Feeling as though she was prying, she tiptoed to the desk and looked at it. On a purple pad was a mouse, but it had no cord to it. Guess he didn’t hook it up after all, she thought as she lifted the mouse and idly rolled the ball on the bottom of it. Then, to her disbelief, the computer started making noise and sprang to life. “What have I done now?” she said under her breath.
“Nothing. It was just on sleep mode,” Matt said from behind her.
Bailey put her hand to her chest in fright. “You startled me.”
“I guess gardening relaxes you, but computers make you nervous.”
“I didn’t think it was hooked up, but it came on.”
“It’s a cordless mouse, and when you touched it, the computer came back into active mode,” he said, but he just stood there, not moving toward her or the machine.
It took Bailey a moment to realize that he was waiting for her to step away from the computer. Obviously, he wasn’t going to get too near her. And no wonder, with the way she’d rebuffed him last night!
“About last night,” she began slowly, looking down at her hands. “I—”
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “Sometimes my humor can get a little crude.”
“No!” Bailey said quickly. “It’s me who was at fault. It’s just that—” She took a deep breath. “You can’t go from sixteen years of faithfulness to what seems like adultery in just a few weeks. At least, I don’t seem able to.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I know what it’s like to lose people. You name a method, and I’ve lost someone that way, and however you lose them, it’s hard on the survivor.” He smiled at her. “I have a proposition.”
His words made Bailey feel better. Although she’d met other people in Calburn, Matt was the closest she had to a friend. “The last one of your propositions took over my house,” she said, returning his smile.
Matt grinned at her, and the awkwardness between them vanished. “Okay, you’re right, but this time my proposition is that we lighten up. You make jokes, I make jokes, and we stay friends. No pressure to be more. Deal?” He held out his hand for her to shake.
Instantly, she took his hand in hers, gave a firm shake, then released her grip. “It’s a deal. Now, about the attic. I don’t remember agreeing to your taking over the whole thing.”
“You want me to show you how to log on to the Internet?”
“Matthew, you’re not listening to me.”
“No, I’m listening, but I’m ignoring you. There’s a difference,” he said, his eyes fastened onto the screen.
“I was planning to use the attic space for my business.”
“And what business is that?”
“I’m going to . . . Well, I haven’t really figured that out yet. Not all of it, anyway.” She squared her shoulders and tried to take the hesitancy out of her voice. “But when I do decide, I’ll need the attic.”
“You’ll need a computer, too, so you can use mine.” He was moving the mouse around on the pad and clicking it.
“But what if you’re using the computer when I need it?”
“I have a laptop, and besides, I thought you didn’t know how to use a computer.”
“I don’t, but I can learn.”
“Before or after you decide what you’re going to do to earn a living?”
“Before. No, after. No, I mean . . . ” She looked at him. “Do you have any idea what I could do to support myself—besides starting a canning factory, that is? I have no training of any kind, no education to speak of, and I’m sure I’d never be good at working for anyone. I’ve had too many years of independence. Any ideas?”
“I think that whatever you do should have something to do with food. Ever thought of writing cookbooks?”
“Now there’s an idea,” she said. “How long has it been since you’ve been inside a bookstore? There are thousands of cookbooks out there. I need something to do on a regular basis.”
Matt stood up from the computer, put his hands on Bailey’s shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “You have recently been widowed after a long-term marriage. Give yourself some time. You need to heal a bit first, then you can make big decisions about what to do with your life.”
His words made sense to her, and for a moment she had to work hard not to lean her head against his shoulder and let him hold her. “I guess you’re right.”
“You know what I thought we’d do today?”
Some part of her thought she should protest that “we,” but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to spend the day alone. She didn’t want to stay in the ugly house by herself and look up at every sound and think it was Jimmie coming home. “What?” she asked, and her mind filled with what he could possibly suggest. Something romantic? Sexy?
“Buy a lawn mower.” Matt looked puzzled when Bailey laughed. “You don’t think you need a lawn mower?”
“Of course I do. It’s just that—” She waved her hand in dismissal. “Never mind. How about breakfast, then we go buy a lawn mower?”
“Sounds good to me,” Matt said as he turned back to look at the computer screen.
At the head of the stairs, Bailey paused to look back at him. He was a nice man, she thought. He was a good man, kind and thoughtful. And he was easy to live with. Smiling, she went downstairs and pulled out a bag of buckwheat flour to start making pancakes.
“May I help you?” the salesman asked. He was young and dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers, looking as though he meant to make manager by the time he was twenty-five.
“I want a push mower,” Bailey said at the same moment that Matt said, “We want a riding mower.”
“There isn’t enough lawn to justify a riding mower,” Bailey said quickly, looking at Matt.
“It’s the repetition that makes a riding mower needed,” he said patiently. “And there’s some heavy cutting that needs to be done in the back.”
“Then get a weed whacker with a saw attachment,” Bailey shot at him. She hadn’t spent years around professional gardeners and learned nothing.
“You need a whacker too, but—”
“Too?! How much do you plan on cutting?”
“The farm is ten acres, and—”
“And half of it is trees!”
“Excuse me,” the clerk said loudly, interrupting them. “Could I suggest a lighter riding mower?”
Both Bailey and Matt glared at him.
The young man put up his hands in front of his face as though to ward off blows. “I would never get between a husband and a wife. If you two need help, call me—or a divorce lawyer,” he added as he walked off.
Looking at each other, Bailey and Matt began to laugh.
“Okay, sorry,” Matt said. “It’s your farm, so you decide.”
He was so nice that he was making her feel guilty. “It’s not that I don’t want a riding mower, it’s just that I can’t afford one.”
“How about if I buy it?”
Bailey stiffened. “I don’t want you buying things for me. I was supported by a man before, and that’s my problem now.”
“How about this?” Matt asked. “Why don’t you hire me to do the work, and I’ll use my own equipment?”
“How much do you charge?” she said quickly.
“A lot.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How much?”
“You have to get my sister-in-law off my back.”
“What are you up to?”
Matt gave her a crooked grin. “Patsy’s big on family. She has these family get-togethers, and she . . . ” He trailed off.
“She what?”
“She’s going to skin me alive if I don’t take you with me when I go.”
For a moment Bailey considered what he was saying. He was, of course, making it up about his “charge.” What he was really doing was offering to pay for the lawn mower and do the work for free. “In other circumstances I wouldn’t agree, but since Opal told me you were paying Patsy seven-fifty for rent and me o
nly six hundred, I figure you owe me.”
Matt laughed, unembarrassed at being caught. “Opal didn’t hear that from me. Janice does my books, so she’s probably the one who told Opal.”
“Whatever. When I think of the way you acted as though I was overcharging you, I could—”
Bending, he kissed her cheek. “You’re cute when you’re angry,” he said as the clerk approached them.
“I’ll get you back for this,” Bailey said under her breath.
With his back to the clerk, Matt winked at her.
“You two lovebirds decide yet?” the young man asked.
“Yeah, that one,” Matt said as he pointed to a behemoth of a lawn mower. It looked like something used to cut the north forty.
“Good choice,” the young man said. “That’s the one I would want.”
“You and all the boys,” Bailey said in disgust as she looked away. Only Matt heard her.
“And we’ll need some hand tools too,” Matt said, turning to Bailey, unperturbed by her sarcasm. “Come on, honey, let’s get some loppers.”
An hour later they were in Matt’s pickup truck. The back was loaded with the oversize tractor lawn mower and one of every shovel, rake, digging fork, and garden cutting tool the store carried. After the first two shovels, Bailey had quit protesting.
When they were out of the parking lot, Bailey said, “You said Janice does your books?”
“Such as they are. When I ran a business, I had an accountant, but now Janice does the work. Not that Janice isn’t as good as an accountant. She did the books for all four of her husband’s car dealerships, until Scott decided that he shouldn’t work with his wife. Between you and me, I think he didn’t want his wife knowing everything he had.”
Bailey didn’t know how to comment on this information. Besides, she was more interested in Matt than in Janice. “Is your move back to Calburn permanent? Or are you just licking your wounds after the divorce, and in a few months you’ll go back to being a big-city architect?”
Matt was quiet for a moment, turning on his blinkers and checking his mirrors before making a left turn. “The truth is that I don’t know. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life driving nails, I can tell you that.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Domestic architecture. Personal dwellings. It’s what I’ve always liked.”
“So why did you work on skyscrapers?”
“More money in it.”
“Ah, right. Money. That ever-important commodity. Jimmie used to say that if you work for money, then you’ll never have any.”
“Spoken like every poor man.”
Bailey said nothing to that, but she turned her head away and smiled.
“So what’s that about?”
“What is what about?” she asked, turning back to look at him.
“That smug little smile. Did I just make a fool of myself in your eyes?”
“It’s just that Jimmie wasn’t poor.”
“Oh? Then why’d he leave you broke?”
“He—” Bailey shook her head. “I don’t know. I can figure out some of the reasons why he did what he did, but why did he leave me this place in this town? I always had the idea that Jimmie hated his childhood, and that’s why he refused to speak of it. But if he hated his childhood, why leave me his childhood home? If it is his home. I don’t even know that it is.” She looked out the side window and willed herself to calm down.
“Last night,” Matt said softly, “I got my computer hooked up, plugged it into a phone line, and got the Net up and working. I paid thirty-five bucks for a property search on your house. I should get some info on Monday.”
Bailey didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If it came onscreen as belonging to James Manville, no matter how Matt planned to keep the knowledge a secret, it would get out. And would he change toward her when he found out?
“Bailey?”
“Yes?”
“Patsy’s planned a little get-together this afternoon, and . . . ”
“I’m invited?”
“You’re the guest of honor.”
“You mean, they’re going to ask me thousands of questions about every aspect of my life?”
“Probably. Plus they’ll, well, try to marry you off to me. Matchmaking is the major occupation of my sister-in-law.”
“For everyone or just you?”
“Me, mainly. I think she’s afraid I’ll move back into her house unless some woman takes pity on me and marries me.”
“What in the world did you do to offend her that she’s so anxious to get rid of you?”
“My sister-in-law lives to sew. She has a room upstairs set up with a sewing machine and a big table to cut out her patterns. Sewing is her claim to fame in this area. Whenever there’s money to be raised, it’s Patsy they ask to supervise the sewing committees.”
“And?” Bailey asked.
“For the last six months my bed has been in her sewing room,” he said softly.
“Oh, my.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“So. Is Patsy paying the rent at my house, or are you?”
“Very funny,” Matt said, but he was smiling as he pulled into Patsy’s driveway.
Just as he said, Bailey was the guest of honor—and all his immediate family was there waiting for them. There was Janice and her husband, Scott, who Bailey hadn’t met, and who Bailey discovered she didn’t like very much. He was what Jimmie used to call a “deal man”: he was always, constantly, trying to make a deal about something. As Bailey shook his hand, she was very glad that he didn’t know she’d been married to a billionaire, because she was sure that Scott would be trying to sell her something. As it was, three minutes after they met, Scott was trying to get her to sell her Toyota and buy a Kia from him.
Matt put his arm around Bailey’s shoulders and led her away. “Don’t listen to a thing Scott says. If he gets too much for you, I’ll deal with him.”
Bailey adored Janice’s two young daughters, Chantal, seven, and Desiree, four. But she felt sorry for them because they were dressed in pink cotton pinafores that had been ironed. Both girls ate their hot dogs as though they were terrified of getting their dresses dirty.
Patsy’s family seemed to be as informal as Janice’s was formal. Her big, handsome twin sons seemed to be terminally bored, and they tended to fall asleep every time they sat down.
“Matthew works them to death,” Patsy said when she saw Bailey looking at the boys sprawled on a quilt in the shade of a tree, sound asleep. In sleep they looked so young and innocent—rather like six-foot-tall toddlers.
Rick snorted. “They were up all night playing video games, and on the phone to half the girls in the county,” he said. “Their laziness has nothing to do with work.”
“Richard Longacre!” Patsy began and, smiling, Bailey walked away.
Contrary to what Matt had said, they didn’t ask Bailey a lot of questions. Instead, they seemed to want to tell her their stories, and they wanted to watch her with Matt. Twice that day everyone stopped talking and looked at her and Matt. The first time was when Matt stuck a crinkled potato chip in some cream-cheesebased dip, then held it out to Bailey. “Try this,” he said.
The four adults sitting at the picnic table fell instantly silent and watched with undisguised interest. Even the boys under the trees opened an eye each. The two little girls stopped swinging and looked at what had made the adults go quiet.
Self-consciously, Bailey bit the potato chip and chewed. Then everyone went back to what they had been doing, but she felt that she’d pleased them all. And, truthfully, it felt good to have pleased them. She was beginning to feel as though she belonged with them, as though she were part of them.
In the late afternoon, Matt leaned over and whispered, “Why don’t you ask Patsy for a tour of her sewing room? She’d love to show it off.”
So Bailey asked Patsy, and she saw Patsy’s face light up before she led the way into her house. Silently, Janic
e followed them.
All day, surreptitiously, Bailey had watched the dynamic between the two women, who looked so much alike, yet dressed so differently. Patsy wore baggy old cotton shorts and a huge T-shirt that probably belonged to her husband. Janice wore dark brown shorts that had a sharp crease down the center of each leg, an alligator belt with a silver buckle, and a crisp brown-and-green-plaid blouse. Her hair was as perfectly arranged as Patsy’s was messy. But under the clothes, the similarity between the women was very strong.
“How are they related?” she’d whispered earlier to Matt as he flipped hamburger patties on the grill.
“Their mothers were identical twins,” he said. “But one sister married rich and the other poor. Guess which one was which?”
“Janice grew up poor,” Bailey said instantly. Her own mother had been like Janice, so afraid the poverty would show on her that she overcompensated. No one ever saw Freida Bailey less than made-up and dressed perfectly.
“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” Matt said, smiling at her.
“Smart enough to know that if you don’t take those burgers off there now, they’ll be charred.”
He kissed her on the nose—and that was the second time everyone halted in midair for a count of three before resuming their activity.
Bailey did what she could to pretend that she hadn’t noticed their movements freeze, but she had to turn away to hide her blush. “Would you stop it?!” she hissed at Matt. “They’re going to think you and I are more than just housemates.”
“Couldn’t have that, now could we?” Matt said, and she could tell that he liked the idea of people thinking they were . . . well, more.
When Matt had called out that the burgers were ready, Bailey had stood back, sipping the awful, made-from-a-mix lemonade that Patsy served, and watched all of them. She watched the way Patsy and Janice worked together but never actually spoke to each other or made eye contact. They sat next to each other at the picnic table, but never spoke. Part of Bailey wanted to ask what had caused the split between them, but she was afraid she’d hear that they’d had a fight over a Barbie doll when they were nine and vowed never again to speak to each other. And, too, it was more interesting not knowing the cause.
The Mulberry Tree Page 14