Plotting at the PTA (18 page)

“Beth.” Evan took my hands. “We’ve danced around this for months. I know you’re not sure the kids are ready, but I want to marry you. I love you. I want to take care of you and make sure you’re safe and warm and happy. You deserve all I can give you and more.”

I wanted to say something eloquent, something we’d both remember, something worth writing down. “Oh.”

He smiled. “You don’t have to answer right now. I’ve waited for this moment for a long time and I’ll wait as long as it takes. But will you do one thing for me? Promise that you won’t go out alone without your dog?”

His light blue gaze rested on my face. A caress. No, more than that. A claim. I was being laid claim to, even if I hadn’t yet acknowledged the ownership.

“I’d be much happier about your safety,” he said, “if you at least had Spot with you.”

The idea that this attractive, fit, intelligent, semirich man had just proposed to me was going to take some getting used to. There were a number of questions to be considered. Would he be a suitable stepfather for Jenna and Oliver? Was he the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life? I’d thought that, once, about Richard, and had wept long tears when I’d pulled the rings off my left hand.

Then, softly, in almost a whisper, he asked, “Please?”

The thoughts in my head fuzzed together and I said the worst thing possible. “I promise.”

Chapter 15

M
arina’s voice roared out of my cell phone and into my poor, defenseless ear. “He what?”

“You heard me the first time,” I said.

“Sure, but I can’t believe Mr. Evan Garrett would propose like that. On a weeknight? I’d have thought he’d have witnesses and a string quartet at the very least.”

“There was a fire in the fireplace.” Gas fire, but still.

She grunted. “Point. But I am seriously bummed my guess was so wrong.”

I put my hand over the phone. “Jenna! Oliver! Stay on the trail, okay? And make sure Spot doesn’t get into anything stinky.” Vague assents wafted backward. The section of the park where we were hiking was so thick with maple trees that darkness seemed imminent, even though it was only seven o’clock. After dinner the kids had been so full of energy that I’d suggested a walk.

I took my hand off the phone. “So how wrong were you?”

“Very,” Marina said, “since there was no moonlight, no horse and carriage, no flowers, no ring in a robin’s egg blue box, and no obscenely sized bouquet of roses. And I must say I’m not happy that it took almost twenty-four hours for me to get this news.”

“I was swamped at the store. And I was trying to edit the story session stories, and the phone hardly stopped ringing all day.”

“Mmm.”

Why, exactly, I hadn’t told Marina right away I wasn’t quite sure myself. I hadn’t told the kids yet, either. Maybe tonight, after we got home from this walk. Or Sunday might be good. I could ease into it over the weekend. Drop some hints. Jenna would pick up on those right away, though Oliver might need it spelled out a little more. As in, “How would you feel if Evan lived here all the time?”

But would he? He owned a perfectly nice home. Not kid-proof, with its off-white upholstery and objects of art placed on pedestals, but nice enough.

“So,” Marina said. “I hear you went for a swim last night.”

I blinked. “How did you know that?”

“I am all knowing and all powerful.”

“Of course you are,” I murmured.

“Plus, I can’t believe you forgot that Debra-don’t-call-me-Debbie O’Conner lives across the street from the beach.”

I had forgotten. The O’Conners used to live not far from Marina, but last summer they’d moved. “Debra spies on people who go swimming?” I asked.

Once upon a time, Debra had had ambitions to be much more than a small-town bank vice president. Plus, she’d had her hair cut in Chicago, worn spiky high heels, and made all other mothers feel inadequate by doing all her baking from scratch.

In the last year or so, however, she’d shifted her goals from business to enjoying life as much as possible. Which, since I was lucky if I had time to enjoy my children’s kiss at bedtime, also made me feel inadequate.

“No, Debra takes her dogs for a walk just before going to bed.” Marina clucked at me. “What were you doing out there, oh silly one? Trying to re-create the scene of Kelly’s death?”

“Something like that.”

I expected her to berate me for doing something so stupid without her coming along to take notes, but she said, “Well, did you figure out anything?”

A cloud went over the sun, and the tree-induced gloom through which we were walking darkened a little more. Jenna and Oliver kept on, paying no attention to the sky, but Spot cast a doggy look upward.

And there I was in the water, arching my head back, trying to find up, trying to find air, hearing Kelly’s voice in my head.

I’d never told anyone, not even Marina, that I once thought I’d heard the voice of a dead woman. But it was only a stress-induced hallucination, that’s all. My own projection of what she would have said. My own wish to believe that the dead lived on in another place and might, under the right circumstances, have something to tell us.

Then again, I’d been in extremely stressful circumstances last fall, when trying to help the family of a dead man, and I hadn’t heard his voice.

Maybe you only hear women
.

“What?” I asked.

“Didn’t say a word,” Marina said. “I’m waiting for you, remember? For the answer to life, the universe, and everything? And don’t tell me forty-two.”

“You’d have a better sense of humor if you read more books.”

“And you’d be less of a know-it-all if you didn’t read as much. And no sticking your tongue out at me.”

I grinned. She knew me too well, and I was about to tell her so when my mom instincts went “twang.” The hiking path in front of me split and the kids were starting down the wrong trail; there wasn’t time on a school night to walk that long route. “Hey, you two!” But they’d already disappeared into the gloom. “Sorry, Marina, gotta go fetch my offspring.” I clicked the phone off and hopped into a slow trot.

“Jenna?” I called. “Oliver? Come back!”

Nothing.

I started to run a little faster. “Jenna?” Her name came out in a pant. “Oliver?”

Nothing. Why didn’t I see them? How had they gone so far so quickly? How could they just vanish like that?

Faster, faster, faster.

They’d be around the next bend in the trail, wouldn’t they? They’d be close by, waiting for me, of course they would.

Nothing.

Time spun out slowly and I lived an agonized life in which Jenna and Oliver never came home, never found their way back. All my fault, all of it. I’d never forgive myself. Jenna . . . Oliver . . .

Then I heard voices. My children! But who else . . . ? A man’s voice.

My mouth suddenly tasted of bright adrenaline. A medium-sized woman versus a grown man in a secluded part of a very large park. Spot would be no help; why hadn’t we adopted a Rottweiler?

I put on a burst of speed, coming around a curve in the trail with fast, pounding feet.

If I could get there first, head him off, maybe I could distract him, maybe by attacking him I’d give the kids time to get free, maybe I could—

“Hey, Mom.” Jenna looked at me. “Why are you running?”

—and maybe if I stopped leaping to the most extreme conclusions possible there’d be one less way to look like an idiot. My immediate drop from terror-induced run to embarrassed walk made my feet trip over themselves. Pete Peterson leapt forward, grabbed my arm, and held me upright.

“Whoopsy daisy,” he said. “All you all right?”

“Fine.” I brushed the sweat off my forehead. “Thanks. How are you doing these days?”

“Oh, you know. Busy.”

“Mr. Peterson likes Spot,” Oliver said.

“Well, who wouldn’t?” Pete said. He squatted and held out his hand for a doggy lick. “Not sure you’d make much of a guard dog,” he said, ruffling the floppy ears, “but you’re a pretty good dog for a dog.”

“A pretty good dog for a dog,” Oliver repeated, frowning slightly. Then he smiled. “That’s funny.”

“Only on the third Thursday in May.” Pete gave Spot one last pat and stood. “Well, I’ll see you three around.”

“Mr. Peterson plays disc golf,” Jenna said. “You know, they put a course in last year. Over there.” She pointed, glanced at Pete’s half smile, and frowned slightly. “Or is over there?” She pointed in the opposite direction.

“I can throw a Frisbee.” Oliver went through the motions with an invisible disc. “Can we play, Mom?”

I looked from one child to the other, sensing a conspiracy. “Not tonight. It’s much too late.”

The instant chorus of “But, Mom—” died out when I put my fingers in my mouth and started to take a deep breath. For years the threat of my whistle had been an excellent behavior modifier. It wouldn’t work much longer and it was already losing its effectiveness with Jenna, but I might as well take advantage while I could.

“Not tonight,” I said firmly. “Besides, we don’t have any Frisbees with us.”

“Tomorrow?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah, how about tomorrow?” Oliver bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “Please please please?”

“Tomorrow night we’re having dinner with Evan.”

Their long faces told me that dining at the country club compared badly to the adventure of disc golf.

“I’m not busy Saturday afternoon,” Pete said. “We could do a round or two. If you want.”

“Can we, Mom?” “Pretty please?”

I looked at my children, then at Pete. “Are you sure you don’t have anything better to do?”

“Sure, but playing Frisbee sounds like a lot more fun than cleaning my garage.”

He grinned, and since he had one of those contagious kinds of smiles, I grinned back at him.

“Cool,” he said. “Then it’s a date.” He gave Spot a pat and bumped knuckles with the kids. “Two o’clock? See you guys on Saturday,” he said, and strolled off.

“Time for us to get home.” I herded dog and children together and we set off in the direction from whence we’d come, dog first, then kids, then me. After a few steps I looked over my shoulder. Pete was still in view, just turning away.

“Caught you,” I said softly.

Oliver started walking backward. “What?”

“Nothing.” I skipped forward a step, took his hand, and spun him around. “No walking backward unless you can say the alphabet backward, too.”

“Z,” he said. “Y, X . . . um . . .”

“W,” Jenna said.

Oliver pulled away from me and started skipping ahead. “Z, Y, X, W,” he sang. “Z, Y, X, W . . . V!”

I felt Jenna’s hand steal into mine. Here, in the park, in the dusk, where no one could see us, she wanted to hold my hand. A warmth rushed through me and I squeezed lightly. “So,” I said, oh-so-casually. “Is Coach Sweeney still calling you kiddo?”

“Probably,” she said. “He calls everybody that. Even his girlfriend.”

Uh-oh. “Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, she came to the last lesson. Her name’s Roma and she’s a vet. Isn’t that cool? Don’t you just love her name? She lives in Minnesota and has this really neat haircut. She said my hair might look good with that kind of a cut, too.”

I relaxed. Crisis averted; the crush was officially over. Bless Roma, whoever she was. “What kind of a cut is it?”

Jenna talked on, and we walked down the trail, our feet in step, our hands and hearts together.

* * *

On Saturday morning I dropped the kids off at Marina’s, whereupon she interrogated me with the ruthless efficiency of a four-time mother.

“Vhat,” she said in a horrible German accent, “are you doing about Amy Yaycobson?”

“Not enough.”

She nodded as if she’d expected my answer. “Und Kelly Engel?”

I jingled my car keys. “Same thing.”

“I see.” She tapped her index finger against her front teeth. “Are Amy’s death and Kelly’s drowning connected?”

Marina’s game suddenly didn’t seem at all amusing. “I don’t know, okay? I just don’t know.”

“Hey, Beth, I didn’t mean—”

I waved off her apology. “Sorry. There are so many different versions of what happened that I can’t figure it out. Does a mother have the better idea of what her eighteen-year-old daughter is doing, or does the daughter’s friends? Is a police report the best answer to what happened to Amy, or . . .” I sighed.

“Or,” Marina said, “should you trust your own instincts?”

“My instincts aren’t worth a thin dime,” I muttered.

“Hey, hey.” Marina grabbed me by the shoulders. “What’s with that crappy attitude? I thought I fixed all that.”

“You did?”

“Well, sure. It was the day I convinced you to become PTA secretary. Every good thing that has happened to you since then is a direct result of that action.”

“Really.”

She held up her hand and starting holding up fingers. “Proof point number one. You haven’t called and asked me what you should cook for dinner in months. Number two, last fall you stood up to that horrible Marcia and fired her. Number three, you’ve helped bring not one, but two, killers to justice.”

I waited, but it seemed she was done. “All this is because you browbeat me into being PTA secretary?” The connection seemed tenuous, at best.

“Well, sure. Way down deep inside you’ve craved a position of authority. Now that you’re on the PTA board, you’re becoming the person you were always supposed to be. You’ve learned to talk to people you don’t want to, and you’ve learned to put yourself forward. It’s been good for you, see?”

She went on, but my thoughts were jogging in place, back at where she’d said I’d learned to talk to people I didn’t want to.

It wasn’t true, of course. If I had, I’d have confronted Gus long ago and found a way to a reconciliation. I would have put my foot down with Auntie May, and I would have had a long, firm chat with Claudia Wolff.

No, I still had a definite tendency to retreat from confrontation. Bad Beth, who shied away from the hard things in life. Bad Beth, setting a poor example for her children.

As Marina kept finding more positive outcomes of my secretarial role—which apparently included helping Debra O’Conner become human, firing Paoze’s ambition to write the Great American Novel, and my new recipe for macaroni and cheese—I realized there was someone I did want to talk to.

“No confrontation required,” I murmured.

Marina paused in the middle of trying to include Oliver’s story-writing ability as a part of the argument proving how much being PTA secretary had improved my life. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “And it’s past time for me to get going.” I called out a good-bye to the kids. Lame “See ya’s,” came back from the family room. I collected my purse and headed for the back door.

“Hey, Beth? There’s one little thing left for you to work on improving.”

Just one? That was good to know.

“Quit with the being afraid thing, okay? It’s a waste of time, you know.”

I tried to lift one eyebrow. Failed. “Am I your project today?”

“This day and all days.” She grinned. “Forever and ever. Aren’t you lucky?”

I stuck my tongue out at her and left, shutting the door with a bang.

* * *

Due to a young girl and her father waiting outside the front door, I opened the bookstore ten minutes early.

Lois shook her head and watched as the child flew past on her way to the picture book section. “I can’t believe you did that. Time on the sign says we open at ten o’clock. This is like breaking a promise.”

“If we’d made that kid wait ten minutes, she’d have convinced her dad to drive to the mall and gone to the toy store instead.”