Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  They had scrubbed the classroom across the hall from Lucy’s and painted it a bright robin’s egg blue with yellow trim and a mural of floating air balloons drifting up the big wall where they had removed the ancient chalkboard. Ida’s bed was loaded with stuffed animals, and her floor was a riot of toys and books and clothes. There were no goat turds to be seen.

  Tom had brought her several giant cardboard boxes that they assembled into a teetering castle, complete with a drawbridge and a tower. Ida would stand on a stool inside the tower and hurl monkey out of the tower window to his death on the ramparts below, then she would lower the drawbridge to rescue him and perform a wild series of triage techniques that usually involved full body bandages and vigorous shaking.

  Lucy decided it was a healthy expression of her creativity. She was proud of herself for mastering the whole child-rearing thing.

  “Mumsy says I used to take off the heads of my Barbies and use them to play badminton,” she explained to Ruby one afternoon when Ida was at school.

  “That’s nothing,” said Probation Rob, bringing them steaming mugs of coffee as they sat outside on the patio at Grim’s in the spring sunshine. “I used to light my Barbies on fire.”

  Lucy blinked at him. “You still on probation, Rob?”

  “Nope. Done my time,” he said with a swagger, a seasoned criminal fresh from the slammer. “Got my driver’s licence last week. Saving up for a car.”

  “Stay out of trouble and you keep your job,” Ruby said. “No more lighting fires.”

  “I’m done with that, Ms. Rubes,” he said, flicking his long bangs out of his face. “You want me to come talk to Ida about making good life decisions, Lucy? I figure I got some stories that might steer her in the right direction.”

  “She’s six, Rob. I don’t think she’s about to embark on a life of crime, but thanks,” Lucy said. As soon as he was out of earshot she turned to Ruby. “You don’t think she is, do you? Just because she throws a stuffed monkey around? And plays with a toy axe? She’s not a sociopath or anything, is she?”

  Ruby laughed. “I’m sure she’s fine, Lu,” she said. “How is life with the police officer?”

  Ruby raised her eyebrows and winked.

  “He works a lot, sometimes at night, and when he isn’t working, he’s writing,” Lucy said. She had tiptoed down to the room he had set up at the far end of the school several times, standing outside his closed door listening to the tapping of keys late at night. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to knock. “And he’s just so wonderful with Ida.”

  She had grown to treasure her little fake family. She knew it was temporary, but she liked to pretend they were a happy couple with a future and a plan.

  “It’s always super sexy when a man is good with kids,” Ruby nodded. “You should see Sven when the daycare kids come down to see the baby chicks. It’s like every egg in my ovaries starts cheering and calling his name.”

  Lucy felt her ovaries stand to attention when Sven strode onto the patio, his hair gleaming in the sun like a Nordic God. He punched her lightly on the shoulder. Like a giant brother. She thought of Dorian and decided she was fine having Sven be brotherly.

  “Ruby-two-shoes, I am having zee trouble with zee pants.”

  Lucy grinned as she noticed that Sven was wearing a pair of dress pants, neatly creased down the front, that were at least six inches too short for him. He was in bare feet, and his ankles were covered with golden fur that waved merrily in the breeze as he lifted the tree-trunk of his leg to show Ruby zee problem. Ruby giggled.

  “You’re just huge,” she said. “Canadian tailors simply aren’t used to men as big as you.”

  “I am a strapping lad.” Sven shook his head sadly, as if all his efforts to be tiny had failed miserably. “But Ruby loves my bigness, ya?”

  “I bet she does,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes as she tried not to laugh. “What’s the deal with the new wardrobe?”

  “Is for zee wedding, ya?” he said. “I am the best man of Tom, and I order tux online but this will not do zee trick.”

  “It definitely won’t,” Lucy said.

  The wedding.

  “Two weeks,” said Ruby. Lucy recognized the look of concern on her friend’s face, as if Ruby was once again reading her mind and finding some of the pages stuck together.

  “It’s okay. I’m totally okay with it,” Lucy spun her coffee cup around on the saucer. “I mean, I think Jo and Tom are awesome, and the Community Garden is really coming together, and the school is clean.”

  Ruby nodded.

  “And I’m clean too, Rubes,” she smiled shyly. “Not a drop for two months. Forty-eight days to be exact. I think I’ve kicked it.”

  “I knew you would,” Ruby said. “I never doubted you.”

  I did, Lucy didn’t say. She smiled, pondering the wedding and how it would feel to watch a couple make the commitment that she and Jeff had missed. She felt a tug deep in her chest and decided to push it down and not think about it.

  She had to get Ida off the school bus and decide what they would wear to the wedding.

  Twenty-Three

  Lucy sat with Ida in the back seat of the police cruiser as Dorian chatted with his partner Rory in the front. Ida was slouched down in her seat with her arms crossed, kicking the back of Dorian’s seat and looking like a very angry little dwarf.

  “You want to tell me why you bit that kid?” Lucy asked, leaning closer and whispering.

  “He’s stupid,” Ida said. “Stupid Dean.”

  Lucy paused. It seemed like perfectly good reasoning to her. If someone is stupid, you bite them until they stop being stupid. Ida’s teacher did not seem to agree.

  “Miss Brooks said he cried when you bit him,” she said. “You must have bit him pretty hard.”

  “He’s a butthole,” Ida said, recrossing her arms.

  “That’s not a very nice word.” Lucy was at a loss. She had missed Parenting 101 during her entire non-breeding lifetime. Surely there was some course you took before you were allowed to care for a child who might pick up bad language.

  “Don’t care.”

  “So… what was Dean doing that was stupid?”

  Ida sniffed.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. You aren’t allowed to bite people, but you are allowed to be upset when someone does something stupid,” Lucy said. She had no idea how to talk to a child. Was six too young to understand empathy? Consequences? Could she tell her that boys were probably going to be stupid for her whole life and biting them wasn’t going stop that?

  “He said my tutu stinked,” Ida finally confessed, running her hand under her nose.

  “Does your tutu stink?”

  “No way! I tolded him you washed it, but he said ‘tutu poopoo, tutu poopoo’ and they was all laughing,” Ida said. She slumped down further into her seat, her tutu fluffed out around her in an explosion of tulle and outrage.

  Lucy wanted to round up all the laughing children and teach them a good lesson in empathy, but instead she put her hand out until Ida laced their fingers together.

  “Do you think biting him was a good idea?” Lucy smiled when Ida nodded her head vigorously. “Even though he’s a butthole? That’s, like, gross.”

  Ida giggled.

  “You want me to talk to Miss Brooks about Dean the Butthole?” Lucy knew she was going to hell as a parent, a pseudo parent, but she was a firm believer in calling it like you see it, and no way was she going to let Ida take the blame for Dean the Butthole’s bullying. Even though butthole wasn’t a very nice word.

  Ida pouted.

  “Miss Brooks be mad at you if you say butthole,” Ida said.

  “I figured,” Lucy agreed. “But you know you’re an awesome kid, right?”

  Ida nodded.

  “And you know that Dorian loves you, right?”

  She nodded again.

  “So, we’re going to go see your teacher, because we don’t want you to bite people,” Lucy squeezed Ida’s hand and con
tinued. “And we really, really don’t want Dean to pick on you.”

  “Dean the Butthole,” Ida grinned.

  Lucy grimaced. She’d obviously made a mistake with the vocabulary development. She made a mental note to pick up a parenting book.

  Ida sighed and uncrossed her arms. She flopped over into the middle seat as far as her seatbelt would allow.

  “I loves you, Loocy,” she said.

  Lucy stroked her hair, her throat tight with the sudden lump that appeared out of nowhere.

  “I loves you too, Warrior Princess,” she said.

  Her eyes were misted with tears when they pulled into the school parking lot.

  Rory caught her eye in the rear-view mirror. “Doin’ okay, Miss McMahon?” he asked, his eyes squinting at her inquisitively. “Haven’t had any calls to come check on you lately. Kinda miss the excitement.”

  “Rory…” Dorian cautioned, and Lucy wondered just how badly tarnished her reputation was in the town. She wiped a tear from her eye and leveled her gaze at the back of Rory’s big head.

  “Keeping pretty quiet lately, Constable,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Rory parked the cruiser and shifted around to look at her over the back of the seat. He thumped Dorian on the arm. “Hate to lose a hundred bucks to this asshole, but he might be right about you after all.”

  Dorian glared at his partner as Lucy looked from one to the other.

  “Right about what?”

  “Nothing,” Dorian grumbled, opening his door as he spoke over his shoulder. “Rory just has a dim view of humanity. Comes from wearing his helmet too tight.”

  “Just sayin’,” Rory shrugged as Dorian closed the cruiser door. He looked at Lucy, his voice warming as he smiled at her. “He’s your champion, you know that? You could do worse.”

  Lucy blinked, not sure how to respond.

  “I don’t wanna go to school,” Ida eyed the playground dismissively as Dorian opened her door and undid her seatbelt.

  “You’re going for a drive with Rory, Ida,” he said, helping her into the front seat and strapping her in. “While Lucy and I talk to Miss Brooks, all right?

  “Ice cream, kiddo,” Rory ruffled her hair till she poked him with her axe, grinning. “All the ice cream you can eat, then I send you home with Uncle Dorian.”

  “Thanks Rory,” Dorian said. “We won’t be long.”

  “What did he mean?” Lucy asked as Rory pulled out of the parking lot. Dorian took her elbow and lead her toward the school doors. “Something about a hundred bucks?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go talk to Ida’s teacher about this biting matter.”

  He held the door for her and she hesitated briefly, but he smiled and put his hand on her back as they entered the building, a unified front in the saga of Dean the Butthole.

  ✽✽✽

  “I wasn’t expecting, um, you and your, um…” Ms. Brooks stammered.

  “This is Lucy McMahon, Ms. Brooks.” Dorian smoothly took the wheel. Lucy stood a little taller instead of reflexively retreating behind his back. “Lucy is Ida’s caregiver while I am working. I felt it was important that we both attend today to discuss Ida’s behavior since we are a united team in the transition she is experiencing with her mother’s incarceration.”

  Lucy liked that. A united team.

  Deal with that.

  Lucy didn’t want to feel antagonistic toward the young Ms. Brooks, who looked to be about twenty and extremely fit. That was no reason to feel antagonistic, Lucy chided herself. She waited patiently for Ms. Brooks to bring up Butthole Dean. There was no way she was going to let Ida take the blame for biting a kid who chanted ‘tutu poopoo’.

  No. Way.

  They sat on tiny chairs in a colorfully cluttered grade one classroom, Dorian’s knees tucked up to his chin as he spoke very eloquently about Ida’s needs. He was using his policeman voice, very official and serious. Lucy liked that voice.

  “So, I’ve been really pleased to see Ida coming to school looking so much happier. She always has a healthy lunch, and she looks much more well-rested and alert,” Ms. Brooks was saying. Lucy listened a bit more closely. “But she has been acting out a little. She bit another student, and she gets frustrated easily over tasks that she should be able to master.”

  “Well, Dean was being mean to her, so if he doesn’t want to get bitten…”

  “She’s had a rough go of it,” Dorian said, interrupting Lucy with a gentle hand on her arm. “I’ve taken over guardianship and should have custody once all the paperwork is completed. I think it’s normal to expect some negative fallout from the trauma she’s experienced.”

  The teacher agreed, but Lucy couldn’t help but feel that Ms. Brooks was avoiding her gaze. She kept smiling and nodding, but she seemed to be pretending Lucy wasn’t there.

  “And she’s bonded really well with Lucy.” He reached out and squeezed her hand.

  “Yes, she talks about you quite often.” Ms. Brooks shared a tight smile with her desk. Lucy felt a cold stone of dread drop into her stomach.

  “Good things?” she asked, hating that her voice wavered.

  “Very good things,” Ms. Brooks said. “But I do have a concern.”

  Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. Ida had never seen Lucy drinking, and no whiskey had passed her lips in over a month, but her shame didn’t care about any of that. Her shame lifted its heavy head and waved at her like an old friend who’d been on vacation.

  Ms. Brooks opened a folder and withdrew a drawing. She placed it flat on the desk and pushed it toward them. Dorian picked it up and they both studied the colorful image.

  “Children often draw images that are very hard to interpret,” Ms. Brooks said. “It’s never good when you say, ‘what a great dinosaur’ and the child gets upset because it a picture of their dad at the beach, but I wanted to discuss this with you all the same.”

  “I think I can explain,” Lucy began, feeling her cheeks burning.

  Dorian chuckled. The he laughed. Then he put his hands on his knees and threw back his head and hooted.

  “This is a great picture,” he said.

  Ms. Brooks looked doubtful.

  “Look,” Dorian said, smoothing out the paper and turning it toward the teacher who was obviously in possession of both a gym membership and eternal youth. “This is a bed, yes, and I’m sure that’s why you were concerned.”

  Lucy swallowed.

  “And this is Ida,” he pointed at a small figure in a pink tutu holding an axe in an upraised hand. “And this is Lucy.”

  Ida’s rendition of Lucy was a stick figure lying on the bed with a whirlwind of hair covering her face. Beside Ida on the bed was a chicken. A surprisingly accurate depiction of a chicken, complete with red comb and a menacing yellow eye. Kentucky. Her feathered nemesis. No wonder the teacher was concerned. That was one scary chicken.

  There was a decidedly goat-like shape drifting over the bed, like it was leaping.

  “Well, yes,” the teacher agreed warily. “But what really concerned me was this figure over here. You see, I assumed the woman in the bed was her mother, but now you seem to think it’s Ms. McMahon who is sleeping with the chicken, so…”

  “Not every night,” Lucy hastened to say. “Only when we forget to close the hutch, or when Ida sneaks out and gets him and then I wake up and there’s Kentucky, all proud of himself.”

  The look on Ms. Brooks’ face told Lucy that she was not helping the situation.

  “I was actually worried about this figure,” Ms. Brooks pointed to the large dark figure that loomed over the bed, holding what was unmistakably a gun in one upraised hand.

  “Ms. Brooks,” Dorian said, smiling. “I’m certain that’s me.”

  The look on Ms. Brooks’ face told Lucy that Dorian was not helping the situation.

  “Ida has never seen my gun of course, but I’m sure she imagines that part of a policeman’s job involves holding a gun,” he said. Lucy was certain Ms. Brook
s would like to see them both arrested. “Look here,” he pointed to the picture. “There’s my badge, on my chest. And she even drew the line down my uniform pants.”

  On closer inspection the menacing figure did suddenly appear much more like a police officer than a serial killer. Lucy started breathing again. She would obviously have to take some steps to remedy her difficult hair-do situation, but other than that the picture was an accurate expression of Ida’s current home life. It warmed Lucy’s heart, now that it was beating normally again.

  “Well there we go, then,” Ms. Brooks smiled winningly. Like someone who won on a regular basis. Ms. Brooks didn’t sleep with chickens, Lucy thought. She probably didn’t even eat chicken.

  They talked for a few more minutes about Ida’s schoolwork and Lucy felt satisfied that Butthole Dean was also being dealt with for his role in the biting incident. They stood up to leave when the teacher shook Dorian’s hand and leaned toward him.

  “Officer Wells, could we have a moment to speak?”

  She didn’t need to add ‘in private’. Lucy smiled stiffly and left the room, standing awkwardly just outside the door.

  Funny, she thought. I live in a school just like this one. Except mine smells like chickens and this one smells like baloney sandwiches. Other than that, they were exactly the same.

  “And so, I’m just concerned because I’ve heard some unsettling rumors…”

  Lucy’s ears tingled as she heard Ms. Brooks’ voice drift through the classroom door.

  “I can assure you, Ms. Brooks,” Dorian murmured. “I have no concerns…”

  “I’d like you look at…”

  Lucy shuffled her feet. She should not be listening. It was rude. Not her business. She was just the babysitter.

  And then Dorian was coming through the door with a serious look on his face and he took her by the elbow and they walked down the echoing school hallway together.