“I’m so very sorry. Beauregard never does anything like this. I don’t understand what got into him.”
“I don’t need your life story. Your apology is not going to clean up my children. Now, if you want to miraculously launder their clothes so they can go to school, then I accept your apology.”
“I’ll pay.” She swallowed hard, feeling the heat of his temper bore into her from his narrowed blue eyes. “For their cleaning, I mean. Whatever it costs. I’ll even replace their uniforms, if necessary.”
The man crouched down as he wiped at the mud on the little girl’s shirt, but he only made it worse. Now the streak of mud went up over her shoulder and onto her sleeve. The girl frowned at him, but she didn’t say anything.
Sarah noticed the boy was still petting Beau’s head, seemingly unaffected by his father’s anger—as if he were used to this kind of outburst. Beau jumped up on the little boy again and the boy squealed in delight.
Sarah had to smile. “He really likes you,” she said.
“Oh, for cripe’s sake,” Luke rumbled. “Control your dog. Haven’t you heard of obedience school?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Not good enough,” Luke bit back.
Anger and frustration uncoiled down Sarah’s spine. She hated being angry. Negative feelings served no purpose whatsoever. As far as Sarah was concerned, they caused illness and wrong-thinking. The fact that this man was upset was understandable. If she were the children’s mother she would be furious, as well. She cared that her dog was the cause of the problem, but she didn’t have time for any of this. Not today.
“I told you. Send me the cleaning bill and I’ll take care of everything.”
“Yeah, right,” the man shot back.
“I’m sorry. So very sorry,” she said again, just as Grandy opened the door.
“What’s all the ruckus out here?” the stick-thin woman wearing a rubber apron asked. “Oh,” she said, looking at the mud-covered golden retriever, “It’s you, Beau.” Grandy stepped aside just as Beauregard charged past her and dragged Sarah, still teetering in her high heels, toward the shop.
Luke looked at the puppy-shop owner and pointed accusingly at Sarah. “Because of that woman’s rudeness, I have to take my kids home so they can change, which will make them late for school and me late to work.” Luke didn’t notice Timmy’s beaming smile.
Annie was keenly aware of her father’s fury. She looked at Timmy’s happy face and nudged him with her elbow. “Cut it out,” she whispered.
Timmy squeezed his mouth into a pucker and hung his head.
“People like that shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog if they can’t control them,” Luke said, looking at Timmy and Annie. He snapped his fingers. “In the truck. Now. March!”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Timmy said, climbing into the truck. “The mud will dry.”
“And I’ll explain everything to his teacher,” Annie offered. “It was just an accident.”
Annie buckled herself in and smiled winningly at her father.
Luke growled under his breath, banged the steering wheel with his fist and stifled a string of curses that threatened to explode from his mouth. He turned on the ignition and said, “This is precisely the kind of thing that confirms my feelings about dogs and kids.”
“What’s that?” Annie asked.
“The two don’t mix.”
Timmy looked back at the puppies in the window. The little one he’d liked so much was standing on his hind legs with his paws on the windowpane, watching them leave. Timmy felt as if a heavy stone was sinking in his chest. He just knew that little fellow would be a beautiful, great big dog someday like Beauregard, and when he was all grown up, he was going to have a dog just like that.
* * *
LUKE DROPPED THE children off at St. Mark’s School, kissed them each goodbye and waited until they were in the building before leaving.
He drove back up Maple Avenue and then across Main Street and headed north toward the construction office where he worked.
It wasn’t until he was on Indian Lake Drive, which rimmed the north shore of Indian Lake, that he realized his eyes were filled with tears. He pinched them away with his thumb and forefinger. He guessed he was so used to tears now that when they came, he was numb to their presence.
He pulled into the gravel drive of the metal-sided and tin-roofed construction office. Luke threw back the last gulp of his coffee.
Getting out of the truck, he didn’t notice the enormous flowering crab-apple tree he’d parked beneath, nor the blanket of pink petals under his truck’s tires. He didn’t notice the warm spring breeze or the scent of purple French lilacs that formed a screen along the chain-link fence that separated the parking lot from the lumberyard next door.
Luke didn’t notice much of any of the beauty around him. All he knew was that he had to face another day of his life without his wife and without the only love he would ever know.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER MAKING CERTAIN that Beauregard was settled in Grandy’s competent and loving hands, Sarah drove toward her office, which sat on a hill across Indian Lake Drive, offering a spectacular view of the lake.
As much as she needed to rehearse her presentation to Charmaine, Sarah’s thoughts tripped back to her encounter with the sharp-tempered, currish man she’d met that morning.
Granted, Beau had ruined his kids’ clothes, but that wasn’t cause enough for him to be so uncivil toward her. She was at fault for not controlling the normally well-behaved Beau, but today he’d been anything but her respectful, intelligent canine companion.
She had to admit Beau’s friendly nature had probably ruined the man’s morning as much as it had hers.
Can’t say that I blame the guy for being angry. But why would he be up late at night doing laundry?
Sarah stopped at the light on Willow Lane and tapped her fingernail against the steering wheel. Then she smacked her forehead. He’s a single dad! Divorced. That’s it.
The light changed.
His wife probably left him because he clearly doesn’t like dogs, not to mention that he’s a snarling grouch. What kind of person doesn’t like dogs? Sarah chewed her lip and watched the light turn green. She depressed the gas pedal. Certainly not any kind of person I would want to know.
As she made her way through town, she looked up at the flowering white almond trees lining both sides of Main Street and thought of her mother.
It was impossible for any of the townsfolk not to think of Ann Marie Jensen when they looked at the beautification projects around Indian Lake. In the past twenty-five years, Ann Marie had been almost solely responsible for the changes that gave Indian Lake its charming, nearly enchanting present look. She’d spent twenty years as a member of the Zoning and Planning Commission, during which time she’d instituted the Downtown Beautification Committee. In the early 1980s, the nostalgia for the forties and fifties that had accompanied the soda fountains, drive-in root beer stands, bike shops, record stores where customers listened to their 45s before they bought them, knitting shops and ladies’ glove shops had died. Factory jobs moved overseas, and Indian Lake manufacturing companies shut down. Younger people moved away. Neglect and disuse settled in. The town looked sad, lonely and unwanted, which it was.
Then Ann Marie moved to town, the new bride of Paul Jensen. She was more than a spark of creativity and new life. She was the firestorm Indian Lake needed to ignite the enthusiasm the town fathers had lost and nearly forgotten. She prodded, cajoled and reasoned with politicians and officials until she got the green light she wanted on whichever beautification project she felt the town could not last another day without. “No” was a concept she did not understand. Rarely did Ann Marie reject anyone or any request made of her. She worked long hours—too long, in many cases—for her town and her
church. She loved both with all her being.
Ultimately, Sarah believed, her mother’s passion for Indian Lake led to her death.
Ann Marie was so used to working hard and sustaining her energy over long periods of time that she seldom slept. The doctors said her lack of rest led to a suppressed immune system. It was Sarah’s belief that the decades of putting her family and community ahead of her own health contributed to the cancer that took her life.
Sarah glanced over at the new bay window on Bechinski’s Pharmacy, another of her mother’s creative suggestions to one of the town retailers. The storefront, with its new, red, wooden door, floated in front of her on a sea of tears.
Exhaling the lump in her throat, she wiped her cheeks.
“Looks great,” she said aloud and gave a little wave.
Everything along Main Street looked amazing, thanks to Ann Marie.
One of the reasons tourists flooded to the area in summer and on warm, golden autumn weekends was that time seemed to stand still in Indian Lake. Down Maple Avenue, where Sarah lived, people still sat in wicker rocking chairs on the front porches of their elegant Victorian and Edwardian-style homes in the summer and waved to people as they drove or walked past. They took time to speak to their neighbors as they went in and out of their homes in the winter. They shoveled each other’s walks, and they brought a fresh-baked pie when someone died. They cut flowers out of their gardens for each other when news of an illness traveled through the neighborhood grapevine—which was usually perpetuated by Helen Knowland or, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Beabots. Indian Lake was a place where people cared about each other. Sometimes, that caring morphed into being a busybody, but such extravagances of eccentricity were forgiven by the locals. Outsiders or those new to the area didn’t understand. They never would, either. That was why they remained outsiders. It took heart to be a part of Indian Lake, and a great deal of courage, determination and persistence. Sarah knew her mother was Indian Lake at its best.
* * *
SARAH PARKED HER car in her assigned space, gathered her portfolio and purse and exited the car. She went around to the front of the building and entered through the double glass doors.
Just walking into the reception area of Environ-Tech Design still gave her chills of pride after almost two years. Charmaine Chalmers had carefully laid out the space with the expertise of one of the most illustrious Black Hat Feng Shui Masters in Chicago. The serenity and peace that clients felt walking in the doors was planned, purposeful and dramatic. It was a breath of urban class in a small town, and Sarah loved it. The walls were painted a burned taupe with glistening white crown molding and trim. The floor was bamboo hardwood covered with ancient Persian rugs in muted browns, reds and golds that looked as if they had been dragged through the Sahara to gain their patina. Tall African jars held white bird-of-paradise stalks that Sarah knew attracted aphids like crazy, but Charmaine spritzed the leaves with soapy water and wiped them down one by one on Saturday nights when she had nowhere else to go.
The conversation area was centered with an ink-black mahogany coffee table that glistened like glass and had never once been allowed to display the first fingerprint or speck of dust. The front-desk receptionist, Lou Ann Hamilton, made certain that Charmaine’s specially manufactured and painstakingly imported Samoan table was pristine at all times.
The Asian-inspired seating was actually Italian in design and constructed south of Milan, but no one in the office was allowed to give out the name of Charmaine’s highly talented, grossly underpaid furniture designer. Charles Vesa was fifty years old, divorced, and other than when he wandered into the Environ-Tech offices unannounced with rolls of design paper under his arm, few people ever saw the man. When Charles showed up, Charmaine always dropped everything she was doing, sat in her conference room and studied his drawings as if they were bits of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Sarah went into her cubby-hole-size office, which was only slightly larger than the other offices up and down the hallway. The building, built before the First World War, still had interior doors with walnut bottoms and frosted, “pebbled” glass on the upper half of the door. No one could see in or out. It seemed rather odd to Sarah that, despite Charmaine’s intense desire to create a Feng Shui atmosphere in the front of the office and the conference room, the rest of the building felt like the back rooms of an old county recorder’s office. The offices were certainly not conducive to creative thought.
Sarah went to her frosted, double-hung window and lifted the sash. A warm, fresh breeze with a hint of lilacs drifted past the sill. She inhaled deeply and sighed.
Just then, her phone rang. She looked at the blinking light. It was Lou Ann at the front desk.
“This is Sarah.”
“Charmaine wants to see you in the conference room. Do you want some coffee?” Lou Ann asked sweetly, with a hint of the Southern accent she’d brought with her when she and her husband moved here from Tennessee.
“Sounds lovely,” Sarah replied. “I’ll be there.”
Sarah hung up, looked down at her portfolio and crossed her fingers for luck. Mom, I know you’re up there pulling for me. You, too, Daddy. If this goes right today, I could finally get a promotion.
She looked around her office and grimaced. Okay. That’s not likely. But, she thought, sticking her finger in the air with a bit of anticipation, landing the client myself would be a huge feather in my cap.
With one last glance heavenward, Sarah picked up her portfolio and left her office.
* * *
CHARMAINE CHALMERS WORE a spring-green, silk sweater set with light beige crepe slacks and low-heeled, leopard-print designer pumps. Today, her jewelry was simple, for Charmaine— a pure gold, diamond-studded chain around her neck and chocolate diamond hoop earrings. She wore no wedding rings, having never been married, and had a man’s alligator-banded antique Hamilton watch on her wrist.
No one knew where the watch came from, but Sarah guessed it had belonged to Charmaine’s wealthy Miracle Mile entrepreneur father who disinherited his daughter over thirty years ago when she moved to Indian Lake to strike out on her own.
Sarah’s eyes squinted together as she watched her boss peer over her drawings for far too long before sharing her assessment.
Charmaine was the kind of person who, if she liked something, would be instantaneously effusive.
There was nothing coming out of Charmaine’s mouth this morning that remotely resembled pleasure—or even mild acceptance.
“You don’t like it,” Sarah said. If she stated the obvious, maybe the rejection wouldn’t cut so deeply.
She was wrong.
“I don’t,” Charmaine said too bluntly and too quickly. “The reception area is the focal point of all our commercial designs. This is the first impression customers or patients receive. Look here. The counter is much too angular. We have always prided ourselves on our Feng Shui design, and I see none of that here. The client expressly requested that this back wall be a lighted glass block, not this bank of file cabinets and shelves. Also, your color boards don’t have the spark I’ve come to expect from you. Where’s your inventiveness?”
Sarah looked at her color boards with their earth tones of tan, brown, camel and brick. Charmaine picked up a swatch of Aztec sun-gold brocade with turquoise and jet beads and tossed it over the color board. The other colors instantly came to life and radiated energy.
Sarah smiled. Then sighed. “I see what you mean.”
Charmaine’s expertly made-up eyes glistened with a sheen that Sarah suddenly realized were tears. “I don’t know how to say this, Sarah.”
Sarah thought she’d quick-frozen her emotions when her mother died two months ago. She was wrong.
Loss and grief had no boundaries.
They just kept rolling on with a vengeance, unmindful of the human hearts in their path.
/> “Say...what?”
Charmaine exhaled a long, yogalike breath. She folded her hands in front of her, on top of Sarah’s drawings. “I want you to know that I hold you and your talent in deep regard. I couldn’t love you more if you were my own daughter. Nevertheless, we have to face something here, Sarah...”
“Which is?” Sarah could barely swallow. She looked down at her drawings and for the first time saw them for what they were. Mediocre. She cringed. She felt as small as the tiniest spec in the universe.
“These past months have been difficult for you. No, its more than that. They have been hell. First your father died two years ago, then your mother got sick. You’ve been her support all this time. I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it, quite frankly.”
Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off her drawings. “Apparently, I haven’t done it.”
Charmaine reached out and touched Sarah’s hand. “Yes. You have. You do so much. But this—” she swept her hand over the papers “—this just isn’t your best work.”
“It isn’t,” Sarah said flatly. She supposed despair would set in later, but for now, she looked up at Charmaine. “You’re absolutely right. It’s not coming together for me.”
Charmaine moved a bit closer to Sarah. “I want you to listen to me. Don’t say anything until I’m finished.”
“Okay,” Sarah replied, her mouth going dry.
“I want you to take a leave of absence. Take a couple of months off.”
“What? Now? I can’t leave now.” A burning sob grabbed Sarah by the throat. Without her work, she would be nothing. Without a project to wrestle with the grief she felt every waking minute of the day, she knew beyond a doubt she would go insane. She was at Charmaine’s mercy more than she’d realized. She couldn’t imagine not coming to this office every morning and seeing the rest of the staff. The idea was ludicrous. She wanted this job. She needed her work. “You don’t understand, Charmaine.”
“Yes, I do,” Charmaine said softly. “I’m not firing you. On the contrary. I think you have more talent than anyone I’ve ever met. Given a bit more flair, you could be me.” Charmaine tried to laugh, but Sarah’s face was stone.
Love Shadows Page 3