by Sofie Kelly
I frowned. “You saw them fighting?” I’d almost said, “Too.”
Ruby nodded. “The other night at the fundraiser. Brady and Dana were off to the side in the wings having a pretty animated discussion about something. Half an hour later she was dead. I can’t imagine how he must feel.”
“Me either,” I said softly.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked, bending down to pull a file folder out of her tote bag.
I looked at her uncertainly. “About what?”
She straightened up and waved the folder at me. “Reading Buddies? The fundraiser?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know yet.”
“You’ll let me know what I can do, right?”
“You’ve already done enough,” I protested. “More than enough. That backdrop you painted was incredible. I wish people had had more time to enjoy it.”
“Nope, nope, nope, nope.” Ruby shook her head. With her two pigtails she looked for all the world like a stubborn toddler. “There’s no such thing as doing more than enough.” She came over and put one arm around my waist, leaning her head against my shoulder. “I’m serious. If you don’t ask me to help when you decide what you’re going to do, I will be mortally insulted.”
“Mortally?” I said. “Really?” Together we walked out into the main part of the library.
Ruby nodded solemnly. “Yes.” Then she smiled, let go of me and turned slowly in a circle. “Maggie said you’re getting a second tree. How are you going to decorate it?”
“I want to do something a little old-fashioned,” I said, looking at the big open space that made up most of the main floor of the library. “Like an old Currier and Ives Christmas card.”
She turned to face me and I could see by the gleam in her eyes that she had an idea. “Want to use my collection of old Christmas ornaments on the tree?”
“Yes,” I said at once. “Are you sure?” I added.
Ruby had a wonderful collection of vintage Christmas decorations from the 1930s to the 1960s.
“Oh yeah. Absolutely. We’re not using them on the tree in the co-op store this year. Remember? Maggie had us all make ornaments for the tree that can be sold for Toys for Tots. So I’d love to see my collection on the tree here.”
“Thank you,” I said. Getting Ruby’s Christmas ornaments for the library tree meant I could cross one more thing off my to-do list.
There was a tap on the front door then. Susan was on the top step hunched into her heavy duffle coat, stamping snow off her boots.
I headed for the door to let her in.
“Tell me there’s coffee,” she said as she stepped inside. Her hat was pulled low on her forehead and all I could see were her eyes above the collar of her red coat.
“What happened to your green smoothie?” I asked.
She frowned darkly at me. “The boys happened to my smoothie. The boys decided to make my smoothie.” She kicked the snow off her knee-high brown boots. “There’s spinach on my kitchen ceiling, and that’s my mother’s problem since it was her idea to ‘involve the boys in meal preparation.’” She made little quotation marks in the air with her gloved fingers.
“Well, the coffee’s made and there are tea bags if you’d like a cup of tea.” I struggled to keep a straight face. I had a mental picture of Susan’s twins trying to make their mother her morning smoothie. The boys were genius-level smart, resourceful and totally fearless. It made life for Susan and Eric very interesting sometimes.
Susan shook her head. “No. I need more caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine.” She pulled off her hat. I picked a bit of spinach out of her updo as she moved past me.
She waved to Ruby and headed for the stairs. She was a woman on a mission. I was glad I’d made a full pot of coffee.
8
The journal-making workshop was just as successful as Vincent Starr’s talk had been. I wasn’t surprised. Ruby was a natural teacher—good at explaining her techniques in simple terms. When the class was over, five different people sought me out to ask if we were planning more workshops.
Maggie showed up about ten to twelve—dropped off by none other than Brady Chapman. The library closed at lunchtime on Saturdays. We climbed into the truck and headed for Wisteria Hill to have lunch with Roma and help her continue to fix up the place.
“How did Ruby’s workshop go?” Mags asked as I started up Mountain Road.
“Really well. All but two people put their e-mail addresses on a list to be notified about more workshops, and they were tourists from out of state.”
Maggie clapped her mittened hands together and smiled at me. “I knew people would love her class. I wish I’d been able to get there, but Oren and I spent the morning going over the plans for the changes to the store.”
Maggie had gotten a grant to renovate the artist co-op store and add a small space for demonstrations and courses in the summer and fall. Oren was going to do the work.
I glanced over at her. “What did he think about your drawings?”
Maggie pulled off her fuzzy hat and ran her fingers through her blond curls. “He had a couple of suggestions for changes—he thinks we should move the half wall about a foot to the right and he suggested glass block for the other wall.”
I tried to picture the sketches Maggie had made for the proposed changes to the main floor of the store. “I do like the idea of using the glass block,” I said. “It would let in more light.”
“I do, too,” Maggie said. “Oren says that costwise it should work out about the same.”
We talked about the renovations all the way out to Wisteria Hill. I wondered when Mags was going to tell me that Brady had dropped her off at the library. There was something going on between those two. I knew she’d tell me about it eventually.
As I flicked on my blinker to turn into the driveway of the old estate, I thought about all the changes that had happened since Roma bought the property from Everett. The house and grounds had been empty for so long. I’d always thought the whole place had an air of sadness. Now that Roma was getting ready to live in the old farmhouse, it somehow seemed alive again.
I had a big soft spot for Wisteria Hill. It was where I’d found Hercules and Owen—or to be more exact, it was where they had found me. It was where Marcus and I had become friends—and then more than friends.
Once Roma was living there full-time, she wouldn’t need her group of volunteers who made sure that the feral cat colony in the old carriage house was fed and cared for. I was going to miss watching Lucy and the other cats.
Roma waved from the kitchen window as we got out of the truck. This was my first chance to see the kitchen since Oren had finished installing the new cupboards.
We took off our boots in what used to be the old side porch. Now it was a combination mudroom/laundry/storage area.
“Ready?” Roma asked, eyes sparkling.
Maggie and I both nodded.
Oren had done a beautiful job on the new cupboards—not that I’d ever had any doubt of that. Maggie and I had helped Roma steam about a hundred years’ worth of wallpaper off the kitchen walls. Before training camp Eddie had patched and repaired them and Maggie and I had spent a weekend helping Roma paint the kitchen a creamy shade of palest yellow. The new kitchen cupboards were a simple Shaker style, painted white, and they went beautifully with the buttery walls and the wide boards of the refinished hardwood floor.
“Oh, Roma, it’s beautiful,” I said.
Maggie put her arm around Roma’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “It really is,” she agreed.
Everett and Rebecca had left Roma the original farmhouse kitchen table as a kind of housewarming present. It sat in the far corner, surrounded by a bank of windows.
“Hey, where did you get the chairs?” Maggie asked, pointing to the corner.
I looked across the room and realized Roma had four new-to-her chairs that looked as though they’d been made to go with the big table.
“Eddie and I found them at a fle
a market,” she said. She smiled at me. “Marcus said he’ll spray-paint them black for me in the spring.”
“Isn’t he a sweetheart?” Maggie said, giving me a saccharine grin. She was never going to let me forget she’d thought Marcus and I were perfect for each other about ten minutes after we’d met.
“Yes, he is,” I said, making a face at her.
“So you like the kitchen?” Roma asked. “Really?”
“Very much,” I said.
“Me too,” Maggie agreed, running a hand over one of the cabinet doors. “The energy of the entire house has changed.”
She was right. The lonely feeling the old place used to give off was gone.
Roma had made minestrone soup for lunch and there were thick slices of brown bread and a wedge of cheddar cheese. We ate at the kitchen table.
“This is Rebecca’s brown bread, isn’t it?” I said.
Roma nodded. “Yep. She brought it out this morning along with two new shelters for the cats.”
Since the cats were feral, they lived in the old carriage house year-round. Harry Taylor Junior had strengthened and added insulation to one corner of the old building, where hay had once been stored. Rebecca and several other volunteers had made warm sleeping shelters for each cat out of large plastic storage bins with straw for insulation.
“How are Lucy and the others?” I asked. Lucy was the smallest member of the feral cat family, but she was its undisputed leader. We seemed to have a rapport. Maggie liked to call me the Cat Whisperer.
Roma looked out the window toward the carriage house. “I’m going to put the cage out for Smokey.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shifted her gaze to me. “He was moving a lot more slowly yesterday and he didn’t eat very much.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Smokey was the oldest cat in the colony as far as Roma could tell. The scar above his right eye and the missing tip of his tail made me wonder what his life had been like before Roma had discovered the cats and taken over their care.
She gave me a half smile. “Thanks. There isn’t anything you can do right now. I’ll let you know how he is once I get him down to the clinic.”
Maggie shot me a look of sympathy and I picked up my spoon again. “What about Micah?” I asked.
Micah was a small ginger tabby that had been wandering around Wisteria Hill since early fall.
Roma broke a slice of bread in half and dipped a piece in her bowl. “She shows up to eat about every second day. But it doesn’t matter what I put in the cage; I can’t catch her.”
Maggie’s head was bent over her bowl, but she inclined it in my direction. “You need to use the Cat Whisperer and her sidekick, the Cat Detective,” she said.
Roma laughed. “The Cat Detective?”
Maggie smiled. “Marcus is the one who found Desmond and brought him to the clinic, which is how you ended up discovering the cats up here. That makes him the Cat Detective.”
“Very funny,” I said.
“And Marcus managed to figure out that Micah was a girl cat and not a boy cat, something that had stymied the best veterinary minds in town,” Maggie added teasingly.
When Roma first spotted Micah she’d thought the little cat was male. Later, when Marcus and I encountered him, he quickly saw that “he” was in fact “she.”
Roma squared her shoulders, and her chin jutted out. “I wasn’t wearing glasses,” she said.
“That’s because you don’t need glasses.” I reached for the cheese.
She crinkled her nose at me. “I mean my sunglasses,” she said. “It was a very bright day.”
“Oh, of course,” I said, nodding solemnly.
Roma stuck her tongue out at me and then she laughed.
“Seriously,” I said. “Would you like Marcus and me to try to catch Micah?”
Roma nodded. “Please. I’m not having any luck and I’m worried about where she’s sleeping, especially since it’s been so cold.”
“Okay,” I said, dropping a chunk of cheese into my soup. “Let me know once you have Smokey and then I’ll see if we can get Micah for you.”
After lunch Maggie helped Roma load the dishwasher and I changed into my old jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
We covered the hardwood floors with cardboard that Harry Junior had saved for Roma from the recycling bins at the community center. Then Maggie settled in with a brush and a small foam roller to paint around the big bay window. Roma started in on the brushwork on the adjacent wall, and I followed her with the roller. This was the second coat and we wanted it to look good.
Eddie, with some guidance from Oren, had stripped and refinished all the wide oak trim and baseboard in the room. Roma had carefully taped off all the wood before Maggie and I had arrived.
“Eddie did a great job with this trim,” Mags said as she worked her brush along the edge of the big window.
“He has more patience than I do,” Roma said. She was working on a small stepladder above my head, cutting in with her brush where the wall and ceiling met. “Eventually, he wants to do all the woodwork in the house.”
Maggie looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Eventually?”
“You know what I mean,” Roma said.
“It’s none of our business,” I began.
“But that’s not going to stop you.” Roma looked down from her perch on the ladder and smiled at me.
“No, it’s not,” Maggie agreed, her head turned almost upside down as she worked underneath the window.
“Does that mean you and Eddie have talked about the future?” I asked.
Roma continued to paint along the top of the wall. “We have. Well, sort of. It’s just . . .” She stopped painting and turned to look down at Maggie and me. “You know that Eddie’s been divorced for a long time.”
“Uh-huh,” Maggie said.
I nodded.
“He has a good relationship with his ex, Sydney’s mother.”
Sydney was Eddie’s ten-year-old daughter from his brief marriage to his high school sweetheart.
“He gets to spend a lot of time with Syd in the off-season, but even so, I know he wishes he had more time with her.” Roma sighed softly. “I don’t want him to regret giving up the chance to have more children.”
I opened my mouth to tell Roma that from what I’d seen, what Eddie wanted was a life with her, but she spoke first, inclining her head toward Maggie. “What I really want to know is what’s happening with Maggie’s love life.”
“I don’t have a love life,” Mags said, keeping her gaze focused on the stretch of wall in front of her.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Roma said teasingly, shaking her head. She looked at me again, raising an eyebrow. “The night of the fundraiser I saw Maggie and Brady Chapman this close together.” She held up her thumb and index finger maybe a couple of millimeters apart.
“It’s not what you think,” Maggie said.
I leaned my roller on the edge of the paint tray. “You don’t know what we think,” I said, smiling sweetly.
“Brady had a little grease mark on his tie. I had one of those detergent pens in my purse. All I was doing was cleaning his tie.”
I looked up at Roma. “She was cleaning his tie,” I said.
Roma closed her free hand into a fist and pressed it to her chest. “Awww, isn’t that sweet?”
“I was,” Maggie insisted, still focusing on her painting.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” I said.
Maggie sat back on her heels and looked over at me. “Brady and I are just friends,” she said, enunciating each word slowly and carefully.
“Marcus and I started out as just friends,” I said.
Above me on the ladder, Roma cleared her throat.
“Sort of,” I amended.
“Eddie and I were just friends at first,” Roma offered.
I remembered how Maggie had squeezed Brady’s hand at the fundraiser, urging him to go to
the hospital. “You like him, Mags,” I said.
She couldn’t hold my gaze.
“You do!” Roma crowed.
“He’s not my type,” Maggie said, pulling her painting pail a little closer. “He’s so serious and competitive. He wears suits. He’s a lawyer, for heaven’s sake.”
“So?” I said.
“So I like the sensitive type—artists, musicians, guys whose idea of dressing up is putting on a clean T-shirt.”
“Brady has a sensitive side,” I said. “When Marcus’s sister needed a lawyer, he took her case. He’s been helping Ruby get the last of Agatha’s estate settled and I know he’s only charging her for his expenses because the money’s all going into art scholarships.”
I held up a finger before she could interrupt me. “And he stepped in to be goalie for the first responder team because Derek isn’t going to be able to get back for Winterfest.”
“He sounds like a nice guy,” Roma said.
“Brady is not interested in me romantically,” Maggie insisted.
Roma and I exchanged a look, which Maggie caught.
“Now what is it?”
“You’ve been out of the dating pool a little too long, Mags,” I said.
“You really haven’t noticed the way he looks at you?” Roma asked.
Maggie was clearly surprised. Then she shook her head. “No. Anyway, things are too complicated right now, with his mother coming back and then dying the way she did.”
Roma looked down at me. “Does Marcus know what happened yet?”
I shook my head.
“That was such a bizarre accident,” Maggie said, pushing back the sleeves of her gray T-shirt.
“I know,” Roma agreed, turning back to her painting. “What are the chances that Dayna Chapman would come back to town and then end up dying from an allergy attack the same day she got here?”
Maggie had glanced over at me and she must have seen something in my face, or maybe it was just the fact that I didn’t immediately agree.
