High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

  He shrugged. “Both, I guess, but I did mean emotionally. Isn’t it all tied in with your religion, whether you believe in angels or not?”

  “Considering they’re the messengers of God, yes, it would help if you believed in Him first.” The words sounded testy, and she immediately regretted them as she saw his face. “Of course, I’d rather you agreed with me 100 percent, but your arguments are valid, I think. They’re definitely much more considered than those I usually hear.”

  The clock bonged softly, and she leaped up.

  “It’s after eleven! Remember—you were going home early to get some sleep.”

  He hedged a bit, but she took his face in her hands and turned it so he was looking directly at her. She could feel the stubble of his beard beneath her hands. It felt wonderful.

  “How late is Panda’s open tonight?” she asked.

  “Midnight.”

  “And Todd can close, right? You could check the till tomorrow, couldn’t you, to make sure it balanced? Or ask him to let you know if it’s off wildly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call. See if there’s any reason you need to go in.” She pushed him toward her phone.

  Tess eavesdropped shamelessly.

  When he hung up the phone, she confronted him. “I know everything is all right, so you don’t need to go there. Go home. Sleep.”

  “I’m not tired,” he protested.

  “Yes, you are. You need to remind your body you are. Have a big glass of milk before you go to bed.” The image of his cold, unlived-in house came into her mind. “You do have milk, don’t you?”

  “I can go to Panda’s and get some.”

  “You will do no such thing. Wait here.”

  She went into the kitchen and retrieved the thermos he had brought on Saturday. As she opened the refrigerator door and took out the carton of milk, Cora padded in to join them.

  Tess filled the thermos for Jake and a bowl for Cora.

  “Now, both of you, drink up. And go to sleep.”

  Now that she was aware of it, she could see the little lines that worry and exhaustion had carved into his face. Automatically her fingers strayed up to soothe them.

  “Please, for me, get some sleep.”

  “I am tired,” he admitted. “So tired I may kiss Cora and scratch you behind your ears.”

  But he got it right.

  Chapter 11

  She took her own advice and went to bed, but sleep was maddeningly elusive. Even when Cora thumped onto the bed and curled up beside her, like a living hot-water bottle, she couldn’t stop thinking about the evening.

  Had it been only a few days she’d known him? In that short time he’d become very dear to her. And when he acknowledged how tired he was, she’d nearly cried.

  He was such a good man, such a good man.

  Her thoughts floated around the word love but refused to settle on it.

  Cora began to snore softly, her mouth open just enough to allow leftover snatches of the aroma of Giblet Niblets to escape. Tess pushed her carefully so as not to awaken her, but so she’d sleep with her mouth facing the other direction.

  Cora stirred from her sleep, sighed, and stood up enough to circle three times and resume her earlier spot, breathing happily into Tess’s face.

  Tess gave up. Maybe she’d get used to it soon. She had other, more pressing problems to deal with.

  Something she was seeing in Jake was an emerging pattern of his inability to move into faith. He wanted proof of angels; he wanted numbers to guarantee his move downtown would be successful; he wanted assurances that his new venture into wholesale was going to be prosperous. Proof. He wanted proof.

  But he wanted a proof that didn’t exist, not the way he envisioned it. Very little in life came with a guarantee—it was a concept so basic it almost seemed cliché. Could he ever make that important step past the necessity of proof and into faith?

  Her mind turned it over and over, but fruitlessly. Finally she buried her face in the warm fur of Cora’s side, away from the cat’s mouth, and slept.

  Quite a bit of snow had fallen overnight. She’d have to clear the walks before her customers arrived. She cleaned the kitchen after breakfast and pulled on her snow-shoveling outfit, a gray one-piece snowsuit that had been her grandfather’s, and arctic lace-up boots in military green and yellow. She waited until the last minute to put on the orange woolen hat with the pull-down mask that covered her face—it itched mercilessly.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. “Stunning. Absolutely stunning.”

  One advantage of the narrow houses clustered together, the hallmark of downtown homes, was not having much public sidewalk to shovel. But the paths to the doors were another matter.

  She cleared the sidewalk of snow and turned her attention to the front walk and steps. The path going to the kitchen could wait. Actually, as cold as she was, it could wait forever. Like until April. Or May if necessary. She could use the front door.

  Right now she needed to warm up.

  The telephone was ringing as she stepped inside. She flung her snow-crusted mittens off her hands, snatched the phone from the hook, and tried to balance so she could untie frozen laces from her boots.

  “Hello!” she shouted. Her lips were frozen into thin blocks of ice, and it was difficult to modulate her voice. “Hello!”

  “Tess?” He sounded unsure.

  “This is Tess.” The phone fell from her icy fingers and clattered onto the floor, startling Cora who had come into the kitchen on her eternal quest for food. “Oh, sorry. Hi, Jake. Cora, in a minute.”

  “Did I call at a bad time?”

  “I was shoveling.” She had to say the word three times before she could get it out. Apparently even her teeth were frozen.

  “With a snow shovel?” Disbelief resounded through his voice.

  “No, with my tongue.” Clumps of snow fell from her jacket and began to melt in icy pools on the freshly cleaned floor of her kitchen. Why had she decided to mop before shoveling?

  “Don’t you have a snowblower?”

  “No. Where would I keep it, in my kitchen?” She tried not to sound angry, but she knew she was losing the battle. Shoveling snow, especially when it was frigid like this and blowing icy particles into her face, frustrated her. “My garage is too small, but a shovel fits just fine by my back door, so I shovel.”

  She tried for a more cheerful attitude. “Besides it’s good exercise.”

  The feeling was starting to return to her fingers and nose. Good. She wasn’t frostbitten. She blew on her hands and rubbed them together, trying to speed the warming process.

  “Tess, it’s seventeen below. That arctic front is here.”

  “I know it’s seventeen below. And with the windchill it’s even worse. Believe me, I know. I just spent half an hour in it. Major chunks of my body are frozen and may never recover properly. I see my fingers, but I don’t feel them. I haven’t checked, but I’m not sure there’s anything below my ankles. It’s not like I have any other options, though. I have to shovel, or the city fines me. And my customers stay away. Either one of those is too much for me.”

  He apparently got the idea not to pursue the subject because he changed the topic. “I did what you said. I went home, drank the milk, and you know what? I went right to sleep. Slept until six thirty this morning. And I stayed away from Panda’s until eight!”

  She resisted the urge to utter a sarcastic “Congratulations.” She knew how difficult this had been for him. And she realized he was doing it for her. She should feel glad, proud, relieved, instead of wallowing in this anger that was misdirected.

  So she forced herself to relax and try to feel cordial. It wasn’t his fault the cold front had arrived in full force.

  “I’m glad. Now don’t you feel better already?”

  “Actually I do. Although I’ll have to be here tonight. I have a very important business meeting, so we’ll need to delay setting up the Christmas trees.”

>   He sounded mysteriously vague, and she couldn’t help but be interested.

  “May I ask what’s going on?” she inquired curiously, giving way to the snoopy side of her nature.

  Cora licked one of the puddles formed by the snow melting from her boots. “Ick, ick, ick!” Tess said to her, trying to push her away from it without dropping the phone again.

  “Well, it sounds as if you’re busy so I’ll talk to you later,” he said cheerfully and hung up, leaving her with her curiosity unsatisfied.

  “Humph,” she said to Cora. “It sounds like we’re on our own tonight. That’s okay, though, because there’s a good movie on the classics channel. You and I can snuggle up with a bowl of popcorn that’s swimming in butter and have girls’ night in.”

  Cora didn’t seem too impressed, but she would be when the popcorn made an appearance. Cora loved buttered popcorn.

  Tess quickly changed out of her snow-shoveling outfit, and just in time, as the first customer of the day came into Angel’s Roost.

  She was almost too busy to miss Jake. Almost. There were corners in the day when he’d appear in her mind or moments would replay. And she’d catch herself leaning against something and smiling goofily at the air.

  Maybe it was best they take a break from each other. Tonight would be good. It would be difficult, but good. And tomorrow night she had the mayor’s commission to go to, and Wednesday night was choir practice. Unless he stopped by the store sometime, she wouldn’t see him until Thursday.

  He did. The following morning he struggled in with her Christmas tree, the blue spruce she’d finally decided on. He left quickly afterward, pleading short-staffing at Panda’s.

  She missed him when she struggled to bolt the tree into its holder, when she decorated the branches with her collection of heritage ornaments, when she placed the special piece on top. But she did get to see him. Each day he popped in with some pastries and coffee, and each day she lost a little more of her heart to him.

  He wouldn’t, however, tell her what the secretive meeting had been about, but it was easy to see he was excited about it. He seemed almost glowing with happiness and anticipation.

  She didn’t have to wait until Thursday night to see him. He met her at Nativity’s church door after choir practice on Wednesday night with the news that he wanted to put up the Christmas trees.

  Fortunately she had laid aside some angels for the tree at Panda’s, afraid they’d be snapped up by anxious shoppers if she didn’t. She dashed inside, got the box, and blew a kiss to Cora, who regarded her sleepily.

  “I’ll be back in a while, punkin,” Tess told her. “Christmas calls!”

  Jake’s house was warmer than it had been before, not just in temperature, but in emotion. She could feel his touch in the rooms, which, she noted happily, were no longer showroom perfect.

  He brought her a paper bag imprinted with the name of a local discount store. “Here’s the stuff for my tree. What do you think?”

  She opened it. “It’s all new.” She looked up from the sack of boxed multicolor ornaments and tinsel.

  He nodded proudly. “I bought it today.”

  The reality finally sank in. He didn’t have any ornaments of his own!

  She thought quickly. With some quick juggling she could use a few of the ornaments she’d designated for Panda’s and sprinkle them in amidst these sparkling new ones. It should lessen the cold, austere sensation of a tree with all-new decorations.

  She presented the idea to him, omitting any mention of her intent to bring his tree some holiday warmth. “It would be a theme then. If you don’t mind angels, of course.”

  Jake laughed. “Could you do anything else?”

  Within an hour of working steadily they had decorated his tree with a melange of old and new. She stood back and admired it. It was astonishing what the angels had done to make the tree less brittle-looking.

  They hurried on to Panda’s. The decorating was easier there because the branches were so thickly laden with flocking that only gilded tips could carry the ornaments. The angels were suspended, hanging only from slender invisible wires, as if ready to take flight. To finish it off, Tess looped a strand of golden beads through the white and gold branches, balancing the effect of the angels dangling from the outer edges.

  Jake contributed a gold-lettered sign: “Decorations by Angel’s Roost.” He tried to pay her, but she refused his money.

  Together they stepped away from the tree and studied the effect.

  “It’s incredible,” Jake said at last. “Who would have thought something as garish as that thing was could ever turn out as, well, celestial as it looks now? Tess, I could kiss you.”

  She turned to him. “Now that’s a payment I can accept.”

  And she did.

  They made a date to go to a movie on Thursday night.

  But early in the morning the phone rang.

  He started right in. “Tess, have you seen the morning’s paper?”

  “No,” she said sleepily. She hadn’t even seen the morning sun.

  “What have I done?” Anguish laced his voice.

  Immediately she was wide-awake. “What’s going on, Jake? Are you in trouble?”

  “In a sense, yes. Tess, I need to talk to you. May I come over?”

  “Sure. Just give me a few minutes for a quick shower.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be over in half an hour.”

  She was about to hang up when he said, “Tess, sweetheart, one more thing. You might want to unplug your phones for a while.”

  “Jake! What is going on? Tell me! What? What?” But the only response to her questions was a dial tone. He’d hung up.

  Questions abounded as she raced through her shower and tugged on a sweat suit. She didn’t bother with makeup. Her hands were shaking too much with worry.

  She met him at the door, and he handed her the morning paper. He had folded it open to the business section, displaying one article in particular: “Is PANDA’S AN ENDANGERED SPECIES IN THE END?” The subtitle read: “PANDA’s to BOLT DOWNTOWN.”

  She scanned the article: “Panda’s, a popular trendy coffee spot in the End, is planning a move downtown, reliable sources say. Jake Cameron, owner of Panda’s, will close his south-end restaurant and coffeehouse by April of next year and head downtown where growth initiatives are attractive for business owners. The move will leave a hole in the End’s growing economy, but it is expected to be a boon to the city’s center. Why this sudden departure from an area that has served him well for the past five years? Perhaps his newest companion, a downtown business owner and member of the mayor’s commission, has something to do with it. Whatever the reason, the move is expected to be positively angelic.”

  Her mouth dropped open in horror. “Can they say that? Is it true? It isn’t! It is? You haven’t—oh, you have! Oh Jake, I’m so happy and so furious right now.”

  She was dimly aware that she was making no sense at all, but it didn’t matter—her emotions warred with each other as they jockeyed for prime place in her brain. Her speech was only a mirror of what her thoughts looked like, chaotic and disordered.

  He was moving Panda’s downtown. That was good. He had told a newspaper reporter before he told her. That was bad. He hadn’t told her at all. That was even worse. He had somehow implicated her in it, although weren’t people implicated only in crimes? That was bad, but it meant he cared for her—didn’t it?—which was good. Wasn’t it?

  Oh, she was so confused.

  “It’s true. Somewhat true,” he corrected himself. “That’s what the big news was I’ve been so mysterious about. I was going to check into that building you told me about, but I hadn’t done anything with it. I don’t even know which building it is. All I’d done was make a call to a Realtor, and we played some phone tag. We never did connect so I’m not sure what this is all about.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” he said glumly. “When it was a done dea
l, all signed, sealed, and delivered, I was going to make a big production out of it. I thought you’d be surprised.”

  “Well, it worked. I’m surprised.” She handed him back the paper. “I’m delighted with the news, of course, although I am livid over the snide innuendoes that I influenced you.”

  “You did. If I hadn’t met you and talked to you, I wouldn’t even have considered moving down here.”

  “But I didn’t make you do something you didn’t want to do,” she reminded him. “And there’s a humongous difference.”

  “I’m trying to figure out how they got this story. I talked to the real estate agent handling the deal, and he claims he didn’t talk to the paper, and I believe him. So who—?” He slapped his forehead. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “You figured it out? Who told the reporter?” She leaned forward eagerly.

  “I did.”

  “Jake!” How could someone with his business savvy sabotage his own project? “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “People from the newspaper come to Panda’s all the time,” Jake said, “and I spent a lot of time on the phone with the real estate agent there. The reporter probably overheard us talking about it.”

  “But, even so, this is still slimy journalism. Did they ever contact you to verify the story?”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and she knew something was wrong. She persisted until he explained he had cut back his time at Panda’s and had missed the reporter every time.

  Her stomach rolled over and sank. She was the one who had been encouraging him not to go to Panda’s so frequently. He’d been spending a lot of time with her, and yet she had kept him away from the coffeehouse even more by telling him he needed to stay home and not go to work so often.

  Had she, in a roundabout way, caused this problem with her misguided interference in his life?

  As if he were reading her mind, Jake said, “I don’t know if it would have mattered if I’d been there or not. This kind of writing is tabloid trash at best, full of half-baked truth that’s more fiction than reality.”

  He had a point there, and she felt her heart lighten, although her stomach was still in turmoil.