Always Florence

by Muriel Jensen

  Ellen tried to compose herself. She was plump and gray-haired, and seemed at the end of her rope. Her husband’s illness had so debilitated him that they’d had to close the gift shop they’d operated together. Ellen provided around-the-clock care for him herself, so their income was now down to two Social Security checks and little else. A previous debt to the IRS had resulted in a lien on their property, and a reverse mortgage would solve their problems if the IRS was willing to take half what they were owed. The reverse mortgage could not be considered until the lender knew the entire lien would be paid. If the IRS didn’t agree, the Binghams’ payout wouldn’t cover everything.

  “Can you borrow the money from one of your kids, Ellen?” Nate asked. “Because I’m sure if we can get this under consideration, you’d win.”

  She dabbed wearily at her nose. “I’ll try. I don’t know. A reverse mortgage seemed like such a good idea in the beginning, but it’s taken so long that it’s involved two appraisals at the tune of five hundred dollars apiece, and the last appraisal was down thirty thousand because of the real estate market. We have nothing left.”

  He put his hand over hers. “Hang in there with us, Ellen. I think it’ll be a slam dunk in the end. The letter you got from your doctor proves that Jim’s illness makes it impossible for him to earn money, and because you have to care for him, you can’t, either. The debt load from the closing of your business proves you have nothing extra to pay them without the cash coming from the reverse mortgage.”

  She drew a ragged breath. “If only it was enough to pay the whole lien.”

  “It’s still half the debt,” he said bracingly, “and they should be happy to get that, considering your situation. Imagine getting rid of your house payment, and the couple of hundred dollars you pay the IRS every month.” He smiled. “Come on. Don’t give up. Try to get the thousand dollars. If you can’t, we’ll see what we can do. There might be other options.”

  She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks for trying so hard.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “You’re here to make money, not spend so much effort on one client’s uphill battle. A client who can’t pay you very much.”

  “Don’t worry about that. You and Jim were favorites of my brother.”

  “He was a good person. And so are you. Are the boys doing well?”

  He nodded. “Mostly. We have our difficult times.”

  “Yes. Who doesn’t? Don’t think it’s you. All children, whether born to you or invited in, can make you crazy. Thank you for doing this for Jim and me when you have so much else to deal with.”

  Hunter patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. He makes me do all the hard stuff.”

  Nate grinned up at him. “That’s what you get for being good at everything. Ellen, let me know in a couple of days if you can get the money, and I’ll contact the agent.”

  She hugged him again, then Jonni, then got to her feet and hugged Hunter. “Thanks, kids. I’ll be in touch.”

  Jonni watched her go with a sad smile. “I hope you can make this work for them. I used to love to shop at their store.”

  “We’ll make it work.” Nate stood and pushed in his chair. “Hunt, since you’re familiar with this agent, you want to call her and tell her the client’s working on getting the fee?”

  “Sure.” Hunter took the notice from him. “I think she secretly has a thing for me, anyway. That’s probably why she’s so mean and frustrated.” He grinned at Nate. “So, how was your lunch with the pretty artist?”

  “Good.” He walked out of the conference room with Hunter as Jonni ran to her desk to get the phone. “We bought paint, brushes and a big canvas board. Nothing exciting.”

  “Oh, come on. I was across the room with Jerry Gold. She was looking into your eyes. I happen to know you’re not that interesting. You must have turned on the charm.”

  “I don’t have any charm. But you do, so please put it to work on that agent.”

  “Right. What’ll we do if Ellen can’t get the money?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Go.”

  Hunter walked away and Nate closed himself in his office. He’d been thinking about ordering a new copier for tax season, but he didn’t absolutely have to have it. Maybe he could divert that capital to more creative uses. Maybe he’d just send the application fee on the Binghams’ behalf, and if they were able to get the money, they could pay him back.

  He laughed at himself. Nate Raleigh, superhero.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BOBBIE HAD A little difficulty focusing on the project at hand. Mostly because it involved taking photos and making sketches of Nate in a sea captain’s jacket and cap from the late 1800s. He was gazing out over the water as she’d instructed, and she felt lost in time. What difference would it have made, she wondered, if they’d met a hundred years ago and she hadn’t been ill, and he hadn’t been confined by the need to raise two children?

  She shook her head to chase away the thought, and reminded herself that she had a short deadline on this painting. All right. She’d positioned him against the background, using period photos of the waterfront without the bridge to work from.

  Today the sky was pewter, and a low bank of fog draped along the Washington shoreline, on the opposite side of the river. Traffic on the water was sparse this morning, just the Coast Guard cutters Alert and Steadfast moored nearby.

  Nate’s jacket was a thick, roughly-woven gray wool worn over a blue cotton shirt with a tab collar. The cap was a traditional captain’s hat with a bill that Nate had instinctively put at a rakish angle.

  She went to him and turned up his collar. “He’d wear it up against the wind,” she speculated. “Don’t you think?”

  Nate dropped the pose to let her adjust the collar. “Sure. And don’t I need a handlebar mustache?” He pretended to twirl the edge of one in the tradition of the melodrama villain. “After all, I might have some cargo aboard I wouldn’t want to be caught with. Didn’t they sometimes smuggle Chinese laborers to work in the canneries?”

  She made the smallest adjustment to the hat. It didn’t really need it but was a way to stay close to him. “You wouldn’t have done that. You’d be picking up salmon to go to Great Britain and Australia. But it might help if you didn’t shave for a couple of days.”

  As she stepped away she had to bite back a gasp. He looked true to the period, despite the lack of facial hair, and the hazel eyes watching her from under the brim of his cap were intriguing—as though he might really have seen the mysteries of the Seven Seas. He was very handsome, not a present-day accountant, but a man of action from another time. A man that any woman might want to accompany her on a trip of self-discovery.

  She shook her head again and prepared to take several more shots.

  “So, if I was a sea captain in, say, 1898...” Nate looked out to sea again, in character. “I suppose you’d have been a suffragist, and I’d be completely offended by your independence. Or maybe you’d want to sail with me to Florence. You being you, you’d probably still want the same things then that you want today.”

  “Unless I hadn’t had cancer, and didn’t feel the urgency I do.” As she spoke the words, she felt the first stirring of self-pity since she’d put that destructive emotion behind her right after her diagnosis.

  He must have heard it in her voice, and turned to look at her. “It is what it is, remember? You made yourself a promise and nothing’s going to change it. Don’t be mad at yourself.”

  She was trying to pull herself out of a sudden, sucking depression when she realized what he’d said. “I’m not mad at myself.” She felt argumentative. “I’m happy with my decision.”

  “Okay. You sounded like you were mad.”

>   “Well, I’m not. I have a right to go.”

  A sudden gust of cold wind took her back a year ago to the moment she’d made herself the promise. It was as though she were encapsulated in a bubble as she remembered that low moment at the end of her chemotherapy.

  She’d been lying on the sofa, too weak and exhausted to move, and her father had been giving her a pep talk. “You have to fight, Bobbie. This is the moment. I know you feel like everything’s dead inside you, that the drugs have killed all the good stuff as well as the bad, but you have to believe you can do this. Make your body work. Don’t let it give up.”

  She had rolled her head on the pillow to look at him, the woolly hat she wore to protect her bald head slipping over her eyes. She’d raised a hand to push it back. “I’m tired, Dad.”

  The lab reports after her previous treatment had shown only minimal improvement and the drugs had hit her like a sledgehammer that day. She’d been vomiting all that morning and was sick of being sick, and sick of the struggle. She’d let herself wonder, for just an instant, what things would be like if she wasn’t here. Her father would be devastated, of course, but she wouldn’t know because she’d be...she’d be with her mother. That possibility was just a little tempting.

  “I’m not saying you don’t deserve to rest, just that you aren’t allowed to give up. Your labs are going to show considerable improvement this time. I feel it.”

  “Good.” She’d liked that thought but wasn’t sure she believed it. “I’d like to see Mom again.”

  His expression became fierce. “She’d only send you back to me, because you’re not through here yet. You have unfinished art. Places to go.”

  He said something about making lunch and she’d closed her eyes wearily and thought, Places to go. In a desperate attempt to rally her bottomed-out spirits, she’d tried to imagine where she would go if she could get up off this sofa.

  Then it hit her. Florence! She’d wanted to visit it since she was a teenager. She’d borrowed books from the library and fallen in love with the Renaissance dome of the Duomo, the medieval town hall, Palazzo Vecchio. The works of Botticelli, Giotto, Michelangelo and Raphael in the Uffizi Gallery.

  Going to Florence hadn’t been possible at seventeen, but with no relationships to worry about and few commitments in her way, it seemed almost doable as she lay on that couch. Or it would be if she didn’t have cancer.

  If she didn’t have cancer.

  That had been the moment fear became resolve. She let the images slide across her mind again. She could move to Florence and paint among the masters if she didn’t have cancer. So she had to get rid of it. Her body was too weak to sit up, but she felt as though her spirit did. Florence. Florence!

  “Bobbie!” She came back to the present at the sound of her name. Nate stood directly in front of her, looking concerned. “Where’d you go?” he asked. “Back to the nineteenth century?”

  She squared her shoulders and smiled. “No. Not quite so far.” She began to gather up her things.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Never mind.

  “Are we done?” he asked, watching her put her book and camera in her bag.

  Curious choice of words, she thought with a touch of fatal resignation. “We’re done. Now you have to go back to work, and I do, too.”

  “No time for coffee?”

  “No. I’ve got to get to my class.”

  His eyes under the bill of his hat still made him seem a little unfamiliar. “Do you want to come with me to the dinner dance?” he asked without warning, and suddenly he was the man she knew again. The man who challenged everything she wanted. “Come on, it’s the holidays. We’ll eat great food, do a little dancing, watch them make a fortune on the raffle and your painting, and go home.”

  She couldn’t come up with a good excuse to refuse. “My father’s coming,” she said lamely.

  “Stella can be his date. We’ll all go together.”

  Bobbie looked into the strong planes of his face, saw the wind stir his hair and redden his earlobes. If only it were a hundred years ago. “Okay,” she said finally. “But just dinner and dancing.”

  “Right.” He grabbed her bag—which was a good thing, because she’d momentarily forgotten she had it—and led her to their vehicles, parked on Commercial Street.

  Before getting into her truck, Bobbie stopped to admire the window of Tony’s Boutique. In the center of the display was a red jacket with an irregular collar and hem, and a front closure at an angle, running from the right side of the neckline to the left hip.

  “Isn’t that pretty?” she asked, leaning closer to the window like a child at a candy store.

  Nate looked slightly askance at the unusual design. “Well, I wouldn’t wear it,” he teased. When she elbowed him in the ribs, he laughed and added, “But I imagine it’d look perfect on you. Very artsy. Too bad you don’t have time to try it on.”

  She turned away resolutely. “No, I have to save my pennies for Florence and a little Christmas shopping. And that shop gives me a terrible case of the ‘I-wants.’ Anyway...” She smiled. “Thanks for your time today. I’m going to put in as much as I can of the background, then I’ll need you to sit for me. The photographs are great, but I’ll still need the real you. Maybe a couple of evenings. Can you work that in?”

  “Sure. And thank you.” Rain had begun to fall and he reached down to pull up her hood.

  “For what?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Lots of indefinable things. Call me when you need me. Bye.” He slipped into his car and disappeared around the corner.

  * * *

  NATE FELT DRIVEN for the next few days. He’d gone back to the office to find that one of the copiers had died and had to be replaced, and at home, Dylan had had a bad day, Sheamus was in tears and even Stella was out of sorts. Apparently her daughter and son-in-law had been invited to Florida for Thanksgiving with his parents.

  “What about Hunter?”

  “He’s talking about going on a camping trip with some friends.”

  Nate was surprised Hunter hadn’t said anything.

  “You’re welcome to join us for Thanksgiving,” he told her as he helped her on with her lavender wool jacket. Her white hair was in disarray from breaking up a confrontation between her charges, and her dark eyes were sad.

  She smiled a thank-you, but it was unconvincing. “Can I let you know? I may do something radical.”

  “Radical?” he asked worriedly.

  “Yes. You know, like order a pizza.”

  He made a face at that suggestion. “Bobbie and her father are coming. And I have a complete dinner planned from Safeway.”

  She nodded. “Then you won’t need a housekeeper-nanny, will you? Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  “Stella. We’ll be expecting you.”

  She hugged him quickly and left.

  He’d been feeling edgy for several days and didn’t like it. He hadn’t felt secure in his job as his nephews’ guardian, or indeed in his life, in so long that he had grown used to it.

  And then Bobbie Molloy had moved in next door and changed everything in subtle ways that made it all just a little better and, if he stopped to think about it, a whole lot worse. He’d known her only two weeks, but she’d brought light to his world. And she was taking that light to Italy in January.

  Though he knew and even understood that anything other than friendship between them was impossible, he found himself longing for more, anyway. And that was stupid. He hated being stupid. He wanted to remember the cost of caring for someone whose life was short.

  Thoughts of her were shredding his resolve to just be her friend.

  And he hated the realization that some of the old anger was coming back. He’d thought he’d learned to cope with it, to disregard it. But it was biting
at him again because he couldn’t have what he wanted with Bobbie.

  The outer-office chatter got a little loud now that the day’s work was done, and he got up to close his door. He had to draft a letter to Social Security on behalf of a client residing in Mexico, and the noise wasn’t helping his already taut mood. He was just getting back into challenge mode when his extension rang. He didn’t recognize the caller ID and let it go to voice mail while he tried to think.

  “Nate? Hi, it’s Bobbie. I’m sorry to...” Her voice sounded anxious. He picked up the receiver.

  “Bobbie, I’m here. What’s the matter?”

  “Now, I don’t want you to get upset,” she said, obviously trying to control her tone.

  He was already on his feet. “What?” he demanded.

  “Well...Dylan was doing an experiment....”

  “Oh, God.” Nate imagined fire, ankle-deep water, injury.

  “He isn’t really hurt,” she assured him quickly. “It wasn’t that kind of experiment. It seems kids on YouTube are trying to swallow cinnamon by the spoonful and, well...”

  That curious craze had even made the news. He recalled images of kids and even some adults vomiting and choking. Somewhere, a teenager had died. “Where are you?”

  “In the E.R.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Dylan was pale and pasty-looking. Bobbie sat beside him and dabbed at his mouth with a tissue. The room smelled nasty. Nate imagined the last hour or so had not been pleasant for his nephew. Bobbie smiled at Nate reassuringly.

  He spotted a rolling stool and considered sitting on it, but was too agitated. “Are you all right?” he demanded of Dylan. His temper was barely controlled.

  The boy’s eyes were bloodshot and miserable. He raised them with a resigned expression. “I’m terrible,” he replied, his voice raspy, probably from vomiting.

  “What were you thinking? We watched that news story together about—”