by JoAnn Ross
“A bit impractical, being all white,” Doris pointed out what Charity had already considered. “But at least it’s machine washable. And it does looks wonderful on you.”
“It shows off your arms,” Amanda said. “Which most women would kill to have. It’s also very summery, while keeping to your own tailored style.”
Until that moment, Charity hadn’t even realized she had a style.
“I feel a bit like a nurse,” she said. “From back when they wore white uniforms, sensible shoes, and perky caps.” She wasn’t old enough to remember those days, but she’d seen movies. Including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Terrific. She was going on her first date in nearly two years looking like Nurse Ratched.
“You just need color,” Amanda said.
“To brighten it up,” Dottie agreed.
“But not too much,” Doris cautioned.
Diving back into the baskets again, Amanda came up with a necklace made of silver chains studded with green and blue sea glass. And a wide, plastic, blue cuff bracelet. Dottie, returning to a rack in the window, retrieved the twin of the seashell cardigan, this time in sea blue.
Doris, going along with the flow, managed to put aside her own tastes and came up with a pair of flat silver sandals.
“Perfect,” they all said on happy sighs as they viewed the final result.
Charity couldn’t argue. She looked crisp and summery, and, she considered, like the kind of woman Gabriel St. James would appreciate. Although she barely knew him, from the way he was resisting disrupting his life with that poor stray dog, she suspected he wasn’t one to go for the ultrafeminine, high-maintenance type.
“It is nice.” She turned around in the three-way mirror, noticing what she hadn’t been able to see in the single wall-length one in the dressing room. There were silvery crystal designs on both back pockets of the jeans. “Though I’m not sure these crystals on my butt aren’t overkill.”
“Not overkill at all. Merely the payoff for all those squats you’ve obviously been doing,” her mother said.
“When you’re manhandling animals who don’t always want to go where you’d like them to, you have to stay in shape.”
“And isn’t it fortunate you have?” Dottie said. “Because those look fabulous on you.” She sighed and turned toward her sister. “Remember when we had bottoms like that?”
“Vaguely,” Doris said on a sigh of her own.
The way they were all looking at her, as if they’d placed all their own memories and romantic hopes on both her outfit and her upcoming date, made Charity decide the time had come to leave.
Unsurprisingly, her mother insisted on paying. Since Charity’s practice and her shelter costs ate up all her income, as well as digging into the small inheritance that had allowed her to buy the Victorian house in the first place, she wasn’t about to argue.
Besides, her mother had always enjoyed giving her gifts. Charity had often thought it was her way of trying to make up for the unstable home life she’d provided her only child.
“Oh!” Dottie said as Doris ran the credit card. “I nearly forgot to give you one of these.” She held out a brightly colored paper flyer.
Charity read the announcement. “A clothing exchange?”
“We started it for prom. Since the economy’s been down, we invited all the girls at the high school to bring in their old dresses and did a swap. It was grand fun.”
“And, more important,” Doris said, “everyone went home with a new dress. For no cost.”
“What a lovely idea. Though it doesn’t seem as if it would help your business,” Amanda said.
“Oh, we’re part of the community now.” As so often happened, the twins didn’t seem to realize they’d spoken in unison. “What’s good for Shelter Bay is good for us.”
“We’ll get more business once the economy turns around,” Dottie said. “Meanwhile, we’re doing fine. And everyone had such a grand time, we’ve decided to extend the idea to the adults. We’re having a party next week.”
“Sedona Sullivan’s providing cupcakes for the refreshments,” Doris said. “Maureen Douchett’s bringing her sweet tea and Sofia’s giving away pots of herbs. You know how she’s always trying to get people to plant their own gardens.”
“That sounds like a nice evening,” Charity said, thinking that she doubted, except for the yellow dress she’d worn to the wedding, and this new outfit, she had a thing in her closet any woman in Shelter Bay would want to swap for.
“We were hoping you’d come,” Dottie said.
“Oh, I don’t—”
“We thought you could bring some of those kittens or puppies,” Doris said.
“In case there’s anyone left in town you haven’t talked into adopting one,” Dottie tacked on.
Charity laughed at that. Hadn’t the sisters adopted a pair of elderly Siamese cats? Unsurprisingly, Doris had chosen the brown chocolate point, while Dottie had gone for the lavender point.
And both Harold and Hayden had gone home from the shelter with older dogs—Harold with a taffy-colored cocker, Hayden with a graying Jack Russell terrier.
She might not have clothes to donate, but no way was she going to resist an opportunity to tell people about the importance of neutering their pets and invite those who might be thinking about getting a pet to come visit the special ones she had at her shelter. Dogs and cats who, in her view, weren’t victims to be pitied but heroes for surviving the odds.
“You’re on,” she said.
18
Johnny’s grandmother had told him that his mother, Crystal, had always been excitable and given to big dreams. But she hadn’t been flat-out crazy until her first baby girl—born three years before Johnny—had died of SIDS, which his grandmother had explained was short for sudden infant death syndrome.
According to the story as it had been told to him, after finding the baby lifeless in her little pink onesie, his mother had sunk into the depths of despair, crying and staying in bed and being so miserable that her husband, unable to take so much sorrow any longer, had run off with her best friend.
But even that hadn’t been enough to get her out of bed.
As his mother had related to his grandmother, she’d been crying buckets of tears into the pillow when a deep voice had spoken to her, rumbling like thunder in the dark. The voice, which his mother claimed to have belonged to God, explained that she was being used as a pawn in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. And that although she’d be blessed with more children, she’d have to fight the demons to protect them. Which she’d done with a vengeance, even locking him in the closet whenever she left the house.
Later, his baby sister, Angel, had been locked in with him.
Although weeks, sometimes even months, might go by when life would be fairly normal, eventually she’d go off her meds again and other voices—belonging to saints and archangels—would warn her that her children were being hunted by evil people who were only waiting for her to drop her guard. During these times, she’d go without sleep for days, keeping him and Angel locked in whatever room they were living in at the time, pacing the floor, forgetting to bathe or eat, or feed her son and daughter. Which was when Johnny had begun teaching himself to cook.
Unfortunately, while she might have tried to protect her children against demons, Crystal was a great deal more lax about the men in her life. Although Johnny didn’t really believe in demon possession, he’d gotten an up-close and personal introduction to evil when he was nine. After bouncing around the country, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, freezing his butt off during an icy winter in Minnesota, back to West Virginia, then Texas, it seemed they might actually be settling down in Salem, Oregon, long enough for him to spend an entire year in one school, when his mama brought home Uncle Buck.
Buck had been a mean, red-faced man with a bulging gut, thick hairy arms, and big hands. Hands that could make you see stars or wield a belt that would leave Johnny’s butt with red marks for a day.
&
nbsp; “Spare the rod, spoil the child” had been his excuse, though it didn’t take Johnny long to realize that Buck was just a bully with a mean streak, which was made even worse by his liking for whiskey.
When Buck started beating up on Crystal, Johnny had tried to stop him, only to end up with a broken arm for his efforts. On the way to the emergency room, his mother had instructed him to say he’d fallen off his bike, because if the doctor knew what had really happened, then he’d have to report it and the police would come and take Buck away.
“But that would be a good thing,” he’d said.
“People can be dangerous,” she’d answered, telling him nothing he hadn’t figured out for himself. “But sometimes, you’re better off with the devil you know. Besides, you know how hard it is for me to keep a job. Without Buck’s paycheck, we could end up living on the street. Or living out of this car again.”
Although his arm hurt like the dickens and he hated the idea of Buck’s big hands touching his mom, most of all Johnny hated living out of the car. With his wrinkled clothes always smelling like the take-out burgers and fries they were forced to live on, along with his hair and freckles, and being small for his age, he might as well go to school with a big red bull’s-eye on his back.
So he’d lied to the doctors and the nurses, even though he could tell one nurse didn’t believe him. But he’d stuck to his story and protected his mother in the only way he knew how.
A few weeks later, Buck had come home from the bar drunk and meaner than usual. It had been the worst night of Johnny’s life. A long, scary night that finally ended when a police SWAT sniper shot Buck dead.
But not before Buck had stabbed Crystal with his switchblade knife. Although his mother had survived the wound, she’d been committed, against her will, to the state mental hospital.
The lady from DHS sent Johnny and Angel to live with his grandmother, who’d finally left Nevada and moved to Oregon. She was living in a downtown Portland apartment, working as a waitress in a riverfront fish restaurant.
Looking back on it now, with the additional wisdom of his fifteen years, Johnny realized that his grandmother, who’d still been a young woman herself, wasn’t all that wild about having two kids dumped in her lap. Especially a redheaded boy who spent most of his time angry, and the rest getting in fights.
He’d been sitting in class, trying to figure out the complexities of long division, when one of the mothers who volunteered in the school office came into the class and handed a note to the teacher.
They exchanged a few words. Then, when the teacher’s gaze landed straight as an arrow on him, both women’s faces serious and sad at the same time, Johnny knew this wasn’t going to be good.
He left the classroom to a buzz of conversation. The kids were all wearing smirks. He’d seen that look before, too.
The hallway seemed a mile long as he walked down it with the pretty blond woman who smelled like flowers. As soon as he entered the principal’s office, he recognized the other woman sitting there immediately. She was the same one who’d come to the house after Buck had been shot. The one who’d taken Angel and him to his grandmother’s house, with only their clothes on their backs, in the middle of the night.
“I’m afraid your grandmother has turned you back in to Social Services.” The woman’s tone, while not unkind, was also brisk, as if she told kids stuff like this every day. Which Johnny figured she probably did. “She says you’re a problem child. That she can’t handle you.”
He looked over at the principal, Mrs. Ferguson, who had begun writing something that must have been really important because she wouldn’t meet his eye.
“Mrs. Ferguson says that you’ve been getting in fights.”
He speared an accusing look at the principal, who continued to write.
“It’s all in your records,” the social worker said in defense of the still-silent principal.
“Kids pick on me. So I fight back.”
“You gave”—she opened the manila folder she was holding—“Tyler Young a black eye. And broke his nose.”
When he’d felt the satisfying crunch of bone beneath his fist, Johnny had, for the first time, understood a little of what Buck must’ve felt. The big difference was Buck had been a bully.
While he was standing up to bullies.
“He called my mother a crazy, nutcase whore.”
Principal Ferguson’s cheeks reddened a bit at that. Johnny knew she didn’t tolerate bad words in her school. Tough. If she’d really cared, she would have called to her office all the kids who threw even worse words at him like a shower of stones every day and written all those words down in their permanent records.
A really bad thought occurred to him. “Did she turn in Angel, too?”
The social worker nodded. “Yes.”
That hadn’t made sense to Johnny then. And six years later, it still didn’t. Okay, so maybe he was a “problem child.” But his sister was an angel. Or as close to one as you were ever going to find here on earth. But it hadn’t mattered, because their grandmother had dumped her, too.
And it was all his fault. If only he’d behaved better. If only he hadn’t gotten into fights, and had cleaned his room, and not sassed his grandmother when she complained about having two brats dumped on her, Angel would still have a home.
As he left the office, the principal finally spoke. “Johnny.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Using his fists wasn’t the only thing Johnny had learned from Buck.
He’d flipped her the bird. Then hadn’t looked back.
He and Angel had spent the next six years bouncing from home to home. He’d always known it was his bad attitude that had kept him from being adopted. Not that he wanted to be placed in a permanent home. Because his mom was coming back and he knew that if he wasn’t waiting for her, something terrible could happen.
But he’d never been able to figure out why no one wanted his sister. Especially since they’d been separated the entire time. So why should his behavior have anything to do with Angel?
The question had remained a puzzle until a year ago, when a bitch of a foster parent even more wicked than that bad witch in The Wizard of Oz had told him that no one would ever adopt either Johnny or Angel because no one trusted their blood history.
“No one knows who either of your fathers were,” she’d said. “And according to your records and the police report, your mother’s a mental mess.”
Which was, unfortunately, true. But that didn’t keep him from feeling guilty. Maybe if he’d just loved his mother a little harder, taken better care of his sister so she wouldn’t have to worry so much, they’d still be a family.
Not all his foster parents had been like old Wicked Witch of the West. Some were kind, and a few even treated him the same way they did their own children, even inviting him to call them Mom.
But he couldn’t do it because they weren’t his mother. His mother was out there. Somewhere. And she’d always told Johnny that whatever happened—that whoever took him away from her and kept them apart—she would always be his mother. His only mom.
So, refusing to forget her, as so many adults advised, forgiving her for past painful behaviors he understood were out of her control whenever her damaged mind burst its boundaries, he’d steadfastly waited for her to come back. Which, in his heart, he knew would probably never happen. But that didn’t keep him from hoping.
And waiting.
While his mother’s face and the scent of her jasmine perfume followed him like a shadow, from placement to placement.
Like a ghost.
19
Time might be slower on the coast, but this was ridiculous, Charity thought as she looked up at the pawshaped wall clock for the umpteenth time. Having just assured a nervous cat owner that it wouldn’t die after scarfing down an entire pork chop it’d snatched from the countertop, she was counting the hours before the Marine was due to show up at the house.
You’re be
having like a teenager before a first date. It was ridiculous to be so nervous. It was, after all, just dinner.
Yeah, and how many times do you buy a new outfit to nuke a Lean Cuisine spaghetti Alfredo?
“Good point,” she muttered.
“Did you say something?” Amie glanced up from stocking the supply cabinet.
“Just talking to myself.”
“I do that all the time,” Janet, who’d come back to announce a new patient, offered. “I figure as long as I answer, I’m okay.” She handed Charity the patient’s color-coded file. “It’s when I start ignoring myself I may be in trouble.”
“You’ve been jittery all day,” Amie accused.
“I have not.” It was a lie. But only a small white one.
“You’ve reminded me of a blind cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” Janet jumped in.
“I’ll bet it’s the date,” Amie said knowingly.
Janet nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“It’s not a date.” The denial sounded as false as when she’d tried it out on herself. “Simply dinner.”
“A dinner you bought a new outfit for,” Janet pointed out.
“And did your nails.”
When both women’s eyes zeroed in on Charity’s fingernails, she was tempted to put her hands behind her back to hide them from view. “It’s clear polish.”
“True. Which is a shame, because if I had your long fingers, I’d want to show them off,” said Amie, who was currently wearing a sky blue color on her own short nails.
“But they’re not chipped like they usually are,” Janet said, proving to have the eye of an eagle, which probably served her well when painting landscapes. “And you shaped them.”
“Jeez.” Charity opened the file, determined to move the topic away from her. “It’s not as if I go around town looking like a bag woman.”
“Of course you don’t, dear,” Janet said. “It’s just that it’s been obvious that you’re anxious about something. Since the day’s been so quiet—”
“Don’t say that!” Amie and Charity immediately cut the older woman off. If there was one thing every veterinarian knew, it was that the surest way to invite chaos was to state out loud how quiet things were.