“Trust it,” Glynnis kept saying. Darcy felt herself chanting it like a mantra whenever her spirit got antsy—which was daily.
Trust it. Trust it.
Trust me. Trust me, God seemed to be asking. It seemed so difficult to do. Darcy found herself moaning to God, pleading with Him to give her enough peace, or to send her more patience. She was itching to act, to move her plan forward. Why wait? What would be gained by not actively pursuing her plan? It would be so much easier if things would just make more sense.
The morning of her birthday, Darcy wasn’t sure Jack felt much like celebrating at all. His shoulders were stiff with tension—there must be a big meeting at his office today, and the stress had kept him up much of the night.
She waited all day for him to call and cancel their dinner out.
But he didn’t. When he called at 4:00 p.m. to check and make sure the kids were set for the evening, his voice sounded softer. Less stressed. Not excited, more like resigned, but at least not as tense. She couldn’t bring herself to ask what had transpired at work.
As she put on the last of her makeup and slid a frozen pizza into the oven for the kids, Darcy found herself almost agitated with uncertainty. She was looking forward to this night, to the time with Jack, but she wasn’t at all sure how the evening would go.
Jack chose a lovely little seafood place in trendy Hyde Park. They’d driven by this place a dozen times, wondering to each other if it was any good. It was a Jack kind of place. Small, unpretentious, but with enough flair to make the evening special. He’d done well.
“Wonderful.” Darcy let the buttery garlic of her shrimp scampi melt on her tongue. Cholesterol be hanged, tonight was no night for margarine. A woman deserved some crustaceans smothered in real butter on her birthday.
Jack nodded. His swordfish steak was nearly gone already. He was currently digging his way through a baked potato big enough for NFL play. “Ed was right—this place is terrific.”
“Ed?”
“I had lunch with Ed Bidwell last week and he mentioned how much he and Glynnis liked this place.”
Darcy tried not to let her shock show. Jack? Lunching with Ed Bidwell? That was the last thing she expected. While her relationship with Glynnis had blossomed immediately, Darcy was never quite sure Jack had hit it off with Ed much beyond mutual car affection. Evidently it had. Or was starting to. She opted for a noncommittal response. “Really?”
“He called with tickets to some car show. I told him it would be like taking a diabetic to the candy store. He laughed at that one. Suggested lunch instead.”
So Ed had called him. Well, she could have guessed that. It was odd, however, for Jack not to have mentioned it. “How was it?” She tried to sound casual, suddenly finding her Greek salad worthy of intense inspection.
“He’s a nice guy. A bit on the odd side, but I think you’d have to be to be married to Glynnis.”
Darcy smiled. “They do suit each other, don’t they?”
“Supremely.” Jack got a bit of a faraway look in his eye. “I wish my parents were so happy. Ed and Glynnis are about as far from the grumpy-old-couple mentality as you can get.”
“Your parents are together, Jack. They seem happy enough.” It felt like a dumb response. As if she’d just negated Jack’s very telling remark. But his parents were together. They were alive, for heaven’s sake, and that counted for a lot in her book. Still, Jack had a point: they were grumpy. Didn’t he realize they’d always been grumpy? What, so now a guy can’t wish for vibrant parents? Darcy stabbed a cucumber with remorse. When would she learn to hush up, stop analyzing things down to the last micron, and just let Jack talk?
“They’re together. But lately, it seems like every conversation with Mom is about something Dad did to tick her off, and every conversation with Dad is about how Mom is nagging him.”
“They’re in their seventies, Jack. It’s what old people do. I suppose we should be happy they can still get around on their own.”
“Ed still talks about his wife like she’s a pinup girl.”
Darcy laughed, thinking of Glynnis’s scandalous remarks in the Henhouse. “Tell me about it. Glynnis was giving me way too much information about Ed’s romantic side the other morning. It’s cute, but it’s creepy at the same time.”
Jack chuckled, and softly sang a verse from the Beatles tune “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
Darcy lifted her glass. “Of course I’ll still feed you when you’re sixty-four. Puree and all.”
“And when I’m seventy-four?”
“Definitely.”
“Eighty-four?”
“I’ll wheel my chair right up beside yours.”
“Ninety-four?”
“I’ll have my nurse pass love notes from my hospital bed to yours.” That one made Jack laugh out loud.
“I like them. The Bidwells. They’re a bit odd, but I have to like a guy who can set you up with cheap videos and I still can’t figure out how he got those basketballs wholesale for you.”
“The man knows everyone. They’re a kooky pair, but it’s a nice kind of kooky.” Darcy imagined Glynnis would take kooky as a compliment.
“He offered to set us up with a financial planner, you know.”
Again, Darcy strove to keep her response as neutral as possible. “That sounds like something Ed would do.”
“He’s offered four times. I’m almost sorry I gave the guy my business card. The man loves to e-mail people.”
“Really.” So Ed’s been e-mailing Jack. Hmm.
“Yeah, and here I can’t even get Dad to program his VCR.”
Darcy smiled, thinking of the nearly dozen times her mother-in-law had called her asking how to reset the clock on the coffeepot. She’d finally put the instructions in large print on an index card, sneaked it through the laminating machine at Paula’s school, and taped it to the wall in their kitchen. She found providing such assistance heart-warming. It was so much different than the large-scale dependence and eventually the dementia she had endured with her father.
When she snapped her thoughts back to the conversation at hand, Darcy noticed Jack was looking at her. Twirling his wedding ring again. She had the distinct impression he was working up the nerve to say something, but honestly couldn’t tell if it was good news or bad.
“Speaking of cards, I’ve got something for you, Dar.” He had a sort of smile on his face, but it was an uncertain one. As if he wasn’t particularly happy with whatever present was forthcoming. That didn’t seem to be a very good sign.
Jack pulled out a box roughly the size of a videocassette. “I bought this two weeks ago, just after my birthday, but I hadn’t decided until this afternoon whether or not to give it to you.” He pulled his hand through his hair. “Ugh, I’m botching this.” He took a deep breath, as if to regroup his thoughts. “Um, look…what I’m trying to say is that I thought long and hard about this. And, actually, I talked about it a lot to Ed, and I’ve come to a…well…oh, why don’t you just open it?” He pushed the box across the table to her.
Well now, that was one of the strangest gift presentations Darcy had ever seen. Honest, even to the point of…what was that, reluctance? But heartfelt. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Whatever it was, it had been a big deal for Jack, so it must be important.
Lord, she sighed as she pulled the box toward her. Give me the right reaction.
Jack put his hand out to still hers as she reached for the bow. “No, wait. I did that all wrong. Let me start over.” He kept his hand on hers, his finger making slow circles on the back of her palm. “This…this was hard for me. But I want you to have this. I want to be all jumpy and enthusiastic about this, but I’m not there yet. But I’m trying. I…I just want you to know that.”
Darcy did not dare let her heart go where it was racing. She did not want to allow herself to hope. But her heart went there anyway, without permission, full of fragile expectation. Could he?
She pulled on the ribbon and slid her
fingers under the tape of the giftwrap. Inside was a beautiful velvet chest—almost like a jewelry box, or a tiny treasure chest, covered in red silk and exotic-looking beadwork. She looked at Jack, and he nodded a silent Open it.
The lid tilted upward to reveal two slim silver boxes and a cream-colored envelope.
“Open the one on the right first.” Jack’s expression was going from contorted to excited. Slowly, but definitely going in that direction.
She picked up the silver case. It was, she realized, a business card case. Stumped, she pressed the small button that popped open the lid.
And lost the ability to breathe.
Inside, on delicate cream-colored cards, was the following inscription.
Darcy Nightengale
President and Founder
The Restoration Project
She ran her hand across the graceful raised lettering and felt life click into place. How much sweeter this moment was for the waiting. How much more Jack’s agreement meant because it had not been hunted. It had been given. Freely, with much effort. Out of sheer love. Jack had stepped out of his sensibility—at a time when it must have felt so uncomfortable to do so—because of his love for her and her wish to do this extraordinary thing.
“Oh, Jack.”
“Yeah, well, I think you should do this. I think you need to do this. I understand it, sort of, but even if I don’t, there seems to be a part of you wrapped up in it.” He seemed to want to say more, but couldn’t quite find the words. “You’re not done, yet, though, open the others.”
The second silver case made Darcy laugh out loud. Its cards read Kate Owens, Vice President, The Restoration Project.
“Oh, Jack, she’ll love this. I love this. Thank you.”
The cream-colored envelope held a small note that read in Jack’s efficient script:
I YOU
I.O. TRP $2K
It took her a moment to unscramble the alphabet soup of his wording, but she smiled when she did. It was pure Jack. He’d found a way to offer his approval in a bits-and-pieces approach that his CPA soul could handle. She almost loved him more for his transparent honesty than if he’d told her to give the whole inheritance away. That would have been wrong for him. This meant, to her, that he was taking it very seriously. And that was wonderful.
“Take your two grand and run with it, Dar. Let that pilot project idea of yours fly. Then we’ll come back, evaluate and see where we go from there.”
She had envisioned the moment when Jack would give his approval. She’d thought of herself jumping with excitement, whooping with victory, even. Instead, what she found was a simple, quiet, almost pure joy. The perfect, silent sound of a plan snapping into place. Of a God engineering all the details to a marvelous outcome. What had Glynnis called it? Exceeding our expectations.
Oh, He’d surely done that.
Way to go, God. Thanks.
She imagined herself high-fiving The Lord Almighty.
Then, better yet, she could picture her father doing the same.
Chapter 16
The Stuff of Legend
Darcy sat in Ernestine’s salon, fresh from a trim and touch-up on her hair. She paged through the November edition of Good Housekeeping, scanning for Thanksgiving recipes while she waited for Kate to finish her “regularly scheduled maintenance.” They’d piled in the car for a celebratory appointment this morning after Darcy had presented Kate with her new business cards. Darcy wasn’t sure it was ethical to send up a prayer for openings in a stylist’s schedule, but God had evidently granted her some leeway: Ernestine had been booked, but she’d squeezed in “the comfortably drastic girls” as she called them, as a favor.
The magazine’s food section served up a stunning-looking turkey with orange-sage dressing. Darcy smiled. To her father, stuffing had always been the whole point of Thanksgiving. He had seven different “secret family recipes.” Paul hadn’t been an especially good cook—he had kept to the three-ingredient-ground-beef-based basics like most single men—and as Darcy had been in high school when her mother died, he had mostly cooked for one.
On Thanksgiving, however, all bets were off. Paul bought one of those deep-frying contraptions long before cooking turkeys in that fashion became the fad. The man lived to, as he called it, “cook The Bird” every November. But more than that, he lived to concoct the perfect assembly of ingredients to stuff that bird to perfection. Hartwell stuffing was, as Dad liked to put it, “the stuff of legend.”
Two years ago, Paul wasn’t in perfect health, but he was well enough to make a turkey worthy of his legend. Darcy had offered to help with the side dishes, and they’d had everything at her house—it helped to claim that they couldn’t all fit at Paul’s small dining table anyhow. Sure, it had been altered a bit, but most of it felt like the traditional Hartwell holiday.
Last year, he’d quietly handed her all seven of his stuffing recipes with a pained look in his eyes.
Jack, God bless him, had gone over to Paul’s house, hauled out the deep fryer, pulled the cooking instructions off the Internet (Dad never did keep the manuals to anything), and “cooked The Bird.” Dad was bundled up in the mud room on a recliner they’d put there just so he could “supervise.”
The realization that this year would be different—that forever would be different—burned in her chest like hot oil.
Thanksgiving without Dad.
Christmas without Dad.
Life without Dad.
Even though she’d gone two weeks without crying, the tears came fast and uninvited. Could she stand the sight of the turkey fryer sending up smoke off the back deck? Would it be a welcome memorial, or a reopened wound?
“Hey, you okay?” Kate’s voice came over her shoulder and a hand touched her arm.
“Sort of.”
“Not sort of.” Kate glanced at the magazine, understanding dawning on her face. “It’s going to be different this year. Hard. But you’ll make it. You’ll make a new kind of Thanksgiving.”
Darcy looked up, suddenly feeling like she was five years old. “I don’t want a new kind of Thanksgiving.” She wanted to stick her trembling lip out and pout.
“I know.” Kate pulled a tissue from the box that sat on a table behind her and handed it to Darcy.
Darcy blew her nose. “Can we just cancel the holiday season this year? Go straight to something harmless like President’s Day?”
Kate plopped down on the seat beside her. “I’m not so sure Mike and Paula would go for that. Especially since they have the Grand Lady of Great Gift Giving as their mother. Christmas is your prime season, girl.”
“Yeah, well everyone may just get department store gift cards this year, I’m warning you.” Darcy reached across Kate’s lap to snag another tissue.
“Hey,” Kate’s voice was soft and suddenly serious. “No one would blame you.”
There was a stretch of silence. Darcy sighed, feeling the tears subside. “I suppose.”
“Just take it slow. Think of Thanksgiving as a warm-up. Do what feels good, and give the rest the boot. Keep the stuff you like and that helps you to remember, and forget anything that feels like it’ll hurt too much. Cut yourself some slack.”
“You’re right.”
Kate took a deep breath. “Yeah, well I have just two words for you.”
Darcy looked up.
“Extra crispy.”
Darcy smiled. “Mmm. I like the sound of that.” She folded the magazine back into her purse.
Kate pulled Darcy up out of her chair and hummed “Hail to the Chief” all the way out the door.
An hour later, they were pulling off the exit ramp toward home. “Man,” Darcy sighed, “I love this little car. It’s such a terrific break from the mom-in-a-minivan existence. I can’t remember the last time I was in a car with less than ten cup holders.”
“Don took the van to work today. He’s stopping at Home Depot on the way home.”
Darcy let out a moan of recognition. “What now?”
“Our garage doesn’t even have shelves, much less new ones.”
“Ah, the joys of being married to Mr. Home Improvement.” Kate rummaged through the bucket for another drumstick. “You got the sports guy, I got the power tool guy.”
Darcy passed her a napkin. “Thanks again for your idea. I’d have never dreamed up the basketballs without you. It was just…wonderful.”
“My pleasure.”
“Speaking of wonderful, are you free Friday morning? I want to set a meeting with Meredith to pick the test group. I thought I’d invite Doug Whitman, too.”
“Whitman? The Pastor Whitman from your dad’s church?”
“Yes. I think he can help with the families and he works with Meredith a lot. I haven’t told him yet, but I think he’ll really buy into the idea.”
“O-kay,” Kate drew the word out in a skeptical drawl. It didn’t take Mike’s mathematical mind to see she wasn’t keen on the idea.
“Kate, he’s an okay guy. And he seems to have a pretty good take on this whole weird setup Dad handed me. I mean, nobody really knew what Dad was doing, what he had in mind, but I think Doug comes close. I trust him.”
Kate deposited another drumstick bone in the paper sack. “This is the guy who didn’t instantly ask you to fund the new church nursery, right?”
“Yup, that’s him.”
Kate was thinking, biting her lower lip in that way she did when she was frustrated or uncomfortable. After a moment, she said without taking her eyes off the road, “This isn’t gonna get all churchy, is it?”
Bad Heiress Day Page 13
