Wallpaper with Roses

by Jenny Andersen

  “You look tired, Sarah,” Rob said.

  Of course she did. That didn’t mean she liked to hear about it. “Thanks.”

  The timer dinged again and she got up and headed for the kitchen. The cookies looked perfect, gently browned at the edges, soft in the middle, so she grabbed a hot mitt and pulled them out of the oven.

  “Those look great.”

  Rob’s voice startled her. She jumped and the cookies started to slide toward disaster.

  “Oops.” He grabbed the hot cookie sheet. “Ow, ow, ow.” He dumped the pan on the wire rack she had readied for the cookies.

  “Cold water,” Sarah said, but he was ahead of her, already holding the burned fingers under the faucet.

  “Take care of the cookies,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  Fine, right. For someone who worked with his hands as much as Rob did, he was being pretty casual about the whole thing. She grabbed the burn gel and a clean towel. “This should keep it from blistering.”

  “I’ll be fine.” He smiled into her eyes.

  Abruptly she realized how nice it felt, standing in the kitchen with Rob, dealing with a problem. Exciting but comfortable. Nice. Like being married, even. Her breath caught. Not a good idea to be thinking that kind of thought. Not about Rob, not about anyone. Never again.

  As if he had read her thoughts, he pulled his hand away. “It scarcely hurts. No worries,” he said.

  “In that case, can you reach the plate on that top shelf, please?”

  “Sure.” He reached up and she admired the rippling muscles in his back and arm.

  She took a step back. Enough already. She didn’t have time to act like a hormone-riddled teen. She had the moms to take care of. “Thanks. I made sun tea this morning. Let me get it out of the fridge.”

  “Great. But while we have a few minute of privacy, I wanted to ask you how things are going. You look tired.”

  Sarah busied herself rearranging the cookies on their plate. “I am tired.”

  Rob leaned against the counter, looking as though he intended to stay awhile, and regarded her with a raised eyebrow. “If having my mother here is too much for you...”

  “No!” Lord, no. No matter how much work it was to have Violet around, life would be twice as hard without her, even though there were problems. “No, Rob, please don’t pay any attention to my complaining. It would be so much harder if Violet weren’t here.” Oh, great. Now she was the next thing to begging. Way to go, Sarah. That was the way to make him think you’re calm, competent, and in control.

  Rob looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I could move Mum if I tried. But you’re looking even more strung out than you were last month, and I don’t think Mum’s that much extra work. So there’s something bothering you, and I want to know what it is.”

  She couldn’t figure out what he did. He didn’t move, his expression didn’t alter, but somehow he turned into Scary Military Man and everything about him said that he was going to find out. Or else. “No, she isn’t. It’s just...just...I worry.”

  “Why?”

  “Leaving those two alone all day is driving me crazy,” she admitted.

  “I repeat, why? What the heck do you think they’re going to do? Ask boys over?”

  Sarah tried to smile but it probably looked more like a grimace. How could he joke about something so serious? “Not funny.”

  He folded his arms.

  She couldn’t help but notice his biceps.

  “So. What’s going on here? Not two minutes ago you practically begged me not to move Mum. So I don’t think you can be working up to throwing her out.”

  “I don’t think I could if I wanted to. Mama is loving her company. But it’s like leaving two kids alone. The possibility of mischief goes up ten-fold.”

  “What kind of mischief can two eighty-three-year-old ladies get into? Relax. After all, they haven’t burned the place down.”

  She resisted the urge to throw the plate at him. “They haven’t burned the house down yet. If you only knew how many times I’ve found the stove on and forgotten, you wouldn’t joke about that. So stop telling me to relax.”

  Rob scowled and leaned against the counter. “That’s serious. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “Like I’ve had time.” She slammed some more cookies onto the plate.

  Two broke and Rob scooped them up and paced around the room.

  Sarah stopped fussing with the cookies and faced him, hands on hips. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I get so worried. Your mother is really ditzy. Sometimes she’s a few bricks shy of a full load.” Her voice was increasingly shrill in her ears but she couldn’t stop herself. “Her elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. She’s a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.” The expression on Rob’s face brought her back to sanity. My God, what was she saying? And she knew her worries were as much about her own mother’s mental stability as Violet’s.

  Rob leaned against the sink in a would-be-casual pose. “I get the idea,” he said between clenched teeth. “But there is nothing wrong with my mother. She’s a little absentminded. She’s always been that way. And, let me point out, without starting any arguments, she’s not the only one who’s in her eighties.”

  Casey pushed in between them, looking worried. Sarah smoothed a hand across the dog’s head. “Rob, I’m sorry. I’m acting like an idiot. A rude idiot, and I apologize. I can’t imagine how I could say all those things.”

  “I can’t either. But let’s just put it down to general stress. You have been looking a little frazzled lately.”

  “I am. I haven’t been sleeping well, and your mother wanders around in the middle of the night, and makes tea, and I have to be sure she doesn’t leave the stove on. And I’m not sure my mother’s able to watch over Violet enough in the daytime. I think someone needs to be here when I’m at work.”

  “I thought your mother was the brain here.”

  Sarah closed her eyes against the pain. If she said anything, she’d be making all her horrible fears come true, and she wasn’t ready to believe that her mother might be failing. She swallowed hard.

  “Ah.” He raised one eyebrow. “So we have the pot’s daughter calling the kettle black?”

  Sarah turned away so she wouldn’t see pity in his eyes. “No.”

  “Well, do you think your mother would be better off alone all day?”

  She tried to say yes. She couldn’t do it. “Well, no,” she said, the words forced out against her will. “No, she wouldn’t. But maybe if someone checked in on them from time to time...”

  “And that would cost how much?”

  Sarah sighed. “More than we can manage.”

  “So?” Rob bit into one of the broken cookies.

  “I was wondering if you could move your workshop over here. Then you’d be around a lot of the time, and you could keep an eye on them.”

  Rob choked. Bits of chocolate chip oatmeal cookie sprayed into the sink. “You expect me to do day care?” he asked when he could talk again. “What the hell do you think I do with my time, woman?”

  “Well.” Sarah heard the hesitation in her voice. Until now, she’d thought it was such a sensible idea. “Well, you build things in your workshop. You could stop and check on them every little bit and...” Her voice trailed off under Rob’s glare.

  “I surely could,” he said, but Sarah didn’t mistake his pleasant tone for real warmth. “If I didn’t need to actually think about what I do. Or if I didn’t make house calls. Or if I didn’t have to buy supplies. Or meet with potential clients.”

  Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “I get the idea.”

  “How would you like it if I suggested you stop working on some account to check the moms?”

  “It’s not quite the same. I have to concentrate. Pay attention to every little detail.”

  He scowled and narrowed his eyes. His black, suddenly dangerous expression had her scooting back until she bumped into the counter. “Like I don�
��t?” he asked, in a voice soft with warning. “That’s intellectual snobbery.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” But she had, sort of.

  He wasn’t paying attention. “Just because I don’t work in an office doesn’t mean my job doesn’t require thinking. What if I’d been interrupted half a dozen times while I was designing your elevator installation? The therapy room at Bellonna? What if I hadn’t been paying attention when I rewired your kitchen? You think hooking your dishwasher up backwards wouldn’t have caused a little bit of trouble?”

  “You’re right. I apologize again. I just—”

  “Worry about your mother.” He touched her shoulder gently. “I know how that goes.”

  His sympathy brought a sting of tears to her eyes. “It’s just that...sometimes she gets this look in her eye, sort of lost, as though she doesn’t know what’s going on. I don’t know if she’s all right. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Are you so afraid Hilda is going to have another accident or get senile that you’re creating trouble for yourself?”

  “Maybe. I guess. But you know those things will happen, so how can I not be anxious?”

  He ruffled her hair, as though she were ten years old. “You can’t stop worrying, but you don’t have to let it take over your life. One of the things we do is let each other blow off steam.”

  “I really didn’t mean all the nasty things I said, you know.”

  “I know. We need to work together here. We can do more for them together than separately.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll put up more smoke alarms. They might melt a few saucepans, but we’ll make sure they don’t burn down the house. And I can stop by here once or twice a day most days.”

  “I can’t get home at lunch time, but I can call.”

  He grinned at her. “Problem solved? Good cookies, by the way.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled back. Maybe the problem wasn’t solved, but the load was a lot lighter now. “The moms don’t like store-bought, and I’m afraid to let them bake.”

  Rob laughed. “No guilt trips.”

  A shiver rippled along her arms. Oh, my God, am I flirting with him? “We’d better get back out there.”

  “Right. But after this, remember. We work as a team here. No more going off on tangents because you’re worried. We can talk things out.”

  Something that might have been embarrassment—or longing—brought a flush to her cheeks. She snatched up the pitcher of iced tea and headed for the porch, leaving Rob to bring the cookies before the moms started matchmaking.

  Or was having Rob around more what she’d really been after all the time? Bad idea. She had enough to worry about right now. And she didn’t want a man in her life. Not interested. Got it?

  “There you are, dear. You were so long we were beginning to worry,” Hilda said.

  Just having a little mental breakdown, Mama. Scaring Rob into thinking I’m totally paranoid. No biggie. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Try one of these, Mum,” Rob said.

  “Now this is pleasant,” Hilda said. “Do you remember when your father was alive, Sarah? He always did like to sit here of an afternoon and watch the show, as he called it.”

  She remembered. Of course she did. Cuddling against her dad on the swing, savoring a glass of lemonade and watching squirrels race up and down the huge old maple trees that lined the wide street. Half listening to her parents’ talk about the day, thinking about the games of tag that she and her friends played in the long twilight after dinner, racing across the broad, fenceless lawns until they were captured and sent off to bed in the gingerbread-trimmed old houses. Oh, yes, she remembered.

  “Lots more traffic these days, I expect,” Rob said. “More to watch.”

  “And so many people we don’t know,” Violet replied. “I just don’t know where they’ve all come from.” She set her chair rocking and gazed at the street.

  “You’re right,” Hilda said. “Everything is so different now.” Her mouth drooped and her eyes were sad.

  Sarah’s heart twisted at the bleak look on her mother’s face. She missed her father, too, but her mother hadn’t been the same since his death.

  “So many strangers, and so many cars,” Hilda added. As if her words had conjured it, a battered old car careened around the corner and sped down the block toward the house.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw that her mother, Violet, and Rob all watched it with the intent stares of cats watching a bird. She smiled to herself and turned her own gaze to the approaching vehicle. “I’ve never seen that car around town before,” she said.

  “No, and he’s driving too fast,” Hilda said. “We don’t need that on our street.”

  The sun angle was low enough that the light struck directly in Sarah’s eyes, and she couldn’t see the driver or make out whether or not there were passengers because of glare on the windshield.

  “He’s sure a bad driver,” Rob observed.

  “Indeed. Worse than I am,” Hilda said, with a glance at Sarah.

  Sarah clenched her teeth to keep from answering. Hilda wasn’t going to forgive her for the driver’s license thing for a long time, if ever.

  But her mother certainly had a point about this driver. Even from the safety of the porch, the erratic driving was scary. The car sped up and swerved, almost hitting a car parked on the far side of the street.

  “Goodness,” exclaimed Violet. “Just look at that. We should call the police. He must be drunk.”

  “That or crazy. Thank goodness there aren’t any children playing in the street,” Hilda said.

  The car bounced off the curb in front of the house with a screech of brakes. Violet clapped her hands over her ears. Sarah jumped to her feet.

  The passenger door opened, and what appeared to be a bundle of laundry tumbled out and bounced across the lawn. Sarah screamed and clapped a hand over her mouth. For a moment, it had looked just like a body. She shuddered.

  Casey bolted off the porch, barking furiously.

  The driver gunned the engine, and the car peeled off down the street, tires squalling and blue smoke belching. The scent of fresh-cut grass disappeared beneath the stench of burning rubber.

  “Wow,” Rob said. “I wouldn’t have thought that old junker could peel rubber like that.” He got up and headed across the lawn.

  “Sarah, you call the police. The nerve of those people, throwing their trash on our lawn.”

  The bundle of clothing moved. Casey nosed at it, ears pricked and tail wagging.

  “Oh, my God. It is a body.” The hair on the back of Sarah’s neck prickled and she shivered, but this was no time for fainting-heroine behavior. She jumped off the porch and raced after Rob. He knelt beside the bundle and pushed the dog out of the way. Sarah dropped down beside him.

  “It’s a woman,” she said. A girl, really. She looked so young, pale and tender and stricken, sprawled on the grass like a forgotten doll.

  “Go. Call 911. Now,” Rob ordered, and Sarah bolted for the house calling Casey to follow. She passed her mother and Violet, who were hobbling across the lawn toward the action. When she returned, they were huddled together behind Rob, staring at the slender form sprawled on the grass.

  Rob still knelt beside the woman. “She’s alive.”

  Sarah feathered a blanket over the woman and knelt next to Rob. “The ambulance is on the way.”

  The girl’s pale, straight hair streamed across the grass, and her face was the color of paper. “She’s so white. And so young.”

  “She looks about sixteen. Maybe a runaway. Stupid damn teenagers,” Rob muttered.

  “Can you tell where she’s hurt?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to move her. But she’s breathing, and her pulse is okay. No broken bones or bleeding that I can see.”

  Sarah shivered.

  “Bumped her head, I guess,” Rob said. “If she’s lucky, that’s all.”

  “She may be a runaway, but she’s we
aring expensive clothes,” Sarah pointed out. “And she doesn’t look like she’s been on the streets. She’s too clean.”

  Before Rob could answer, sirens converged on the house. Police, fire, and ambulance arrived simultaneously, and the EMTs shouldered Sarah and Rob out of the way. “Come on, Mama, Violet. We need to get out of the way,” Sarah said, and took her mother’s arm. She led the two women back to the safety of the porch.

  “Oh, that poor girl.” Violet fluttered her hands over her heart and breathed in little gasps.

  “I know,” Sarah said. She patted Violet’s shoulder, easing her toward a chair, and cast a worried look at Hilda. She looked calm enough, but her hands twisted together, revealing inner agitation. “Mama, come sit. I think we all need a glass of sherry.”

  “Thank you, dear. That would be very nice,” Hilda replied. But she didn’t tear her gaze from the activity on the lawn.

  Sarah cast her an anxious glance and hurried with the drinks. When she returned to the porch, the EMTs were loading a distressingly still form into the ambulance. Rob stood to one side, talking to a police officer who wrote in a small notebook.

  “She’s just a girl,” Hilda said. Distress colored her voice, and she hadn’t stopped frowning.

  Violet had wandered off to poke at one of the window boxes. “You need to water these begonias, Sarah,” she said.

  Oh sure. In her plentiful spare time. She was lucky to have time to brush her teeth, much less water plants. “In a few minutes, Violet,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Patience, dear,” Hilda whispered. “She’s really very sweet, you know.”

  Sarah relaxed her jaw muscles. “So you’re really enjoying having her here?”

  “Indeed, yes. And I think it does me good to have someone to look after.”

  It seemed a little callous to start watering plants with that poor girl so hurt, but that was just Violet. Most of the neighbors were in the street by now, but no one had been brave enough to walk through the knot of officials to get up the front walk. “For these small mercies we are grateful,” Sarah murmured.