, though inside she wanted to both punish Jackson and hug him. “I would have never let that happen. Honey, I’m a vet. I love animals.”

  He looked up at her and his eyes glimmered in the dim light while the puppies tugged on the hem of his jeans and gnawed on his shoelaces. “Yeah, but not everyone does. And Grandma was the only one who wouldn’t kill them.”

  Diana bit her lip. She wanted to tell her son that that was the reality of shelters, that sometimes they had to do the very thing they didn’t want to do—put an animal to sleep—to be able to handle the continual influx of unwanted pets. That her mother had held a strict no-kill policy until the shelter got too overwhelming physically and financially and she’d had to shut her doors. That sometimes this was how life worked, and it sucked, and if she could change the world, she would.

  But she didn’t say one word of that because right now her son was looking at her with that same look he’d given her when he was seven and had come home crying from school because some fifth-grader told him Santa wasn’t real. She couldn’t dash his dreams then, or now.

  “Well, they’re going to need some shots,” she said. “And Mom needs to be checked out. Why don’t I come back later today with some supplies, and we can make sure these guys get the best start possible?”

  Jackson’s eyes filled with hope, and for a few seconds he was her little boy again, the one with tearstained cheeks and a trembling bottom lip, a little boy who desperately needed to believe in Santa and miracles. The angry, distant teenager had been left outside the kennel gate. “Really, Mom?”

  “Yeah, if it’s okay with Olivia.” She glanced at her sister.

  “Fine with me.” Olivia gave Jackson a kind smile. “Plus I think I know the puppies’ dad.”

  “The golden you brought in the other day?” Diana nodded. It all made sense.

  “I found him out here, right in front of the shelter, in fact. I bet he was guarding his family-to-be.”

  Diana got to her feet and glanced at her son. One of the puppies had latched onto Jackson’s jeans with his teeth and was pulling at the hard denim, while another puppy tried to snag his brother’s tail. “They are cute.”

  “Can I keep them?” Jackson asked.

  No was her immediate answer, but she bit her tongue again, unwilling to spoil the moment. “Let’s get them through their first few weeks, and then we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

  He nodded, then buried his face in the third puppy’s fur. “Okay.” He nodded again. “Okay, Mom.”

  Her heart swelled, and she had to root her feet to the floor so she wouldn’t rush in there and topple Jackson with a hug. Instead she stood to the side, and through the glimmer of unshed tears, Diana watched a puppy steal her troubled son’s heart and fill him with joy for the first time in forever.

  After a while, Olivia and Diana headed out of the shelter. They hit the bright sunshine and paused in the yard. “He can come by anytime he wants to feed them or play with them. If you tell me what to do, I’ll make sure they have whatever food and things they need.”

  Diana sighed and glanced back at the ramshackle building. “It’s not really safe for them in there. But I know Mom won’t be happy to be moved right away. If you can take care of them for a couple days, then we’ll see about bringing them in to the office.”

  “Whatever it takes is fine. It’s been kinda lonely around here, so the puppies might be good company.”

  Diana toed at the ground. “I’ll be back, as
long as that’s all right with you.”

  In the distance, a car horn beeped and a bird called out. A light breeze danced in the air, rustling the sturdy green leaves of an orange tree.

  “I’d like that,” Olivia said.

  Diana glanced again at the shelter. Her son was skipping school, and there would be hell to pay for that down the road, but right now, she wanted to hold on to this moment, to that smile on his face. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  Diana exhaled and waited until a passing car turned off the street and they were left with silence again. “I’m sorry for being so . . . angry earlier. This whole thing is hard for me.” Still was, and Diana had no idea when it would get easier. “I didn’t expect . . . well, I didn’t expect you.”

  “I didn’t expect you either.” Olivia gave her a smile that was half sympathy, half hope. “We’ll just play it by ear. Okay?”

  “Yeah.” Diana had the strangest urge to hug Olivia. But instead, she gave her a little wave and headed to her car.

  Sixteen

  Olivia checked on the puppies once more, bringing Jackson a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches before she ran over to Golden Years for her afternoon appointments. She welcomed the break, to give her a moment where she wasn’t wondering where she stood. With Luke. With Diana.

  Her relationship with Diana, if one could even call it that, was still new and tenuous. Still, a part of Olivia reveled in the words my sister, words she’d never spoken or thought in her life until now. She wasn’t quite sure how, or whether, they would get any further than cordial acquaintances. And whether she wanted that. After all, she’d gone all this time without a sister. Who said she needed one now? Especially one who didn’t seem to need her?

  Deep down inside, though, Olivia craved that connection. It was as if Diana held the other keys to Olivia, to figuring out why she was here in Florida, looking for a mother who hadn’t ever looked for her.