High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

But Victoria’s white linen suit was unwrinkled. The gold accents at her neck, ears, and wrists looked real. Her matching golden hair, however, Lily was sure was not. At least the color wasn’t. Perhaps the hair was.

  She was pretty, in a brittle sort of way. Underneath the thick application of black mascara that weighed down her eyelashes were eyes the color of rich chocolate. Lily stood up and walked over to the door. “I’m Lily Chamberlain,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. I believe we had an appointment this afternoon, and if you’ll let me tidy myself up a bit, we can get right down to it.”

  Victoria’s eyes flashed uneasily from Lily to Ric and then Marnie. “Are we meeting in here?”

  “No, I have an office closer to the day care. Why don’t you come with me, and we can talk down there?” Lily tried not to look at Ric and Marnie, although she knew their expressions would be telling.

  Victoria’s impression of Lily’s office was clear from her expression. She obviously had been expecting it to be something on a grander scale, but she graciously took a seat in the folding chair Lily offered.

  “What can I help you with?” she asked the woman who sat poised on the folding chair.

  “I need day care for my son.”

  “That’s what we’re here for.” Lily opened the drawer on her desk and withdrew a file from which she took a paper. “First we need to have you fill out this application. Here’s a pen—”

  Victoria Campbell shoved the pen and the application away and smiled winningly at Lily. “Do I really need to go through all this paperwork? Surely not. Can’t I just bring Edgar in?”

  “Edgar is your son?”

  Victoria nodded, and briefly the mask of sophistication fell from her face. Lily saw there pure love for her little boy. “He’s six. And no trouble at all.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t,” Lily responded. “But the fact is that the state requires these papers to be filled out.”

  “Oh, it’ll be fine. I’ll bring Edgar around nine tomorrow morning.” Victoria started to pick up her purse.

  “Edgar can’t stay here without the paperwork,” Lily said. “It’ll only take you a few minutes to fill it out. I’ll help you.”

  The blond woman picked up the application and put it in her purse. “I’ll take it with me and fill it out at home tonight. Then tomorrow when I drop off Edgar, I’ll leave this application, too.”

  “Mrs. Campbell—” Lily began, but the woman interrupted her.

  “Please call me Victoria. Everyone else does.”

  “Victoria, I cannot stress to you enough how important this particular sheet is.” Lily tapped the file folder. “We can’t take every child who needs day care, unfortunately, and we use this as a screening device.”

  “Screening? How?” Victoria edged closer to Lily’s desk.

  “We have to establish a hierarchy of need. For example, if a person might lose her job because she needs to go back to work and her prior day care is closed, that would give her priority. Or if there’s a health concern while a home is being sanitized. Income is also a factor in determining who we select.”

  “Income? How?” Victoria leaned forward toward Lily even more.

  “Well, if the parents’ bank account is fairly well depleted, then they clearly don’t have the resources to hire private care. But if there’s a regular income that’s not been affected by the disaster, then we have to take that into consideration.”

  Victoria seemed to consider what Lily had said. Then she said, “How public is this information? No one sees it except you?”

  “I can’t promise that. If there is an investigation of some kind by a governmental body, such as a licensing board, then our records would be opened to them. But even so, they are not supposed to share the information they find there. Does that answer your question?”

  Victoria shrugged. Even that little motion seemed so elegant when she did it. “Locally, though, how private is this information?”

  “Again, no one would see it except those involved with the operation of the day care, and even then, not the actual providers, aside from basic necessary information, such as contact phones, medical data, and so on.”

  “What about here?”

  “Here?” Clearly Victoria was searching for something specific, but Lily wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Here. In the church. Who would see it here?”

  “Oh!” Suddenly light dawned. She was checking on how secure the financial and personal data was being kept here.

  “Again, no one unconnected with the day care would know.”

  “What about Marnie? And Ric? Would they have access to my application?”

  “I don’t see why they would. The only reason they might be able to see it would be if, say, I were ill and one of them had to review it. Other than that, no, I can’t say that they would. But nevertheless, even if they saw the application, they would not share the information on it with anyone else.”

  “Would not or could not?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t see where this is going.” This conversation was getting way out of hand. “If you want to have Edgar come to the day care, you have to fill out one of these applications. That’s the bottom line.”

  Victoria’s eyes became hooded. “I can’t do that. I need this to be off the record.”

  A flash of anger rose in Lily’s chest. She would not compromise her standards. Especially not after what she had been through in Chicago.

  “No application, no day care,” was Lily’s blunt answer. “No ifs, ands, or buts. That’s it. I don’t care if you’re the empress of China, you don’t get day care here unless you fill out the application.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it.” Victoria snatched up the application. “I’ll fill the stupid thing out. Anything to get Edgar in a day care.”

  “Well, we have a second problem,” Lily said. “The day care is full. I’m hoping—”

  Victoria slammed the pen down on the desk so hard it rolled across the surface and onto the wooden floor and kept rolling until it came to rest under a baseboard heater. “They got to you, didn’t they?”

  “Who got to me?”

  “Marnie. And Ric. I don’t trust either one of them. They told you the whole story, didn’t they? Well, it’s not the whole story. Not by a long shot. But I’m not going to tell you any of the story because I’m sick of it.”

  She stood up and walked to the door, but not before Lily stopped her.

  “Wait a minute. I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that you own the wedding place in town, and that’s it. Even if there were some kind of history between you and Marnie and Ric, that’s between the three of you. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, and unless it has something to do with the day care, I don’t give a rip about what happened in the past.”

  Victoria Campbell stood there, motionless, as if pondering something important. For a moment, neither woman spoke. And then Victoria turned and looked at Lily with tears pooled in her eyes. “I wish I could believe that. I want to believe that. But—”

  And with those enigmatic words, she spun around and walked out the door.

  Lily stared at the now-vacant doorway. What on earth had that been all about?

  She recovered the pen that had disappeared under the heater and sat back down at the desk. Obviously Victoria had something on her mind, something of major importance to her. But Lily had no idea what that might be.

  Ric knocked on the jamb of her open door. Although he looked at her curiously, he didn’t pursue the situation with Victoria. Instead, he handed her a pile of envelopes. “Mail call.”

  She leafed through them. One of them bore her name, and she opened it.

  Her stomach tightened as she read it.

  “Bad news?” Ric asked, his forehead wrinkling with concern.

  How could she explain it? How could she tell him why this single letter renewed her anxiety without telling him the whole tawdry story about the Nanny Group?

  “It’s a lett
er from the state licensing board. They want a copy of my résumé, plus this application filled out and returned. And I need three references, too.” She stared at the paper. The black letters swam in and out of focus.

  “So?” Ric shrugged. “That should be a no-brainer for you. Is it a deadline problem? Mail’s been a bit erratic since the flood, but it hasn’t been too wildly slow. Is that the problem?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s nothing, really.” She looked up at him and tried to smile. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Good.” Ric stood up. “Want to join me for dinner again tonight?”

  Her smile trembled and almost refused to stay put. “I think we’ll pass. Todd and I need to get settled in tonight, so I think we’ll eat at home.”

  Home. It had such a comforting ring to it. Even if her home was a little mobile home parked outside a church in a flood-ravaged community.

  But she knew that all she had to have was her son and her Lord with her, and wherever she was, she was home.

  That’s what her heart told her. If only her brain could believe it.

  Ric stood at the stove in his apartment, mindlessly stirring the chili he’d taken from the refrigerator.

  Victoria Campbell’s appearance had put a crimp in his day, that was for sure. In a town the size of Wildwood, it was nearly impossible to stay invisible, so he’d certainly seen her in the past year.

  The woman had caused more dissatisfaction among the congregation than anyone he’d ever known. He wasn’t totally sure what had happened, or why, although he’d heard variations on a single theme: She had, in some way, created problems within the church. Whatever it was had come before his arrival in Wildwood.

  Marnie knew the story, and he was sure that if he ever had to hear a straightforward version of it, he could ask her. But the situation seemed to have resolved itself—or at least subsided into ancient history—until today when it had reappeared.

  Lily hadn’t told him what had happened, but she seemed to have dealt with it. Should he have said something to her? What would he have said?

  Besides, Victoria Campbell seemed to come with her own variation of a flashing red light on her head, signaling warning. Some people simply had the ability to make others not like them—and aggressively so.

  Victoria was one of those women.

  She had quit coming to Resurrection shortly after he’d arrived. As the youth minister, he’d tried to contact her about her son, Edgar, and to ask her to keep Edgar at Resurrection if she chose not to have another church home, but she had refused his calls.

  Now she was back.

  Lily seemed up to the task of dealing with Victoria, but he needed to be ready to support her if necessary. He didn’t know Victoria well, just enough to be aware that she had a strong personality.

  Well, if Lily needed him, he would definitely be at her side.

  He stood over the pan, spoon in hand, lost in that thought, until the sound of the chili furiously simmering interrupted his reverie.

  He frowned at the bubbling concoction on the stove, and he turned off the burner. If he planned to eat the chili soon, he’d better not have it boiling.

  Pay attention, Jensen, or you’ll have the place on fire.

  The last thing he needed was to burn down his apartment.

  He took the pan off the heat and ladled steaming chili into a green and white bowl. Yes, he had to focus on the other issues at hand. And there were many.

  After dinner Todd settled down with a handheld game, and she sat at the kitchen table and studied what the agency was asking of her.

  A résumé. She could do that. And, she supposed, she’d have to include the Nanny Group on it. It was, after all, what had enabled her to get this position in Wildwood and start a new life.

  How could anything be such a bane and a blessing at the same time? It was through the Nanny Group that she had discovered how she wanted to proceed through her life.

  Her parents had raised her with the strong principle that she should live her life as a form of service. This, they had taught her, was the highest form of praise, returning to the Maker what He had given you with more.

  God had given her an intense love of caring for children. It was, she had known from her own childhood, what she was meant to do in life.

  With a sigh, she turned back to the materials she needed to fill out.

  The employment history was going to be the most difficult. Reason for leaving. What would she say?

  “Discovered massive wrongdoing”? “Identified top-level illegal activities”? “Ran for my life”?

  Lily frowned at the form. She opted for a noncommittal “Career realignment.” That was the truth. It was vague and very true, and she hoped it would satisfy whoever examined the applications.

  If asked, she could explain that Chicago was not the environment she wanted to raise her son in. That was true. She’d already seen him blossoming under the care Resurrection offered, and tonight at dinner he’d chattered happily about his new friends.

  Plus the advantage of having him in the same building where she worked was a blessing. Ric and Marnie had managed to save a place for him when one child’s family moved away from Wildwood, so the transition to his new home was smooth and seamless.

  The next question brought her up hard against the cold reality of what she’d left in Chicago. May we contact this employer?

  Was Douglas Newton aware of her knowledge of the situation at the Nanny Group? That was a big unknown. She hadn’t said anything to him about it. And, on the record, she’d simply left to return to North Dakota to be near her mother.

  But he’d suspected something. She could tell by the way he studied her when he thought she wasn’t watching. And she knew he’d rifled through her papers one evening after she’d gone because the next day her “to-do” pile was mixed with her “to-file” pile. She was meticulous about those things, the result of not having her own secretary, and it was obvious he’d been looking for something.

  She’d been foolish in not duplicating or saving incriminating documents on a jump drive, but she’d been so anxious to get out of there that she had simply given her two weeks’ notice and tried to work ahead far enough that the agency was not impaired by her loss.

  He’d watched her like a hawk at work, and even at home she didn’t feel safe. Sometimes in her home, the faintest waft of cigarette smoke would materialize and vanish just as quickly, as if someone who smoked heavily had been there.

  Only now did she piece together that part of the puzzle.

  Newton always smelled like cigarettes, the victim of his habit. He’d never be so foolish as to smoke in her house, but the smell was there, perhaps the residue of old smoke from his clothes.

  Had he been in her condo in Chicago? The thought made her skin creep.

  She was safe here in Wildwood, she told herself. For one thing, she lived in the shadow of a church. What could be safer? A bed in the police station?

  Ric’s image floated in front of her tired eyes. She could feel herself being drawn to him. Was this part of God’s plan for her, too? A part of her almost begged for the answer to be yes. He was a good man, she could tell that.

  But she had to resist the urge to let that relationship develop. She had to work through the problems left by her encounter with the Nanny Group. At the very least, she owed it to whomever she might begin a lifetime relationship with. It wasn’t fair to go into a new life together with the specter of that hanging over her head.

  The Nanny Group had to be put into the past, where it belonged. And maybe, just maybe, this was her opportunity to do something about taking care of it. Maybe this application that was giving her fits was a way of taking her through the trauma and into the light.

  Nevertheless, before she turned off the lights for the evening, the application still lying unfinished on the table, she tiptoed into Todd’s room.

  He sprawled across the bed, one arm thrown across his bear. His mouth was open slightly, and as s
he leaned closer, she could hear the steady rhythm of a faint, even snore.

  Lily smoothed back his hair and smiled. Whatever else had happened in her life, this was the one immutable fact of God’s existence, right here before her.

  She kissed him, and he stirred slightly.

  “Thank You, God,” she whispered. “Thank You.”

  Chapter 6

  Did you get that application figured out?” Ric asked her cheerily the next morning.

  Lily smiled and waved. Actually, she hadn’t finished it. It was back inside her briefcase, right on top, a pen clipped to it, ready to go. She had it all set so she could start on it as soon as she went into her office and sat down.

  Maybe a change in environment would help.

  She’d even gotten up early and sat down at the table with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, intending to finish the application. But she couldn’t make herself fill it out. Answering the questions seemed about as easy as climbing Mount Everest in high heels.

  Marnie called out a hello to her as she walked with great efficiency down to her office. Yes indeed, nothing would stop her once she got there.

  Nothing except everything. She couldn’t do it. The application still lay on her desk, the same blanks still unanswered, when Ric came to get her for lunch. She shoved it into her top drawer and turned her attention to him.

  “I thought we’d have lunch with the day care today,” Ric said. “That way you can get a good idea of what’s going on in there, both as a mother and as coordinator of the child-care site.”

  Eileen, the child-care provider, greeted them when they walked in. Every night, Todd came home with happy stories about Eileen, who knew more finger plays than any other human being.

  “Go ahead and have a seat at those tables over there,” Eileen said. “We’ll be eating in—whoa!”

  Todd ran into the group of adults at full speed. “Mom! Mom! Hey, everybody, this is my mom!”

  Lily found herself surrounded by a cluster of small children, all looking at her curiously.

  Lily knelt down to eye level with the children, who moved in even closer. “Hello, everyone! My name is Lily.”