by Dana Mentink
“She’s not being rude, she…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The doctors said it’s called selective mutism.”
Misty’s eyes widened.
“From the trauma of what happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He noted that Fiona’s shirt was stained with paint, and he wondered what was the proper laundry treatment for that. “She’ll start talking again one day when she feels more secure.” He frowned. “At least I hope so.” Was her Uncle Bill enough to help her feel secure in the world? They walked along in silence, Jellybean wriggling to get down and Misty not allowing it.
“I’m delivering you to Lawrence,” she told the dog, “and then you’re his problem, not mine.”
Bill looked at her. “Oh, are you still leaving, then?”
She nodded. “It’s better that way. Mr. Tucker will find someone else to take care of his dog, and I’m available on Skype if he needs more music support. This whole movie thing was a mistake.”
For some reason, Bill felt a pang of regret as they strolled along, eventually stopping outside Chocolate Heaven. “When will you leave?”
“Today. Tonight. As soon as I can.”
He smiled. “We’re that bad here in Albatross?”
“Yes. I mean no. Not you.” She gripped the dog tighter. “Everyone’s been nice. I just don’t belong here.”
“I felt that way too when I got here. I was working on a dude ranch in Klamath Falls when I heard about my brother. Never thought I’d be running a candy shop in Albatross. Figured I would be staying on that dude ranch till I was an old man. I loved it there—mountains, grassland, and plenty of horses.” He paused. “So where do you belong?”
She froze, and he realized he’d been too personal again.
“Sorry. Not my business. I’m nosy, I know. I was just wondering…um…one lost soul to another. Where’s your favorite place to hang out?”
She surprised him by answering, “My apartment. I don’t like to venture out too much.”
He thought he’d never heard anything so sad in his life. Inside four walls, teaching lessons over the computer.
“It’s a great big world out there, Misty Agnelli,” he said softly. “You never know what you might find if you look around.”
She raised her chin, the sunlight painting her hair in caramel splendor. “I don’t need to look around. I’m going home.” She waved over the top of the whining dog. “Goodbye, Fiona. Thanks again, Mr. Woodson.”
“Bill,” he said to her departing back. “Please call me Bill.”
But she was already too far away to hear.
With a sigh, he ushered Fiona inside.
The day passed in a blur. He snatched hours of prep time for the upcoming grand opening while Fiona colored with her fat crayons, this time everything in green. Gunther spent a while reading to her, and though he grumped about getting down on the floor, Bill noticed the man’s angry, pinched look disappeared as he read something about a cow and a barn to Fiona. Gunther supervised her tricycle ride while Bill tended to the marshmallow cream filling for the Tucker’s Treats he planned to push big-time when the tour bus rolled into town. The tours were scheduled every Friday for six weeks, and he did not intend to miss out on a single potential sale.
Seeing Gunther and Fiona together sent him drifting back to thoughts of his own family. His father had only recently sold his thriving veterinary practice because of his wife’s precarious health. He hadn’t seen much of his father in the last decade. The shouting match that occurred when Bill dropped out of high school halfway through his senior year echoed loud enough in his memory to carry through to the present.
“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” his father hollered, slamming both palms on the table. “Anyone can get a diploma, even if you’re not smart.”
“Even if you’re not smart.” And that was the bare bones of it. His father had always secretly wondered why his oldest son was dumb. Bill’s younger brother, Dillon, was a computer engineer with a PhD in something technological, married to Bella, a CPA, with a fancy house in San Francisco. The Albatross property was to have been a summer home for the perfect couple and their little girl. Instead, their life insurance money secured the house for Uncle Bill and Fiona, the rest of their assets landing in a trust fund for their daughter to receive when she turned twenty-one.
His parents were still steeped in grief, but Bill knew deep down his father was thinking, Why Dillon? The one who had his life together. The smart one. Bill knew his father loved him and would never wish him harm, but in those dark, three a.m. moments when all the feelings he’d pushed away during the day rose up to attack him, he wondered the same thing: God, why didn’t You take the loser brother?
Why didn’t You take me?
The rich smell of chocolate roused him from his self-pity, and he mumbled a quick prayer. “I know You love me, God. I’m enough for You.” If he could not teach Fiona anything else, he would teach her that. She would always know she was enough.
He looked up to find Fiona back in her pint-size chair, another book clutched in her hand, and Gunther pushing his glasses up on his nose. “She’s a smart cookie.”
His heart both thrilled and quavered at Gunther’s pronouncement. Was this how parents felt? he wondered. All filled with hope that their children had just the right stuff to light up the world? It was a heady thought. He contemplated how far the fall must be when children could not live up to their parents’ dreams, how bitterly it must have galled his own father, the smartest man he knew.
He gripped the spatula tighter. He would make a success of Chocolate Heaven by dint of hard work and excruciating hours, and he’d make sure Fiona had everything she could require, everything Dillon and Bella had wanted for her.
Would his father see Bill as a success then?
He turned back to the chocolate, soothing himself with creating the delicate shells that would be filled with mousse and topped with a tiny fondant bone and one jellybean—Jellybean Jumbles in honor of the feisty dog.
He was considering how to make chocolate violins to connect to the movie’s theme when Gunther spoke up.
“Going home.”
Bill was dismayed to find that it was after six. He’d not gotten nearly far enough.
“Okay. Thanks very much, Gunther. You’re a natural with kids.”
Gunther waved a gnarled hand. “Yeah, yeah. Lunk’s enough for me.”
Lunk was Gunther’s couch potato mutt, an ottoman-sized bulldog mix.
Fiona waved goodbye to Gunther.
“Bath time for you, missy,” Bill said.
After she’d finished her bath, eaten a plate of noodles, played building blocks, brushed her teeth, and done the final potty run, it was after seven. As he lay down on the floor beside her bed to listen to the story of the three little pigs on her CD player, he thought about the long list of things he needed to complete for the next day’s grand opening.
The chocolate violins still twirled in his mind, and he decided to experiment after Fiona fell asleep. It was bad parenting, someone had told him, to stay with her while she drifted off to sleep. She was supposed to self-soothe or some such thing. He’d tried that precisely one time until he heard her sniffling into her blankets, her nose running and eyes swollen and still not crying aloud.
She should soothe herself? And how was she to know that the sun would rise in the morning, this child whose mommy and daddy were snatched away in an instant? How could she know there was nothing lurking in the darkness that would drag away her Uncle Bill too? From that night on, he’d lain on a blanket next to her bed, letting her fingers play with his hair until she slept, singing all the songs he could remember from his long-ago Sunday school.
Maybe he was making a mistake in soothing Fiona.
Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, as her chubby fingers found comfort twirling a lock of his hair. By the time she was grown, he would have made enough mistakes to fill up a book.
>
“Lord, help me,” he mumbled as he too lost himself in sleep.
Misty stayed up late into the night, perched on a bench seat in her trailer as she scoured the Internet for local dog sitters. Jellybean had decided to make himself at home, and the creature was snoring under a bundle of covers. When she finally climbed into bed, she’d insisted he sleep on the floor, but sometime during the night he’d taken advantage of her unconscious state and invited himself aboard, tunneling under the blankets. There was something sweet, she thought for a moment, about a warm little dog all snuggled up next to a person.
“Remember, Jellybean is nothing but a bundle of trouble,” she grumbled.
At the earliest hour that was decent, she began dialing. After a half dozen phone calls, she connected with a woman named Phyllis Marshall, who came with an impressive list of credentials on doggy behavior. Phyllis, to Misty’s great delight, was stationed not a half hour away and promised to be on the set by ten to take charge of her fuzzy client.
Misty quietly packed her small bag. When Jellybean finally stuck his twitching nose up out of the covers, she clipped his collar to a leash.
“You’re going to love Ms. Marshall,” Misty said. “She’s a dog expert. Practically a canine savant.”
Jellybean stared in that vacant way of his. She took him outside to do his morning business and then offered a bowl of kibble. The dog looked from her to the food bowl in obvious disgust.
“Fine. We’ll try later. Let’s go find Lawrence.”
The actor was poring over a script, coffee in one hand, a chocolate brioche in the other. Misty wondered if Bill had made the brioche, but she didn’t know if he dabbled in pastry. He might, she thought. Something about his mixture of easy confidence, nosiness, and humility made him linger in her mind. Or maybe it was the courageous way he was attempting to raise a grieving little girl.
Her feelings of admiration for Bill were confusing. She remembered having similar thoughts about Jack—a man she had admired, respected, and grown to love. What a disaster that had turned out to be.
Lawrence was writing copious notes on his script, and he didn’t seem to have a need for her musical tutelage. She started toward Mr. Wilson to explain about Phyllis’s arrival and her own departure, but the man was whacking his baseball cap, complete with mayonnaise advertising and dog tooth holes, on his thigh, snarling at another man with a headset and clipboard. Perhaps now is not the time, she thought. When Phyllis arrived would be an altogether better moment.
Jellybean was dragging her away from the set, and she saw no reason not to follow his direction. She’d much rather take a quiet walk into town, enjoying the brisk sea air, than try to stay out of the way of cranky film people. At this early hour, she most likely would not run into anyone at all—the perfect scenario.
The town of Albatross was more alive than she’d ever seen it in the time of her short stay. Bill’s shop sported a bouquet of colorful balloons outside, fastened to an easel offering everything from Tucker’s Treats to Jellybean Jumbles. In the window she saw two delicate chocolate violins, each with a slender confectionary bow. How had the man done it? She was peering closer when Jellybean started to bark and yank the leash taut.
Fiona, her hand pressed to the inside of the glass door, looked out at them.
Misty tried to pull the dog away before he could attract any more attention, but it was too late. Bill, clad in jeans, a T-shirt that clung to his muscled torso, and a Chocolate Heaven apron, popped his head out the door. Fiona scooted past her uncle to scratch Jellybean’s offered tummy.
“The violins,” Misty blabbered, “they’re awesome.”
“Did I get it right?” His smile was wide and welcoming. “I looked at pictures in Fiona’s storybook. There’s one about a talking violin.”
“They’re perfect, right down to the tuning pegs.” She looked past him and saw that the floor was sparkling. Additional bunches of balloons were tied on either side of the counter. Fiona was wearing a pink dress that tied at the waist and a bow in her neatly combed hair. “You’re really pulling out all the stops for this grand opening.”
“We have to. It’s sink-or-swim time.” He gestured her to come inside. “Let me get you a cup of coffee and a Close-Up Caramel.” He gave her an elaborate wink. “Are you ready for your Close-Up, Misty Agnelli?”
She laughed. “You’ve been waiting all morning to say that, haven’t you?”
He nodded. “Since I came up with the idea at two a.m.”
“Thank you, but I can’t. I’m just killing time until the new dog assistant arrives in”—she checked her watch—“about an hour.”
“Might as well kill time with chocolate as anything else.”
Something about his grin warmed her insides in a way she hadn’t experienced since Jack. It made her nervous, more nervous than she usually felt when talking to strangers. The longer she hung around, the more awkward it would get.
“Thanks anyway,” she said, trying to urge Jellybean to come along.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking maybe Fiona should have violin lessons sometime. Is she old enough, do you think?”
“I recommend to most parents that they wait until age five.”
“But Fiona’s exceptional, I’m sure.” A shadow passed across his bottle-green eyes. “Both her parents were musical. My brother played both the cello and the trumpet, actually.”
“Do you play?”
“Me? No. My brother was the talented one.”
Misty was more accomplished in terms of education and degrees than her five siblings, yet she understood exactly. Dating, marriages, friends—the normal social interactions of life—came easily to everyone in the Agnelli clan except Misty. They were a noisy, boisterous family who loved socializing, and she was the odd, awkward one. They loved her anyway.
The social anxiety had kicked in at age five after her father’s accident, from which he had recovered and she had not. In one single moment, he had been struck by a distracted driver while walking the dog, and both their lives had changed forever.
“She’ll grow out of it,” her mother had said for years. She’d finally stopped saying it after her four younger brothers and sister had all gotten married, or at least engaged. Misty had barely even dated more than a dozen times. After she’d fallen in and out of love with Jack, her mother had come to accept that Misty was just not cut out of the same cloth. Misty had accepted it too. During her growing-up years, the doctors would hint at many causes for her oddities, social anxiety, and nonverbal learning disability, dyssemia, at which point Misty’s mother would march out of the office. “No one is going to label you, Misty,” she’d snap. “I won’t allow it!”
Misty wondered sometimes if a label, a name for the strangeness that set her apart from her own noisy clan, would have made her life easier. In any case, she was who she was, who God created her to be. He had made her to speak through her music, and that was usually sufficient.
But just now, standing awkwardly opposite an extremely intriguing and not at all bad-looking man, she wished for a brief moment that she were more like her siblings. The rumble of a motor made them turn. A tour bus rolled past. “Everybody smile and wave,” Bill said.
The three of them did just that, earning several return waves from the people crammed on the bus. “Looks full,” Misty said.
“Sure does,” Bill said, straightening his apron. “They’ll be coming here after their stop at the film set. Do you want to stick around for the fun?”
“I hope they do, Bill. I’d better get back to the set. Lawrence will want to show off Jellybean. He says everyone loves a celebrity dog.”
“Maybe Fiona and I will sneak up too. Everything here is ready.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re welcome in my trailer.” She felt her face go scarlet. “I meant…you know, if Fiona needed a bathroom or a drink of water or anything.”
He smiled. “I knew what you meant. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Well, uh, depends on the timing. I’m leaving at lunch.”
“That soon?” Bill said.
Did she detect a look of disappointment on his face?
Surely not. People were not generally disappointed to see her go. Relieved, usually, but not disappointed. She waved goodbye to Fiona. In the distance, the tour bus churned away in a cloud of exhaust.
I hope it goes well for you, Bill Woodson, she said silently, resisting the urge to look back.
Five
Misty hightailed it to the grassy field that was home to the film shoot, making it back as the bus slowed to a stop. A gentleman with a black mustache and a clipboard hopped out first. The name tag clipped to his lapel read “Tom” with a little smiley face inside the o.
“Here, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, ushering them to find a seat in a cluster of folding chairs arranged between Misty’s trailer and the one that was home to the director. A woman wearing a pink hat waved madly at Misty. No doubt she was a Jellybean fan.
Drat, Misty thought, wiggling her fingers in a halfhearted response. The tourists were blocking access to her door. She’d been hoping to hand Jellybean off to Lawrence, hole up in her trailer, and avoid the crowd until Ms. Marshall arrived. Now a new flood of people turned their interest in her direction. Her skin erupted in cold prickles. As she began a backward creep away from the assembled tourists, Lawrence swept into view, greeting the delighted group with hearty affirmations. Strolling by, he beamed at Misty, patted her shoulder, and gathered up a wriggling Jellybean.
Relieved and edging to the back of the group, Misty watched in awe as Lawrence worked the crowd of sixty or so starstruck visitors. “Welcome to the battlefield,” he chortled, sweeping a hand toward the Sherman tank. The top hatch of the tank was open, and a uniformed actor was manning the machine gun. He waved, and the tourists captured it all with their cell phone cameras before the actor climbed out and joined the presentation.
Misty continued to ease toward the periphery, and by the time she’d neared the spot where the tour bus was parked, Bill and Fiona were just strolling up. Her heart jumped oddly, and after a moment she forced a jerky wave.
