“You read my online profile.”
He not only kept up with her, he was a step ahead. She liked that. “There was one part I didn’t understand, though.”
“And what was that?”
“Why you said no one under sixty-five should reply.”
He grinned. “I thought you’d have it figured out by now—I’ve only been going after you to get to Anna.”
She put her hand to her forehead. “I feel so used.”
“I have to admit I’ve enjoyed our time together more than I thought I would.”
“I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
“I really have, Karla,” he said, serious again. “I’m sorry it’s coming to an end.”
“I thought the weeks would seem like months before I came,” she said. “I dreaded every day I would be here. And now it seems as if I just arrived and I’m leaving.”
“And I’m sitting here trying to come up with the words that will get you to stay even knowing there aren’t any.”
“I know. I feel the same way.” She smiled. “It’s hard to say good-bye to a new best friend.” They hit a pothole and she turned to check on the setter. The dog opened one eye, then settled back into sleep.
Facing forward again, she said, “I go back and forth between wanting to be with Anna and wanting to get back to work. Maybe if I didn’t like what I do so much it would be easier to stay away, but the shop is my life, it’s my identity.”
“You’re a hell of a lot more than a coffee shop, Karla.” Mark slowed the car to make a left-hand turn. He drove another half mile and then turned left again into a long driveway. A classic brick colonial sat at the top of the hill surrounded by heritage oaks, a gray Mercedes in the circle driveway. Mark stopped behind the Mercedes as a tall man came out to greet them.
“You just missed Melinda. She took the boys to basketball practice.” He held out his hand to Karla. “I’m Darren. And you must be Karla. I told Mark he didn’t have to drag you all the way up here, that I was perfectly willing to come down there to pick up Tammy, but he insisted.”
Mark looked at Karla and shrugged. “I figured it was the only way I could get you to see me again. Of course I wasn’t figuring on Darren shooting off his mouth about it.”
Darren laughed. “Anytime I can be of service. Now let me see that dog of mine.”
“You named her Tammy?” Karla said.
“My oldest boy came up with it,” Darren told her. “Melinda and I just went with it, no questions asked. But I have a feeling it has something to do with a girl he met last summer at camp.”
They went around to the back of the Jeep. Tammy was up and waiting to be let out of the cage. Her tail thumped loudly against the plastic sides when she saw Darren. He grinned and held out his hand for her to smell.
“How you doing, girl?” She came into his arms as soon as Mark opened the cage, licking his chin and whining in excitement. He put her down and she followed them into the house. She moved with the grace and confidence of a dog in a show ring, her head and tail high, unaware how peculiar she looked with a belly of soft fuzz where there had once been glorious, silky feathering.
“We can’t stay,” Mark said, giving Tammy’s ears a loving, final scratch.
“Melinda’s going to be real unhappy to hear that,” Darren told him. “She made your favorite casserole for lunch.”
“It’s my fault,” Karla said. “I’m the one who has to get back.”
“Maybe next time, then,” he said graciously. The setter leaned possessively against his leg and gave him a doe-eyed look. She almost missed the appearance of a small black cat as it wandered into the room, its tail riding high. The cat spotted the setter, made a high-pitched sound, and tensed. “Mess with her and she’ll put you right back in that hospital,” Darren told the adoring dog.
Mark chuckled. “I’m sorry I’m going to miss this. Call me if you need help.”
Darren and a distracted Tammy walked them to the door. “Are you and Cindy still planning to come up for the tournament next week?”
“She wouldn’t let me miss it,” Mark said. “Tell Melinda and the boys we’re sorry we had to take off before they got back.”
“It was nice meeting you, Karla. Come back when you can stay awhile.”
Darren was the kind of man who made the ordinary sound sincere. Karla had no doubt she would be as welcome as Mark should she come again.
“I like Darren,” she said as Mark drove away. “How did you two meet?”
“We’ve been friends since high school. I talked him into taking a job up here when he finished college, and now he owns his own software business.”
“And how did he and Tammy get together?”
“He stopped by the clinic to pick up some medicine for the black cat. I had Tammy in the break room with me, and it was love at first sight for them both.”
“Just like in one of my movies. I hope they have a happy ending, too.”
“What’s this—sloppy sentimentality?”
“I’ve been known to indulge once in a while. It’s not something I spread around, so you should know I’ll be forced to take extreme measures should it get out.”
“A sense of humor, too? Now I really am impressed.”
“You’ve hardly scratched the surface where I’m concerned, Mr. Taylor.” Was this really her? Somewhere there was a memory of a teasing, carefree girl, but she’d been gone so long, Karla hardly recognized her anymore. How had Mark found her so easily?
When she glanced in his direction she saw that he was looking at her. Before he turned to look at the road again, she said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I assume you’re going to tell me what for?”
This time, for the first time, she was the one who reached out to touch him. She wasn’t usually a tactile person, having learned to stop wanting the hugs that stopped coming. “For being my new best friend. I’m really sorry I’m leaving,” she admitted.
“And not just because of Anna. I’m going to miss you, too.” She saw the beginning of a smile. “Okay, I said it. Satisfied?”
“More than you can imagine. It’s the most encouraging thing you’ve said all morning.”
“How’s this—I wish . . .” She stared out the window. “Never mind.”
“Tell me what you wish.”
She hesitated, took a deep breath, and plunged forward before she could change her mind again. “I wish I lived here or you lived in Solvang, that we’d met before or never at all, that I knew what I wanted and had the guts to go after it, that you would let me see the side of you that you keep hidden, especially if it’s a side that would let me walk away without regret.”
“Sorry, Karla. There is no hidden side. With me, it’s what you see is what you get.”
“I know. . . .”
“Well, there’s something you don’t know that I need to tell you.”
She looked at him.
“There’s no way I’m going to let you walk out of my life. There’s more, but I don’t think you’re ready to hear it yet.”
Her heart swelled until it filled her chest. As much as she wanted to know what he would say next, she didn’t want to spoil the moment by asking him to explain. For now, this was enough.
“I had a bet with Grandma that you wouldn’t be back until tonight,” Heather said as she gently rocked in Anna’s chair and watched Karla rake leaves.
“For the third time—we’re just friends. Saying it’s something else isn’t going to make it so.” She finished one section and moved to the next. “When I leave on Sunday I doubt we’ll ever see each other again.”
“Real friends stay in contact.”
“You know, you can be a real pain sometimes.”
“I’m supposed to be. It says so in my little sister contract.” She stood and stretched. “What do you suppose got into Grace?”
“What do you mean?”
“Leaving the way she did. And where were you? Did the two of you
have a fight?”
“We had a discussion.” Heather would find out what happened sooner or later and would have her feelings hurt if she thought she’d been lied to.
“About?” she prompted.
“Her finances.”
“God damn it, Karla. You’re not giving her more money, are you?”
“Think about it Heather. If I’d given Grace money, we wouldn’t have had a fight.”
“Don’t tell me you finally stood up to her.”
“You might say that.”
“And?”
“And she wasn’t happy.”
Heather left the porch and crossed the lawn. “I want details.”
“Later.” She was talked out where Grace was concerned. And she was tired of worrying about her, which was just about all the control she’d ever had over their situation. “I think I see Bill and the boys coming.”
As if on cue, they drove up. Jamie tumbled out of the car and into Heather’s arms. “Look what I got.” He held a plastic car aloft.
“I got one, too,” Jason told her when Bill released him from his car seat. “Mine’s blue.”
Karla leaned into the rake and watched the reunion. She tried to picture herself in Heather’s role, wondering what kind of mother she would make. She had a hundred ideas about being a good mother, some intractable, others open to change. There would always be a bedtime story and never a time when she was too busy to pay attention to a small need. Hands were meant to hold and laps to sit on and cheeks and foreheads and chins and noses were to kiss.
“She’s good with them, isn’t she?” Bill said coming to stand beside Karla.
“Wonderful. She was born to be a mother.”
“Are these nephews of yours—and the soon-to-be niece—ever going to have any cousins to play with?”
Her immediate thought was to give him a flippant answer about Grace being a long way from motherhood, but the question hit too close to home not to be taken seriously. “Not from me. I’ve had to face some uncomfortable truths this past month, and one of them is that I’m not mother material. I have a lot of ideas, but not the dedication it takes to do the job right.”
“You’re selling yourself short, Karla.”
“Maybe. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear my biological clock ticking its final hour. The timing is wrong for me to do anything about it now, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me, too.” One of the things she liked best about Bill was that he never argued with her about her feelings. He acknowledged she knew herself better than he possibly could by taking the effort to really listen to what she said. She wondered about his choice of professions; to her law seemed a place where nothing was ever accepted at face value.
“I have a favor to ask.” He lowered his voice but kept a show of casualness. “I need your help talking Heather into leaving this afternoon instead of tomorrow.”
“All right. Can I ask why?”
“She’s putting up a good front, but she’s exhausted, and that’s not good for her or the baby.”
A warning chill went through Karla. “I thought everything was all right with this pregnancy.”
“That’s what Heather wanted you to think. She didn’t see any sense in having the whole family worried over something they couldn’t do anything about.”
“Is it the same thing she had last time?”
“Yes.”
“Then she lied to me.” Karla had asked Heather the result of her ultrasounds, and Heather had told her that the placenta was where it should be with this pregnancy. With Jason it had been low, between him and the birth canal. She’d damn near died before they could get Jason delivered by cesarean section and stop her hemorrhaging. Another few minutes and they would have had to perform a hysterectomy. Now Karla wondered if that wouldn’t have been better. No pregnancy was worth her sister’s life.
Karla didn’t look at Bill. If she saw confirmation of the fear she heard in his voice, she wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretense if Heather happened to look their way. “I can’t believe the doctor let her come. Or that you did.”
“She’ll be furious if she finds out I told you.”
“I won’t say anything,” she reluctantly promised. What she’d like to do was give them both hell for taking such a foolish chance with Heather’s life.
“I don’t understand why she put herself at risk again when she knows how much you and Jason and Jamie need her. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ve said the same thing to myself a hundred times. I can’t believe I agreed to have another child, but you know how persuasive Heather can be when she wants something. At the time it made a crazy kind of sense, now I can’t imagine that I fell for it.”
“What could possibly matter more than her health?”
Bill rubbed the back of his neck as he considered how to answer her. “Heather heard about a DNA strand, or something like that. Only women have it, and it’s passed from mother to daughter. If the link is broken, it’s gone forever. She became obsessed with not letting that happen. She talked to the doctor and convinced him—and me, I should add—that she could manage one more pregnancy. If it was a boy, she promised she wouldn’t try again, but she wanted this one chance for a daughter. She kept reminding me that it wasn’t a hundred percent that she would have the placenta previa again.”
As much as Karla wanted to vent her frustration over the risk they’d taken, in the end, it was their decision. She had no right to tell them they were wrong. “And one of the things she’s not supposed to do is get overly tired.”
“She’s actually supposed to be in bed as much as possible,” Bill said, relief heavy in his voice.
“Give me a few minutes to come up with something.”
“Thanks, Karla. I owe you one.”
“If there’s a debt to be paid, it’s mine.” Heather was carrying the baby she so desperately wanted. The deed was done. She and Bill needed her support, not her criticism. “I couldn’t ask for anyone better to love my sister. You’ve given her everything I could wish for her, and a love I never imagined.” She desperately wanted to tell him to take care of Heather and to keep her safe, but knew the words were unnecessary. Heather couldn’t be in better hands.
Chapter
21
You want to tell me what we’re really doing on this trip?” Anna said, her hand resting on the padded shoulder strap.
Karla wasn’t surprised at the question, only that it hadn’t come sooner. “I told you, I wanted to give you an early Christmas present.”
“The real reason.”
Anna wasn’t going to let go, nor would she accept a pat answer. “Bill thought Heather was overdoing it and figured the only way to get her to rest was to take her home.”
“Now that makes sense.” Anna’s fingers moved in a waving motion to the child in the car next to theirs. The little boy giggled and ducked out of sight, then popped up again, his tongue stuck out. Anna stuck her tongue out, too.
“Whatever the reason we’re here, it’s nice to get away for a while.”
Karla had packed a lunch and brought a blanket and pillow for Anna’s afternoon nap, planning to bed her down in the back seat if she refused to fall asleep sitting up. She’d never intended for her and Anna to actually take the trip over to the ocean, it was simply a way to get Heather to leave. But once set in motion, the idea had taken on a life of its own. Anna had been up and ready to leave that morning before Karla had poured her first cup of coffee.
“You do realize your sister is a little put out with you,” Anna said. “She had a whole list of plans for today.”
“I expected as much.” Heather’s possessiveness where Anna was concerned would have been laughable if she weren’t so serious. “She’ll get over it.”
“Have you heard from Grace?”
Karla was tempted to lie, nothing big, just enough to
ease Anna’s mind. “No, but then I really didn’t expect to. She knows the one sure way to get to me is with silence. She’s probably sitting there waiting for me to call.”
“Can you just cut her off like that?”
“I don’t know.” Karla glanced in the rearview mirror to check traffic before exiting for Petaluma. “I feel like I’m caught in one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations. No answer feels like the right one.” She glanced at Anna. “What do you think?”
“Remember, I’m the one who sent Grace all those rent checks. I helped create the problem.”
“What is it with us? I don’t think anyone would ever consider either one of us a soft touch, and look what we did.”
In spite of the context, the “us” pleased Anna. It was another example of the small, daily gifts Karla unknowingly gave her. Like this trip. She didn’t mind in the least how it had come about. Karla could have found a dozen different ways to accomplish her goal of getting Heather to go home. Instead she chose one that meant something special to Anna. She would see her ocean one last time. She would feel the wind against her face and smell the salty air. And she would create a memory with her beloved first granddaughter that maybe someday Karla would look back on as a gift in return.
She’d taken this drive a hundred times and never tired of the journey. The coastal mountains between Sacramento and Bodega Bay were benign cousins of the Sierra, no more than softly rolling hills by comparison. But they provided the valleys and slopes that produced the grapes made into wines known around the world.
A thick carpet of green grew beneath the brown of last summer’s grasses. By February, the hills would be on their way to spring, the mustard showing promise of the brilliant yellow soon to take over the fields and vineyards. As they neared the coast, the grapes gave way to pastures and dairy farms, the sunshine to fog.
“You may not get to see the ocean after all,” Karla said.
“We’ll find a clear place. And if not, we’ll enjoy the fog. I’m content just to be here. I don’t need vistas.” She reached up to touch the soft pad that rested on her shoulder, not because it was in the way, but because she liked knowing why it was there. “Did I remember to thank you for buying this for me?”
Things Remembered Page 21