The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  “Some storm, hey?” Lindsay said.

  “Pretty wild,” he agreed. A tiny rivulet streamed down his head, dripping onto the shoulders of his black knit polo shirt. He set the basket on the floor and used one of the towels he’d rescued from the line to wipe himself dry. “How are you doing?”

  She shrugged self-consciously and went back to sorting the toys, putting cars and trucks in one plastic basket, small people figures in another. “Okay. I was out for a bike ride when the sky went black. I barely made it back ahead of the rain.”

  He averted his eyes, focusing on wiping his damp shoes on the doormat. It was too hard to look at her sometimes. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to her mother, and from there, went places they shouldn’t. Dwelling on things that would never be.

  Pushing the screen door, he cast his gaze back across the yard. “Where did Carol get to?” he wondered aloud. Then he caught a glimpse of his daughter’s white blouse at the garage window, moving around inside. He closed the door and turned back to Lindsay. “Where are the babies?”

  “Still napping, I guess. Alex went down early. He’s got the sniffles.”

  “He okay?”

  “Carol says it’s just a summer cold. I guess the medicine makes him pretty sleepy, though. We gave him an early lunch, but the poor little guy fell asleep in his high chair, facedown in his noodles.”

  Tucker felt the ache in his chest start up again. She had a great smile. Nothing like her mother in looks, apart from the fine bone structure. Lindsay had to be at least a full head taller, to start with. Then there was the matter of those dark eyes, the wild flame of hair and the stubborn determination that seemed to go with it.

  In the car wreck she and David had been in, Lindsay’s leg had been crushed. Mariah said she still limped when she was tired, but she swam on her high-school swim team and played right wing in a mixed hockey league—the latter a passion picked up from David, an amateur player himself. She was one tough kid.

  The porch steps creaked, and he reached back to open the door. Carol blew in on a gust, carrying the last of the towels from the line. “Phew! Thanks,” she said gratefully.

  “What took you? You’re half soaked.”

  “Alex’s tricycle was on the grass. I went to put it in the garage and discovered tennis balls all over the floor.”

  “Oops! My fault, sorry,” Lindsay said. “I was teaching him how to do a slap shot this morning. We were using the badminton net for a goal. I strung it up between the work bench and the motorcycle.”

  Carol smiled and nodded. “Thought I’d better pick it up. I had visions of Michael coming in from work after dark and getting himself hung up like a fly in a spiderweb.” Her husband was a patrolman doing twelve-hour shifts with the Fairfax County Police. She turned to her father. “What brings you out in the middle of the day? How come you’re not at work?”

  “I had some stuff to do at home. I was wondering if you still had your brother’s laptop computer.”

  “His laptop? Sure, it’s here. Do you need it?”

  “I wouldn’t mind borrowing it for a few days.”

  “It’s in the den, I think. We haven’t used it much. Take it for as long as you need it. What’s wrong with your PC?”

  “Nothing, but I have to go back out on the road. I thought I could use the laptop to catch up on some paperwork.” He felt a guilty twinge at lying to her.

  “I guess I’m not supposed to ask where you’re going, as usual?’

  He shrugged. “You know how it is.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” Carol said, shaking her head. “Want some coffee? I just brewed a fresh pot.”

  He hesitated, shifting the basket. “Maybe just a quick cup. Where should I put this laundry?”

  “I’ll take it with me,” Carol said. “I need to run up and change into dry clothes.”

  “I’ll get the laptop,” Lindsay said. “It’s on the bookcase in the den, next to the sofa bed. I saw it there last night.”

  “I’ll get it on my way back,” Carol told her. “You guys stay and visit.”

  After she left, Lindsay turned back to Frank and caught him looking at her arms. She stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her shorts. He stood back by the door, shuffling self-consciously.

  “So,” he said finally, “your mom’s went to the opening of the Romanov treasures.”

  “Yeah. At least, that’s the official story.”

  Tucker heard the scathing tone, the kind of rampant disdain only a teenager can muster. “You’re not buying it?”

  “Awfully convenient Paul Chaney just happens to be out there, too, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tucker felt his gut contract, but he kept his tone neutral. “It’s a pretty big deal, this show. The Russian foreign minister came over to open it. That’s the kind of thing Chaney would normally cover. I’m not surprised he’s there.”

  “Well, maybe, except I know what he’s really covering.”

  “Listen, Lindsay—”

  “They think I’m stupid, you know? She let me go with her to Paris. I wanted to go this time, too, but she said no way, she’d be too busy. Yeah, right. Busy entertaining Paul in her hotel room.”

  Tucker’s response was immediate. “That’s no way to talk,” he said sternly.

  “But it’s true! I tried to call her at her hotel last night, and guess who picked up, like he owned the place?”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s your mother, and I don’t think it’s right for you to talk about her that way.”

  Lindsay fell silent, finally offering a grudging, “Sorry. But they make me so mad, you know?”

  He knew exactly, but it wasn’t his place to commiserate with her. If Chaney made Mariah happy, so be it. “I thought you liked him,” he said.

  “Ha!”

  “Your friends probably think it’s a big deal you know him.”

  “Oh, sure they do,” Lindsay said disdainfully. “They always want to know if he’s going to be over at our house so they can just happen to drop by. People who’d never even talked to me before started getting all friendly after the paper ran that picture of Mom with Paul the night he got that press award. And, of course,” she added, “wouldn’t you just know that Paul would tell the reporter who Mom was, and who her father was—like, that’s the only reason a big shot like him would be hanging around with her. Now the popular people are always saying hi to me in the hall, when before, I was just another nerdy insect under their feet.”

  Tucker tried not to smile. So, she had a temper as well to go with that red hair, did she? “Kind of makes you wonder who your real friends are, huh?”

  “Oh, I know who my friends are,” she said firmly. “I’m not sure my mom does, though.”

  Carol came back into the kitchen wearing dry clothes, her wet hair brushed. She tiptoed to the cupboard for coffee mugs, looking reluctant to interrupt their conversation. By the expression on her face, Tucker knew she and Lindsay had already had this conversation. Well, good. Unlike Steven, at least Lindsay had someone she could talk to about things that were bothering her. He was glad for that.

  On the other hand, things couldn’t be too easy for Mariah these days, either. “Paul was a help to your mom when your dad passed away,” he reminded Lindsay.

  “Fine. He was Dad’s friend. That doesn’t mean he should be dating his wife. And you know what? If she weren’t Ben Bolt’s daughter, I bet you he wouldn’t be, either.”

  The girl was bright, no doubt about that. Secretly, Tucker had always harbored the same suspicion about Chaney, though he wasn’t about to tell Lindsay. He had no business interfering in Mariah’s life. He wanted what was right for her—for her own sake, and not because of her father, whose books he’d never read and whose reputation he didn’t think much of.

  “How about that coffee?” Carol said, the fingers of one hand looped through three mug handles, the other hand reaching for the pot.

  Lindsay’s hands came out of her pockets and she scrambled to help. “Here,
let me get those.”

  “They’re kind of tangled,” Carol said. “I’d better—”

  She froze, and when Tucker followed the direction of her stunned look, he realized why.

  “Lindsay, your hair!” Carol exclaimed.

  The hood of the girl’s shirt had slipped off her head, and the thick mass of hair Tucker had thought was jammed inside wasn’t there. All that was left was a crop of short, spiky curls.

  He was taken aback. “You cut it all off,” he said in a deft mastery of the obvious.

  Lindsay touched it self-consciously. “I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while. When I rode past the Supercuts place up at the corner just now, there were no other customers inside. So, I figured, what the heck? Just do it, right?” She said it a little too brightly.

  “Oh, my,” Carol said.

  Lindsay’s face fell. “Is it really awful?”

  “No, no,” Carol said quickly, “it’s not. Honestly. It looks really cute, as a matter of fact. It’s just a shock, that’s all.”

  “Uncle Frank? What do you think.”

  “I suppose.”

  Her dark eyes glistened. “You hate it.”

  “No, I don’t hate it. It looks nice. It’s just…well…why?”

  “Because it was hot and heavy, and it gets in the way when I’m swimming, and…” The tears started to overflow. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have done it, should I? I look horrible. I feel so stupid.”

  Carol set aside the coffee pot and put down the mugs. “You have no reason to feel stupid,” she said, wrapping the girl in her arms. “I love it, Lins. I really do. It’s a change, that’s all. We’ve all been used to seeing you with long hair ever since you were a little girl, so naturally it takes some getting used to. But you look gorgeous. Very sophisticated.”

  Lindsay pulled away enough to look her in the eye. “Honest? You really think so?”

  “Absolutely.” Carol smiled and wiped the tears off the girl’s cheeks, then passed a hand over the short, coppery crop. “It’s so soft! It’s going to be a lot easier to take care of, too. You’ll love that. Anyway, the beauty of hair is that if you change your mind, it grows back. But how are you going to know what you like if you never try anything new?”

  Lindsay nodded. “That’s true. And my friends won’t see it until I get back from California, so I should be used to it by then.”

  “There you go,” Carol said encouragingly.

  “Does your mother know you were planning to do this?” Tucker asked.

  Lindsay’s dark eyes flashed. “No. I wanted to tell her last night that I was thinking about getting it done before I left, but she wasn’t in, was she? And I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask Paul Chaney for permission.”

  “Is she going to be okay with it?” Tucker pressed.

  Carol shot him a warning look that said, Back off, Dad. Don’t make a federal case out of this.

  Lindsay folded her decorated arms across her chest. “It’s my hair. Anyway, she never said I couldn’t. Better to do it when she wasn’t around. Every time I mentioned it, she got all teary, like, ‘Oh, no! My baby! Don’t cut your beautiful hair!”’ Her voice had pitched itself up into a high, mocking defensiveness. Fearful, defiant, yet needing reassurance.

  Carol laughed and nudged her—seeking to break the tension, Tucker knew, and to remind him to stop mixing in where he had no business. “You are her baby, Lins,” she said, retrieving the coffee pot. “Might as well face it. That’s never going to change. I guarantee, when Charlotte gets to be your age, I’m going to be a totally neurotic old nag. She’s going to hate me.”

  Lindsay got the mugs and put them on the table, then draped an arm around Carol’s shoulders. “Nah, you’ll be way cool. And my mom won’t care,” she added to Tucker. “Not much, anyway. Like Carol said, it’s just hair. It grows back.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he said, smoothing a hand over his own head. Lindsay grinned.

  “Sit down, you two,” Carol said.

  He settled onto an oak chair that was padded in ruffled blue gingham. Lindsay folded her long legs onto another one opposite him and leaned her elbows on the table, chin resting in her hands as she studied him.

  “How come you never let your hair grow out?” she asked.

  Carol passed behind him with the coffee pot, patting his head with her free hand. “Bald as a baby’s butt.”

  Tucker shrugged. “Don’t know. Habit.”

  “Have you always shaved it?”

  He nodded. “Since I was in the navy.”

  “Dad was a frogman,” Carol said, returning the carafe to the counter and settling on a chair beside him. “Mr. Demolition Man.”

  “That why you started?” Lindsay asked.

  He nodded. “More practical for underwater work.”

  Carol poked him in the ribs. “Liar. It was sheer vanity. I’ll show you his high-school graduation picture, Lindsay. His hairline was receding even then. Inherited the fringe-over-the-ears look from a long line of Scottish bookkeeper ancestors, so he shaved it all off to look tough and get the babes. Right, Dad?”

  He shook his head and scowled into his coffee mug.

  Lindsay closed one eye and cupped an inverted hand, peering through it. “I’m trying to picture you with hair. Black, like your eyebrows, I guess?”

  “That’s the Lakota Sioux,” Carol said. “His great-great-grandfather was a Plains warrior in South Dakota. Did you know that?”

  “Like Dances with Wolves? Cool.”

  “Ancient history,” Tucker said, secretly flattered to be the object of all this attention. “Anyway, it’s probably more gray than black by now.”

  “Think an aging Bozo the Clown,” Carol suggested.

  He gave her a playful tap on the jaw. “You watch your step, little girl.”

  The two young women smiled.

  For the next half hour thunder rumbled outside, and rain beat a steady tattoo on the roof, but inside Carol’s cheerful blue and yellow kitchen, the three of them sat companionably, drinking their coffee.

  At one point, a hollow-sounding snuffle echoed though the room, like water coming down a long copper tube. Carol paused to listen to the two baby monitors on the counter, her face set in that look of intense concentration that is the private domain of young mothers. Watching her, Tucker saw Joanne, standing outside the nursery door, listening intently as their twin babies slept in their matching blue-and pink-canopied cribs.

  Carol was the daughter of his first great love, he reflected. And across the table, that lovely, copper-haired girl on the brink of becoming a woman was the daughter of his other. He’d have liked to try to be a father to her, too, now that she needed one. He could never be anything more than an also-ran after David, he knew, but maybe he could help her through these rocky years. He like to think he could do better than he had with Carol and Steven. What was the point of getting older, after all, if you didn’t get a little smarter, learn from your painful lessons?

  He held his cup between his big palms, his gaze moving between Lindsay and Carol, who were still talking about ancestors. The company of women was a gratifying thing, he decided, thinking of not only these two, but their mothers, and Patty and Wanetta. Most of his male friends had been colleagues, and when his career had stumbled, those friendships had, too. After Steven had died, he’d had a few visits from guys who felt duty-bound to offer condolences. But they always looked relieved when the time came to go, backslapping him on the way out, making keep-in-touch promises they both knew would never be kept. The fraying of another man’s life made them nervous, like a disease that might be communicable. In the space of a few short weeks, most of his male friends had drifted away.

  The phone rang, and at a nod from Carol, Lindsay got up to answer.

  “I’ve been getting a preview of life with a teenager,” Carol told her father. “The phone’s hardly stopped ringing since Lindsay got here, but it’s never for me.”

  “Ha!” he chortled. “Nice to see yo
u put up with it for a change instead of your old man. I called earlier, by the way.”

  “I heard the ring,” she said, nodding. “Lindsay was out on the bike and I was nursing the baby, so I let the machine get it.”

  “Hello?” Lindsay said. Then she grimaced at the two of them. “Hi, Mom.”

  Tucker’s mind flashed on the computer diskette in his back pocket and Chap Korman’s package out in his car. He caught Lindsay’s eye and mimed a phone at his own ear.

  She nodded. “Uncle Frank’s here,” she told her mother. “He wants to talk to you.” She slumped back down into her chair. “Me? Not much. Except—well, I got my hair cut.” She glanced at Carol and rolled her eyes melodramatically. “A little while ago. I went out for a bike ride, and it was really hot. I went by the Supercuts near here and decided to go ahead and do it…. Pretty short…. Carol likes it. You can ask Uncle Frank yourself. So, are you having fun out there?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject. Her finger traced a pattern on the tabletop, and her mouth tightened into a grim line. “Yes, Mother, it certainly was a surprise. You could’ve warned me, you know. I felt like an idiot…. Look, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care, all right?”

  From the tears welling in her eyes again, Tucker guessed she did care, very much.

  Lindsay listened for a while. “I just wonder when you were going to get around to telling me he was there. Or were you not going to mention it? You know, Mom, it would’ve been nice if you’d been honest and told me that’s the real reason you didn’t want me to go with you.”

  She rocked back in the chair, wedging the phone between her ear and shoulder while her arms crossed defiantly. Tucker glanced at Carol, who was getting to her feet.

  “I forgot the laptop,” she mouthed, pointing down the hall toward the den.

  “Whatever,” Lindsay was saying. “Look, Mom, you do what you want. I’ve gotta go. I’m putting Uncle Frank on the line now.”

  She straight-armed the phone to Tucker, then got up and walked over to the counter. Opening the dishwasher, she put her cup in, then closed it and stood with her back to him, staring out the window.