“Good riddance.” Mandy balanced on an old wood ladder, painting the wall where the fire had been, wishing she could just as easily paint over Ben’s objections to keep Hannah.
The plumber had come and gone. The van filled with supplies from the mail hub in Santa Rosa had come and gone. The mail truck with the day’s mail had come and gone. A trend, this coming and going from her life. Take Ben, for example.
Don’t think of Ben.
Unfortunately, that was all she was thinking about.
“He’ll be back.” Utley turned his face to the sun. “Pests always come back.”
It took Mandy a moment to realize Utley wasn’t talking about Ben.
“Shh,” she said. “Riley might be listening and thinking we want him back. Don’t jinx us.”
“We’re already jinxed.” Olivia shoved mail into post office boxes.
“We? Us? That’s the first time you’ve included me.” Utley sounded miffed.
A ruckus down the road drew their attention. Hannah rode her pink bike toward them, towing a red wagon behind her.
“Hey, you,” Utley said when she rode into the driveway and stopped. “Who are you?”
“I’m Hannah Thompson.” She blinked at him from behind her serious glasses. “And I’m going to be a veterinarian.” Her eyebrows pinched. “Or a librarian. I love animals and books.”
“Hey, Hannah.” Olivia waved. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”
“Okay.” Hannah tucked her flyaway hair behind her ears.
She was adorable. How could Ben even think about giving her up? And for what? A job? Mandy wanted to shake him.
Utley’s jaw worked as he tried to stay serious. “Well, Hannah Thompson, future vet and bookworm, what can we do for you?”
She set her kickstand and got off her bike. “Grandpa Keith told Granny Vanessa that you had a raccoon problem, and then Ben told Grandpa Keith that you should shoot the raccoon.” She turned spectacled eyes their way, taking them in. “I’m glad you don’t have guns out. I was worried you might shoot the raccoon before I could come to the rescue.” She wrestled the cage from the wagon to the ground with a clatter and then surveyed the grounds. “Where did you see the critter last?”
“Riley loved the hedges.” Mandy set the brush down on top of the paint can. “You aren’t going to try to trap him.”
“It won’t hurt.” She dragged the wire cage across the asphalt. The sound made the red-winged blackbirds in the nearby trees take flight. “I got this from Great-Grandpa Felix. I’m good at catching animals.”
“He might have moved on.” Olivia shut and locked the mailboxes. “We haven’t seen him.”
“Are you sure Riley wasn’t a girl?” Hannah stopped mere feet from Riley’s hedge. Her face was red from exertion. “If she was a girl, she could have gone somewhere to have kittens.” Hannah shaded her eyes and looked around. “There’s a house back there. Does anyone live there?”
“No.” Mandy darted inside her office to close up her laptop since she was ready to do the afternoon mail run. She rushed from one thing to another, but it finally felt as if the post office was poised to thrive.
“That’s where I’ll look.” Hannah took some marshmallows from her pink shoe bag and put them in the trap. “Empty houses are where wild animals go.”
“She’s got a point,” Utley said. “Someone should tear that house down before that raccoon eats wires over there and burns the place.”
“Riley, the arsonist.” Olivia began putting things away and closing the rolling window above the customer service desk because Mandy had decided it didn’t make sense to be open for business while she delivered mail.
“Raccoons don’t start fires,” Hannah said staunchly.
“I was joking.” Olivia locked the window.
“Let’s not joke about fire.” Mandy returned to the mail room and folded the ladder, storing it against the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief. Organization was everything. Ben couldn’t fault the post office now.
Don’t think about Ben.
“We’re closing up, Utley,” Mandy said.
The old man heaved himself up and moved slowly toward the stairs. “I was needing a smoke anyway.”
Mandy folded his chair and put it by the ladder.
Hannah shoved her way into the bushes, dragging the cage behind her.
“Are you going to the volunteer fire department meeting tonight?” Olivia examined her nails for damage. Finding none, she looked at Mandy. “You should go and show Ben that kiss meant nothing.”
“I’m not going.” Mandy didn’t want to have a discussion about Ben, especially not in front of Hannah. “Shouldn’t you call Hannah’s grandmother and make sure she knows where she is?”
“Why?” Olivia retrieved her purse from its hook by the office door.
“Because it’s the adult thing to do.”
“Oh, is shirking your civic duty adult, as well?” Olivia sauntered toward the stairs and said in a put-upon voice, “Hannah, does your granny know where you are?”
The new fire alarms shrieked. Outside, the bell clanged.
Mandy ran for the extinguisher. And then the sprinklers came on.
Utley and Olivia managed to make it to the parking lot, dry as toast.
Mandy stood in the middle of the mail room, drenched and searching for a fire.
In the distance, the whine of a fire truck’s siren built.
Hannah emerged from the bushes, pushed her glasses up her nose and said, “Oops.”
“Turn it off,” Mandy cried, racing for the steps. “Whatever you did, turn it off.”
The little girl was still pushing buttons and turning valves every which way when the fire truck pulled into the parking lot, lights and sirens blazing.
Ben took in Mandy’s position by the box, and her dripping state with a shake of his head. “Looks like faulty wiring to me.”
“Faulty? But...” Mandy bit back an accusation toward Hannah. She wasn’t sure Hannah had tripped anything, and she knew firsthand how it felt to be accused of something you didn’t do. Admitting defeat, she came out from behind the bushes. “Can you fix it?”
“Let me see.” Ben leaned in, his long arms reaching the control panel without him having to wade into the shrubbery. A moment later, the water stopped and the alarms ceased. He went over to Hannah and knelt in front of her. “Han, I’ve been searching for you everywhere. You need to tell Granny Vanessa where you’re going.”
Hannah made a huffing noise, hands on her slim hips. “I told her this morning. There were baby frogs to be relocated. Iggy needed to be fed. And a raccoon saved.”
“She thought you meant in the backyard.”
“Ben,” Hannah said in a voice that spoke of patience hard-won. “The only animal in the backyard is a cricket.”
Mandy hurried to the mail room, waving to Keith, who was on the phone, presumably with his wife. She stopped at the top of the stairs to wring out her shirt and her hair.
“Han, we talked about this,” Ben said. “No disappearing.”
“I told her.” Hannah sounded like she was going to cry.
The post office was flooded. Mandy’s hopes were crushed. All that hard work...
She turned away, unable to face it. Olivia was taking pictures with her cell phone and Utley had walked to the street to have a smoke.
“Okay, listen,” Ben said to Hannah. “I have a department radio. It’s like a cell phone, see?” He held it out to the girl.
“It’s not like a cell phone.” Hannah’s chin jutted mutinously. “It’s big and bulky.”
Ben ignored her complaint and bent over to show her. “Push this button to talk.” He pressed a button on the side and spoke into radio. “Hello, Grandpa Keith. I found Hannah.”
“Copy that,” came a staticky reply.
Hannah’s eyes widened.
“You can listen to Grandpa and I talk to each other.” He handed her the radio. “All I ask is that you call me on that and tell me where you are.”
“Like...all the time?”
“Every time you ride to a new place, peanut.”
Hannah cradled the radio in two hands. “Mom used to have a radio like this.”
Ben swung Hannah into his arms. His gaze met Mandy’s over her shoulder. “And now you have one, too.”
How could he give that little girl up without a fight? Mandy almost shed a tear.
She had no time for a breakdown. Luckily, they’d closed up before the sprinklers came on. Her supplies were saved. The mail was either in post office boxes or the Jeep. But her laptop and the computer they used at the service window were most likely ruined. It was another setback she didn’t need.
“Olivia, can you mop?”
“You’re going to need more than a mop. And I can’t help you. My shift with Hannah starts in twenty minutes.”
Mandy gritted her teeth. She knew better than to rely on anyone.
There had to be a silver lining here somewhere.
Of course. This had to be rock bottom.
And then the fire alarm went off again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I WANT TO go down by the river.” Hannah skipped ahead of Olivia with blond ponytails that bounced on the shoulders of her pink T-shirt.
It was Olivia’s first day as the girl’s babysitter. She’d painted teddy bears on her fingernails in honor of the occasion. Not that Hannah had appreciated her art. She’d told Olivia they needed to get out of the house so Granny Vanessa could nap. And then she’d dragged her outside into the summer heat.
Olivia hadn’t had a chance to tell Vanessa about Ben’s faux pas. She didn’t want to talk about Ben and Mandy kissing in front of The Youngster. Said child might have lost Olivia her post office job, which wasn’t much of a loss. After the fire alarm and sprinklers went off a second time, Ben had declared the building unsafe for operation. He’d gotten on the phone and tried to talk to Mandy’s boss. Meanwhile, Mandy got on the phone and tried to get Perry the Electrician to return.
Hannah continued skipping. She had blond ponytails that shouldn’t be bouncing because Hannah wasn’t a bouncy girl. She bounced anyway.
“We can go to the river,” Olivia promised. “But first I want to check out the winery.”
Hannah stopped skipping and turned around. “What’s a winery?”
“A place where they make wine.” A place where the dude worked. She had plans for the dude. And Hannah was the perfect excuse to wander onto winery property without looking like a lovesick teenager.
“Are there animals at this place?”
With Olivia’s luck, no. “Let’s go see.”
“Okay.” Hannah skipped ahead, turning toward the town square.
“Hey, this way is quicker.” Olivia pointed to the alley behind El Rosal.
“I have to make my rounds.” The little girl kept skipping.
It was the first inkling Olivia had that she might not be in charge.
They checked on a family of doves. They pet obese cats and friendly dogs. They sat on a rock in a field in silence waiting to see what kind of creatures might show themselves. They wound their way through the town, never in a straight line, until Olivia smiled with grim determination and thought about the benefits of working for the post office. It seemed to be beating babysitting. The nail polish bottles in her purse rattled in agreement.
Finally, their path came close to the winery, and Olivia charged down the gravel driveway toward her man.
“Oh, it’s a farm,” Hannah said, skipping past her, a marathon runner in training. “A barn and a house. And look, chickens.”
There was a big red barn, and a two-story white house with dormer windows. And sadly, chickens. A few people sat on the patio drinking wine. Olivia felt sophisticated just watching them being sophisticated.
Hannah fell to her knees on the dirt near a big brown chicken and began to make clucking noises. The chicken strutted closer, circling Hannah as if taking her measure.
“Hey, mail girl!” The dude had come out of the house. He waved at her. He was still tall, still cute and—bonus!—had a clean shirt on. “What are you doing here?”
Olivia’s legs felt as if she’d been dancing all night. She was afraid she might reach the dude and collapse at his feet. “I’m babysitting.” Lame! Lame! Say something else. “And you have chickens.” That was worse!
Crossing the parking lot toward her, the dude chuckled as if he found Olivia both charming and amusing, which made Olivia’s legs stop shaking so much. “I have some packs of chicken feed for the tourists.” He tossed her a small burlap bag with a drawstring.
Hannah’s brown chicken ran toward Olivia, pecking the ground around her feet, closer and closer until Olivia thought she might peck her pink toenails.
“Olivia,” Hannah said in an aggravated voice. “Feed her!”
Olivia managed to open the bag and shake some feed on the ground, backing away and smiling the way Mandy did when she wasn’t happy but didn’t want anyone to know. How sad was it that Mandy had wanted to be an astronomer and ended up working at the post office? How sad was it that the dude was turning back to the guests on the patio?
The bag was empty. The chicken moved closer to the patio with the wine drinkers. The dude went back inside the farmhouse.
“Let’s go,” Hannah said, dragging Olivia by the hand. “There are other animals that need me.”
Mission accomplished, Olivia went willingly.
“What’s wrong with you?” Hannah tugged harder.
“I’m going to marry that man,” Olivia said dreamily.
“You are?” Hannah slowed down, apparently a bit of a romantic. “What’s his name?”
“I have no idea.”
* * *
THE COUNTRY DUET blaring on the radio was old-school. They crooned about love and twanged about their problems and blamed each other for their homely looking kids. Mandy could almost laugh.
“We thought you could use some help.”
Standing in a large puddle and feeling as if she was only pushing water around with her mop, Mandy walked out of her office to see who could possibly want to help clean up the fire-alarm flood at the post office. Olivia had taken off, claiming she had to babysit. Ben had left, but not before notifying Mandy’s supervisor that she’d failed a fire inspection.
It was Keith. He stood in the parking lot at the edge of the loading dock in his blue navy fire uniform. Only his head and shoulders were visible at the floor level. His face was slightly flushed, and his breathing was a little uneven.
There was more than bad fish impacting his health. She hoped those meds he received would help him breathe easier.
“I’m afraid this is a lost cause.” Mandy didn’t want to admit it out loud, but there it was. The mail was safe, but the rest...
This was an epic fail. Other failures, other losses, came tumbling back.
She’d been unable to make her mother love her. She’d been unable to help Grandma beat cancer. She’d been unable to talk sense into Grandpa about whom he left the house to. And now? This. She’d done nothing wonderful here.
“I wasn’t sure how bad the damage was, so we brought a bit of everything and everyone.” Ben’s mother appeared at the stairs holding an armful of towels.
Mandy walked into the middle of the mail room, her feet making a splash with every step. “That might not be enough.”
Agnes came around the post office corner. “I brought a clothesline. You’d be amazed at how quickly papers dry when they hang from a clothespin. Had a roof leak once. D
ripped all over my tax return.”
Mildred sat on her walker behind Agnes. “And I brought chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate makes everything better.”
“Which is why I brought a thermos of hot chocolate,” Rose said, completing the presence of the town councilwomen.
Eunice appeared behind them with another armload of towels. “If I would’ve known we were making an entrance, I would’ve prepared a witty remark.”
Others reported in. People Mandy barely knew or had only met once on her route.
“You’re here to help me?” Touched, Mandy’s eyes welled with tears. Not since Grandpa was dying had a group pulled together to support her.
“It’s what we do in Harmony Valley,” Agnes said. “We pull together.”
“If you don’t mind—” Keith cleared his throat “—I’ll organize the troops.”
“By all means,” Mandy said.
It seemed like a band of elves had descended upon the post office. A clothesline was hung in her office and papers pinned to it. Vanessa submerged Mandy’s laptop in a large plastic tub filled with rice, claiming it worked with cell phones and was worth a try. Counters were dried. Floors, too. Her listing office chair was thrown in the Dumpster. Another appeared in its place, donated by Eunice, who claimed to never sit at a desk. Every drawer and every cupboard was opened and inspected for water damage.
Hours later, Mandy thanked them all with a hug. They’d forever be her angels.
Finally, the only ones left were Keith and Vanessa. The three of them lugged five-gallon construction buckets filled with wet towels to the parking lot.
“I talked to your supervisor,” Keith said in a hitching voice. He leaned on the side of the truck while Mandy and Vanessa dumped wet towels in the bed. “He said it might take time for the place to be rewired, but he was relieved to hear it wasn’t as bad as some people feared.” He exchanged a glance with his wife and then checked his pager.
“Stop.” Vanessa gently swatted his hand away from the device. “Firemen always look at their pagers when they want to leave.”
Love, Special Delivery Page 17
