Pocketful of Pearls
Page 10
Dinah waved a hand. “I was going to take him up to the summer pasture and show him where the cattle are. But we can do that anytime. I’m not going to let you out of my sight, now that I have you.”
Tamara bent over to check that Tamsen had fallen asleep. “I’m not going anywhere, Di. If you guys planned to take a ride in the Jeep, you should do that. I could use the time to sleep.”
“Is she up every two hours?”
Tamara straightened. “That was only in the beginning. At night she’s down for six or eight.”
“When you first came home, you’d wake up screaming. When I was little I used to get scared at the sound of running feet in the night, but it was only Mom, going to get you.”
“Tamsen doesn’t scream, thank goodness. She does this thing like a fire engine. You know, rrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRRR. If I don’t get there fast enough, she turns up the volume. But she sleeps in my room, so it doesn’t get to that point very often.” She paused. “I mean it, you guys. Go do what you were planning to do. I’m going upstairs to crash. My room’s still there, right?”
Dinah felt herself flush. “Yes. Dad wanted to turn it into a study, but Mom wouldn’t let him. Then he got sick and had other things to think about.”
“That’s one blessing, then, isn’t it?”
She didn’t know if Tamara was being sincere or sarcastic, so she let it go. Tamara gathered the baby’s carrier, blanket, and bag and toted them all upstairs as if she’d had practice at doing a lot of things at once. Her body looked small and slender with the bulky items slung all around it, and Dinah wondered if she’d been eating properly.
She was a fine one to talk. But with a start, she realized she hadn’t been driven out to her white plastic bucket since yesterday. Since Phinehas had gone, in fact, and she’d cleaned him and everyone else out of the house.
She followed Tamara up to the back bedroom and found her sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Sweetie, I don’t feel right about leaving you here all alone.”
Tamara glanced over her shoulder. “Why? Is somebody going to come and kick me out?”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant. I just . . .” She sat beside her and slipped an arm around her sister’s waist. The sweater felt soft and warm against the crook of her elbow. “I haven’t seen you in nearly a year. I want to hug you and drink you in and make sure you’re okay and feed you and . . .”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Tamara grinned the wide, unselfconscious grin Dinah loved and hadn’t seen in so long. “Don’t worry about feeding me. Somebody needs to feed you. Good grief, Di, you must weigh ninety pounds.”
“A hundred and ten.”
“And you’re five foot seven.”
“Black is slimming.”
“It doesn’t fool me. That skirt is falling off you. The only thing holding it up is your hipbones sticking out. When are you going to get some help?”
“You sound just like Matthew.”
“I knew I liked that guy for a reason. Please, Dinah. This isn’t right.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You’ve been saying that for years.”
“And I am okay, aren’t I?”
“You are not. You’re bulimic and thin and pale and—”
“Tamara.”
“What?”
“Leave it alone.”
“When are you going to deal with this?”
“I kept my breakfast down today.”
Tamara was silent for a couple of seconds. “That’s dealing with it?”
“Yes. And I’ll see about lunch when we get back from the summer pasture.”
“Dinah, what really makes you do this?”
Uneasiness prodded Dinah to her feet. She picked up a book from the dusty stack on the desk where Tamara used to write her research papers on sharks and poets and the expansion of the Roman Empire.
“Nothing makes me. I just don’t need as much to eat as other people.”
“That’s a crock and you know it.”
Stung, Dinah glared at her. “Don’t talk to me like that. How would you like it if I asked you what made you go out and get pregnant?”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s how it’s usually done, isn’t it?”
“I just went out and got pregnant. Just ruined my life for the fun of it. Right, Dinah.” Tamara’s voice sounded weary and resigned and adult, in a way Dinah had never heard before. It frightened her. Why was she talking to Tamara this way? All she wanted to do was hold her and protect her forever, and instead she sounded just like her mother. Don’t do this. You should have done that.
Dinah hated herself. She reached out a hand to touch Tamara’s shoulder, but her sister bent down to look into Tamsen’s sleeping face, and they didn’t connect.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Dinah said softly. “I sound just like Mom. I didn’t mean it.”
“I’m really tired, Di. The drive from Spokane was longer than it used to be. I’m going to have a nap. You go do the pasture thing. We’ll talk later, okay?”
It wasn’t the forgiveness she hungered for, but it would have to do. Dinah closed the bedroom door and walked softly down the hall, as if Tamara were already asleep. When she passed the bathroom door, she hesitated, but then she heard Matthew come in the back door. There was no time to purge herself, to get rid of her stomach’s burden. And she didn’t want Tamara to hear the toilet flush and realize she’d been right.
She found Matthew in the kitchen, and grabbed her boots from the mud room. “Ready to go?”
“You’re not going to stay and visit with your sister?”
“She’s probably already asleep. She said she was going to take a nap and we should do what we’d planned to do.”
“With a baby so young, she probably is. Are you sure she doesn’t mind my taking you away so soon after she arrived?”
“Positive. Come on, let’s go.”
THE BUMPY SHORTCUT across the fields to the service road normally took about ten minutes. Dinah shoved the Jeep into a lower gear and slowed for a swampy bit at the bottom of a slope, then listened to the engine drop to a guttural growl as it began to climb again. Neither she nor Matthew spoke until they reached the service road and she sped up to thirty miles an hour.
“How much land do you have?” His right hand gripped the armrest on the door as if he thought she was going to take them over the nearest cliff. Well, there weren’t any of those until they got up to the top.
“Two hundred acres,” she said. “It’s not very big, but the leases are a bit of income.”
“Cattle raising seems very . . . frontier-like.”
“It was bigger in the forties, when my grandparents settled here. Now that Dad is gone we’ll probably sell off our animals at auction and just let other people run theirs on our land.”
“And what then?”
She gave him a sidelong glance. He’d kept all her secrets so far. There was no reason to think he would give away another. But hard-won caution kept her quiet. If he knew about the online stocks, he might try and control them somehow. Give advice she didn’t need. Men, in her experience, couldn’t seem to help themselves that way. That portfolio was all she and Elsie had to live on, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize it just so he wouldn’t feel concerned.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back to the bank.”
Sure she would. Jobs in Hamilton Falls weren’t easy to get. Everyone could see them coming a mile away and they were always filled immediately. Besides, Claire Montoya had her old job at the bank. It wasn’t likely they’d take her back for old time’s sake.
The job at Rebecca’s bookshop was open as of Sunday, her mind whispered.
But Sunday made her thoughts shut down in pain, and she turned to practicalities. It was a good strategy. It had worked many times before.
They left the service road on a track that meandered across the lower slopes of Mount Ayres, and she began to point out particular meadows and landmarks.
Small groups of cattle were visible in the distance, and he answered her quizzes on brands and breeds with a steady patience that told her he just might be humoring her until she was ready to talk.
But she wasn’t going to talk about anything but cows. Tamara, the baby, their finances, the Silence—these were not things you talked about with your hired hand, even if he had buried Sheba with quiet sensitivity and had not laughed at her grief.
He was still humoring her two hours later when they finished their tour of the mountain and bumped back across the fields to the barn, where Dinah pulled open the double doors and parked the Jeep where it usually sat.
“I’ll see you at supper, shall I?” Matthew said in his contained way. “Thank you for the tour.”
“About four o’clock. Early, because we didn’t have lunch.”
“All right.”
She watched him move into the shadows and heard the apartment door close quietly. Shaking off the sense that she hadn’t done something that needed doing, she fed the chickens and went in the back door of the house.
It was very quiet. Tamara and the baby must still be sleeping. Well, they would likely be awake any time now.
She glanced out the window and noticed the car was gone. Tamara must have moved it so it couldn’t be seen from the road. But the barn storage, the only place a car could be parked other than the gravel turnaround, had only had the truck in it when they’d put the Jeep away. Had Tamara needed something for the baby and made a fast run to town?
She ran up the stairs and hesitated outside the closed door of Tamara’s room. But there was no reason to wait, she chided herself. If the car’s gone, so are they. You’re not going to wake anyone.
She pushed open the door.
The first thing she saw was the baby bag and the baby carrier. How on earth could Tammy go to town without the car seat? That was downright dangerous.
She leaned over and moved the blanket that covered it.
Cold disbelief ran light footed over her skin. Tamsen slept the deep sleep of infancy, her little hands curled up against her cheeks as though mugging surprise.
“Wha-a-t?” Dinah breathed. Tamara couldn’t have gone to town and left the baby alone in the house. She might only be seventeen, but she was a mother of four months. Surely she had more sense than that.
Dinah looked wildly around the room—for what, she didn’t know. A manila envelope sat on the desk. With hands that had begun to tremble, she picked it up and saw that it was addressed to her. There were a couple of pieces of paper inside, so she pulled out the first one.
I, Tamara Elsbeth Traynell, of 1812 Mackay Street, Spokane, Washington, do hereby forever renounce my daughter, Tamsen Dinah Traynell, to the care of my beloved sister, Dinah Miriam Traynell, of Rural Route 14, Hamilton Falls, Washington.
I resolve and swear that I am not capable of providing the care and love that Tamsen deserves, and, being confident that my sister will give her both, give Tamsen into her keeping. I will not at any time attempt to rescind this gift, nor will I interfere in the upbringing of Tamsen Traynell, whom I now consider my sister’s child.
Signed, Tamara Elsbeth Traynell, and dated this fourteenth day of March, 2005.
Chapter 10
FOR SEVERAL HORRIFIED seconds—maybe even a minute—Dinah stared at the document. Its words didn’t change after the second reading, or the third. When they didn’t change after the fourth, either, she looked up and out the side window—the one that gave a view of the road that led past the neighbors’ place and down to the highway.
The road was empty. Nothing moved but a flock of magpies that wheeled over the ditch and came to rest on the fencing like a row of little judges.
Maybe she could still catch Tamara before she got to the highway. But no, she’d had a couple of hours’ head start. She could be nearly back to Spokane by now.
Spokane. Aunt Evelyn. She could call Aunt Evelyn, get her to talk Tammy into taking the baby back. She couldn’t give up the baby. It wasn’t right or natural. A baby should be with its mother, especially since its dad wouldn’t acknowledge its existence or even admit the act that had created it had happened.
She needed to stop thinking of her niece as “it.”
She. She was a problem, just another in a long line of problems that Dinah had had lots of practice solving. She could solve this, too. One step at a time.
The first thing to do was find Aunt Evelyn’s number. She’d never spoken to her in her life, but if ever there was a time to start, it was now.
She found her father’s phone directory in the top right drawer of his desk and located the number, written in his neat hand. As she waited for it to ring through, she tried to think of a way to introduce herself and break the news of what Tamara had done while still sounding reasonably adult and logical.
The problem was her estrangement from her aunt and the baby’s abandonment were neither adult nor logical. But before she’d gotten much beyond that unhappy conclusion, someone picked up the phone.
“Aunt Evelyn, you don’t know me, but I’m your niece, Dinah.” There. Even her voice had decided to cooperate. Calm. Adult.
“Well, hello.” Her aunt’s voice was deeper than she’d expected. She pictured a woman in tweeds with a short, practical haircut. “The last time I heard your little voice, you were hollering for a feeding.”
So her aunt had seen her as a baby. She hadn’t known. Of course, since Evelyn’s name was never spoken, there was a lot she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember.”
“You were the cutest little thing. Huge brown eyes like melted chocolate, and glossy dark hair. And a darling little dab of a nose. I hope it didn’t turn into the Simcoe Schnozz.”
It took Dinah a moment to realize she meant her dad’s mother, who had been a Simcoe. “No. It’s a pretty ordinary nose.”
“Bad enough I got it. It looks all right on boys, but it’s a horror to a girl in high school. I had it done five years ago. I wasn’t going to inflict it on Jim for the rest of his life.”
“Done?” Jim?
“Yes. Had a plastic surgeon in Seattle take a scalpel to it. Now I have a nice ordinary one, too. Jim says it always gives him a jolt in the mornings. Keeps things interesting.”
Jim was her second husband. Dinah’s step-uncle. Another name that was never mentioned.
“Aunt Evelyn—”
“I know. You probably didn’t break Silence to call down here to talk about my nose. What’s up? Tamara get there okay? She didn’t run my car into the side of the barn, did she?”
“Yes. I mean, yes, she got here. She didn’t run the car into the barn.”
“Oh, good. She’s a levelheaded kid, but you never know. She said the only thing she ever drove was the truck and her boyfriend’s Honda. It had a stick shift.”
“Aunt Evelyn, did she say anything about what she planned to do when she got here?”
“Have a visit, I think. Maybe try to see her mother. Why? Not that I’m not glad to hear from you, but calls from Hamilton Falls tend to mean either death or disaster, if you know what I mean.”
Dinah took a deep breath. “I guess this falls into the second category, then. Tamara’s left the baby here.”
“What, and gone to find that kid she was seeing? Oh, to be seventeen again, thinking that everybody’s going to pick up the slack for you. Well, here’s what you do. If the baby’s sleeping, let her. If she wakes up, feed her. That ought to hold you till Tammy gets back. And you can tell her from me that she’d better not pull a stunt like this again or that’ll be the end of the free babysitting.”
“I don’t think she’s coming back.” Dinah saw the bedroom in her mind’s eye, empty of everything but the envelope, the baby’s bag, and the car seat. Now that she thought about it, Tamara had never even brought in any luggage. Had probably never intended to.
“What do you mean, not coming back? She went out there to see you guys. Otherwise, why risk the grief she’d get?”
“Ye gods and little fishes.” Evelyn sounded winded. “The kid’s gone off her rocker.”
“When she gets back to your place, you have to talk her out of it.”
“You’re not kidding. How long ago did she leave?”
“I was gone for about two hours. She said she was going to take a nap. She’d just fed the baby and probably waited long enough for her to fall asleep and for us to drive out of sight before she took off.”
“Will you be okay babysitting until we hear from her? My word, this just beats all. After this, I’m not letting Tammy out of my sight. I take back what I said about her being levelheaded.”
“We’ll be okay, Aunt Evelyn. Let me know as soon as you see her.”
“No problem. You did the right thing to call.”
When Dinah hung up, some of the panic lodged under her ribs had dissipated. It felt strange to have someone come down firmly on her side for once, someone who pitched in to help without throwing blame and “should-haves” along with it.
A furious howl penetrated the floorboards, and she realized she’d been hearing a noise behind her conversation without registering what it was. Tamsen had awakened alone in a strange place, and her fire-engine noise had turned into screams that even Dinah could recognize meant panic.
She dropped the phone and Tamara’s letter and ran for the stairs.
Matthew must have heard them, too, all the way out in the barn, because when she got to the bedroom she found him hovering helplessly over the baby, whom he’d managed to extract from the car seat and lay on her back on the bed. Part of Tamsen’s panic probably stemmed from the sight of a strange male looming over her.
Dinah was a stranger, too, as far as that went. The baby’s screams were deafening as Dinah checked her over.
“She’s wet,” she shouted. “Hand me a diaper, will you?”
“Where is your sister?” Matthew scrabbled through the baby bag and finally found a stack of diapers. He handed her one, and she changed the baby with hands that hadn’t forgotten how.