by Dana Mentink
She concurred. Curiosity—that burning desire to know everything about the violin—had fallen on her like burning ash, lighting a passion inside that was still as bright as it was when she was eight years old. Misty Agnelli was not sure of many things in her life, but she knew without a doubt that God meant for her to love the violin.
Listening to Bill was akin to playing a light and airy melody. His words danced along like her bow on the strings, unfettered by her own awkward conversational contributions. How sweet just to listen without the tension of having to reply.
“You know,” he said, “no pressure, but if you have something to say, I’m all ears. I don’t mean to hog the conversation.”
“I like to listen to you talk.” Immediately after the words had left her mouth, her face grew fiery, and she wished she could reel her idiotic utterance back in.
But Bill just kept on driving, hitting every bump and pothole, collecting each giggle from Fiona. Misty held on and collected them too. She’d never noticed before how much human laughter could sound like music. She would write down the observation in her newest journal, the most recent addition to her pile of fifty-odd volumes crammed with her wonderings. Music and laughter—how similar, how precious.
They reached Lawrence’s trailer, and Misty’s stomach tightened. There was no dog tied anywhere that she could see. Perhaps Lawrence had relented and come to his senses. He and Jellybean must be hunkered down and centering themselves, whatever that meant, and the film shoot would resume. She could find another dog trainer or maybe an out-of-work musician who could play the violin all day to keep Jellybean in check. Hope sprang anew in her heart.
She knocked on the door. “Mr. Tucker? I mean, Lawrence? It’s Misty Agnelli. Are you and Jellybean okay?”
The inside of the trailer was still and quiet. They might be napping, but Jellybean could hear a potato chip drop at fifty paces, so he wouldn’t sleep through Misty’s assertive knocking.
Now her optimism began to waver, and worry took its place. She pulled the latch on the door and opened it a crack.
“Mr. Tucker?” she called into the gap.
Bill moved by her and pushed inside. “I’d better check.”
She followed him, and Fiona climbed in behind them. The trailer was empty. No sign of the actor or his dog.
“Where is he?” Misty said aloud.
Bill picked up a piece of paper from the table and frowned. “I’m not sure, but I think you’d better read this. It’s addressed to you.”
Bill watched as she snatched the paper and read it. Twice. “I know the words, but I don’t get what he’s trying to say.”
“Read it aloud. Maybe I can pick up the gist.”
“My dear Misty,” she read. “My heart is heavy, burdened. How I admire you for being able to lose yourself in your music, to cast off your worries and sink yourself deep. I am disturbed of soul and spirit, and I must depart for a while to find my center, to”—she squinted at the handwriting—“reconnect myself with my essence.” She quirked a brow at Bill.
“He’s taking a break,” he translated.
“All that to say he needs a vacation?”
“Actors.”
She read the last part. “I will return when I have done so. I commit him into your tender care until my return.” She stared at Bill. “What does he mean ‘commit him into my tender care’?”
Like a perfectly cued line from a film, at that moment Larry nudged open the door with his foot. He sported an oven mitt on each hand, and clasped between them was a snarling Jellybean.
Larry held the dog as if he were an unexploded mortar. “He was tied to my door with a note that said I should watch him until you got here. Uh-uh. I don’t get paid enough for that. Here.”
He thrust the dog at Misty, and Jellybean set about happily licking her chin.
“But—” she started.
“Forget it.” Larry slammed out the door. “I’m outta here.”
Misty stared at the dog, who kept winding up in her arms in spite of her best efforts. “How long does it take someone to reconnect with their essence?”
Bill searched for something helpful to offer. “Good question. I’ve never really known anyone to do that. Most people I know take a weekend trip and come back refreshed.”
“But Lawrence Tucker is not most people.”
“You’re right about that.”
She stared at the dog and sank into the kitchen chair. Jellybean continued his licking, his nose quivering at the sight of Fiona. “I just can’t get rid of this creature.” It came out as a whimper, and she bit her lip. “And I want to go home.”
Bill settled into the chair opposite, his nosiness getting the better of him. “May I ask, if it’s not too personal, why you’re so miserable here? I mean, they’re paying you to stay in a beach town on a movie set. Most people would jump at the chance.”
“I guess I’m like Lawrence Tucker. Neither of us are like most people.”
He sat quietly, studying her.
The quiet appeared to tease an admission out of her. “I don’t like change. It…scares me. I want things to be normal and routine.”
“Your grandmother said you, er, became a bit more tentative after your father’s accident.”
She blushed. “Yes, my natural reclusive tendencies went out of control when my father was hit by a car while he was walking the dog. They didn’t think he would live.” She expelled a slow breath. “We lived in a really small town outside San Bernardino, and this parade of people, literally dozens of them, would arrive every day at home or at the hospital, and I heard them whisper all the things the doctors said. Broken neck, possible infection, ruptured spleen. I wanted them all to leave.” The words seemed to explode from her. “If they would just leave us alone, I knew Dad would get better.”
Bill nodded, waiting for the rest.
“I sort of stopped wanting to be around people. I would hide under my dad’s bed and refuse to go to school. If I could just stay with him and be quiet and keep the people away, I knew he would be okay.”
“And he healed?”
“Yes. God brought my father back to us. He recovered almost completely, but…I guess I didn’t. I never got over that feeling of wanting to stay under the bed and be invisible.” Jellybean sniffed the knee of her jeans. “I stick to my regular routine and I’m okay.”
“Does your routine include other people?” Again, a nosy question.
She started. “Of course. I see Nana regularly and my family. I have five siblings.”
“When you see them, is it in person or on Skype?”
“Both,” she mumbled. “I know what you’re thinking. Lawrence gave me a talk about letting my light shine too, but I’ve learned I can shine my light just fine using Skype and writing notes to people, or by the occasional phone call.”
“Those are good things, but rubbing elbows with people is pretty good too.”
“God would not have made me so prone to social disaster if He wanted me to rub elbows.”
Bill chuckled. “I’ve had my own share of public disasters, for sure. So…no boyfriend in your life? Whoops, sorry. Not my business.”
“I dated a man while I was earning my master’s in music. Jack was a part-time saxophonist and a business major. I used to go out more. With him. We went to museums and flea markets and coffee shops, and I got better at that rubbing elbows thing, but he’s gone now.”
He saw a flicker of pain cross her face.
“He loves someone else.” Jellybean licked her cheeks, and she buried her face in his silky coat.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Believe me, I know how that feels.”
“It’s perfectly logical,” Misty babbled. “His fiancée is extremely pretty, and she’s a party planner. Her name is Jill, so it’s funny—Jack and Jill. She’s so confident. It’s as if she owns the room wherever she goes. I’ve never felt that way.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “My girlfriend in high school was like that. She had a m
illion-dollar smile that lit up my soul. We dated for three years, and I never could figure out why a girl like that went out with a guy like me.”
“Why didn’t you stay together?”
“I would have, but she found someone else too. Someone smarter.” The word sounded harsh, and he wished he could take it back.
Misty looked puzzled. “But you’re really smart, and everyone likes you.”
“Smart? No. That’s for people with schooling and degrees and such.”
“People don’t need degrees to be smart.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many degrees do you have?”
She stroked Jellybean’s wiry topknot. “Well, um, I have a BA and a master’s in music theory.”
“And?”
“Well, and…I’ve started on a PhD.”
“But if you didn’t have any of those things, would you still feel like you were smart?”
“I never really thought about it. My family is full of academic types. It was never a question about whether or not to get a degree, but rather which ones.”
“My family is the academic type too, but I’m not.” Don’t say another word, Bill, not another word.
“Nana doesn’t have a degree, and she’s the smartest person I know.”
Did she really believe that? Well-meaning people would often voice similar sentiments. You’re smart in a different way, Bill. Just not in the way that allowed a fellow to succeed, that paved the way for a man to earn dignity and respect enough to hold his head up.
How could a man feel smart when he couldn’t fill out a job application? When he had to order a hamburger at every restaurant he ever went to because he couldn’t decipher the menu? How would Misty look at him if she knew? He glanced away and cleared his throat. “Anyway, if you really need to get back home, I’ll take Jellybean for you.”
She gaped. “You would do that?”
“Sure. He can hang out in the chocolate shop until Lawrence comes back.”
Misty looked as though she’d won the lottery. She could go home. He shook off a touch of sadness.
“That would be really nice of you.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. Come here, dog-o.”
Misty gathered him up to hand over to Bill. Jellybean began to whine.
“Fine way to treat a guy,” Bill said as he took the end of the leash.
Misty Agnelli looked as though the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. She was free.
Eight
Bill wondered how soon he would regret his magnanimous gesture. Jellybean sensed a change in the air and tried to bolt, but Bill had managed to snag the leash before the dog escaped.
Fiona held up her hands, wanting to hold the leash.
“You can take charge of Jellybean, Fee, but let’s wash first,” Bill said, eyeing the red smears on her fingers. “You’re all sticky from the lollipop. Go in the bathroom and clean up.”
Fiona’s mouth pinched into a stubborn pucker, and she shook her head.
“Go now, Fee,” Bill said, “or you can’t hold the leash.”
Fiona refused. When she did not get the coveted leash, she sat hard on her bottom, stuck her fingers in her mouth, and began to smack her feet against the floor. Soon tears gushed down her face. Bill looked on in confusion.
“Uh…”
Fiona’s shoes whomped harder, vibrating the linoleum. Jellybean would have thrown himself onto the pounding limbs if Bill hadn’t held fast to the leash.
Fiona’s face grew wet with tears, and her nose ran.
Bill felt panic building inside as he looked around for someone to come and handle the problem, until he realized he was now that someone. The choices spooled through his brain. Should he reason with her? Carry her to the bathroom and forcibly wash her hands? Give her the silly leash already to stop the eruption?
“I haven’t seen her do this before,” he said out of the corner of his mouth to Misty.
Misty cocked her head. “It’s a temper tantrum. Pretty common for this age.”
Common? He’d never seen her do it when Dillon and Bella were alive. It was the kind of thing he would call his mother about if he wasn’t so worried that his father would answer the phone. Then it would be a tense chat in which he tried to paint the success of Chocolate Heaven in glowing colors and his father attempted to sound interested in his son’s newest ridiculous venture. Nope. He’d have to figure this one out on his own.
Fiona kicked so hard one of her shoes flew off, sending Jellybean into a barking frenzy as he lunged for it until Bill pulled him back. Misty appeared completely calm.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Nothing? “Huh? That doesn’t seem right. She’s really upset. I should be doing something.”
“Doing nothing is doing something. You just let her have her blowup, and most importantly, you don’t let her get her way until she does what you want.”
He tried to keep the doubt from his voice. “Are you sure? She’s been through a lot.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Losing her parents and moving here. It turned her world upside down.” Along with mine, he thought. It was a nutty world indeed when Bill Woodson became the disciplinarian.
“That’s true, but she needs to feel like you’re a parent, and a parent says no sometimes. She needs walls to bounce off of so she knows she’s safe.”
The word parent startled Bill. It was the first moment it had actually dawned on him that he was now, for better or for worse, Fiona’s parent. The notion started twin rivers of love and terror coursing through him. “I haven’t really thought about it like that…I mean, that I’m her parent now. Not just Uncle Bill.” He stared at Fiona a while longer. “This is a permanent job, isn’t it?”
A note of something shone in Misty’s face. Could it be admiration? He didn’t see how.
“Yes, it is. You’ve taken on a lot.”
He blew out a breath. “There was no other choice, really. My parents aren’t in good health, and Fiona’s aunt, Bella’s sister, is a geophysicist for an oil company, so she’s all over the world. She was in Africa at the tail end of a yearlong assignment when the accident happened.”
“There is always another choice.” She reached out and put a tentative hand on his forearm. “You stepped up. That took an amazing amount of courage.”
Yes, it was admiration he saw in her coffee-colored eyes. He let himself savor the feel of her hand on his arm for a moment until doubts crept in. Dillon and Bella were smart achiever types, a far cry from a guy who was struggling to make a living selling sweets. His heart, not his head, had led him to take in his little niece. He would never measure up in the parenting department. There were just not enough YouTube videos to shape Bill Woodson into a sharp enough parent for Fiona. Worry bubbled up inside him.
His mother’s words echoed in his heart. “God made you to shine a light, Bill. You don’t get to pick what kind of candle you get.” He figured he’d been allotted a tiny birthday candle compared to a petawatt laser he’d seen on TV. Still, he thought, straightening, if God gave him a puny birthday candle, he might as well make the flicker useful.
“Okay. So I do nothing,” he murmured to bolster his courage. “Right.”
Together they watched the tantrum build to storm levels, Jellybean barking his concern. Just when he was about at his breaking point, when he feared Fiona was about to asphyxiate in her rage, it was over. She sat up and looked at Bill. Bill looked at Misty. Misty gave him a reassuring nod. Jellybean shook his ears as if in encouragement.
Bill cleared his throat. “Go wash now, Fiona.”
Fiona got up, put on her runaway shoe, and went to the trailer bathroom to wash her hands.
Bill tried not to gape outright at his first parenting success.
“You were right. It did work.”
Misty laughed. “Yeah.”
When Fiona returned, Bill handed her the leash, and Jellybean was delig
hted to lead her outside into the sunshine.
In a flood of excitement and gratitude, Bill gave in to his feelings and wrapped Misty in a hug.
“Thank you,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the perfect shell of her ear.
His heart danced up to a faster tempo at the feel of her soft body, the press of her silken hair against his cheek. He imagined she relaxed in his embrace, leaned her head to his chest, welcomed their sudden connection.
When he released her, his senses were dizzied.
She blinked, cheeks pink. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Anytime. You can, um, Skype me or maybe even call if you come across anything else.”
He’d made her uncomfortable. He sighed. “Where did you learn how to handle a tantrum? Child psychology classes?”
“Nope. Having five siblings.”
“Can’t learn stuff like that in a classroom, huh?”
“I had to rub elbows, so to speak.”
He laughed and she joined in.
Misty was still feeling off balance as they returned to Chocolate Heaven. Bill, Fiona, and Jellybean rode in the golf cart, and this time Misty followed in her grumbly VW. She’d wanted to make a clean break of it, but Wilson was having a staff meeting in his trailer, and she dared not disturb him to tell him of her imminent departure, so she resolved to return after she collected Nana Bett. It was the upheaval that left her feeling nonplussed, she told herself, not the lingering feeling of Bill’s embrace.
He was grateful, that was all, and she was out of practice with the hugging of men. Bill was an amazing man, a patient, helpful soul to take on the rascally Jellybean, and she resolved to send him a very graciously worded thank-you note for his dog assistance and a heartfelt apology that she might have inadvertently put the kibosh on his grand opening. Maybe she should send along a little something. A plant? A fruit basket? A subscription to a doggy-treat-of-the-month club?
She sighed. Knowing Jellybean, a doggy straitjacket might be more useful.
