The Mommy Wish

by Pamela Browning

  “That’s a shame,” Molly said. “You’ll still be able to put on some shows, right?”

  “Yes, because we have plenty of volunteer help. There, that takes care of it. Thanks, Molly. Would you like to walk up to the art class with me? They should be getting out about now.”

  Molly shook her head. “I’m going back to the boat to practice my harp for open mike night.”

  “Oh, you’re a harp player! Wonderful, because we’ve been inundated with poetry readers lately, and a harp’s something new. Will you be there tonight?”

  “Maybe,” Molly said.

  “Great! Good luck, and I hope I’ll catch your performance.” With that, Selena took off at a trot toward the stairs.

  That was where Eric would be, Molly thought glumly. He’d pick up Phoebe, and they’d go somewhere fun without her. She wished she could get over this morning’s rejection. After all, she’d gotten along fine before she ever met the Norvalds. Why did she feel so lonely? Did she want to be part of everything they did?

  The answer was an emphatic no.

  MOLLY WAS IN HER STATEROOM, playing her harp when Eric and Phoebe arrived back. She heard Phoebe arguing with her father as they walked down the dock, and she stopped playing as the child stomped across the deck.

  “Don’t walk away from me, young lady, when I’m talking to you,” Eric said. He sounded angry.

  The footsteps stopped, and Molly could imagine Phoebe turning on her heel and planting her hands on her hips as she faced off with her dad.

  “All I was trying to say,” Eric said in a reasoning tone, “is that I’m glad you drew a picture of something besides a vacuum cleaner at art class. You could be interested in a lot of other things.”

  “Well, Dad, I’m real interested in a house, and that’s why I drew a picture of the Farrells’, but I don’t think we’re ever going to have our own as long as I live.”

  Molly sensed real distress in Phoebe’s voice.

  “Peanut, we will eventually.”

  “Everyone in the whole world has their own house and their own dog and their own vacuum cleaner. You’re never going to get us a house. You might as well admit it.”

  Heavy footsteps thudded across the cockpit. Eric was probably sitting down on the long bench that ran the length of it. “Come over here, Peanut. Sit on your daddy’s lap and we’ll talk it over.”

  “All you do is talk. You never do anything, and I’m getting tired of it.” Molly heard Phoebe scramble down the ladder, march across the salon and go into her room. She slammed the door, hard.

  Molly didn’t dare breathe. She halfway hoped that neither of them knew she was aboard, but they’d probably heard her playing her harp.

  At any rate, she was out of the mood to practice. She set her harp carefully in its case and snapped it shut.

  It occurred to her that this would be a good time to wash clothes, so she stuffed a few more things in the canvas bag hanging from a hook in the bathroom and opened her stateroom door. It squeaked. That scratched any hope she might have had for a quiet escape.

  “Molly?” Eric stood at the top of the ladder. He looked tired, exhausted and discouraged.

  She waited until he’d moved aside before she climbed the ladder. He eyed her laundry bag and then flung himself down on the bench.

  “I’m on my way to the laundry room,” she said unnecessarily.

  “Could I convince you to stop and drink a beer with me?”

  “No, Eric,” she said.

  He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it so that it looked particularly attractive.

  “You heard,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re on Phoebe’s side.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose side I’m on, Eric. I’m not involved.”

  “Aren’t you?” His eyes were steady upon her face.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’ve been talking up a house, you might as well admit it.”

  “I never said anything to Phoebe,” Molly said furiously. When the expression of dismay flitted across his features, she regretted speaking so sharply.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I assumed the two of you had been dad-trashing.”

  “Eric, I would never run you down. Never.” She was horrified that he’d even think so.

  “I believe you,” he said heavily. “I’m sorry. Now it seems that I’ve got two women angry with me instead of only one. Not a good thing.”

  “Eric—”

  “Forget about the beer. Go on to wherever you’re going.”

  “Could we please keep our voices low so that Phoebe doesn’t hear?”

  “She won’t, because this discussion is over.” His brows were drawn into a straight line, as was his mouth.

  All of a sudden, Molly realized that she didn’t want to let the opportunity pass to tell Eric how she felt about his insistence on living an uprooted life. He was already angry with her, so what did it matter what she liked to say now? As her grandfather always said, in for a penny, in for a pound. And she had accumulated a pound of irritation over the issue that Phoebe seemed to be so unhappy about.

  “Your daughter let you know exactly how she feels about not having a real home. And what did you do, Eric? You put her off, evidently not for the first time. She’s a delightful girl who wants a set of friends, the support of a community, her dog, Cookie. She wants her own house, probably so she can have those friends over to play and ride bikes and, yes, admire her very own vacuum cleaner. Okay, so that’s a little odd, but it shows that she has an imagination. An imagination, Eric, that makes her able to experience all those wonderful things in her own mind. Maybe she magnifies them out of proportion. Maybe, if she had the life she so desperately wants to lead, it wouldn’t live up to her expectations. But she deserves to find that out for herself. She deserves the best you can give her, Eric Norvald, and the life of a boat bum isn’t it.”

  A stunned Eric gazed at her openmouthed throughout this diatribe, and when she stopped, she inhaled a deep breath. “I’m going out,” she said. She hauled her laundry bag off the seat and climbed out of the cockpit. When she stepped from the edge of the deck onto the stairs leading down to the dock, she saw Eric still staring after her.

  She set off down the dock at a fast clip, refusing to look back. It might not have any effect on what Eric did, but she certainly felt a lot better for hauling off and giving him a piece of her mind.

  BY THE TIME SHE RETURNED to Fiona, Eric and Phoebe were gone. They hadn’t left a note saying when they’d be back, so she ate a solitary supper of canned soup and crackers, discovering that she didn’t like eating alone. Solitary mealtimes certainly hadn’t been a problem back in Chicago, but now she was accustomed to the spirited byplay between Phoebe and Eric as they all prepared dinner, and to discussion of Phoebe’s schoolwork and other sundry items, followed by watching Jeopardy! She missed the easy companionship.

  Later, in keeping with her resolution to establish a life of her own in Greensea Springs, she took her harp and walked to the Plumosa Hotel, where she was assigned a number. Before the show, she enjoyed talking with the other performers—a reader of poetry, a man who played spoons and an amateur opera singer.

  As she sat in the wings waiting for the comedian preceding her in the entertainment lineup to finish telling a few lame jokes, she peeked through the curtain at the audience. Its ranks were swollen with tourists who had driven over from nearby St. Augustine, a historic city and one that ranked high on many tourists’ lists of must-see Florida attractions. She spotted Selena and her husband in the center section, and she thought she recognized a couple who lived at the marina sitting in the front row. The room was so crowded that there were even a few people standing in back.

  When her turn came, Molly walked briskly to the chair provided for her onstage and adjusted the mike. She was aware of an expectant hush when people saw her harp; it was the promise of something different, she knew from per
forming at local clubs when she attended college in Boston.

  She’d worn her usual jeans and a V-necked T-shirt tucked in at the waist. A spotlight zeroed in on her, making it hard to see the audience. It was better that way, since if she couldn’t see them, she didn’t feel self-conscious. As for stage fright, performing in Emmett’s puppet shows when she was a kid had pretty much solved that problem.

  She began to strum the harp and sing, an old Irish revolutionary song full of fiery passion about a cause, and she followed it with another one about heartbreak and remorse. That was all she had planned, but when the last chord had shimmered and faded away, the audience erupted into applause that seemed way out of proportion to her performance.

  Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the acoustics of the room, which occupied the old solarium of the hotel. The people standing in the back shifted as she stood and took her bow, and someone in the front row yelled, “More! We want to hear more!”

  “That’s all for tonight,” she said before she started to walk offstage, and that was when the spotlight switched off and she spied a lanky figure detach itself from the others in the back of the room and slink out the door.

  Eric. No one else held his head at just that angle, no one else was that tall and slim. No one else had the ability to make her heart leap to her throat at the sight of him.

  And why did her heart do that? Why, indeed? Because she was being stupid, was investing her relationship with him with more importance than it deserved. Which she shouldn’t do, considering her last, ill-fated romance.

  She rethought. It couldn’t have been Eric standing in the back of the room. By this time of night, he would be with Phoebe back on Fiona, and besides, there was no way he would have followed her to the Plumosa Hotel after their last interaction, which she was beginning to regret. She shouldn’t have told him off. She’d been way out of line.

  Instead of staying to watch the other performers, she set out walking toward the marina. The streets were quiet and well lit, and the scent of some unidentifiable tropical flower wafted in the air. It was a good opportunity for reflection and thought, and who she thought about was Charles Stalnecky, alias Chuck the Cheese.

  They’d met at a conference for accountants where she’d given a speech, the topic of which escaped her now. He’d sauntered up to her afterward, smiled engagingly and asked her out for a drink. He was so appealing in contrast to the others in that stodgy group that she hadn’t said no, even though his charm alone should have set off warning bells in her head.

  He’d courted her shamelessly for two months, when she’d finally capitulated. She’d been ready, too, of course, but he was a disappointing lover. However, she’d become so enmeshed by then that it seemed like more trouble than it was worth to break up with him, plus she enjoyed having a ready escort who was adept in social situations. They’d fallen into a regular routine, because Chuck was all about schedules. In fact, they never did anything spontaneous. She’d been bored almost from the beginning.

  Still, he was considered a catch by the other single women she knew. He earned an income almost as high as hers, and his grandparents had left him a trust fund. He belonged to the right clubs. He gave Molly presents, sent a dozen roses to the office every month on the anniversary of their meeting, called faithfully every night. Except later she found out that some of those phone calls had been made from his assistant’s apartment after she’d fallen asleep. The assistant, that is. Chuck kept himself awake after making love to her so that he could call Molly and tell her he loved her.

  When she caught him at it, Chuck seemed sheepish and said apologetically that he didn’t love the assistant, a little dumpling of a blonde whose name was Rhonda Wettingfeld. Rhonda, he claimed while making puppy-dog eyes at Molly, was a convenience. Nevertheless, after sneaking a peek at Chuck’s PDA, Molly learned that Rhonda was a planned convenience, just like her. She’d allowed Chuck five minutes to clear his things out of her apartment, and afterward she’d tossed his forgotten favorite sweater into a Salvation Army barrel.

  Goodbye, Chuck the Cheese. She’d never regretted kicking him out of her life. But she’d never found a replacement for him, either, because trusting anyone after such a disheartening experience was difficult.

  And yet…and yet, Eric was different. Was he different enough to risk losing her heart? Or her mind, or anything at all?

  The very fact that she was asking herself such questions about Eric Norvald was enough reason for her to cut and run back to Chicago as fast as she could. She had a good job there, and she worked with people who liked her as much as she liked them. She didn’t like hassles, didn’t need another guy who was going to turn into a problem.

  But there was Phoebe. Phoebe, who missed her mother and her dog and longed for nothing so much as a sense of permanence in her life. She’d taken to Molly right away, and Molly, though she didn’t like to admit it, was smitten with the child. She sympathized with her. She didn’t want to make Phoebe’s life any harder than it already was.

  So sure, she could hightail it back to Chicago and resume her life where she had left off. She could continue to go out with a succession of uninteresting men and meet her girlfriends at Starbucks for coffee and visit Frank and his family on holidays. She could settle back into her comfortable, decorator-designed high-rise apartment overlooking Lake Michigan and never think about Eric and Phoebe Norvald again.

  But she knew she wouldn’t be able to shut Phoebe out of her mind. It was easier, she decided helplessly, to banish a man from her thoughts than an adorable child whose welfare mattered to her more than she had dreamed possible.

  So she wouldn’t go back to Chicago yet. McBryde Industries didn’t need her nearly as much as Phoebe did. Molly would stay in Greensea Springs, and maybe she’d make some progress in convincing Eric to stop this nonsense of dragging his daughter all over the place in search of who knows what. Maybe the things she’d said this afternoon had impressed him in some small way, and maybe they hadn’t. But if Molly left, she’d never find out if her input had helped.

  When she got back to Fiona, all was quiet and dark. Phoebe was asleep in her bunk with the door open, and the door to Eric’s stateroom was securely closed. He would never leave Phoebe alone on Fiona or anywhere else, Molly was certain of that. So it couldn’t have been Eric who rushed out of the Blossom Cabaret right after Molly’s performance. That had only been Molly’s imagination working overtime.

  She went back up on deck and stared for a long time at the reflections on the water. She wasn’t sleepy at all. She was wide awake and aware of the ramifications of staying on Fiona. But she’d come to terms with the reality that she wasn’t, at this point, capable of leaving.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’ll be working on Miss Take in slip 22 today,” Eric told Molly without preamble when she appeared on deck the next morning. “Phoebe can come with me.”

  Phoebe, though she looked rebellious, said nothing.

  Molly cleared her throat. “If that’s what you want, fine,” she said evenly.

  “It’s not what I want,” Phoebe said. “I need a new pad of paper for art class so I can get started on my assignment. The teacher told us the kind to buy. The store’s on Water Street, and I was thinking I could go there this morning.”

  “It’s Sunday, honey. The store won’t be open.”

  “My teacher said it would be. He said it’s a drugstore.”

  “Well, Harold Pauling is expecting me to show up on time to assess the problems on his boat. He’s planning a fishing trip soon, and he’s eager for Miss Take to be ready.”

  “Molly and I could go get the paper,” Phoebe suggested.

  Eric sighed and pushed his hat back on his head. “Molly? What say you?”

  “Sure,” Molly said, holding her breath. Eric might still be on his kick of wanting exclusive rights to Phoebe. On the other hand, maybe this week’s extended togetherness was wearing thin. In the past few days, he and Phoebe had gone on a bird-w
atching expedition, to a children’s story hour at the library and to buy groceries, all without her.

  Eric hesitated, but he finally gave his grudging permission. “All right. Far be it from me to stifle the work of a budding artist. Draw me a picture of yourself, will you, Peanut?”

  “Oh, Dad, I’m not much good at drawing people.”

  “Then why am I paying for this art course, huh?” He grinned at his daughter.

  “So I’ll be a happy camper, right?”

  “Yeah, right. We hope to have only happy campers around here.” He sneaked a glance at Molly.

  Molly only raised her brows. Truth be told, she didn’t like being left out, but she and Micki had gone to a movie one night, and she’d gone for several long walks around town.

  Eric, still waiting for Molly to speak, drained the coffee from his mug. When she didn’t say anything, he seemed chastened and dug deep into his pocket, withdrawing a wad of bills. “Here, Molly. This is to pay for Phoebe’s paper.”

  “I don’t—”

  He pressed it into her hand. “We’re not a charity.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said.

  “I pay our way, Molly. That’s how I want it.”

  She accepted the money, and Eric swung up onto the deck. “See you around three, Phoebe.” With one last unreadable glance back at Molly, he hurried down the dock.

  “Did my dad give you a lot of money?” Phoebe asked with interest.

  “Enough to pay for your paper and a bit extra.”

  “Will you keep the extra?”

  “Of course not. I don’t need it.” Molly stuffed the bills into the pocket of her jeans.

  “My dad says you have lots. He says you’re an air mattress.”

  “He says I’m a what?”

  “An air mattress. It means you’re going to inherit a whole bunch of money.”

  Laughter bubbled up in Molly’s throat, but she didn’t want to hurt Phoebe’s feelings, so she held it back.