He clipped and pruned, dropping the dead branches in baskets as he went, head still bent as if hiding from a storm.
“It was unbelievable. She leaves us, you know? Because we don’t matter enough to her to stay. She doesn’t care about us. But now she calls, wanting it to be okay. Like sure.”
Camille quit pretending to work.
“She says, like, she needed space. She says how she felt smothered. She says she was afraid she’d have a complete breakdown if she lived in the country another minute, so that was why she left, because she didn’t want us exposed to her going crazy. She didn’t want to hurt us. You ever heard such bullshit?”
Simon, who was supposed to be clipping down at the far end of the row, had mysteriously scooched up to the other side of Sean’s row. “Don’t say bullshit in front of Camille, stupid.”
“Why? She doesn’t mind. She’s like us.”
“I don’t mind,” Camille agreed.
“See. She’s no girl type. She’s like us.” Clip-clip. Clip-clip. “You know what I told my mom?”
“No. What?”
“It’s like she wanted us to tell her it was okay. That she just took off on us. Well, it’s not okay.” Sean lifted his face, just for an instant, his eyes aching with fury.
“So we told her just what she’d told us.” Simon tucked his head down now. “We told her we needed some space. Like how we felt smothered living with a mother all the time. So she could just have a real great time with her boyfriend, because we didn’t need her. And Dad doesn’t need her either, or any other woman, too.”
Everybody clipped. A cloud chased across the sun, than bared it. Sean said, “We were gonna wake Dad and tell him about the call, but we figured he was either working or sleeping, because we didn’t hear him behind either door. So we told him this morning.”
“He was pretty mad,” Simon said.
“Mad at you two?”
Sean and Simon both shrugged. “He said we should have been nicer. He said, no matter what she did, she’s still our mother. He said, that the fact of her calling meant that she was at least trying to say she was sorry. I said that was totally stupid.”
“I said it was totally stupid, too,” Simon affirmed.
“Then he got madder. You think that was fair?”
Camille gulped. “Hey, what are you asking me for? This is between you two and your dad. My opinion isn’t worth anything.”
“It is to us,” Sean said. “We think Dad should have been on our side. And we don’t see one single reason why we should have been nicer. Like what kind of excuse is that about needing space?”
“It’s no excuse at all,” Camille agreed.
“You don’t leave people you love when it’s tough. That’s when you stay and stick it out. That’s always what Dad said before. Mom just left because she wanted to. Period. She didn’t care about us. That’s the way it is.”
“So why are we supposed to be nice?” Sean demanded.
Both of them looked at her, waiting. Camille threw up her hands. “Look, you guys. I’m the last person in the world you should be asking. I don’t claim to have any answers for anyone.”
“But that’s exactly why we’re asking you. You’re the only one who isn’t always telling us what to do. All we’re asking is what you think, for Pete’s sake. Sheesh.”
Sean sounded so disgusted with her that she felt compelled to at least say something. “Well…what I think…is that it’s about time your mom called and started to try to make amends. And personally, I don’t see any problem with you being honest with her. You guys have every reason to feel angry. And you have every right to let her know how you feel. It’s up to her to figure out what she wants to do about that.”
“See,” Simon muttered to Sean. “I told you Camille’d take our side.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don’t be thinking your dad isn’t on your side. He just wants you two to take the higher ground. You don’t want to do the same thing your mother did, now do you? Run away because something was hard?”
“Hey, we’re not running from anything,” Simon protested.
“It’s not like we’re afraid to talk to her or anything like that,” Sean agreed.
“Well, good,” Camille said. “Because I think that’s probably what your dad’s trying to get you to see-that nobody’s winning the way it is. Your mom made a big mistake. Nothing she says or does is going to erase that. So maybe you can’t forgive her, and maybe you can’t accept what she’s done, at least right now. But if you can’t talk to her-at all-how can it ever get better?”
“What’s to get better? We don’t need her.”
“We don’t need women ever again.” Simon said. “Except you. We didn’t mean to include you with the creeps, Cam,” he said warmly.
“Yeah, Cam.” Sean slapped her companionably on the back, hard enough to make her rock forward. “You’re one of us. We’d never lump you with the women. We know we can trust you.”
Her heart froze. She’d seen this coming. Pete’s boys liking her, their wanting to depend on her. They needed to depend on someone-a woman-exactly because of what their mother had done to them. But if she couldn’t get her own life together, what kind of role model could she possibly be for them?
And if she couldn’t be the kind of role model that they really could trust, she simply had no business embroiling her life any closer with Pete and his family.
Nine
The next morning, Camille carted two armfuls of laundry to the house. Unfortunately, Violet caught her scooping up more dirty clothes from the hamper.
“What’s this?” Violet said in shock.
“Hey. I’ve washed clothes a bunch of times since I’ve been here. Yours, too.”
“I know you have. But suddenly you’re toting junk to the dump. And you’re washing sheets every couple days. And your windows are clean. Could it be…you’re starting to feel a little sociable again?”
“Not willingly. More like, I’m working outside so much that everything gets dirty faster.”
“Ah. So it isn’t about a certain guy half living over at the cottage-”
“Pete is not half living over at the cottage.”
Violet’s eyebrows arched. “Did I say Pete’s name? My, we are defensive.” A rusted heap of a truck pulled up in the yard. Vi glanced out, and then hustled outside to greet the visitors.
Judging from the conversation, Violet had hired the two men to do some heavy-duty landscaping around the front of the house and Herb Haven.
Camille had just been considering murdering her sister. Man, no one could tease more mercilessly than a sister, and Violet was even worse than Daisy. But now, she watched Vi change personalities from a completely normal, pain in the neck sister into Ms. Brainless Ditz again.
It was the men. They were both late-twenties. Sun-bronzed. Their shoulders and arms were ropey with muscles, their jeans riding low, their hair shaggy. Cute enough, but young, and nothing special, really. Just guys.
Yet Violet’s whole behavior changed around them. Her laughter came out trilly; her movements mimicked an airhead; she chattered nine for a dozen and acted dense as a thicket.
Camille cocked her hands on her hips, thinking soon. She could hardly interfere in someone else’s life when her own was still in pieces. But soon, she simply had to figure what the Sam Hill was going on with her sister.
But right then, she scooped up her clean sheets and towels and laundry and hustled back to the cottage. Her goal was to be out in the lavender before lunch. In her mind, she’d set a goal-she was giving herself a maximum of one more week to finish the pruning. Really, it was ridiculously late in the season to be trying to do this kind of work now, but she was close to the end. Once the pruning was done, she’d have essentially done a needed job for her sister-something to earn her keep. What Violet intended to do with the damn stuff from there wasn’t her business or her problem.
The lavender was only a symbol, though. Camille knew full well that
Pete was welling into a crisis, in both her mind and her heart. But where she didn’t seem able to handle Pete, she was determined to handle the things she could. The lavender, for one. For another, she was determined to set the cottage to rights-all things thrown out from her old life, a keeper pile established, the cottage cleaned up for real. And then…
Well, then she needed to make decisions about her life.
She’d been coasting long enough. And if she still wasn’t sure where to aim from here, she resolved to stop babying herself.
By the time she reached the cottage porch, her arms ached from the weight of the two laundry baskets. She used her elbow to open the screen door…but then startling her, she heard a mewling sound from somewhere in the living room.
Killer must have heard the same sound, because he immediately initiated a howl worthy of a banshee.
“Shut up, you dolt.”
Sometimes he obeyed. This morning, he didn’t seem inclined, so she bribed him outside with a dog cookie and closed the door-the fresh air had been welcome on this warm morning, but she couldn’t hear herself think with all Killer’s howling. And then she turned around to face the towel-draped cage on the floor.
Warily she pulled off the towel, and discovered a mournfully panicked cat. At least, she thought it was a cat. It looked like a pumpkin run over by a tar truck, with a torn ear, a gimpy leg and a face only its mother could have loved.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Dream on. This is not happening.”
The cat prowled a circle in the cage, mewling pitifully.
“No,” she said. “Practice it. Because it’s the only word you’re going to hear from me.” Fuming, she stormed into the kitchen, slammed a bowl on the counter and foraged in the fridge. Almost nothing was in there, no surprise, but there happened to be a couple slices of cheese and the leftovers from a sandwich the day before.
When she came back to the cat, she snarled, “I’ll feed you. Because you’re obviously hungry. But you’re not staying here. I’ve got one dog I’m not keeping now. There isn’t a prayer in the universe that I’ll take on a cat, so forget it.”
The minute she opened the cage, she assumed the cat would fly out, and either hide or dive for the food. Instead the mangy, hairy thing immediately started up a thunderous purr and tried to climb on her lap, nuzzling her nose into Camille’s tummy.
Obviously she had to pet her, but she still put the truth on the line. “I hate cats. Even before, when I was a nice person, cats were just never my thing. That’s just the way it is.”
The cat, who weighed somewhere around three ton, circled her lap and then settled down, eyes closed, claws kneading Camille’s skin through jeans. Probably drawing blood. She showed no signs of getting up. The torn ear looked scabby. It was a monster-sized cat, but Camille could still feel its ribs underneath all that matted long hair. The face looked as if someone had thrown black and orange paint on it in blotches.
“Look. You’re not staying on my lap. You’re not staying here at all,” Camille said irritably.
No response.
“Okay. Look. You can have something to eat and you can nap here for a few minutes. Then that’s it. So don’t get too settled in.”
Still, no response. Camille waited. And waited. But the cat showed no inclination to stop purring, much less to move, so eventually she shifted her onto a chair.
Faster than spit, she grabbed her car keys from the kitchen, jogged outside and snarled, “Killer, come with me.” The dog enthusiastically jumped in the front seat and sat down, shooting her a look of complete commiseration. “Yes,” she said, “that’s exactly what I was thinking. What low-down varmint would do this to me? What pond scum? What worm-brained, conscienceless, stone-headed…”
Cam was still frothing insults when she pulled into Pete’s drive. With Killer by her side, she marched to the back door like a soldier on a mission, shoulders arched, spine stiff. She pounded on the back door with a fist, then stepped in and yoo-hooed.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the MacDougal house. The Campbell household had been female to the core, where Pete’s family had been testosterone based. The guys likely wouldn’t recognize the sound of their own doorbell, so she didn’t hesitate to walk in and yoo-hoo. Still, when no one instantly answered, she propped her hands on her hips and looked around.
Nothing much had changed since Pete’s mom was alive. Newer appliances, but his mom had always been tuned to a practical channel. The kitchen reflected a floor prepared to cope with mud; the back hall had plenty of stow space for hats and boots; the table was big enough to serve serious-sized platters. Nothing inside had seen wax in a decade. Nothing needed wax. The coffeemaker was a size to give caffeine highs to a platoon, the glasses and silverware sturdy.
It struck her as odd, how she’d always felt more comfortable here than in the house she grew up in-but undoubtedly that was because of the decor, not the company.
When no one answered after a second yoo-hoo, she turned around, thinking she’d search out the bounders in the barns-but then Ian yelled a welcome. Pete’s dad caned through the door with a huge wreath of a smile. A gnarled hand scooped around her shoulder and trapped her in a hug. “There now, Camille, I haven’t seen you in a blue moon. Got a mug of coffee with your name on it, just isn’t poured yet.”
“I didn’t come for-” She couldn’t get that thought out, before both the boys thundered down the stairs.
“Camille! Hey! You never came to visit us before!”
“I didn’t exactly come to visit-”
She just couldn’t get a word in. First Sean pounded her on the back, then Simon. Ian took off with her sweater. A box of doughnuts was shoved in front of her-well, part of a box, anyway. There seemed to be two left, not looking too scarily stale. Coffee splashed over the side of the mug. Ian’s sneaky grin reminded her of his son’s-too much so.
“We don’t fuss much in this house. Paper towels do as well as napkins, you know? But you never were the kind to care about those kinds of things-”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“We told you, Gramps. She isn’t like a regular woman.”
Camille touched her forehead, thinking that if she heard that one more time, even one more small time, she might just shriek. Exactly. Like. A. Regular. Woman. “Mr. MacDougal, I’m really glad to see you, but honestly, all of you, I only came about the cat.”
“Cat? What cat?”
Sean said swiftly, innocently, “Dang. I wonder where Dad is.”
“Gramps, you should see what she did with Darby. He’s like this sweet old thing now-”
“The cat,” Camille repeated firmly.
Both boys stole another look at each other. “Yup, we’re gonna get Dad right away. Gramps, you talk to Cam, okay? Like make her have another doughnut, okay? Okay?”
“Okay,” Ian said peaceably, and smiled across the counter at Camille as if he’d been waiting years for her to finally visit. “I remember you from when you were knee-high, Pete carrying you on his shoulders, walking to the bus stop.”
“Yeah?” She heard a door open, Pete’s voice, the door closed, then the muffled sound of two cracked adolescent voices talking double time. “The boys got me the cat, didn’t they?”
“Sean? Simon?” Ian’s jaw dropped as if such an idea shocked him speechless. “They’re sure taken with you,” he said, as if the complete change of subject worked well for him.
“Mr. MacDougal,” Camille said warily, but he interrupted.
“Just call me Ian. You’re practically family.”
She intended to answer that, but her heart suddenly started thudding with such alarm that she could barely swallow. Family? Family? What in God’s name had the boys been telling their grandfather? What had Pete?
And then there was Pete loping toward her from the back study, flanked by his sidekicks. All three of them were wearing flannel shirts, holey jeans, and no shoes. Their feet-my God, apparently that size feet ran in the family. But never mind th
at; she could feel her pulse zooming off the chart just from seeing him again. It was enough to scare the life out of her.
“MacDougal,” she roared, “I am not keeping that cat!”
“What cat?” he asked amiably.
“You know what cat. No one else in the county would have done that to me but you-”
“Um, wait a sec, Camille,” Simon said honestly, “The truth is-I would have.”
“The truth is, I would have, too.” Sean added hastily, “I didn’t. And Simon didn’t. And Gramps didn’t. And Dad didn’t. But in principle, we would have, because we know you’re one of the few women on the planet who could actually love an animal the way we do. But the thing is, we just have so many animals around here that we can’t adopt any more strays.”
“Our dad would kill us,” Simon explained.
“Especially since he finally agreed to the horse.”
Pete lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I did not exactly agree to the horse.”
“Yes, you did, Dad,” Both boys insisted, and their grandfather immediately took their side by saying, “Peter, I’m quite certain I heard you agree, myself.”
Pete shook a finger at each of them, then wrapped his arm around Camille’s shoulder and steered toward the door. “We’re leaving to discuss this so-called cat in some privacy.”
“That’s good, Dad!”
“Yeah, that’s real good, Dad!”
“You go, Cam!”
There was more of the same refrain, but once Pete closed the door, neither of them had to hear it. “I suggest,” he said, “that we drive somewhere totally away from the hearing range of my back door.”
“You’ve got that right. In fact, I suggest we go straight to my place so you can pick up the damn cat.”
“That makes sense,” Pete said.
He didn’t, of course, mean it. He managed to finagle the keys to Camille’s car, but only because she blindly assumed he was one of the guys who had to drive. Which was true, but in this case, his male thing about driving had nothing to do with it. He needed her to go along, and she did that because she assumed they were driving to her cottage.
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