by Jodi Thomas
Rick had always thought Martha Q crazy, but in her own way she was kind. She was also right to have someone watch the old place while she was in Dallas. He figured he could either become a housesitter for a few weeks or defend the bums who’d try to break into Winter’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast when they heard she was gone.
“Any other duties? This sounds almost too easy.”
She thought for a moment, then added, “If you’re up to it, I’d like you to try and make the writers’ group meeting at the library. Way I figure, I’ll only miss one, maybe two, sessions while I’m in Dallas. If you’ll take notes, I won’t get behind.”
“I’d be happy to do that.” Sitting in on the writers’ group might bring him some new clients. If they were anything like the groups he sat in during college, they were mostly women. “You’ve got yourself a deal. Go ahead with your plans.” Rick smiled, thinking Martha Q could use a lot more work than a face-lift. Her entire body seemed to be moving south. “Your business will be in good hands.” He offered his scraped hand. “Thanks for the offer.”
“Don’t thank me until the job is over. Running a B&B, even an empty one, is not easy. I’ll expect you to let the cat in and out. Which is a constant problem. You’ll have to wake the housekeeper up and tell her to go home every afternoon, and my house is a hundred years old, so something is constantly breaking, leaking, stopping up, or cracking. I’ll leave numbers of who to call when problems come up and they’ll know to bill me.” She took his hand carefully. “I’ll expect you tomorrow. Your room will be ready.”
Without another word, she waddled out.
“I don’t know about this,” Hank whispered just in case she’d stopped on the other side of the door to listen.
“What could go wrong?” Rick answered. “I’ll watch over her house, have a security system, be able to walk to work, and have Mrs. Biggs to cook me breakfast. This deal was almost worth the fall.”
Hank frowned. “On the downside, you’re in an old house and you’re barely mobile. Mrs. Biggs won’t be any help if trouble comes, and the place is haunted, according to the bookstore owner downtown.”
Rick grinned. “I’ll be fine. Look at the bright side, all I have to do is call and Alex or one of her deputies can be at the bed-and-breakfast door in five minutes.”
Chapter 8
MONDAY
EMILY TOMLINSON WALKED INTO THE NURSING HOME FEELING like she was doing something wrong. Tannon asking her to come visit his mother was one thing, but Emily just deciding to go was another. Before Saturday night, she’d said nothing to the woman in more than ten years. That didn’t exactly make her a close friend, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the visit was something she should do.
Maybe now was the time to start the friendship over. Monday was her only early day off and three o’clock seemed like a good time to pay a visit. She knew deep down she wasn’t there to visit Paulette Parker so much as to visit the memory of her mother.
With all her family gone, Emily had no one who could answer her questions. Paulette Parker might be half out of her mind, but she was the only person who would know what her mother had truly been like. Emily had her childhood memories, but they were scattered and disconnected like random toys tucked away in an attic box.
She remembered summer mornings in the garden working beside her parents. Her mother’s easy laugh. Her father’s gentle smile. Late-night movies with her parents cuddling. Shopping at farmers’ markets. Vacations to historic sites. Her mother was always there, always dear in those growing-up years. Emily felt like she knew her mother, but she didn’t know Shelley Tomlinson, the girl, the young woman, the dreamer.
She took a deep breath and pushed Paulette’s door open hoping to see one more glimpse today of the way her mother had once been.
The thin woman sat in a wheelchair by the window staring out at nothing but a garden wall. Someone had dressed her, with little care, in a plain cotton blouse and dull brown pants. Her collar was turned up on one end and one of her socks caught the leg of her pants. The Paulette that Emily remembered would never have looked so unkempt. She dressed in colorful outfits to garden, and everything about her matched.
“Morning, Mrs. Parker, are you feeling up for a visitor?”
Paulette turned toward her, and for a few seconds her eyes were dull, unseeing, but then she smiled. “You do look like your mother, child. I see her kind brown eyes in your gaze.”
Emily pulled up a chair close enough to almost touch knees with the older woman. “I’ve heard people say that, but I don’t see it.” She put her hand over Paulette’s wrinkled fingers. “Is it all right if I’m here? I don’t want to bother you while you’re resting.”
“It’s fine. I’ve had my lunch and my nap. Now it’s sit-up time until supper. My days seem to move around meals and bowel movements. I think I’ve figured out why people die in places like this…boredom. I was thinking about planning my escape, but now that you’re here, I think I’ll stay until dinner.”
Emily smiled. Paulette had always been one of those rare people who said the unexpected, only now she couldn’t tell if Tannon’s mother were kidding or being deadly serious. She decided to play along. “I’ll smuggle in a map of the grounds for you, if you like. With all the construction, I had to walk around a pile of lumber and a mountain of dirt. I had to drop leftover French fries so I’d be able to find my way back to the lot where I parked.”
Paulette laughed. “You’re a dear. That’s just what your mother would have done. People always wondered why we were friends, me so outgoing and her so quiet and shy, but they didn’t see the real her. She was always whispering funny things in my ear. I used to tell her I lived big on the outside and she lived big on the inside.”
“You two were friends,” Emily agreed, remembering pictures of them standing side by side since they’d been in grade school.
“More than that. We accepted each other just the way we were. I remember back when we were young, Shelley’s mother was always badgering her to take bigger bites out of life, be braver, take a risk now and then. Shelley hated that. She said once that she was a nibbler at life’s banquet and liked it that way.”
“You knew my grandmother?”
“Of course. She used to say she wished she had me for a daughter and not Shelley, but I didn’t want her for a mother any more than Shelley did most days. Your momma was a good momma, but she sure didn’t learn it from any example.”
Emily asked questions about her grandparents. Paulette filled in where she could, but she said she rarely went over to Shelley’s house, and when she married so young her parents got so mad they moved up north somewhere. “They wouldn’t even come to your mother’s wedding, so I told her I’d be her mom for the day. I even had an usher walk me in and seat me in the first row.”
Emily smiled realizing she’d got that little bit of information she’d hoped for. One glance of her mother’s life. “I never knew they didn’t make the wedding. My grandparents would have changed their minds if they’d seen how happy my parents were. They were sweethearts.”
Paulette agreed and filled in any details she could.
Shelley’s mother died of cancer when Emily was a baby. Shelley wasn’t able to make it to the funeral, but she heard her father married three months later. As far as Paulette knew, he never made any effort to contact his only daughter or anyone else in Harmony.
“He’s dead by now,” Paulette said, without any caring in her tone. “No loss. He was pretty much invisible even when we were kids. Never came to any of your mother’s school events. If I remember right, he sold farm equipment and was gone a lot.”
Emily listened. In her mind, when she’d been a child, she’d imagined grandparents who loved her dearly living far away, but she knew it was only a dream. No cards, no presents, not even phone calls. She could never get her mother to talk about them. Apparently they hadn’t been bad parents or good parents—they’d simply faded away.
A nurse stopped in and seem
ed delighted to see a visitor in the room. “If you’d like, you can wheel her through the main hallway and around to the north door. The grounds outside haven’t been torn up there. It’s not so windy right now, though the temperature seems to be dropping. This may be the last warm afternoon we have for a while. I hear a cold front is heading our way.”
Emily stood. “Are you up for a stroll, Mrs. Parker?”
“Of course. I need to learn where the hole in the fence is.”
The nurse tucked a blanket around her while Emily straightened her white blouse and wrapped her own silk scarf around Paulette’s neck to add a touch of class.
“Thank you, dear,” Paulette said. “You’re very kind. My son brought a few clothes, but I’m afraid he’s never heard of the word ‘accessory.’”
They circled the grounds twice talking mostly of what should be done with the flower beds this time of year and how gray the day seemed. When they came back inside, Emily noticed a nice sitting area off the main entrance and asked if they could take tea in the empty room.
One of the staff nodded. “I think Mrs. Parker might like that. I’ll fix it up for you.”
By the time they were settled into the colorful room, tea on a tray was delivered. The cups and saucers might have been thick and white, but a colorful napkin covered the brown cafeteria tray. They had hot water in silver cream pitchers and several tea bags along with little cookies that resembled fat goldfish.
Emily couldn’t stop smiling. From the time she’d been three or four, Mrs. Parker had kept a tea set just for her in the Parkers’ formal living room. While her mother and Paulette talked, Emily would have tea with her dolls. When she’d finished, she’d run off searching through the house for Tannon. He’d always offer to play a game with her or watch TV, but he never joined her for tea and it never occurred to her to ask why.
“This is lovely,” Paulette said as she puffed up her scarf. “The tea and the visit are also lovely, dear. I hope you’ll come again.”
“I’m always off on Monday afternoons. We could make it a regular date until you go home.”
“That would be perfect. I’ll have Tannon pick up proper tea cookies. These will never do, but I don’t want to hurt the staff’s feelings. They try so hard to make me happy, you know.”
Rain tapping on the window reminded Emily that it was getting late. “I’ll see you to your room before I go. I’d better be getting home.”
The storm had gotten worse by the time Paulette settled back in her bed. She looked frightened when thunder rattled the windows. “I’ve always hated storms since the wreck. It was raining that night your parents died, you know. I remember looking up front and seeing that truck coming at us out of the storm like a devil running from hell straight toward us.”
Emily sat on the side of the bed and held Paulette’s hand. Paulette’s big eyes were almost childlike in the growing shadows as she told Emily of that night. She spoke of how happy the four of them had been to be traveling together and how they’d laughed and talked all at once.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Parker?” Emily whispered when Paulette finally fell silent.
“Stay with me a little longer, will you, dear? Just till the storm passes.”
“Of course.” Emily wasn’t sure if she was truly needed or just being manipulated. She remembered how Paulette always seemed to get her way. Once, her mother had said that if the end of the world came and Paulette Parker wasn’t ready, the Lord would just have to postpone his plans.
Staff brought dinner, but Paulette didn’t eat more than a few bites. She took her pills without much protest and begged Emily to hold her hand until she fell asleep.
Since it was already dark outside, Emily didn’t see that it mattered much. Though Emily liked to be in her apartment by dusk, this was an exception.
After a few minutes, Paulette fell asleep. Emily tucked her in as if she were a child and tiptoed out of the room.
Halfway down the hallway, she saw Tannon Parker storming toward her. In his rain slicker and boots, he looked like a giant.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped when he was five feet away. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She felt as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. She circled past Tannon and headed for the door.
But he caught up to her. “How is she?” he asked more calmly.
“She’s fine. She’s asleep.”
He kept walking beside her until they reached the first of two doors.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked. “Aren’t you going to stop in and check on her?”
“You’ve already done that. I’ve got my hands full of problems tonight. She won’t know if I’m there or not.”
Emily hesitated as she glanced out at the stormy night. “She asked me to stay and hold her hand. She’s so afraid of storms. It was raining the night of the wreck, you know. A terrible storm, she told me.”
Tannon swore under his breath. “No, it wasn’t. I drove up from Denton. I had to drive right by the wreck to get home. My folks and yours were already gone, but I saw the car. The flares were still burning on the road. It hadn’t been raining.”
She started to argue. He’d been in shock. He probably hadn’t noticed.
Tannon’s arm circled her waist. “I’ll run with you to your car. This rain isn’t letting up for a while.”
“No, that’s—” was all she got out before he shoved the door open and they were running. The mountain of dirt by the construction site seemed to be melting across the temporary boardwalks. His arm held her solid against his side.
When they reached her car, she dropped her keys. As they both knelt to pick them up, he noticed the flat tire.
“I’m not changing that in this weather.” He shoved her car key in his pocket. “I’ll take you home, then come back and take care of this when the rain stops. I’m guessing it was probably a nail with all this construction going on.”
“It’s not your problem,” she shouted over the rain. “I’ll call someone.”
He opened the door to his truck parked beside her. “I’m already out in this mess and wet. I’ll take you home, Emily.”
She wanted to argue, but in truth she had no idea who she’d call for help. The few staff at the library were older and didn’t need to be out on a night like this. Pamela Sue would probably never find her and she didn’t know her neighbors’ phone numbers.
She climbed in, more mad at herself for being so helpless than at him for being so bossy. She was already shivering by the time he walked around to his side and started the engine.
“It’ll be warm in a sec,” he said. “I can hear your teeth rattling.”
They sat listening to the pounding outside, and then he put the truck in reverse.
“Your mom was happy this afternoon. She seemed happy and funny almost like I remembered her.”
“Great.” He didn’t sound like she’d just given him good news.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mom lives in a mountain range, Emily. For every high, there is a low.” He took a deep breath. “Thanks for visiting and making her day bright. Maybe she’ll be on the road to recovery.”
“Is it all right if I visit her again?”
“Of course. Just don’t get caught up in her moods.” He shook his wet hair. “Speaking of moods, I was in a bad one when I yelled at you back there. I’m sorry. It’s turning out to be one hell of a night.”
“And now you have to deal with me.”
“You’re the only bright spot, believe me.” He pulled into her apartment’s underground parking garage and parked by the elevator. Pulling a card off his sun visor, he offered it to her. “If you ever need anything, call me. No matter where you are, I’ll come get you.”
She wondered if he could tell she was trying to think of a friend who could help, or maybe he was just reading her mind again. “Thanks for the ride.” She didn’t take the card. He wasn’t that close of a friend. If she let him too close, she might let lo
ng-hidden memories see light. “Don’t worry about my flat tire. I’ll call someone to fix it tomorrow and I can walk to the library in the morning.”
He didn’t say a word as she opened the door and jumped out. He just watched her as she ran for the elevator being held open by one of her neighbors. When she stepped inside and pushed the top floor, he was still sitting in his pickup watching.
The next morning, her car was parked in the garage. The keys were in the seat along with one of his cards. She didn’t know whether to be glad or angry that he’d helped her when she hadn’t asked for it.
Chapter 9
RICK MATHESON MOVED INTO WINTER’s INN BED-AND-BREAKFAST without going back to his apartment. Hank had packed up a few bags of clothes and loaded them in his truck when he circled by to get Rick in front of the hospital. Anything remaining in his apartment could wait until he was well enough to go back home.
Dr. Addison Spencer waited with him, keeping up a steady lecture on what he could and couldn’t do. Mostly what Rick heard was, rest for a few days, get the back wound checked by the end of the week, and don’t do anything strenuous.
Rick assured her lawyers rarely do anything strenuous, but he promised to take no more exercise than walking to work until his body stopped aching. Even knowing someone was out there wishing him harm didn’t frighten Rick. The town was full of people who were related to him by either blood or marriage. No matter where he went there would be someone watching over him…as long as he stayed away from back stairs. Martha Q had been right about the bed-and-breakfast having a fine alarm system, so he wasn’t worried about being able to sleep at night.
Alex told him to keep where he was staying a secret, but he had to tell his mother and she’d tell her sisters and of course they’d tell their children. Rick grinned. If he hadn’t had to worry about being killed, he might find it interesting that he was probably the most talked-about person in Harmony this week.