The Road to Testament

by Eva Marie Everson

  I reread the e-mail before hitting Enter, a lifesaving trick I’d learned years ago. When I got to my name, I deleted it, replacing it with A.R., thinking the initials made me look and sound friendlier. More like a colleague ready to enter the trenches versus Constance Rothschild’s granddaughter, who—let’s be honest—got her job because of who she was, not what she could do. Oh, I’d had to prove myself, all right, and I knew I’d have to do the same again. Here. In Testament.

  But even still, I didn’t like the initials. They were too friendly and not professional enough. So, I returned to the previous “Ashlynne Rothschild” and hit Send.

  I opened the first attachment. There were two forms used by the paper for weddings from the past weekend. Both of those came with photos scanned into the form. The second attachment contained a form for new engagements, which included where the couple would be registered.

  This particular couple, the form noted, had registered at a local store called The Village Hut.

  I printed the forms, then walked to the back room to get the previous Thursday’s copy of the paper, my mind already forming the wedding and anniversary society column in Teas and Guns. When I returned, Alma said, “So, what’d you think of our star football player yesterday?”

  “Well,” I said, crossing my arms, leaving the newspaper in my hand hanging at my side. “I’m not really one who knows a lot about football. But from what I could see, he’s pretty good.”

  “Pretty good?” Alma shook her head. “Girl, that boy is a running back heading straight for the Heisman trophy.”

  I smiled weakly. “I don’t know what that means, Alma.”

  Alma threw up her hands. “You don’t know—girl, please.” She placed a hand over her chest. “My heart cannot take this kind of blasphemy.”

  I laughed at her hyperbole. “Oh, Alma. We just . . . where I went to school, we didn’t have a football team, so I never got into the sport. My dad loved it, but my mother only tolerated it. Most Sunday afternoons during the season she and I went shopping or to the movies with Gram while Dad and Papa stayed home and watched the game.”

  “Mmm—mmm—mmm.” Alma shook her head slowly. “So you really had no idea what you were looking at yesterday, did you?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” She crossed her arms over an ample middle. “Did you ask Will Decker for clarity if you had any questions?”

  My whole being frowned. “Absolutely not.” For one, I’d never give him that kind of ammunition, seeing as one of the Fs was football. But, even more so . . . “To be honest, I sort of had my mind on the story we were working on from yesterday morning.”

  “I see. Well, if you have any questions whatsoever, you come talk to Alma,” she said, pointing to herself with a coral-polished fingernail.

  I smiled. “I will.” I headed back to my desk.

  “You going to the scrimmage game on Friday night?”

  I turned. “Scrimmage?”

  “That’s football talk, I guess you could say. It means ‘practice.’ Are you going to the practice game on Friday?”

  “I didn’t know there was one.” When Rob had called, he said something about going out to dinner, but nothing about a game. But, according to Will, football ranked above food in Testament, so . . . “I’ve got a dinner date, actually.”

  Alma gave me an all-knowing look. “Well, now. Look at you, Miss Fancy Pants and Swanky Blouses. Here not even a week and you’ve got yourself a date.”

  My cheeks grew hot. “I wonder why Rob didn’t say something about the game,” I said to the floor. Then, to Alma, “What’d you call it? Skirmage?”

  “Oh, Lawd. Lawd. Scrimmage.”

  I nodded. “Got it. Scrimmage.” I sent another smile her way, already figuring that if I chose the game over dinner—which I preferred—I would win brownie points with the folks I’d been sent to live with for six months. “Thanks, Alma.” I waved the newspaper at her. “I’d better get this done before William gets here.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  I stood next to my car in the parking lot and called Rob’s number—the one he’d called from the night before—during my lunch break. The call went straight to voice mail. “Hey, Rob,” I said. “It’s Ashlynne Rothschild. Hey, um . . .” I sighed. Not loud enough to sound as though I were exasperated, but more to myself. “I hate voice mail. I always end up rambling. So, let me try to get to the point . . .” The phone beeped, telling me my time had run out. I held my cell phone out, looked at it as though it were a new contraption, then brought it back to my ear. An automated voice informed me that my recording time was up, but I could press “1” for more options.

  Which I did.

  “One” allowed me to either send with normal delivery by pressing “star” or to note as urgent by pressing “pound.”

  Well, my message was hardly urgent. I pressed the “star” key.

  I hung up and called again. When the voice mail recording began, I giggled like a schoolgirl and said, “Me again. Not much of a recording time you have there. Usually, when I call my friends or my family, I get about two and a half minutes. Three tops. But for some reason, I got cut o—” The phone beeped again.

  “For crying out loud,” I said as I pressed “star.”

  I hung up. Started again.

  “Rob? Ashlynne. For the third time. I’m so sorry . . . I wanted to ask you a question about Friday night. I understand there’s going to be a . . .” What was the word Alma used? Oh, heaven help me. “A um . . . well, a practice game and—” Ugh.

  Again I repeated the steps. I happened to be a magna cum laude graduate of one of the top colleges in the country. I’d won awards in school and in my work. How could a simple voice mail possibly get the best of me?

  I drew in a breath and called Rob for what I determined to be the final time. At least for today.

  “Rob. Ashlynne. Call me,” I said, then ended the pain of my humiliation.

  I left the office for lunch a few minutes before noon. I didn’t know much about where I was going on my own, but I figured if I could drive in the city of Orlando, I could certainly find my way around Testament.

  Within minutes I was on Main Street, driving down the same road I’d driven up on Sunday. Diagonally parked cars in front of old brick buildings, the large pots brimming over with colorful flowers, and the occasional wrought-iron bench charmed me once again. I inched along, looking for a place to eat and a place to park, until I caught sight of Will’s truck on the opposite side of the street. I whipped my head around to see if he was in it. Or about to hop out of it as he’d done before.

  He wasn’t, on both accounts.

  A white Toyota slid out of the space in front of me. I stopped, waited, and pulled in. I got out of my car, pushed the key fob to lock it just as one of the storefront doors from the opposite side of the street opened. Will Decker strolled out. I opened my mouth to say hello, but he seemed to be in a hurry so I clamped my lips together.

  He jogged across the street to where his truck waited. Instinctively, I felt he wouldn’t want me to see him. I hurried to the door directly in front of me, taking no notice of the type of establishment I entered. A handwritten note on a pink index card read: PUSH HARD, so I pressed my thumb down on the handle and jerked the door forward . . .

  . . . and walked right into an intimately charming nail salon with lavender painted walls, pink frilly wreaths, and porcelain face wall-hangings. A round antique oak table flanked the entryway. An arrangement of silk flowers dominated its center. Beneath that, flyers from local businesses had been fanned.

  Well, hello.

  A pretty blonde, who sat at her station working on an older woman’s fingernails, looked up at me. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh . . .” I pointed to the sidewalk and street beyond the door. “I just happened to park here. I’m new in town and I’d like to make an appointment for Friday, if possible?”

  Another woman—slightly older and carrying a stack of pink
and lavender towels—entered the room from the back.

  “Erin, can you help this lady? She wants to make an appointment for Friday.”

  Erin dropped the towels onto an unused workstation with a smile. “Have you been here before?”

  “No. I’m new here to Testament.” I followed Erin to the glass- and-oak display case, which held a variety of polishes and lotions. A cash register and an opened appointment book nearly covered the top.

  “Friday?”

  “Yes.” Alma had said I would need to take time off to balance the forty-hour workweek. I picked Friday morning, already apprehensive of Will saying, “No, that doesn’t work for me.” After all, it would be a Friday. The day before the weekend. I’d not worked a full week in a newspaper office, but I could bet he’d say that Fridays were not to be missed. While I didn’t want to cause a problem—or any more than I already had—I wanted my nails done the morning of my date with Rob.

  “How about ten o’clock?”

  “That’s perfect,” I said with a smile. Gram had instructed me that to connect to people, make deliberate eye contact and hold the gaze. “The simple gesture,” she said to me on my first day at the magazine, “says you care. That you’re interested in them, more than anything else, as a person first.”

  I sought out the woman’s eyes.

  Erin’s locked with mine. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, why?”

  Her expression became suspicious. “Do I have something in my eyes?” She stuck her fingers to the inside corners of her eyes as though clearing away the “sleep.”

  “Oh. No.” Would I ever get this right? I pointed to the appointment book. “Ten o’clock?”

  “Yes, if that works for you.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Your name?”

  “Ashlynne. A-S-H-L-Y-N-N-E. Ashlynne Rothschild.”

  Erin picked up a pencil and wrote my name in the tiny box. “And you’re new here?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “So you don’t have a preference for technicians?”

  “No. But can you put me down for a mani and a pedi?”

  Erin smiled, brought her eyes to mine and held them there. “Yes, ma’am, I sure will.”

  I smiled at the elongation of the last word, spoken as though she’d said “wheel,” and at the fact she called me “ma’am.”

  “See you Friday, then,” I said, then thanked the blonde on my way out to the sidewalk, the warm sunshine, and the large primary-colored building across the way. The one William Decker had walked out of a few minutes earlier.

  I read the sign and bit my bottom lip. What had he been doing . . . there?

  13

  I shot across the street, darting between the cars that eased along Main Street, and into Testament Children’s Museum. Everything about the exterior—from the primary paint colors to the storefront window displays of framed elementary art—shouted the joy and innocence of childhood.

  What was a man like William Decker doing here? He’d not been married nor did he have children. That much I felt fairly certain about. An even greater mystery was why I cared. But I did. I had felt unable to figure the man out since I’d arrived—his hot-to-cold-to- hot attitude toward me. Hopefully, knowing more about him would provide the insight I needed to successfully complete my six-month trial period and prove myself.

  Or, was I already serving a sentence?

  Walking in and simply asking questions like the journalist I had trained to be could be tricky. I was the stranger in town. William’s family had practically laid the cornerstone of the town.

  Or so I imagined.

  Any wrong move would cost me; that much was for sure. I had to play it safe. Play it . . . how did people used to say it? Play it cool?

  I went inside where open spaces were filled with various displays—science, art, geography, a reading corner—and the joyous laughter and chatter of about a dozen children met me. Blue walls had been stamped with child-sized handprints, each in a different primary color. “Wow,” I said, turning to take it all in. I’d not been around a lot of children, but I’d reported on the special events for children at the Winter Park Arts Festival, on the grand opening of upscale children’s stores along Park Avenue, and on unique classes held for the children of our fair city.

  I’d even been a child once.

  But . . . this was a special, special place. Come . . . Dream . . . Create, it all but shouted.

  A woman dressed in khaki slacks, a white tee, and a blue bib apron approached. She appeared to be no more than twenty. Twenty-one tops. “May I help you?” she asked, though it sounded more like “May I halp ya?”

  I put on my best smile and said, “I’m new in town and just happened to be passing by.” I gave the room a wide sweep with my eyes. “I’m wondering if you can tell me a little more about what you do here.”

  “Well,” she said, elevating her voice so as to be heard above the rise in clatter. “First off, my name is Kate. And you are . . . ?”

  “Ashlynne,” I said, extending my hand. “Ashlynne Rothschild.”

  “Welcome to Testament Children’s Museum,” she said, as though she’d rehearsed the words to perfection. She took a few steps to a table, picked up a brochure, and handed it to me. “We’re a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing joy and fun to the education of young children. We want them to become excited about learning at this stage of life so that, when they become older, they will carry that thrill all the way to college.”

  Definitely rehearsed. “So then, these children . . .” I looked past Kate to where girls and boys interacted with the displays. “Is being here a part of their school day?” Because, hadn’t school just started? And weren’t field trips rare during the first weeks?

  “Most of the kids here today,” she said, nodding toward them, “are homeschooled. The public and private school kids won’t start making field trips until a couple of weeks from now.”

  “Oh, I see.” Again I looked at the children, doing my best to come up with a way to ask why Will Decker had been inside the building earlier. Why would an adult male, with no children of his own, or nieces or nephews that I knew of come inside the museum?

  Unless, of course, he had been working on a story.

  No . . . he’d taken the morning off. At least, that’s what Alma had said.

  “Where are their parents right now?” I asked, mainly for something to ask.

  Kate laughed lightly. “They’re in the back. We have some classes to help homeschool parents with their sometimes overwhelming task of teaching.”

  Great answer. If only it helped with my real question. “And you’re nonprofit?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

  That word again. Ma’am. I bit my lip, thinking. “Oh!” Eureka. “Are you a volunteer or are you employed here?”

  “No, ma’am. I volunteer a couple of mornings a week when I don’t have classes over at the community college. Everyone except the program director is a volunteer.”

  I turned ever so slightly toward the sidewalk and street. “I . . . uh . . . I noticed a man in a cowboy hat walking out earlier . . .”

  The girl pinked. She actually pinked. “That’s Will Decker.”

  “Is he a volunteer?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s one of those who doesn’t mind actually sitting down with the kids. He comes in once a week to read over there at the reading corner.” She pointed to the area with brightly colored carpet, yellow and red cubbies filled with primary readers, and posters advertising the importance of reading. “You should see him,” she continued, looking back at me. “He does all the character voices. The kids just love him.”

  Cowboy Willy? I could hardly imagine. “Really,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

  “Mmhmm. He’s also one of our best financial contributors. And, of course, his granddaddy and grandmama, too. This was Miss Bobbie’s brainchild some years back, but it didn’t get off the ground until about four years ago.”<
br />
  “How about that . . . ,” I said, though my words were not referring so much to Bobbie Decker’s great idea as to her grandson reading to children on his time off. Well, I would have never guessed that one.

  “May I ask?” she said, three words that filled me with dread. “Would you like to volunteer?”

  Working—whether for pay or as a volunteer—with children had never been something I’d thought to do. But, what I could imagine was doing a story on the museum after the magazine came out. Perhaps holding a type of fund-raiser and covering it. Maybe even making it part of the first issue. I raised a finger as though I were pointing to the lightbulb going off over my head. “I know that the Deckers own the newspaper . . .”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

  “Have they ever done a story on the museum?”

  I received a beautiful—albeit “What planet did you come from?”—smile. “Of course.” The smile returned, weaker than before. “Like I said, this was Miss Bobbie’s idea to start with.”

  I shook my head lightly. “Of course. I—I’m actually working at the newspaper, you see. Helping to restart an old magazine the Deckers had with my grandparents.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want to volunteer?”

  “Oh, no. It just means that I thought a piece on the museum would be wonderful for the magazine.”

  Kate stared at me. She didn’t blink, she didn’t speak, she just stared. From the back of the room, the voices of the children seemed to elevate, even as I felt myself drawn into a tunnel of familiar yet uncomfortable feelings. My skin tingled. My head swam. How did people do this? How do they connect so easily? How had Gram and Dad and Mom always made it appear so effortless? And why couldn’t I get it?

  I swallowed. “I’d love to volunteer,” I said around the knot in my throat, knowing good and well I’d just as soon have a molar pulled. Not that I ever had, but Gram told me once about getting a crown on a back tooth and how awful the whole process had been.

  Kate’s smile once again spread across her face. “Well then, let me get you a form to fill out.”

  “Thank you,” I said.