Back on Blossom Street

by Debbie Macomber

  “Good Grief,” Steve repeated.

  “I identified with how the widow felt. At one point she goes to work in her pajamas and housecoat. I laughed out loud and at the same time I was weeping because…well, there were days like that for me, too, especially at first.”

  Steve nodded and was about to speak when his cell phone rang. He automatically reached for it and snapped it open. “Grisham,” he said in a terse voice, instantly the professional.

  Colette ate a little more of her soup but after the latte her appetite was gone. She really should be getting back to the shop; she was already five minutes late and still had a brisk walk ahead of her.

  Steve closed the cell and clipped it back to his waistband. “I have to go.”

  “Me, too.” She picked up her purse.

  “Listen, I’d better take a rain check on tonight,” he said and slid out of the booth. “Work intrudes.” He scooped up the tab and headed over to the cashier.

  Colette found a pen at the counter and wrote out her cell number on a napkin, then handed it to him.

  He smiled and thanked her. Colette went back to Susannah’s Garden in a good mood. The clouds had lifted in more ways than one and she felt as if her life was finally taking shape.

  That euphoric sensation didn’t last long, however. When she walked into the shop, the first person she saw was Christian Dempsey, drumming his fingers on the counter.

  Colette felt her heart plummet. She could hear Susannah on the phone in the back room—which meant there was no one to rescue her. “What are you doing here?” she muttered.

  “I’ve come to order flowers.”

  “A special occasion?”

  “Not really. They’re for a woman.”

  Colette should’ve guessed. “You couldn’t do it by phone?”

  “I prefer to order them in person.”

  She understood his intent. He wanted her to know he was seeing someone else now. Fine. Message received. In her opinion, he was acting both vindictive and immature.

  “And while I was here, I thought I’d see how you were doing.”

  “I’m busy,” she returned stiffly. “Actually, I have a date myself.” She found herself stretching the truth, but Steve had asked her out, and even if it wasn’t possible that evening, she would eventually be seeing him.

  Her blatant attempt to discourage Christian didn’t seem to be working. “With whom?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s an old friend of my husband’s.” She turned her back to him and removed her jacket.

  His smile had vanished when she turned around. “Does this so-called friend have a name?”

  “Of course he has a name. What’s the matter, don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” he said, and looked away as Susannah stepped up to the counter and gave him back his credit card.

  “Thank you for your order, Mr. Dempsey. I’ll make sure the flowers are lovely.”

  She spoke with a little more enthusiasm than Colette deemed strictly necessary.

  “Thank you,” he said, and shot Colette an enigmatic smile that she puzzled over for days.

  CHAPTER 9

  “When making sweaters and you’re off gauge, don’t worry! Fudge and smudge until it fits!”

  —Joyce Renee Wyatt, designer and instructor

  Lydia Goetz

  Brad and I invited Matt and Margaret over for dinner on the first Sunday in March. It was my husband’s suggestion and I’m grateful he thought of it. After Julia’s attack, Margaret still wasn’t the same. Julia herself was back in school but refused to talk about what had happened, even to her mother. It was as if a giant boulder had crashed through the roof; everyone had to walk around it and pretend it wasn’t there. At any hint or mention of the carjacking, Julia disappeared into her room, plugged her iPod into her ears and zoned out for hours on end.

  I knew this couldn’t be healthy and I was afraid Margaret’s response wasn’t, either. My sister wanted revenge and she wanted it badly enough to hound the authorities day and night.

  I’d hoped that an evening out with Brad and me would help my sister put aside her anger, at least for a few hours. Every day she arrived at work tense and angry, snapping at me without provocation. Just that week, I’d asked her a simple question about an order I’d had her place for circular knitting needles and she’d yelled at me, saying she was a responsible adult and I’d made her feel like a child. I hardly knew how to respond to the unreasonableness of her attack. Thankfully, no customers were in the shop at the time.

  Brad and I spent the afternoon shopping and then cooking. We make a good team on the domestic front—and in every other way. My husband’s a master at the barbecue, and we decided to grill chicken. I made a batch of potato salad, following a recipe Tammie Lee Donovan had given me. It has jalapeño in the mayonnaise, which provides a little kick. In addition to the potato salad, I doctored up baked beans with brown sugar and mustard and baked a carrot cake for dessert. It’s Cody’s favorite.

  Unfortunately, it was still too early in the year to bring out the picnic table, so we planned to eat indoors. Our goal was a carefree, festive evening in the hope that Margaret and Matt would relax and enjoy themselves.

  Brad had everything under control by the time my sister and her husband arrived. Although I see Margaret almost every day, I was shocked by her appearance when she stepped into the house that afternoon. Outside the familiar environment of A Good Yarn, I suddenly realized how haggard Margaret looked. She’s physically bigger than I am, a good four to five inches taller than my five-foot-two height and sturdily built. Compared to this nightmare with Julia, so little has truly frightened her over the years. Even when Matt was unemployed for months she kept it hidden from me. For all I knew at the time, everything was perfectly fine at home. Only when they were about to lose their house did she reveal that anything was wrong.

  That wasn’t the case now. The dark circles under Margaret’s eyes betrayed her inability to sleep. She’d lost weight, too, and her pants hung loose around her waist.

  After hanging up their coats, I hugged Margaret. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  Matt glanced in Margaret’s direction, and I had the feeling that at the last minute, she’d wanted to cancel. I don’t know how he managed to change her mind, but I was relieved he had.

  “The chicken’s on the grill,” Brad said, shaking hands with Matt and hugging Margaret. I loved him all the more for the warm way he welcomed my family. “I’m not sure what Lydia’s been making, but she’s been in the kitchen most of the afternoon.”

  “You’ll see,” I teased and we shared a smile because he knew very well what I was making.

  “How about a beer?” Brad offered Matt and the two men disappeared onto the back patio while I got a bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator for Margaret and me. Cody was with a friend for the day and wouldn’t be back until later. After investigating who was at the door, Chase, Cody’s golden retriever, had returned to his bed in Cody’s room.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Margaret asked.

  “You could set the table.” I had the plates, napkins, silverware and glasses ready. All Margaret had to do was carry them to the table and arrange each place setting.

  “Would you mind if I called home first?”

  “Of course not.”

  She excused herself and hurried into the other room. I could hear her talking to Julia, her tone anxious as she checked on her daughter’s safety. Were the doors locked? she asked. The windows? Had she turned the oven off? Julia must’ve hated having her mother constantly standing guard over her, and yet I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.

  Margaret returned to the kitchen, where I was busy transferring everything to serving dishes and setting them in the middle of the table. “How’s Mom?” she asked as she carefully folded the napkins. This was her attempt at avoiding questions about Julia.

  Margaret had only seen our mother a
couple of times since the attack. “She seems fine,” I told her.

  My sister gazed sightlessly into the living room. “I miss her.”

  Initially I didn’t understand what she meant. How could Margaret miss our mother when all she had to do was drive over to the assisted-living complex? They’d always been close. Even now, they talked at least once a day. After we’d first moved Mom, Margaret stopped by the complex as often as twice daily.

  “It’s almost like we don’t have a mother anymore, isn’t it?” Margaret said sadly.

  A sense of loss came over me. The role reversal had occurred so gradually, I was hardly aware of it while it was happening. All at once, Margaret and I were taking care of Mom. We had, in effect, become the parents, weighing decisions, dealing with financial matters and driving her to doctor’s appointments. This situation had begun in earnest a year ago, when we discovered Mom was severely diabetic and needed to be on insulin. Lately, she’d slipped mentally. The medication she was on no longer seemed to be working.

  “Mom will always be our mother.”

  “I know that,” Margaret said and cast me an irritated glance. “It’s just that I can’t talk to her now.”

  “Of course you can,” I challenged. Mom thrived on routinely hearing from us.

  “Not about this.”

  This, of course, was the attack on Julia. I forgave Margaret for her hot-tempered response when I understood what she meant.

  “I miss my mother,” Margaret repeated.

  I agreed. I missed Mom, too. Missed those special times we’d spent talking about anything and everything. I’d grown to rely on her insights about the store and my customers. But when I was a teenager, Mom had been so deathly afraid of my cancer that she’d forced my father to oversee all medical matters. My father was the one who’d chauffeured me to countless appointments and argued with doctors on my behalf. He’d sat by my bedside before and after my surgeries and whispered encouragement when the pain was more than I could bear. He was there when I suffered the debilitating effects of chemotherapy and buoyed my spirits every way he could. We grew exceptionally close, and in that, we’d excluded Margaret and our mother. True, Mom did her best for me, but my father was my anchor.

  “I’d like to tell her about Julia,” Margaret continued. “But…I can’t.”

  What my sister wanted, of course, was our mother back the way she used to be. She wanted Mom to promise her that everything would be all right, that this nightmare would soon be over and life would return to normal. She sought assurance that the attack wouldn’t have a lasting effect on her daughter. She wanted Mom to tell her that Julia would be able to sleep through the night again and smile and laugh as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Margaret wanted peace, the kind of peace only a mother can give a hurting child, the peace she longed to offer her own daughter.

  “Chicken’s done,” Brad said, coming in from the patio. It’d started to rain, which was no real surprise, since it’d been raining off and on all weekend. The chicken breasts smelled tangy and enticing. Brad had marinated them in a mixture of soy sauce, Italian salad dressing and herbs—a blend he could probably never duplicate again.

  We all gathered around the table and after Brad had offered a simple grace, I passed the serving dishes around.

  Matt dug into the meal with gusto. “This is great,” he said between bites. He helped himself to a second scoop of potato salad before he’d finished his original serving.

  “I haven’t been doing much cooking lately,” Margaret confessed, looking a little embarrassed at the way her husband kept commenting on the food.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said, dismissing her remark.

  “She’s driving the police nuts,” Matt said.

  Margaret glared across the table at him. I caught Brad’s eye and we exchanged an exasperated grimace. We’d hoped to avoid exactly this conversation. Margaret had gone into the dining room twice during dinner to use her cell phone. I knew she was checking on Julia again. Most likely it wasn’t only the police Margaret was annoying.

  “I thought we weren’t going to mention the attack,” she said pointedly to her husband.

  I noticed that Margaret had barely touched her meal.

  Matt sighed, sounding genuinely regretful. “You’re right. I apologize.”

  Now that Matt had brought it up, though, Margaret was loath to drop the subject. “The police don’t even seem to be trying. To the authorities, it’s not that big a deal. They aren’t taking it seriously.”

  Matt raised his hand. “Now, Margaret—”

  “Don’t argue with me, Matt,” she said, interrupting him. “I’m the one dealing with the police, and I’m telling you right now, what happened to Julia is being swept under the rug.”

  “Would anyone like coffee?” I asked in a blatant attempt to redirect the conversation.

  “I’d love some,” Brad said quickly.

  “Coffee, Margaret?” I leaned over to touch her arm.

  Margaret nodded impatiently. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve talked with Detective Johnson,” she muttered. “The man’s an idiot.”

  “Margaret,” Matt said softly, in an effort to deflect her.

  My sister sighed deeply. I could tell she was trying not to ruin the evening. I also knew that Julia’s ordeal was constantly on her mind.

  Margaret had made it her mission to see justice done—more than justice, vengeance. The man responsible for hurting her daughter should be strung up, in her view, and left hanging in a public square. That sounds medieval, but it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. If he was ever arrested and brought to court, she’d sit through every minute of his trial and cheer when a guilty verdict was read. I was just as outraged as she was, but I didn’t have the same passion for revenge. Don’t get me wrong; I wanted this man found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Margaret wanted that, too. But she also wanted him to suffer for what he’d done to Julia. She was obsessed with it.

  I hurried to the kitchen to start a pot of decaf, and while it brewed, we managed to finish the meal without any further mention of the incident. It didn’t come up again until we sat in the living room with our coffee and dessert.

  “Does anyone know the name of a good private investigator?” Margaret asked unexpectedly.

  “Whatever for?” Matt demanded.

  “What do you think?” Margaret lashed out. “The police aren’t doing a damn thing. I want to hire someone who will.”

  “Margaret…”

  “Don’t Margaret me,” she cried, pinching her lips together in a way that told me she was determined to see this through. “Do you want this…this bastard to strike again? Next time, the victim might not be so fortunate. Julia’s arm was broken, but if she hadn’t rolled away, she could’ve been hit by an oncoming car. We’re both aware that our daughter could have easily been maimed for life or killed.”

  “But she wasn’t,” Matt said gently, patiently.

  “The next victim might not be so fortunate, did you think of that? This man needs to pay for his crimes and be prevented from ever doing it again. And if the police aren’t going to see to that, then I am.”

  “It’s the responsibility of the police to find him, not some investigator we hire. We’re already paying taxes to support law enforcement. Give them a chance first.”

  Margaret’s response was a derisive snort.

  “More coffee anyone?” I asked, hoping to divert an argument.

  Both Matt and Margaret shook their heads, and Brad and I shared another glance. Thankfully, Cody got home a few minutes later, bursting into the house with his usual enthusiasm. Chase bolted into the living room eager to greet his master, tail wagging madly.

  “Can I have some cake?” Cody asked, looking at the empty dessert plates—and at Matt, who was eating a second piece.

  “What did you have for dinner?” I asked.

  Cody paused to think about it. “Roast beef with potatoes and gravy, peas and salad. Mr
s. Martin’s a good cook. Not as good as you, though.”

  That boy certainly had a way with words. “I’ll see what I can do about that cake,” I promised, not bothering to hide a smile.

  Margaret stood and Matt finished off the last bite of his dessert before joining her.

  “We should be getting home,” Margaret said. “I don’t like being away from the girls for so long.”

  Matt looked as though he wanted to comment but apparently changed his mind. “Lydia, Brad, we can’t thank you enough for dinner. It was delicious.”

  My sister had already reached for her raincoat and purse and seemed anxious to be on her way. I’d lost count of the number of times she’d phoned home, and I wondered if she thought no one had noticed. Or maybe she simply didn’t care.

  Brad and I walked them to the door and stood on the front porch while they dashed through the rain to their car, which was parked at the curb. With the insurance money, Matt and Margaret had purchased a replacement car. This one was used and about as plain as they come. Margaret had no intention of risking a repeat of Julia’s experience.

  After they drove off, Brad heaved a sigh of relief. “How do you think it went?” he asked.

  “Definitely not as well as I’d hoped,” I admitted, leaning against him. He brought his arm around my waist.

  “Matt said Margaret’s up till all hours of the night, obsessing over this. She can’t sleep.”

  “Neither can Julia.” I wanted to hug my precious niece and reassure her. I only wished I had the words to comfort her and Margaret, too.

  “Do you figure Margaret was serious about hiring a private investigator?” Brad asked as we went back inside. He closed the front door and turned the lock.

  Before I could answer, Cody came into the living room, overhearing the end of our conversation. “What’s a private investigator?”