Lost and Found Family

by Leigh Riker

  Bob was leaping at the back door and barking. They had to get out. Emma could only hope their rural volunteer fire department made it up the mountain before the whole house was destroyed.

  Someone hammered at the outer garage door. When she opened it, Bob burst out onto the driveway and her nearest neighbor hauled Emma outside.

  “I saw smoke pouring out your windows. Called 911. The trucks are on the way,” he said in her ear. “Let’s get you away from this.”

  He guided a shaking Emma to his house and sat her down in an easy chair in his living room. His wife hovered over her with a cloth dipped in cool water to cleanse her burned hand. Even the water stung but Emma tried not to flinch.

  “What have I done?” she said, half to herself. “I got caught up in something when I should have been watching our dinner.”

  Neither of them said a word, and Emma realized they must be thinking, That’s not the first time. Like Thad, maybe they thought she belonged in prison for what had happened last December. They’d always been good neighbors, yet they’d rarely spoken to Emma since the funeral.

  With her good hand over her eyes, she sank back into the chair. And waited.

  It seemed an eternity before she heard sirens coming up the hill. By then, even though the volunteer fire department had responded quickly, her kitchen was engulfed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AFTER THE DRIVE home from Nashville, Christian dropped the truck in the Mallory lot downtown. He retrieved his pickup and stopped at Max Barrett’s shop again. He hadn’t meant to, but as he passed Ponies on Parade, something seemed to draw him in once more. He wouldn’t stay long, but after last night he doubted Emma would mind if he was a few minutes late.

  Getting out of his truck, he took a moment to look around, then stepped into the neatly arranged store, where even the scent of sawdust in the air smelled clean and fresh.

  Max appeared from some back room before Christian could call a hello.

  “I’m surprised. I didn’t expect you to take my invitation.”

  “I’m an easy mark today,” he said.

  As if he couldn’t help himself, Christian headed straight for the little black-and-white pony with its compact body and long brush of tail, the gleam of rich paint on its one side.

  “Oil paint,” Max said. “Enough coats for depth and to lend the impression of reality. The tail’s real horsehair. That’s not used much anymore but I like the effect. I try to be as true to the old-timers as possible.”

  A brief silence fell between them. Max was one of those people who didn’t need the constant hum of conversation, so he just stood there with a half smile, waiting for Christian to say something. Or nothing. He imagined Max could wait all day. Just as he was still waiting to sell this pony.

  Christian shifted his gaze from the horse to Max. “It’s amazing,” he said.

  “I had a good subject. But I worked from a picture not the real thing.”

  “Still. You captured the look in the General’s eye, his noble spirit,” Christian said.

  “It’s a shame he’s going to waste. This carving, I mean.”

  “The real one, too.”

  “I’ve been meaning to finish painting,” Max finally said. “I’ll get to it any day now.”

  “No hurry.” Christian turned away. The beautiful pony was like seeing the General again.

  Except for him and Max, the shop was empty. “This is my quiet day to organize myself,” Max said. “I was in the back getting ready to order some supplies when you came in. You’re in time for a free tour. If you like.”

  Christian started to say no but instead said, “I’d like that.”

  Max led him into a huge workshop area in the back, with rough-hewn tables, a pegboard on the wall holding every imaginable size of chisel and some other tools he didn’t recognize. On the floor stacks of lumber were everywhere. The sawdust smell was even stronger here.

  “May I?” At Max’s nod he wandered around while Max explained what he was seeing. Christian smoothed a hand over the bare wood of a horse’s detached head, which was alone on a table. “Is this for The Godfather?” he asked.

  Max smiled. “It’s for a doctor in Atlanta, his second order. The first was for a classic Stander—a sturdy, impressive type of model. Typically it has at least three feet on the ground. Now he wants this Prancer—front legs raised, back feet on the platform. His knowledge of anatomy means I’ll have to be especially careful to make it look authentic.”

  Christian’s insides began to unknot. “There’s more to this than I thought.”

  Conscious of Max’s gaze, he drifted over to the pile of lumber in a corner. Beside it was a smaller stack, one board pressed like laminate to another.

  “The body of another project,” Max said, shifting wood around so Christian could see it better. “You should try one. I’d be happy to work with you.”

  “I’m not suited to being a student again—and don’t have the time—but I am curious. I always thought these horses were one piece. This looks like just a torso. Sort of.”

  “You’re right. We cut the wood—mostly basswood—into this rough shape, then glue the boards together. The ponies are hollow to keep them light. Many of the old carousels were portables, that is, they had to be moved from place to place. The legs, the neck and head, are added as pieces.”

  They made a full circuit of the workroom. Max showed Christian a horse that looked closer to being finished with legs and head attached. “Now we sand,” he said, “then sand some more. This one was ordered by a seventy-eight-year-old grandmother for her great-grandson.” Max ran a hand over the neck, where muscle and sinew had been carved.

  If only Owen could have seen his pony...if only Christian could find some other use for it now instead of selling it or giving it away to remove yet another reminder of loss for Emma. And if he sold the General, he’d have no way to remember him except a few photos.

  Max seemed not to notice his discomfort. “It’s in the realistic—Philadelphia—style. I won’t bore you with all that now, though. The different kinds of carving.”

  Christian cleared his throat. “No, I find all this fascinating.” He hadn’t felt this sense of almost belonging, wanting to belong, since his first courses in design. “Thanks for showing me around.” Christian headed for the front of the shop, feeling guilty that he’d stopped here, stolen an hour for himself. Emma’s dinner would be getting cold.

  “I hope you’ll drop by again.”

  And why shouldn’t he? His hours on the road would be long and often boring, but he would also have some days free, and he’d enjoyed Max’s tour of the shop even more than he’d expected.

  In the doorway Christian turned back for a last glance at the pony. He wasn’t being fair to the General.

  “I doubt I’d be any good as a carver, but if you have some cleanup work to be done, stuff to be moved or whatever, I’d be happy to volunteer.”

  Max grinned. “I can always use help. I’ll find something for you to do.” His eyes sparked with mischief. “Be careful, though. I just may talk you into trying that project, after all.”

  Christian was about to reply when his cell phone rang. It wasn’t Emma’s ringtone. One of his neighbors, he saw from the display. He answered, then felt the blood drain from his face.

  “I’ve gotta go.” He choked on the words. “There’s a fire at my house.”

  Max didn’t hesitate. “I’ll go with you.”

  * * *

  CHRISTIAN’S HEAD POUNDED and his hands on the wheel were slick with sweat. He’d left Max’s parking lot behind only a few minutes when he heard sirens. If he didn’t miss his guess, he was just behind the volunteer trucks winding their way up the mountain.

  Max drove in front of him, probably to keep Christian from flooring the accelerator and
driving himself right off the winding road into the valley below. Sequoia wasn’t a big mountain, but a fourteen-hundred-foot drop would still prove fatal.

  Even with Max setting the slower pace, Christian reached the house in record time. Two fire trucks, one of them a pumper, were parked on the road. Max pulled up behind them in front of the neighbor’s house, but Christian’s driveway was empty. He swung in, braking hard.

  He hit the ground running, shouting. “Emma!”

  * * *

  AS SOON AS the blaze had died down, Emma stood with her husband and the neighbors in their driveway while the volunteer firemen unhooked their hoses and put their equipment away. Max was the first to leave.

  “Take care,” he told Emma. He touched Christian’s shoulder on his way past. “I’ll see you at the shop.”

  Christian watched him leave, then turned to Emma.

  “Well, we can’t stay here tonight,” he said, his mouth tight.

  Emma’s stomach sank. Their kitchen, blackened and smelling of smoke, the walls and ceiling coated with grease, was indeed unusable. The firemen had smashed all the windows. Still, the idea of trying to get a hotel room with Bob to consider didn’t appeal.

  The neighbors offered their guest room, then Melanie called with the brilliant idea to let her girls have a slumber party in her husband’s den, giving Emma and Christian the guest room. Even Grace and Rafe, who didn’t have a spare room, offered their living room sofa bed, but in all cases they’d only have to move again anyway. “I can’t see us using our kitchen anytime soon,” Christian said.

  The logical choice seemed to be Frankie and Lanier, who had the most room and claimed they didn’t mind a longer stay. In their spare bedroom, Emma lay in the darkness beside Christian, shaken by the fire—and by a fresh surge of guilt. She might have been trapped inside the house. Or in the chaos she might have forgotten Bob, not that her barking had been easy to ignore. Emma would have caused yet another tragedy for Christian.

  Right now Bob was outdoors in Lanier’s kennel because Frankie didn’t allow animals in the house. The fact that Bob was not one of the hunting dogs but a family pet didn’t count.

  “Poor Bob,” Emma said, cradling her bandaged hand. “She must be cold. That’s some reward for saving my life.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. She barked to let you know the pan was smoking.”

  “She’s still my brave girl,” Emma said. “How can Frankie be so heartless?” The thought of Bob shivering in the kennel tonight was terrible.

  “Have you seen my father’s setup? It’s like a posh resort for dogs. There’s a heated indoor space for each of his Gordon setters—one of them Bob’s mother—in addition to the outdoor runs.” He added, “It’s not as if we’ve sent her to the pound.”

  Emma murmured, “I hope she doesn’t have to stay long, though.”

  “I’ll call contractors in the morning. I know some good people.”

  Emma did, too, but she didn’t say anything. She’d upset the entire family again. She knew how true that was when he said, “If you’d paid attention to those burgers instead of cruising around on the web—”

  “I wasn’t cruising.”

  “What, then?” he asked.

  “I was on a grief support group site.”

  He tensed. “With a bunch of strangers? Why don’t you talk to me? Emma.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You scared another ten years off my life. I swear, when I got that call—”

  “You must have been frantic.”

  “That’s not the word for it, believe me. And now, after everything else, we have no home. Grace was worried about us, too,” he added. “I’m glad Rafe was there with her—and I never thought I’d say that. I convinced them not to come over here tonight, but until she actually sees us I don’t think she’ll relax.”

  “Christian, I’ll see—or call—her in the morning. What more can I say?”

  He took a deep breath. “That trip to the house was the longest I’ve ever made. Good thing I followed Max or I’d have qualified for the Indy 500 coming up that hill—and wrecked my truck on top of the fire.”

  “I’m sorry I gave you such a scare.”

  For a long time they lay in silence, each likely imagining another tragedy she couldn’t bear to talk about.

  “My parents, too,” he muttered. “They were pretty upset, especially Mom.”

  She rolled away from him to the opposite edge of the bed. “Well. If every cloud has its silver lining, staying here may be mine. For the duration I can be a help to your mother. In several ways. Maybe by the time we go home, the entire anniversary party will be planned.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EMMA SOON REGRETTED her impulse to become Frankie’s helper. Several days into her stay in the big house on Lookout Mountain she and Christian decided to change rooms.

  “Where are you going?” Frankie’s voice echoed along the upstairs hall.

  Emma stopped with a pile of clothing in her hands. Several sets of underwear fell to the thick Oriental carpet runner and she bent to pick them up, giving herself time to form a response that wouldn’t ruffle Frankie’s feathers.

  “Moving,” she said, silently cursing her clumsiness.

  “You can’t go home. Your kitchen is a construction zone. It has to be professionally cleaned, repainted and all the appliances need to be replaced. The only thing left is the stone floor and dirty walls.”

  “We’re moving to a different room,” Emma said. “Christian and I thought we’d feel more comfortable at the opposite end of this hall.” As far away from Frankie and Lanier as it was possible to get unless they took the even smaller room downstairs that had been intended for a live-in housekeeper.

  Frankie followed her gaze. “That room is half the size of the one you’re in now,” she said. “Why would you want to—” Her face turned pink.

  Emma blushed, too. “We’re a married couple. We need our privacy.”

  Frankie wrung her hands. “I see.”

  It wasn’t as if Emma and Christian made love that often now, which had become more a kind of clinging together than the true closeness Emma missed terribly. Yet she imagined Frankie could hear them talking or arguing every night.

  “We’re not swinging from the ceiling light,” Emma added with a faint smile. “But, seriously, Christian comes in late some nights after he’s been on the road and voices carry. We don’t want to keep you and Lanier awake.”

  Emma shifted the stack of loose clothing and a bra suddenly dangled free, its metal clasp brushing against her leg. Her bandaged hand made every task more difficult. “You may embellish that any way you want,” she said. “But if it’s all right with you, we’ll take the other room.”

  “Sleep where you will,” Frankie said at last. But when Emma started down the hall again, Frankie called her back. “As long as we’re making other arrangements, I’d like to talk to you about the rest of this house.”

  Emma froze. She’d expected to hear more of Frankie’s opinions about the party they were planning together—or trying to. “I know I didn’t clean the sunroom to your liking yesterday, but it’s never easy to start working in someone else’s home. The same is true for me each time I begin working with a new client.”

  “I’m not a client. I have a cleaning service,” Frankie said. “I don’t need you to dust or sweep or mop the floors in the sunroom or anywhere else.”

  “I was only trying to help. The sunroom furniture seemed a bit...” No, nothing in Frankie’s house was ever dirty. “I guess I needed something to do while I waited for Christian to get home. And, Frankie, I can’t simply accept your hospitality without giving something back. I’ll get the hang of it,” she added with a smile Frankie didn’t return.

  “The ‘hang’ of it,” she said. And Emma
once again felt like the girl who’d had no proper upbringing, who had none of the social graces Frankie prized and that Melanie seemed to be born with.

  “My clients understand,” she said. “So far Melanie seems more than pleased with what we’ve done for her twins’ room.” But since her brief meltdown over the imagined gummy bears, Emma had tried to plan her visits to the site when she knew Melanie—but especially the girls—wouldn’t be home.

  Frankie marched back along the hall, shoulders squared and spine straight, like a soldier on parade. “As soon as you’ve moved, don’t forget we need to discuss the party.”

  But when she and Frankie tried to discuss the guest list, they ended up in a new wrangle.

  “I have thirty people here,” Emma said, running an eye down the invitation list. But somehow the party had expanded from the close family and a few friends Frankie had insisted upon. In fact, it was growing by the day. “You want to add...?”

  “I can’t forget Elise. She would never forgive me.” Frankie paused. “Oh, and then there are the Sunderlands and the Wagners and...” On she went until the list had topped fifty, including, to Emma’s dismay, her former client Mrs. Belkin. The extra people meant Emma would have to request a larger banquet space for the dinner. The event budget was increasing, too.

  “We were lucky to get the club on such short notice,” she told Frankie. “People book wedding receptions there years ahead—as I’m sure you know.” What had happened to Frankie’s insistence on a small dinner party with half a dozen family members?

  It seemed the party Frankie had once hated to think about had become her latest social crusade. She’d taken over.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, SITTING beside Emma on the bed in their new room, Christian bent closer to examine her injured hand.

  “That hurts,” she said, but it was his way of apologizing.