Guarded

by Angela Correll

  Before, he would make time for a quick visit in the evenings, even if it were late, just to touch base. Now he went straight to bed, claiming to be tired. Then there were the phone calls he obviously didn’t want her to overhear. Annie was confused, yet when she said something to him, he assured her everything was fine.

  “Annie?” Evelyn was looking at her, waiting on an answer.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said I thought you’d probably attended fancy weddings in New York,” Evelyn said.

  “Not many,” she said. “I wasn’t in that social circle.”

  “I love party planning,” Evelyn said. “I haven’t done anything like this since Suzanne’s wedding. I forgot how much I enjoyed it.”

  “You’re good at it,” Beulah said. “I am happy to be an extra hand and do some sewing, but organizing is not my strength.”

  “Lots of details,” Lindy said. “It’s like conducting an orchestra, every part has to come in at the perfect time.”

  While they were chatting, Annie heard Jake’s truck pull in the driveway and excused herself. They had their first real date tonight since she got back from Italy two weeks ago. She was looking forward to it, hoping it meant everything was back to normal.

  Jake was on the phone when he got out of the truck, smiling broadly at the conversation—until he saw her.

  “Can I call you back later?” He had already hung up the phone by the time she reached the truck.

  “Hey,” she said. “I was just wondering what time you wanted to leave for Lexington tonight?”

  “You know … I need to stick around here and do some things. Can we go tomorrow night instead?”

  Despite trying to hide it, she knew her face showed the disappointment.

  “Sure.”

  “Annie,” he said, leaving a question in the air.

  “I need to help with the wedding stuff tonight anyway. There’s so much to do right now.” Before he could say another word, she bounded up the stairs.

  If she had any doubt he was hiding something before, there could be none now.

  ***

  The next morning, she completed her application for activities director at Richwood Manor and drove it out to the facility. Annie was sent to the director’s office where a secretary greeted her.

  “Do you have a moment?” the secretary asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and sat down in one of the available chairs while she waited for the secretary to return.

  “The director would like to see you if you have time.”

  “Of course,” she stood and followed the secretary. “Right in there,” the secretary pointed to a door.

  The office was warm and inviting. Positive quotes about aging were framed and hung on the walls and a middle-aged woman sat behind a clutter-free desk. She stood and offered her hand and her warm smile put Annie at ease.

  “I’m Colleen Whitley. Please, have a seat. I hope you don’t mind us grabbing you like this, but my secretary knew I wanted to speak with you if you applied for the job,” she said. “I’ve heard such good things about you.”

  “You have?”

  Colleen nodded. “And Vesta Givens doesn’t give out her recommendations lightly.”

  “Vesta is a fascinating woman.”

  “I don’t make any decisions that affect the patients without talking to her first. I call her the Mayor of Richwood. If she’s for it, everyone else will go along. If she doesn’t like it, well, you can imagine.”

  Annie laughed again, feeling completely at ease with this woman.

  “So Vesta told me you were a flight attendant for ten years. I suppose you’ve dealt with all types of personalities.”

  “Passengers make up quite a cross-section of the population. You see them relaxed and under stress,” Annie said.

  “And you have some emergency medical training?”

  “CPR, first aid, flight emergencies, basic stuff.”

  “Why did you leave the airline?”

  “The airline merged and my seniority wasn’t high enough to secure a job. Later, I was offered a job, but I decided to stay here.”

  “So you don’t have any plans to leave, to go back to New York or somewhere else?”

  “No, I want to be here,” Annie said, and there was peace in saying the words she knew were true.

  “Aging has a tendency to distill our personalities,” Colleen said. “I think someone with your background would be very good with our residents. Simply loving them is part of the job. The other part is coming up with activities for them to do, such as outings, guest speakers, book clubs, anything they might experience if they lived outside the facility. We want to make it easy for them to participate and feel a part of a larger world. If you’re interested, we would like to offer you the job.”

  “Really?” Annie said.

  “Really,” Colleen said and laughed.

  “I accept,” Annie said.

  There was paperwork to fill out, start dates to discuss, and materials to study from the previous activities director. Before going home, Annie went by Vesta’s room, her arms loaded with notebooks.

  Annie stood in the doorway and waited until Vesta looked up from her reading.

  “You got the job!” Vesta said and clapped her hands together.

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Well, you are the right person for it. God sent you to us. Now, we have some things to discuss.” Vesta cleared the reading materials off her lap. “You can put those notebooks on the table.” Annie did as she was told and sat down on a chair near Vesta.

  “We need to work on the book club. They’ve fallen into a habit of reading junk. I was thinking of a classical curriculum with …”

  Annie spent the rest of the day with Vesta, eating lunch with her in the Manor’s dining room, taking vociferous notes, and making plans. Annie was excited. The job came at the perfect time for her, now that all her other projects were winding down. Even the work at the old stone house had gone well past her abilities to contribute anything, at least until later down the road when she could begin painting inside.

  Driving home, Annie called Jake to tell him the good news, but the call went to his cell voicemail. They were supposed to go to Lexington for dinner, so she would tell him all about the job when they were together.

  She saw Jake had left her a voicemail.

  “Annie, I am so sorry,” he said. “I can’t go tonight. It’s unavoidable. I’m sorry. I promise everything will be back to normal after the wedding.”

  Her heart dropped. Not again. There couldn’t possibly be this many unavoidable things. If Jake loved her, wouldn’t he move heaven and earth for them to spend time with each other?

  It was past suppertime, but she had missed her daily run by staying all day at Richwood Manor. Since she had no plans for the evening, she changed her clothes and told her grandmother the good news about her job, before starting a run down the long driveway. As she turned the corner onto May Hollow Road, Betty Gibson opened her door and waved her down.

  Annie wondered if she could ignore Betty, but the lavender bathrobe and the pink foam curlers sticking out from her head made it impossible. Not to mention the urgent arm-waving that had started as soon as Betty was out her front door. Annie stopped and stretched while she waited for Betty to come down the concrete steps.

  “I just heard the news! I am tickled pink. Shirley Updike just called me; she’s my friend who works in the nursing home side of Richwood. I am just so proud of you; it looks like you are really putting roots down,” Betty said.

  Unlike my father, Annie thought.

  Betty continued. “Why, I said to Joe just the other day, Annie Taylor is so much like the May side. Solid as a rock.” Betty’s dimples punctuated her straight white teeth.

  “I’m sure I’ve got a full dose of both sides of the family,” she said as she turned to run.

  “Jake’s been working awful hard on the farm, Joe tells me,” Betty called out. Annie paused,
turned, and waited for her to finish. “Why yesterday, he worked from dawn to dusk and then had to run to Lexington for dinner last night. I reckon that kind of life is for the young. Of course, it must have been something important to send Jake to Lexington without you,” she said, watching for Annie’s reaction.

  “Sure was,” Annie said, waving goodbye over her shoulder.

  She pounded the macadam road. Lexington for dinner? Jake cancelled their date in Lexington so he could have dinner with someone else? Surely not another woman, she told herself, breathing harder.

  Why did he lie to me?

  All during her run, she wrestled with the information Betty handed her. Should she confront Jake? Why would Jake tell Joe Gibson where he was going but lie to me? None of it made sense.

  Annie crossed the pastures to the Wilder’s stock barn where she sought comfort with the eight young nanny goats Jake had brought to the farm just a few days before. Annie was drawn to them more than any of the other farm animals. They had grown up with lots of human contact, and as a result they were affectionate and curious, not fearing humans like most of the livestock she had been around.

  The goats were in the small pasture next to the stock barn. When they saw her, they ran to her, nearly knocking her over as she quickly latched the gate behind her. Nudging her hand and looking for feed, Annie wished she had grabbed a handful of grain for them. When they saw there was no feed in her hand, they hovered about enjoying whatever attention she doled out.

  She sat down on an old tree stump Jake had hauled into the pasture for the goats to jump on. When she did, one of the goats grabbed her ponytail in its teeth and jerked.

  “Ouch,” she said, wrestling her hair from the goat’s mouth.

  “Better watch them, haven’t you heard they’ll eat anything?” Jake was coming around the lot, carrying a pitchfork.

  Annie leveled her gaze at Jake, and before she could restrain herself, she fired.

  “How was dinner last night?”

  Momentary surprise and then recovery all registered in his expression.

  “Great,” Jake said, forking hay into the goat’s pen, avoiding her eyes.

  “Must have been important,” she said, waiting for him to explain.

  He stopped pitching hay and leaned on the pitchfork, this time meeting her stare full on.

  “It was important.”

  “Jake, I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Annie, I can’t talk about it right now. After the wedding, everything will be back to normal.”

  “I’ll check on the goats later tonight,” she went through the gate. “I know you’re too busy these days.”

  Jake met her on the outside of the gate and touched her gently on the arm.

  “Annie, it’s not …”

  “Forget it,” she said, walking away.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THERE WAS AN air of excitement on May Hollow Road. The upcoming wedding had set them all scurrying around like mice, everybody hoping to make it a special day for Scott and Mary Beth.

  Even though Mary Beth had hired a caterer for the wedding, there was still so much food to get ready for all of Evelyn’s house guests as well as her own. Beulah cut out biscuits and put them in an aluminum pan and covered them with foil so they would freeze. Breakfast was the main meal they needed, since Scott and Mary Beth had meals planned out for the rest of the time for their family.

  Stella had not been back to Somerville since her stay at the old stone house and the fire that had nearly destroyed it. The renter with the fly-a-way red hair had been in a bad place back then, ready to end her life, and had even tried while she was in the old stone house. Divine interruptions kept her from succeeding. From the letters she had written Beulah after leaving Somerville, she knew Stella was doing the hard work of paying off her debts.

  Woody’s frequent trips up north had probably not hurt her feelings, either. Woody was picking her up at the airport tomorrow and bringing her to stay with Beulah for the weekend. After having Rossella for a week, Stella Hawkins would at least not be fighting her for the kitchen.

  Scott’s family from Dothan, Alabama, would arrive today. Some of Scott’s family members were staying in Evelyn’s guest rooms and the guest cottage while Jake camped out on Evelyn’s couch. Extended family and friends were booked at hotels in Rutherford. It would be a whirlwind.

  Jake had the Wilder farm slicked up and shining. He and Annie had barely seen each other all week.

  Beulah pressed down on the biscuit cutter and twisted, then poked the biscuit onto the tin pan. Another good piece of news came when Annie told her she found a job at Richwood Manor. It was good to see her granddaughter excited about something she was gifted to do. She would be a blessing to all the old folks out there, just as she had been a blessing to her these last several months.

  As if on cue, Annie walked in the back door.

  “The house is coming along,” Annie said. “I want to show Stella since she was so worried about it after the fire. I’m sure it will make her feel better to come back and see it being fixed.”

  Beulah washed the dough off her hands and wiped them with the hand towel. “What time does Scott’s family arrive?”

  “Scott and Mary Beth are picking them up around four in Lexington, but they are taking them around to see a couple of horse farms and then to dinner, so they won’t get to Evelyn’s until sometime tonight. I thought I would go over to help place tables. They should be setting the tent up by now.”

  Later, she drove the biscuits over to Evelyn. Friends and family of Scott and Mary Beth were bustling about moving chairs and tables under the tent. There was a dance floor and long tables set up for food and such. It already looked festive, even without the tablecloths, decorations and lights. Her heart lifted in joy at all the activity. There was nothing like a wedding celebration.

  ***

  When Woody’s truck crunched up the gravel driveway the next day, Beulah took off her apron and smoothed out her dress. From the kitchen window, she watched as Woody came around to the passenger’s side and helped Stella out like a real gentleman. Stella, who walked with hunched shoulders when she saw her the first time, stood straighter. Her frizzy red hair was smoothed back off her face. It was as if her inner peace had turned on her outward beauty.

  “Welcome,” she said, holding open the screen door.

  “Beulah, we’re just coming to drop off her luggage and then I’m taking her over to my farm to show her around,” Woody said, holding Stella’s arm as he steered her onto the back porch. “Booger’s not out, is he?”

  “No, I think he may be gone for the winter.”

  “Thank you so much for having me.” Stella extended her hand and Beulah took it.

  “You’re most welcome. I have your room ready upstairs. Woody, if you want to take her up, it’s to the left, just above the kitchen here. And show her where the bathroom is, too.”

  Might as well let Woody do the showing since he’s intent on holding on to Stella, she thought. They were soon gone and she suspected she was likely to see very little of her houseguest other than bedtime. Woody had plans to spend every minute with Stella outside of the wedding activities. At least the young woman could see what she might be getting into with Woody early on, just in case she wanted to jump ship.

  ***

  While Beulah washed the dishes, her thoughts went again to Benito and the letter she was composing to him. Janice agreed to translate it when she was finished. She wasn’t accustomed to writing many letters and she wanted to get this one just right, so she was taking her time. Annie had already scanned the pictures of Ephraim and e-mailed them to Benito and his family. Annie said Vincenzo had responded for him, saying how thankful they were, and how much they all thought Benito looked like his father. The resemblance was truly striking.

  In the letter, she was inviting Benito and his family to be guests in her home for a visit as soon as they could come. “Practice hospitality,” the apo
stle Paul had written. It did take practice because sharing of a person’s space and giving up routine did not come easy. Like practicing anything, the more it was done, the easier it got.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  WOODY RAN HIS hand along the hand-hewn studs now exposed in the old stone house.

  “Look at the fine work,” he said. “Nobody builds like this anymore.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Stella said. “I worried about it so much; I was afraid you’d have to tear it down.”

  “It all worked out,” Annie said. “I probably wouldn’t have been so intent on finding out the history of the house if it had not been in danger.”

  Stella pushed her glasses up on her nose.

  “It was a good thing for me, too,” she said. “I would have probably kept running, and who knows where I would be today,” she said, shyly looking up at Woody.

  He put his arm around Stella and gave her a squeeze.

  “You’re here now, and that’s the main thing,” Woody said. “Now, how about I show you my kids,” Woody said, his voice reverberating against the wood floors without furniture or rugs to soak up the sound.

  Stella’s eyes grew wide. “Woody, you never mentioned children!”

  “He’s talking about his goats,” Annie said.

  “Oh, well yes,” she said, relief flooding her face.

  “Yep,” Woody said. “Goats and horses, too. I’ll teach you to ride. I’ve got a sweet little mare called Nutmeg. She’s just come into foal, but I can ride you around the paddock on her.”

  Annie shut the door of the stone house and waved goodbye. The trees were at peak this weekend, the red and yellow maples in full color scattered along the landscape and hills. Needing a few minutes alone before the activity started, she climbed the hill to the cemetery; leaves crinkled and crunched under her feet. At the top of the hill, she opened the iron gate.

  It was like a painting with the autumn leaves in various colors, sprinkled on the still green grass, amidst the new granite and old limestone gravestones. She kneeled down and laid her open palm on the marble of Ephraim’s military footstone. In Italy, she stood beside Elena’s grave, where she had claimed her love for Ephraim by taking his name in death. It seemed only fitting to visit Ephraim’s final resting place, especially after meeting his son, Benito.