Mom Over Miami

by Annie Jones

  wlmom: Wait! Before I sign off—one question?

  NachoMama: What?

  wlmom: Where did you get the idea that the other soccer moms had time to bake?

  NachoMama: The boys have bragged from day one that their mother’s snacks were homemade.

  wlmom: LOL! Hannah, Homemade is what everyone around here says when they mean they’re from the Home Oven Bakery.

  NachoMama: Store bought?

  wlmom: A regional chain, no less. You can get the stuff at some groceries or at one of like, three or four locations.

  NachoMama:

  wlmom: There’s one near the kids’ school. Let’s meet there one morning after we drop off the boys and talk over muffins and coffee.

  NachoMama: That would be great. Now, can I ask you a question?

  wlmom: Shoot.

  NachoMama: Does your screen name stand for world’s number one mom?

  wlmom: LOL! Hannah, you’re a hoot!

  NachoMama: Thanks, I think.

  wlmom: It’s my initials—Wilma Lauren.

  NachoMama: Wilma?

  wlmom: World’s number one mom! Where would you even get that?

  NachoMama: Just guessing.

  wlmom: Well, guess again. At least half of the time I feel exactly the way you said you felt in your column.

  Everyone else seems so calm and cool and collected. Not me.

  NachoMama: Thank you, Lauren.

  wlmom: Thank you, Hannah, for starting my day off on such a thoughtful note. Am adding reading through the book of Samuel to my burgeoning to-do list! Bye.

  NachoMama: Bye.

  Lauren Faison felt just like her. Who would ever have imagined?

  Sadie for one.

  Loved it. Love you. Love yourself and see you when you get back.

  April echoed the thoughts.

  Aunt Phiz promised to stand by with prayer and light as long as Hannah needed her.

  Hannah whizzed through those, but when she got to her minister’s name, she paused. Had she insulted him with her crack about not knowing why he chose her? Would he dress her down for her flippant words?

  Only one way to see.

  Dear Hannah,

  How you are going to handle the Christmas pageant? With style, girl! With style! And all the help you need. Just ask.

  She smiled until it sprang to mind exactly the kind of help she’d gotten for her last church undertaking—the women poised and already waiting to help her right over the edge.

  “DIYCyd has sent you an e-card.” She searched and found the header easily. An e-card. From Cydney. “Hmm, wonder if she made it herself?”

  If it were a do-it-yourself e-card, would it crash her computer? Hannah held her breath and clicked the blue link.

  Doves and flowers and rainbows filled then faded from her screen while the computer dinked out the notes of “Wind Beneath My Wings.” At last the words “You Are My Hero” swelled against a pink and orange sunset.

  “Okay.” Hannah waited for some kind of explanation, but the program ended with only the choices to view it again, respond to the sender or send the message to someone else.

  “What message?” she asked the screen.

  Click.

  Back to her mail and the one, two, three e-mails from the other half of the duo. “Of course, Jacqui would have to outdo her sister.”

  E-mail one: Thank you,

  E-mail two: Oops! Hit send with my charm bracelet. Thank you, Thank you, Th

  E-mail three: Took my charm bracelet off. Maybe now I can get through a whole note.

  Thank you, Hannah. Thank you a hundred times over. You said it all. How I feel, and Cydney, we were on the phone to each other first thing this morning. You made it possible for me to tell you, and I speak—type?—for Cydney, too, our truth. We are miserable decorators.

  “You don’t say?” Hannah shut her eyes and shook her head to keep the images of the nursery suite incident from assailing her. After a moment she turned back to the e-mail.

  We never wanted to decorate or design anything. Ever.

  “Oh.” She got it now. Jacqui wasn’t confessing they made miserable decorators. They were miserable because they were decorators. That was her truth.

  Gluing plastic gems to tennis shoes and putting up wallpaper borders in the guest powder room is one thing, but interior decorating as a business is beyond us. We just did it because people said we would be good at it.

  “Really? Were these people drinking at the time?” Bad, Hannah. But she couldn’t help it; knowing that the best mom in the world and the worst interior decorators shared the same insecurities that she did made her a little giddy.

  We still want to do everything we can for the church and the nursery program.

  “Giddiness subsiding,” Hannah murmured.

  So we thought why not take over child-care duties Sunday mornings? If we shared them between the three of us, we could all serve and still attend some of the services.

  Hannah sat back, overwhelmed. That was the kind of help she could really use. The gift of time. “Wow.”

  She raised her hand to hit the reply button when a knock at the door drew her away.

  “Room service!”

  “Oh, breakfast!” She lost track of the time. So much for showering and getting dressed. She squirmed into her robe and grabbed her wallet to get some tip money. “Be right there.”

  She rushed to the door then, remembering a show she’d watched on the perils of travel, made use of the peephole in the center of the door. “Flowers?”

  She couldn’t get the door open fast enough. “I bet my husband sent these, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am, I just deliver them.”

  “Oh, and breakfast—guess you didn’t make that, either.” She laughed.

  He didn’t. “No, ma’am.”

  “Um, okay, then.” She stopped herself from launching into a lengthy story about how the misdirected newspaper column and the flood of empathy and support it had brought her had her unusually energized. Flashing her brightest I-am-really-not-a-nut smile, she pressed the tip into his hand and thanked him as she shut the door behind him.

  The room filled with the aroma of bacon and roses, and instantly Hannah thought if they would ever make that a perfume, she’d buy it by the gallon. “They’d sell it by the gallon, too, in stores that sold everything for a dollar.”

  She left the breakfast tray on the dresser and set the roses down by her laptop. She took a deep whiff of the dark peach blooms, worked the small rectangular card free and murmured, “I am married to the most wonderful man in all of…Dr. Briggs’s office?”

  She blinked. Sure enough. Payt hadn’t sent the roses—the women in Dr. Briggs’s office had!

  She read the succinct but very welcome message. “‘We put a sign in the break room. ‘Nacho Mama Doesn’t Work Here Anymore. Clean Up After Yourself!’ Enjoy your well-earned vacation.’”

  More time. Wow, she wouldn’t know what to do with it all. Starting with right now. Here she was all alone in a strange city in a strange state with no itinerary or plans. It was the kind of thing that sounded blissful in the midst of her usual chaos, but now she hardly knew what to do first.

  Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. She needed to make a phone call before she did anything more.

  She sat at the table and dialed out even as she resumed opening e-mails.

  The phone rang once, twice, three times, and she wondered if maybe they had all slept in when the one voice she wanted to hear most in the world answered.

  “Bartlett here.”

  His voice warmed her to the center of her being. “Bartlett here, too.”

  “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Well, the sun is shining in Miami, but how about where you are?”

  “The weather is okay and so are we, though I might have heard the rumblings of low thunderclouds coming from Tessa’s room.”

  “That’s what you get for feeding her popcorn.”

/>   “It wasn’t popcorn, it was canned chili.”

  She plunked her feet down so hard her chair squeaked. “What?”

  “I was trying to improve on your nachos for the boys. Say, did you know that canned chili holds that can shape the entire length of time it takes to sail across the kitchen?”

  She put her hand over her eyes. “I was going to ask if I should make plans to hurry home, but now I might just add an extra few days onto my stay.”

  “You can, you know.”

  “What can? We still talking chili here?”

  “No. I think we’re talking turkey. If that’s what they call it when two people are speaking frankly.”

  “There’s a bad pun in there someplace about turkey franks, I know.”

  “Hannah.” His voice was deep and sincere.

  “Payt?” Hers, more tentative.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? I’m the one who ran away.”

  “No, you’re the one who followed through on the plans we’d already agreed to. And I don’t blame you.”

  “You should. I acted like such a baby.”

  “You acted like someone who was tired of always being a good soldier.”

  She knew how hard it was for him to bring up his childhood pain, and how genuinely he must understand her plight when he compared it to his own.

  “I messed up the second honeymoon, Hannah. I made you work at the office and never told you how much I appreciated it. I do, you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. No matter what, I always know you have my back, Hannah. You are the one person I always know will be there for me. I can’t count on anyone—not my folks or brother or sisters—no one, like I can count on you.”

  “Always,” she whispered, glad he couldn’t see the tears puddling along her lashes. “Thank you for saying all that, Payt. You don’t know how much it makes up for—the trip, the frustrations, the office. Oh, listen, speaking of the office—they sent me flowers.”

  “Lucky you, they sent me to the moon. Pow.”

  “Yeah, I can just see chubby gray-haired Dottie landing a wicked uppercut across your jaw.” She trapped the phone against her shoulder and slapped her fist into her open palm for effect.

  “She could have knocked me over with a feather when she called this morning to tell me Kaye agreed to fill in until we find a replacement for her.”

  She sat up so straight that the phone almost slid into her lap. She caught it in time to say into the mouthpiece without missing a beat, “Wow.”

  “Wow, and a few other choice words. Oh, they wanted me to make sure to tell you that none of them knew you were doing the cleaning, much less doing it for free.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “No. Wives working at the office is a very touchy subject ever since Mrs. Briggs died.”

  “I thought Dr. Briggs was divorced.”

  “The first Mrs. Briggs. She ran the office for nearly twenty years.”

  “Wow.”

  “When she died, Dr. Briggs had no idea what to do, and the first woman he hired took advantage of that—and him.”

  “Let me guess—the second Mrs. Briggs?”

  “Yep. Anyway, that’s what lay beneath so much of the turmoil in the office the past five years, and now that everything had gotten smoothed out…”

  “You didn’t want to risk more stress over wastebaskets and unwashed cups.”

  “Only, it didn’t work. Kaye still quit and you got mad at me.”

  “And what have we learned from all this?” She laughed even as she asked it.

  “Knock off trying to please everyone. Please God and He’ll take care of the rest.”

  She wound around her finger a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. “Was I too heavy-handed in the column with that?”

  “I didn’t think so. Have you heard from your editor?”

  “Along with everyone else.” She closed the e-mail from that very man and hugged one knee close to her chest. “He had a few suggestions and one very specific complaint.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He wanted to know why his name didn’t pop up in the men-I-adore-who-have-taught-me-so-much section.”

  “Figures.” Payt chuckled, but just a little. “So what now, Hannah?”

  “Well, I have to get on the rewrite and get it back to him. And there are a dozen e-mails here that need responses, and my bacon and eggs are getting cold.”

  “And after all that?”

  “Do you need me to come home?” she asked softly.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay.”

  “But not one minute before you need yourself to come home.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And what about when you get home?”

  “I…I think I might go back to college and finish my degree. I have a lot to learn about writing.”

  “Great. And?”

  “And I’d like for us start working toward getting your cousin to allow us to adopt Sam.” She rested her elbows on the table.

  “Long-range but, yes, I’m with you there. And?”

  “And…I…uh…have decided I will direct the Christmas pageant.”

  “Should be great. And?”

  “I don’t know what you want to hear, Payt. That I’m going to quit writing? Because I really hope not to.”

  “I was thinking more in terms of starting something, not quitting.”

  “Oh, Payt. I’m just…” She pulled her legs up to her chest again and hunched her shoulders. “I’m not ready to have another baby.”

  “Are you ready to talk about it?”

  “Yes.” She unwound her body and set her feet on the floor again. “I can’t promise that I’ll have much to say. But I will listen.”

  “So will I.”

  “That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Me, too.”

  His tone conjured up an image of him as he must be this morning, rumpled and relaxed and a bit rough around the edges.

  She sighed. “Wow, now I wish you were here with me.”

  “So do I.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  “A lot of reasons. One of them is that you took my plane ticket.”

  “No, I didn’t. I worked it all out at the airport. You have a credit and can use the money toward a new ticket anytime you want.”

  “What about what you want? I thought you needed time alone.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours to unwind and catch up on my sleep.”

  “Are you asking me to fly away to you, Hannah?”

  “I am, Bartlett.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” he warned her.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  They hung up, and as she tackled the column rewrites and her first uninterrupted breakfast in a very long time, Hannah smiled to herself and thanked God for all the blessings in her life—even the ones that sometimes made her want to fly away.

  STEEPLE HILL BOOKS

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5421-7

  MOM OVER MIAMI

  Copyright © 2005 by Luanne Jones

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  This edition published by arrangement with Steeple Hill Books.

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