She hated to bash Gary, tried not to in case one day he stepped up to the plate and was actually a dad to the boys. Once they were spoken, she couldn’t take negative words back, but sometimes they just slipped out.
“How come we can’t have the child support to buy comics?”
“Because it goes toward food and electricity.”
“I don’t want electricity,” Matt grumbled, stacking his fists and lowering his chin on top of them.
Lucy smiled. “But you use it every time you leave the light on in your bedroom.” She drank a swallow of iced tea. “Dad helps, so I don’t want you to think he doesn’t do anything.”
It was important to Lucy that the boys didn’t hate their father, even though he was an absentee dad. Sons looked at adult males as role models, and Gary Carpenter was surely no role model. So Lucy had to improvise and make him appear a level better than he was.
His lack of being here still annoyed her in that he didn’t participate in Jason and Matt’s lives. There was no excuse for Gary to be down in Mexico with another woman. He should have stayed in Boise, been there for her sons and been a dad.
But Gary had his own agenda and there wasn’t a darn thing Lucy could do to change how her ex-husband thought. She’d wasted enough time on that over the course of their marriage.
The food came, and she and the boys enjoyed a family dinner together. It felt good. Right. She forgot about past hurts, the wrong choices, and just enjoyed. She even let the boys order dessert, and just as they were finishing off the last spoonfuls of chocolate syrup in melted vanilla ice cream sundaes, Drew came into Woolly Burgers with the other Little League coaches.
The group stopped by the table and said hello to the boys. The coach Matt had was pleasant and attractive. Too bad he wore a gold wedding ring. The fact that she noticed had Lucy silently chastising herself. He complimented Matt on his fielding, then said he’d see him day after tomorrow. The men filled a table, but Drew lagged behind.
“How’s it going, Jason?” he asked.
“Okay.”
Lucy kept her gaze leveled on Drew, wondering about his past and wishing she knew more. How could he have tossed away a great career for an addiction? She’d never understand why someone would cave to the lure of drugs. She hardly ever took a pain reliever, unless she had bad cramps or a headache. Drew’s past didn’t make sense and perhaps the Greenbaums didn’t know the whole story.
Drew shifted his stance, emphasizing the strength in his well-muscled thighs. The faded blue jeans he wore fit him snugly, but they weren’t too tight. A striped, button-down Oxford shirt made his shoulders appear quite broad. He tucked the tails in, so Lucy could see his stomach was flat, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. For his age, he was in great shape. She couldn’t help admiring him, and when she caught herself, she looked away.
“We’ll be doing dailies at nine,” Drew said to Jason, “but if you want to come an hour early, I’ll let you pitch some balls to me.”
“Yeah, sure. I could do that.” Jason seemed to really want to, and it made Lucy take notice. He’d complained about having to try out for Little League, but when he’d found out he’d made the team, he had looked pleased. She knew baseball would be good for him. Too bad he had to be around Drew….
She wished she could figure out if he was fit or unfit to coach. Surely the Little League commission had checked him out. They were very stringent in their guidelines. So many parents sued now, it was ridiculous.
“Just make sure you bring your doctor’s release.” Drew’s profile drew her attention—his nose and straight forehead, the shape of his mouth.
“I’ll get it.” Lucy crossed her arms, perhaps a subconscious move to ward away thoughts of him because she found her reaction to him vaguely disturbing.
His attention turned to her and he smiled. A tingle started in the pit of her belly. She hated that he could cause her to feel a little flutter. “How’re you?”
“Fine.”
“Everything go all right at the Greenbaums?”
“I got the job.”
“You’ll like working for them. They’re good people.”
Lucy wondered how good Drew would think they were if he knew they talked about his past, even with favor and sympathy.
“Hey, Coach.” Matt, who had quietly listened to the exchange, finally burst in. “Do you think if I got one of your baseball cards, you could autograph it to me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Gee, thanks!”
Drew glanced over his shoulder to the table where his friends sat. “I better go. See you around.”
A moment later, Lucy paid the bill and drove the boys home.
Switching on lights, she closed the kitchen window to ward off the chill mountain air that had settled in. She looked at the stack of mail on the counter, and watched Jason finger through the envelopes. He didn’t have to tell her what he was hoping for.
She’d gone to their post office box earlier in the day, and what he wanted had come.
He grabbed an envelope and waved it at her. “Sweet! My car insurance money. When can we buy me a replacement truck?” Jason’s face lit up as if it were his birthday. She hated to knock the wind out of his sail, but he’d given her no choice.
“We aren’t,” she replied, walking into the kitchen and getting a glass of water.
“Whadda you mean?”
“I’m not buying you another truck, Jason.”
“Why not?”
“Because you haven’t earned it.”
He lowered the envelope, stared hard at it, then stared hard at her. “That’s bull. You said if I tried out for Little League, I could have another car.”
“I did say that, yes.”
“So you can’t change your mind! It’s not fair.”
“No. When someone doesn’t stick to their end of the bargain about something, it’s not fair.”
“Whadda you mean?”
She gazed at him for a long, long moment, giving him a look that spoke volumes. Only one other time had she looked at him like this.
Then suddenly, he clued in. His shoulders slumped, the light in his eyes dimmed.
“I will keep my promise, since you’re playing baseball,” Lucy said, then raised her tone an octave and infused hope into her next words. “But there’s going to be a delay. I know of a way you can get your truck by summer’s end if you don’t mess up. On anything.”
Her meaning was quite clear and he understood.
Jason frowned, tentatively asked, “How?”
“You’ll go to work. For me.”
“Huh?”
“Starting on Thursday, you’ll be delivering meals that I prepare to the Sunrise Trail Creek Seniors Home each Tuesday and Thursday. I’ve already cleared everything with the staff, and I’ll be making food donations to the home on those days.” Lucy continued in a light tone, but she’d thought this out well in advance and was quite succinct with her plan. “I want you to stay there for a couple of hours, serve the meals to the elderly and then clean up.”
Jason made a face. “I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of old people.”
She raised her brows, put her hands on her hips. “The way I see it, you don’t have a choice, Jason.”
“Can’t I do something else?” She saw the flicker in his eyes as his mind worked. “How about if I apply to be a busboy at Woolly Burgers?”
Lucy smiled, nodded with genuine enthusiasm. “That’s a fantastic idea. You can do that along with the meals at Sunrise.” She inhaled, pleased. “Between the Sunrise, baseball and Woolly’s, you’ll be so busy this summer, you won’t have time for anything else, now will you?”
She let the question hang, hovering between them as if suspended on an invisible thread.
Jason’s mouth pursed. “Okay,” he mumbled, then climbed the stairs to the bedroom he shared with his younger brother.
Lucy stayed in the kitchen a long while, hoping her son would be able to prove himself. She r
emembered her little boy and how he used to be, and she knew he had it in him to do the right thing. He just had to believe in himself.
Last evening had ended on a note of promise, but Lucy’s morning began on a chord of disappointment.
She received a call on her cell just after breakfast.
She pushed the talk button. “Hello?”
Shirley Greenbaum was on the other end. “Lucy, I’m so sorry but we’re going to have to postpone.”
Lucy’s heartbeat slowed to molasses.
Postpone. No income.
Shirley went on, “Our daughter developed a complication with her pregnancy and we’re flying to Los Angeles immediately.”
“I hope it’s nothing serious, Mrs. Greenbaum.”
“The doctors are monitoring her. She had a similar situation with our last grandson. So we’re optimistic. It’s still scary, though.”
After discussing a possible restart date, Lucy disconnected the phone.
Since it wasn’t technically a breach of contract, Lucy had no recourse. The Greenbaums still wanted her to work for them, only she wouldn’t be making any money for a couple of weeks until they returned.
With her mind running on overload, half numb with Shirley’s untimely news, Lucy neatened up the slips of paper on the kitchen counter. A gas receipt for $37.85 to fill her tank. The Little League paperwork. Hospital release.
Looking at the restaurant slip for last night’s dinner—$48.95 on three burgers, drinks and desserts, plus tip—Lucy had a surge of regret for splurging.
If things didn’t turn around, she would have to get a real job with a steady income. Something she hadn’t done since before the boys were born.
But a weekly paycheck was desperately needed. And soon.
Eleven
Spin’s eyesight gave her fits and she ripped out a strong curse beneath her breath. She wore her rhinestone, horn-rim glasses, the filigreed chain around her neck.
Squinting so she could see better, she dabbed some oil paint on the tiny section numbered 45. Or was that 46? For the love of mud. Da Vinci must have had the patience of a saint.
It had taken Spin the better portion of a year to get this far on The Last Supper, only able to work on the paint-by-number scene for small increments before her vision blurred from the strain. But she was making progress. She hoped to finish it before she died.
The Sunrise Trail Creek assisted care home was located by a stretch of the Wood River and appointed modestly in neutral colors—bland walls in the foyer, the floor covered in speckled linoleum. Out back, there was a pond where the residents could feed the geese. Every now and then, Spin liked to watch them, but it saddened her at the same time. They could fly away, go wherever they wanted, and she was stuck here. Dying a little each day.
Her purpose in life was gone. Over.
Back in the old days, she was quite the catch, a real dish. But as time wore on and age faded her beauty to a map of wrinkles and a widow’s peak that turned white-gray, she felt her value ebb.
She used to be a live pistol. Could cut a joke with the best of them, and had attention lavished on her. After Wally died, life in Red Duck without her beloved husband had taken a solitary path. By choice, she hadn’t remarried. Perhaps if she had, she wouldn’t be alone now. But the saying went that women outlived the men they loved, and if the inhabitants in Sunrise were any indication, that was true.
There were more women than men in the facility. And the men who hadn’t lost their hearing altogether, weren’t drooling or wetting themselves sitting in wheelchairs, paid her notice that she didn’t care for. Perverts, the lot of them.
Spin dipped her Grumbacher paintbrush into the yellow-gold mix on her palette. Hand raised, she tried not to let her wrist shake as she put a dot on the canvas. She smeared it and landed a dollop of color on the number 123 portion.
Hell’s bells!
Disgusted, she set the paintbrush down and took a break. She left the glassed-in sunporch and walked outside to look at the pond.
She stood on the covered veranda, her liver-spotted, gnarled hands holding on to the railing. For some ungodly reason, hot tears pooled in her eyes.
She blinked.
Borrowed time. That’s what she was on.
Inhaling, she took a deep breath of the meadow grass, smelled the fragrance of aspen leaves and wild columbine. She held it inside her frail lungs for as long as she could. She wanted to remember for when she got to heaven.
“Hi, Ms. Goodey-Leonard!” one of the staff called cheerfully. Spin turned to see that cute little nurse walking onto the porch with a tall woman following her. “How are you today?”
“I’m still alive.”
The nurse giggled, her fresh-faced complexion golden in the indirect sunshine. “You sure are!”
Spin sized up the dark-haired woman, who wore attitude like a coat. She was pretty, but the look in her eyes was bruised. She was in self-torture.
“Ms. Goodey-Leonard, this is Jacquie. She’s volunteering at the Sunrise for the next few weeks, and she’ll be here to visit with you.”
“Visit me for what?”
“Play cards, take a stroll in our garden, share a snack at our coffee shop, write letters for you—”
“Everyone I loved is dead accept for Morris, my great-nephew, and I talk to him on the phone.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Jacquie muttered, rolling her eyes and exhaling sharply. Then, in a soft tone to the nurse, she said, “I didn’t volunteer for this job. Can’t you assign me to someone else? Someone who’s bedridden, in a coma, and I’ll just watch television in their room.”
Spin might wear small hearing aids, but they were hypersensitive and she could radio in on things that others might miss.
“You don’t have to have a kitten. I don’t need anyone to write a letter for me. I can do it myself.”
Pushing the glasses farther up her noise, she took a hard look at Jacquie and made a fast inventory. She had the goods, but a bad attitude went with that. A woman scorned. That was obvious in the way her concealer didn’t quite cover up the dark circles beneath her puffy eyes. Women didn’t bawl like that over missing a clothing sale. A man was involved.
Spin perked up. Hearing about a love story gone wrong would kill half the afternoon. The painting could wait.
“I need a letter written,” she said bluntly.
Jacquie’s expression clouded. “But isn’t there someone else I can—”
“Dear, I feel some abdominal gas coming on from that cabbage soup I had for lunch,” Spin said to the young nurse, then feigned a grimace, clutching her midsection. “Get me something for it. I’d hate to soil myself. Hurry along, now.”
The nurse hightailed it to the infirmary.
Spin’s arms dropped as soon as the nurse was out of sight.
Jacquie’s eyes widened. “If you’re going to have an accident, go to the bathroom.”
“So what was his name? Some sugarpuss—wasn’t he? How long did you know him?”
“What are you talking about?” Jacquie demanded, her brown eyes hard with attitude. “I’m getting that nurse.”
“Don’t bother.” Spin’s grip was slight but firm as she grabbed hold of Jacquie’s arm. “Sit down with me. I’m not going to shit my pants, but my knees are ready to give out. I’ve been standing at an easel for an hour.”
Something within Jacquie reacted. Who was this old bird that she could bull crap her way to giving a nurse the slip? Then talk as if she were born in a naval yard, yet appear as frail as parchment?
It hit Jacquie. She reminded her of…herself.
Clenching her jaw, Jacquie wished she wasn’t in an old folks home. Damn Sheriff Lewis and his fake-and-bake tan to hell. He’d pulled her over the night of her birthday, after she’d left Max Beck’s place. The sheriff could have written her up for a DUI. God knows she’d been juiced. Instead of hauling her butt to jail, he’d arranged for Deputy Cooper to come out, get her and drive her home—but with two condit
ions. She promised never to drive drunk again, and she had to perform one month of voluntary community service. He’d done the picking. The Sunrise Trail Creek Seniors Home.
Along with a bitch of a hangover she hadn’t been able to shake after Drew left, Jacquie had literally been taken for a ride. This was her punishment—sitting with an elderly woman who was staring at her as if she could read her mind.
“Are you sure you don’t need to use the bathroom?” Jacquie asked, suddenly antsy and nervous to be here. She didn’t like that undressed feeling that rose when Spin looked at her through those diamond-encrusted glasses.
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