Three Times a Charm

by Jean Stone

  Jo turned to him with a smile. “I have a feeling I’m being watched.”

  He folded his arms and smiled.

  She turned her attention back to the sink. “You could come here and kiss me if you wanted. On the back of my neck. That would be quite sexy.”

  He waited a few more seconds, then he quietly approached her from behind. Without his hands touching her, he leaned down and lightly kissed the back of her neck.

  “Ah,” she said.

  He kissed again. He reached up and moved her taupe-colored hair from the top of her collar. He ran his tongue along her hairline. She dropped the potato peeler and turned to him. They held each other’s eyes for just a moment, then Andrew leaned down and kissed her on the mouth, a long, lingering kiss. He held her shoulders; he wanted to explore her standing there, he wanted to take her standing there; he wanted to do so many things right there, but he could not because Cassie was in the other room.

  When at last he stopped, Jo said, “Well. Remind me to invite you for dinner more often.”

  He smiled again, stepped back, and put his hands into the pockets of his jeans, hoping to ease down his erection, wishing he didn’t have to. He redirected his attention out the kitchen window.

  “Birds,” he said. “You get many of them over here?” He was staring at the bird feeders, all of which seemed neatly filled.

  “They came with the house,” Jo said.

  The backyard was sizable. Andrew wondered if Jo had a riding lawn mower, then realized her mother had probably paid someone to do the landscaping.

  If he and Cassie lived here, at least until she married Eddie what’s-his-name, he would maintain the yard.

  And maybe he would oversee construction of an addition onto the house, a big family room—or, wait, a master bedroom suite! With a couple of walk-in closets and a generous bath. The toilet and small sink tucked under the stairs to the second floor would hardly be sufficient. Yes, it would be better for all of them to live here, not at the cottage. It would be better for them all once he and Cassie lived here.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Jo said, as she plopped the last of the potatoes into the pot and set it on the old stove. He wondered if she’d like one of those new ones with the flat top for the burners. He wondered where the hell he’d get the money for all these things now that he had written his last column and the college probably wouldn’t take him back, because John would be pissed and he had clout there too.

  Maybe they’d end up living in the small cottage by default.

  Andrew sort-of grinned and said, “I was wondering what’s for dinner.”

  She smiled. “No you weren’t,” Jo said, then pulled down the oven door and a cloud of beef roasting with garlic wafted up from it.

  He wondered how many years it had been since he’d wanted to touch a woman so much, so often, and in so many places.

  “I know, but it’s safe,” he said, then added, “Is it too soon to put Cassie to bed?”

  Jo laughed. She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” she said, “but you are such a man.”

  Then she turned back to her work, and Andrew stood there, watching, hearing her words I love you over and over in his mind, knowing that when—or if—Cassie chose to leave his nest had nothing to do with the way he felt about this woman, Jo.

  The next morning, Sarah went to work early because she’d hardly slept. Three cups of chamomile did not soothe her the way tea from the mullein flower would, but it had been years since Sarah needed to think about the flower, her grandmother’s favorite sedative.

  Instead of sleeping, she had spent the night in Burch’s room, trying to convince herself she was sorting through the clothes that he’d outgrown, the toys that he’d no longer bother with when he came home for a visit. In reality, she knew she was searching for something there, some connection to her present and her future that would make her past irrelevant. Something that would reinforce that her life was okay where it was, that she belonged right there.

  At dawn she’d taken Elton for a run around the reservoir; even that had not calmed her nerves, had not enabled her to find her stillness.

  Juggling her purse and a bag from the graphic-arts store, she let herself in the back door of Second Chances before seven o’clock, determined to immerse herself in the Pittsfield wedding-on-the-mountain, the nuptials of the woman with MS, and the odd request of the soap-opera diva who was friends with the grand dame Irene.

  She set down the bag and purse and then flipped on the lights. She did not expect to see Lily sitting there.

  “God,” she said, “you scared me half to death. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” Lily said. She was dressed in a thick, navy cable-knit sweater, under which she wore a crisp white cotton shirt. She also had on jeans, which Sarah did not know the woman owned. With Lily’s wispy blond curls tied back by a navy band, Sarah noted that she looked like a teenager, not a woman in her forties who’d been married three “lovely, unregrettable, unforgettable” (Lily’s words) times.

  “You live upstairs,” Sarah said. When they’d first opened the business, Lily “closed” her New York City apartment and moved into the space above the shop. She had decorated it in storybook, ice-cream colors and added life-size dolls, who now enjoyed a perpetual Alice in Wonderland adventure, complete with a child-size table that was always set for tea. “Downstairs is reality,” Sarah added. “Downstairs is where we work.”

  Lily ignored Sarah’s remark. “I tried calling you at home,” she said. “I figured you were on your way in. I’m going to an auction with Frank this morning. It’s being held inside a barn.” Her little, turned-up nose wrinkled, and tiny stress lines crept out from the corners of her mouth.

  Sarah thought she should receive an Academy Award for not laughing out loud. She did not ask if Lily had ever been inside a barn in her entire life, or if she’d ever even been awake before eight A.M. Instead, she went directly to her drawing table without hanging up her coat.

  “Sarah,” Lily said, getting up and following her. “I know you think I’m frivolous. Airheaded. Well, maybe sometimes I am. But give me credit for a few things. Like understanding men.”

  With a short laugh, Sarah said she’d never doubted that. She sat down on the tall stool; she and Lily now were eye to eye.

  “Then tell me what you’re doing,” Lily said.

  “Don’t try to be my keeper, Lily. Your feet are too small for my shoes.”

  “Oh, bull pucky.”

  Sarah laughed again. “Excuse me?”

  “A perfectly nice man comes to see you and what do you do? You blow him off.”

  “If you’re speaking about Sutter Jones, you don’t know anything about him.”

  “I know I sometimes say things that are none of my damn business, but I’m worried about you, Sarah. I know you let Jason up and leave. I know he took your son. I know a very nice man came here yesterday for the sole purpose of seeing you.”

  Unbuttoning her coat, Sarah wondered how Lily truly would react if she’d lived Sarah’s life. “Yes, well, you’re right to say that these things are none of your damn business.”

  “But you’re alone now, Sarah. I do know what that’s like. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that when you are alone, you must look for ways to fill up the emptiness.”

  Lily’s emptiness, Sarah knew, had always been “filled” by one man or another.

  “Besides,” Lily added, “it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that your dead grandmother sent Sutter Jones to find you.”

  Sarah blinked a long, slow blink.

  “Well,” Lily added, “I’ve never said your Indian spiritual stuff was just a bunch of hooey.”

  Bull pucky. Hooey. Not to mention that Lily called her an Indian instead of a Native American. Dear Lily honestly meant well, airhead that she was.

  Lily checked her watch. “I’ve got to run. But think about it. Please.” She pointed to a pile of drawings on Sarah’s table
, on top of which was a small brochure from the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast. “Sutter left this with me after you bolted yesterday. He’ll be staying there until tomorrow.”

  7

  Friday afternoon was the only time the stables would be able to accommodate a birthday party for seventeen: five boys, seven girls (one of the many gender inequities bound to wind up in their lives), the four women of Second Chances (eager chaperones), and, of course, Andrew.

  “I’ll make gourmet pizzas,” Elaine volunteered later in the morning when they gathered in the Second Chances showroom for a wedding-planning break. “Shall I shape them into cowboy hats and the state of Texas?”

  If Lily had been there, she surely would have commented on Elaine’s idea.

  “I think regular-shaped will be fine,” Jo, the diplomat, suggested.

  “They’ll be too busy noticing one another to pay much attention to the food,” Sarah added, then instantly wished she hadn’t when Andrew leaped from his chair and said, “I can’t do this. I’m way too young to have a daughter with a boyfriend.” He ran his fingers through his hair, his face crunched up, perplexed.

  It brought back memories of Red Elk, the first boy Sarah had a crush on. She, too, had been eleven. Her father had threatened to chain him to the sluice down at the gold mine and let the rocks tumble over him until he was sorely black and blue.

  Glisi had been more understanding. With her help, Sarah and Craig (though he’d always be Red Elk to her) saw each other from time to time and shared innocent kisses when they could. By the time Sarah was twelve, they were into “making out.” Perhaps she shouldn’t mention that to Andrew now.

  “Cassie will be fine,” Jo said. “We’ll keep a special eye on her, won’t we, girls?”

  Elaine said absolutely and Sarah nodded as expected, though her thoughts drifted to Sutter Jones. She wondered if he remembered Red Elk and if he’d ever looked him up too. Perhaps Red Elk had been one of the few who’d stayed in northern California.

  A surprise longing for home tugged at Sarah’s heart. She thought of the long, hot summer days when she and Red Elk explored the valleys and the canyons at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range; she remembered hiking with him through the forests, gathering seven woods for a sacred fire. Seven woods, symbolic of the seven Cherokee clans. Seven woods, seven annual festivals, seven everything. It was tradition, after all.

  She hadn’t seen Red Elk when she returned for Glisi’s funeral. She’d heard that he was dating a girl from a Miwok tribe down in Sausalito. Maybe Sutter Jones knew if they had ever married, if they’d had any children. Maybe Sutter Jones would know about the others too, members of the clan she’d once thought belonged to her.

  “Sarah?” Jo interrupted. “A trail ride, then some games, followed by a campfire, don’t you think?”

  A campfire, Sarah thought. “Sure,” she said, wondering if Jo had read her mind about the seven woods.

  She half-listened to the chatter about lasso games (to be conducted by an “expert” cowboy on the premises) and rides on a mechanical bull (rounded up from a now-defunct seventies’ disco down in Stockbridge). The birthday cake—according to Elaine—would feature horse replicas as decorations. She was certain she could find some among the memorabilia from her father’s restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York, though they might look like fine thoroughbreds, not the old plug horses at the stables. Everyone agreed that the kids probably wouldn’t mind.

  By noon, the birthday-party plans had been happily resolved, subject, of course, to revision once Lily learned the details. Also by noon, it had become increasingly difficult for Sarah to shake her thoughts free from the past, thanks to Sutter Jones.

  “Lunch?” Jo asked when they were finished.

  Elaine shook her head. “Too much to do next door,” she said, then waved good-bye and left the showroom, leaving Sarah alone with Jo and Andrew, the newly consummated (or so it seemed) couple.

  Sarah stood up. “I think I have somewhere to go,” she said. She didn’t need directions to the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast; she passed it every morning on her way into West Hope.

  “So what’s your story?” Sarah asked Sutter Jones as she pushed her spoon around a crock of roasted-vegetable stew at the Bear Claw Tavern. He wore a coral-color sweater and fine wool pants and was the first Cherokee she’d sat with in more than twenty years. It felt oddly comfortable, like sliding into old, familiar slippers on a wintry night.

  For the first time in a long, long time, she wondered what it would be like to be with a man other than Jason, not that—despite their separation—she needed or wanted to.

  Sutter smiled. “My story isn’t so different from yours. I grew up the same way you did. We were the Long Hair Clan. You were the Paint, I think.”

  She scooped a piece of carrot onto her spoon. The Long Hair Clan were the peacemakers, the Paint, the medicine people. They were but two of the seven clans of Cherokee. Seven, like everything else.

  Sarah shifted on her chair. “The Paint was my father’s clan.” She wondered if he knew that her mother died when Sarah was born.

  “I used to love to climb the cliffs,” he said. “I used to love to prowl through the mines. My mother always said I had my head up in the clouds and my butt below the earth, and that my biggest problem was I never had two feet on the ground.”

  Sarah chewed a carrot, unsure if she should laugh. Instead, she swallowed and asked, “How is your mother? Is she still alive?”

  He shook his head. “She died last year. She lived on the reservation until the end. I tried to get her to move down to San Francisco. I wanted to buy her a nice condominium near where I was living. But she wanted to stay up there. It was her home, she said.”

  “It was their home,” Sarah replied. “I think their generation was the last to cherish it. The rest of us couldn’t wait to get away.”

  “The world changed,” Sutter said.

  “And we wanted to be part of it.”

  “You never returned?”

  She shook her head. “Not since Glisi died.”

  “I have a son who lives there. His mother, my ex-wife, was a white woman. When we split up, he decided to follow his Cherokee roots.”

  “Does that please you?”

  “Not completely. I think there are greater opportunities for him in the world.”

  “Sometimes the world isn’t all that terrific.” She took another spoonful of the stew. They ate in silence for a moment, caught up in separate memories, or maybe in the same.

  And then he said, “I lied.” He said it so abruptly Sarah wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “I didn’t see your name on a tag on a bracelet in Boston. I’m an attorney, Sarah. I found you for a client.”

  She set down her spoon and lowered her eyes to her lap. “What?” she asked through closed teeth. Sarah could abide many things. She could handle all those years of Jason being on the road. She could handle him taking their son to live in the city. She could not handle lying. Not from family, not from a friend, and certainly not from a total stranger who’d made her feel off balance to begin with, despite these last few moments of languishing in the comfortable-slipper syndrome. She should have known better, for godssake.

  Then, instead of waiting for an answer, Sarah pushed back her chair, grateful that she’d driven herself to the restaurant. “Look, Mr. Jones. It’s been nice meeting you. But I’m going through a tough time myself right now. And I really don’t have the patience for strangers and their crap, Cherokee or not.”

  He stood up too. Even with Sarah’s substantial height, he had a good four inches on her. He placed a hand on her forearm. “Please,” he said. “Don’t go. I’ve done this all wrong.”

  She glanced down at his hand, at his large, strong fingers and his copper skin like hers.

  “Please,” he said, “sit down.”

  She sat because she didn’t want to cause a scene right there in the restaurant. She sat because he was a peacemaker, after all.

&nbs
p; “Sarah,” he said, his hand still on her arm. “Your mother sent me.”

  She flinched. He must have meant his mother sent him. But he had said that Little Tree was dead, the same way her mother was. She forced a public smile. “I talk to the stars too,” she said, “but they rarely converse with me.”

  He shook his head. “Your mother, Sarah. Your mother is alive and well. And she’s looking for you.”

  This time, she stood up so fast she nearly knocked the table over. She flashed her eyes at him just once, then darted from the place.

  8

  Of course, she didn’t have a mother. The man calling himself Sutter Jones must be some sort of con man, someone who had seen the success of Second Chances, caught sight, perhaps, of Sarah, tagged her as an easy mark. A fellow Cherokee who might think that he’d get something—what? Money? Had his penchant for the finer things in life left him penniless?

  If only that was a likely scenario.

  She did not go back to work. Instead, Sarah drove and drove all afternoon, trying to forget about it, trying to drive away the images of Little Tree and her colorful blankets and the dancing shadows that the cliffs cast on the reservation. She tried to put it all behind her, but this time she could not lock her misery within, as she’d done for so long.

  Late in the afternoon she drove past the lake, the rising winter moon shimmering on black waters. She thought about the Lake of the Spotted Deer back home; she used to love to sit by it at night and listen to nature’s harmony and dream about her life and what was waiting for her. In daylight, she’d study her reflection in the same deep waters, hoping this was the magic lake of Cherokee legend, where looking at her rippling image promised to bring inner harmony and balance.

  Sarah wondered now when it had been that she was transformed from a contented, inquisitive child into a closed, cautious adult.

  “Sometimes you are so vacant,” Jason had said on more than one occasion.

  She’d thought about the odd choice of his word. Vacant. As if she had somehow become empty, detached from emotion, zombielike.