Someone Like Her (6 page)

Her look made him feel as if he were a grease spot she’d just noticed on her dress.

“The hat lady was gentle and sweet. She was wonderful with children, especially the little ones. They’d beam at her when they saw her. And no, she wasn’t alone with the children. Mothers take turn supervising the day care.”

Adrian shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get? You’d better park,” she added. “This is as close as we’ll find.”

They had to be four blocks from the redbrick church with the gilt Jesus nailed to the cross on the spire. He took her word for it, though, and pulled in to the first spot he saw that was big enough for his Mercedes. A family in front of them was getting out of their car, everyone scrubbed and in their Sunday best, the little boy’s hair slicked down, the girl’s in pigtails. Adrian remembered his mother ruthlessly taming his thick hair, using spit if they neared the church and his cowlick rebelled. He’d felt as uncomfortable in a suit as that poor kid did, holding his mother’s hand and dragging his feet.

He and Lucy got out, too. Adrian locked the car with the remote before dropping it in his pocket and joining her on the sidewalk. A regular parade of townspeople was streaming toward the church, and even the teenagers dressed up, not a one sullen. Wasn’t there a sixteen-year-old in town who sported a nose ring?

“What don’t you get?” Lucy repeated.

He liked her height. She’d be perfect to dance with.
A tall man, he’d never liked looking down at the top of a woman’s head. She had an easy, comfortable stride, too, when they fell into step together.

“Why she was so easily accepted,” he said. “Get offended if you want, but the truth is, she was nuts. The homeless make people uneasy. Except, apparently, in Middleton.”

She was silent for a moment. “Maybe,” she said at last, “that’s because she was our only homeless person. And also…Well, it’s not true that she was easily accepted, or even that everyone was nice to her. There are people who’d cross the street so they didn’t have to get too close to her. She just…well, found refuges. Places she
was
accepted and even welcome.” Sadness infused Lucy’s voice. “She knew there were places she wasn’t.”

A jolt of anger surprised him. “Like?”

She shook her head, and he realized they’d reached the crowded front steps of the church.

He let Lucy lead the way inside and choose a pew toward the back. A few curious glances turned toward them, but she only smiled and nodded at people she apparently knew.

Father Joseph in robes and surplice proved to be elderly, his hair scant and white, his face so thin Adrian wondered if he were ill. But he had that air of certainty that clergy so often had, a kind of inner peace that comforted his flock. He spoke of forgiveness of sins small and large.

Adrian suppressed a snort. Too much forgiveness would put his law firm out of business. Somehow, he didn’t think there was any danger of that happening.

A choir of children in white robes sang, their voices astonishingly pure and high and beautiful. The entire
congregation sat transfixed. Lucy’s face shone as she listened. Adrian could easily imagine his mother as captivated. He had trouble turning his gaze to the front. He would rather have watched Lucy.

When parishioners stood to take communion, Lucy poked him with her elbow and they slipped out. Once they were in the lobby, she said, “I thought we could visit the day care until Father Joseph is free.”

Sitting there watching a ritual being repeated a hundred times or more hadn’t held much appeal, but neither did checking out the toddlers. Adrian had no close friends with young children, and until these past couple of days had had only rare memories of being one himself. Still, he nodded and followed her down the steps into the basement.

The room was bright, with white paint and high windows and cheerful pictures on the walls. Several cribs stood along one wall, while kids up to maybe four or five finger-painted at a long table in the middle. A baby slept in one crib, and another sat up and shook the bars of the crib, working from a grumble to a scream. There were only two adults in the room, one a teenager and the other likely a mother. She was changing a kid’s diaper at a table designed and stocked for the purpose, while the teenage girl supervised the painting.

Lucy headed right for the screamer and lifted her as naturally as if she had a brood of her own. Adrian hovered in the doorway.

“My goodness!” she told the baby, a girl—no, probably a boy despite the golden curls, given the blue striped T-shirt. “Is nobody paying any attention to you at all?”

The mother laughed. “Lucy. Here, I’ll trade you. Unless you want to change his diaper?”

A boy then.

“I don’t mind,” Lucy said, expertly laying him out on the table vacated by a little girl now being set on the carpeted floor.

“Cruising for a new church?” the mother asked.

“No, we just wanted to talk to Father Joseph. But he’ll be awhile. I have to get my baby fix.” She nuzzled the little boy, whose legs kicked wildly.

The woman gave Adrian an idle glance that became more interested. “Come on in,” she said cordially.

“I’m, uh, fine.” He eyed a couple of toddlers squealing and running straight toward him. Thank God, they veered at the last second.

Adrian continued to hover while Lucy chatted companionably with the other woman and even the teenager, helping out with an ease that told him she’d spent plenty of time with children. All those cousins once-removed? Or maybe she’d babysat her way through her teenage years.

Did she dream of having her own children? Of course she did; she obviously adored these little ones. Lucy Peterson was made to be a mother. She hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend or fiancé, but then why would she? Adrian frowned, disliking the idea of her confiding in this unknown man, maybe telling him all about the hat lady and her arrogant lawyer son.

Or did he just dislike the idea of her with a man at all?

Ridiculous. He was simply avoiding thinking about his mother and her sad life. Impatient with himself, Adrian looked away from Lucy and watched the older kids finger-painting instead.

His mother had
chosen
to spend her mornings changing soggy diapers and wiping snotty noses? If she liked
children so much, why didn’t he have a host of brothers and sisters?

He knew the answer, of course: his father. Adrian couldn’t imagine him changing a diaper or enjoying a two-year-old. And once he realized his wife was unstable, that would have been a further deterrent. Assuming he’d ever wanted children at all. Certainly he hadn’t chosen to have more when he remarried.

Adrian was surprised by a peculiar emotion that was something like jealousy. The kid in him who’d lost his mom didn’t like the idea of her snuggling giggling toddlers, of her laughing with them or telling the older ones knock-knock jokes.
His
knock-knock jokes. She’d loved her Sunday mornings here, but she didn’t remember him.

Annoyed to feel something so irrational, he frowned. Finding out what his mother’s life had been like was one thing; regressing into childhood himself was another. So his mentally ill mother had disappeared from his life when he was ten. What if she hadn’t? The average thirteen-year-old boy was embarrassed by his parents anyway. Imagine how hurt she’d have been if he’d rejected her, when Mom and me ceased to be a unit and became a lonely woman and a teenage boy who didn’t want to be seen with her.

Footsteps and voices and laughter on the stairs heralded the arrival of parents to pick up their youngsters. Some ignored Adrian; a few stared covertly. Lucy chatted with nearly everyone while they claimed their offspring.

Only a few were left when Father Joseph appeared, beaming. “Lucy! I knew I’d find you down here.”

She laughed. “Where else? I wouldn’t need to lurk
in random day-care centers if I could just persuade Samantha to get married and start a family….”

Adrian’s eyes narrowed. Why did she seem to assume her sister would get married first?

“Or choose a good man and start one yourself,” the good father suggested.

Lucy’s gaze strayed to Adrian, waiting to one side. Immediately, color ran over her cheeks. “Um, Father Joseph, I’d like you to meet Adrian Rutledge, the hat lady’s son.”

“Ah.” Father Joseph held out a hand, his generous smile holding no hint of the accusation Adrian had felt from nearly everyone else. “What a blessing that Lucy found you.”

Adrian accepted the handshake. “And that all of you took such good care of her.”

“I think those of us lucky enough to become her friends received more than we gave. Lucy told you how much she loved the children?”

Adrian nodded, that uncomfortable feeling swelling in his chest again. “Yes.”

Father Joseph’s smile didn’t waver, but his hazel eyes seemed to read everything Adrian felt. His tone became especially gentle. “She brought joy to them, and they brought joy to her.”

Adrian swallowed. “I’m glad.” He was a little surprised to realize he meant it. “I understand you let her sleep here at the church sometimes.”

“Yes, we have a room with a cot. Occasionally a parishioner needs a temporary refuge from troubles at home, or feels poorly during a service and must lie down. Your mother took advantage of it rarely.” He
shook his head sorrowfully. “She came only on the coldest or stormiest nights.”

“It was good of you to offer the room.”

“Does she show any improvement?” the father asked, looking from Adrian to Lucy and back. “I haven’t visited since Thursday, but I pray every day for her.”

Lucy shook her head. “Not yet. Unless…?” She, too, turned her gaze to Adrian.

“Not that I could see.”

He waited while Father Joseph said goodbye to a family taking the golden-haired boy, then asked, “Did my mother ever talk about her past?”

“Remembering at all upset her. Once she told me she had a boy. ‘He loved to watch the ferry leave the pier,’ she said. I asked where she’d lived, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. I suggested that one day we take a drive and ride the ferry, thinking it might bring back good memories, but she looked so frightened I didn’t press her.”

“I worry about the years before she came here to Middleton,” Adrian admitted. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter, but—”

“Of course it matters. She’s your mother.” Father Joseph hesitated, his face creasing. “Once she told me about riding a train for days. To go home, she said, only she didn’t have a ticket and they put her off. Wherever it was, it was cold and so flat the land went on forever. She couldn’t remember who she should call and got confused about where she was going anyway. Some nice people bought her a ticket back to Seattle, where she’d come from. ‘I am the queen,’ she said, ‘so I thought I ought to see the king.’ I didn’t know what she meant.”

Throat thick, Adrian said, “The King Street Station. That’s the train station in Seattle.”

“Ah.” Father Joseph’s face cleared. “She did see signs in everything. Was she from Seattle originally?”

“Nova Scotia. But she and my father lived in Edmonds. She must have been trying to go to her parents.” He imagined her, abandoned at some small train station in Saskatchewan, and felt rage at the conductor who hadn’t been able to see how desperately she needed help.

He told the priest more about his mother and his regret that he had never pressed his father for answers.

Lucy stood silent as he spoke, listening, her eyes never leaving his face. The priest talked more about his mother, too, her ability to relate to every child at his or her level, to make them giggle, to heal any woe. “Most of the mothers here adored her.”

“Most?”

“There are always doubters,” Father Joseph said with unimpaired serenity, but Adrian had no trouble interpreting that. Some parents hadn’t trusted their children to his mother. He couldn’t even blame them.

Adrian realized the room was empty but for them. Voices upstairs suggested that other people were waiting to speak to Father Joseph. He thanked him and was told, “Bless you, my son.”

Feeling numb, he followed Lucy upstairs and out into the sunshine.

My mother tried to go home.
He imagined the devastation of her failure. Was that when she had sought the next best thing, a place that reminded her of home?

One phone call. So little, and
Maman
would have found a way to bring her home.

Two blocks from the church, he said aloud, “She did try.”

“Are you going to call your grandmother then?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll have to persuade her not to come. She isn’t well.” She’d want to anyway. Adrian walled off the worry. He’d deal with it later.

After
he went through his mother’s pathetic cache of possessions and tried to be a halfway pleasant lunchtime companion, the least he owed Lucy.

I
N
L
UCY’S GUEST
bedroom, Adrian sat in an antique rocking chair, one of his mother’s many hats in his hands. He didn’t know what this style was called, but it looked like the ones upper-crust women wore to the Kentucky Derby. Lightweight, cream-colored and fashioned of some woven material, it had a broad, sweeping brim to shade a lady’s complexion and a cluster of peach and white silk flowers sewn to the band. The silk flowers were just a little tattered, and a dirty spot marred the brim.

Something about this hat hit him. He could see her, real as day, smiling at him from beneath the shade of her hat. She was young, and happy, and beautiful, at least to him.

He turned it slowly in his hands, then flipped it over—he didn’t know why. A hair clung inside, not blond like he remembered, but white. He touched it with one forefinger and had to swallow hard to suppress…he didn’t know. Tears, maybe.

Why did his mother seem more alive to him here than she did breathing in that hospital bed?

With a guttural sound, he laid the hat on the bed, hung his head for a moment, then made himself open another box.

Lucy had packed his mother’s possessions carefully,
the hats in plastic boxes with lids, the clothes and miscellany in cardboard boxes.

This box held a few books, a plain wooden chest and some oddities. Like a big conch shell. Why in hell would a homeless woman want one? Yet he could imagine her stroking its satiny pink interior or holding it up to her ear to listen for the beat of the ocean.

A couple of the books were from the library. Adrian guessed that Lucy had forgotten they were there. He set them aside to be returned. His mother wouldn’t be reading them in the near future.

At the bottom was the single paperback,
The Fellowship of the Ring.
Hardly breathing, he picked it up. Lucy was right; it looked unread, the spine unmarred, yet the pages were yellowed with age. He started to open it to the beginning, then hastily closed it. Stupid, maybe, but he’d had a sort of superstition about the damn book, one he’d never analyzed. Tolkien made him think about his mother, ergo he didn’t think about Tolkien.

But now he realized, with a grunt of surprise, that his feelings were more complicated than that. He
couldn’t
read it without her, not without abandoning hope. Apparently he clung to more sentiment than he’d believed.

It was in the wooden chest, Lucy had told him, that she’d found the driver’s license, the photo and the handmade Mother’s Day card. When he opened the small chest it contained a few more pictures—a couple of school photos of him and an old black-and-white photograph, curling at the edges, of a little girl. His mother as a child. Blond, thin, ethereal, yet something already sad in her face.

He didn’t understand the trinkets. A thin gold ring
with a single seed pearl, nice enough she could have gotten some money for it. Had his father given it to her? Adrian fingered it. Maybe she’d had it longer than that. As pretty as she was, she’d have had boyfriends along the way. Was this a memento of one in particular, remembered with fondness?

There was other jewelry, mostly cheap, and a few items that must have held some meaning. He didn’t recognize any. Or…wait. At the bottom was a shard of porcelain, waterworn but the blue-and-white glaze still visible on one side. The style was Asian.

In a flash, Adrian remembered himself walking along a beach, gazing intently at the streaks of pebbles among the miles of ocean sand. The Oregon coast? Near Kalaloch on the Washington coast? They’d vacationed at both. He was hoping for something wondrous. A sand dollar, maybe, unchipped. Or a glass float, like the man at the gift shop had talked about, or…He saw something poking from the sand that didn’t belong and pounced. In his hand lay the shard.

“Mom! Mom! Look what I found!”

She hurried to him and gazed in delight at his find. “Why, I’ll bet the ocean carried that all the way here from China. See the curve? It must have come from a pot or bowl. I think that’s porcelain, which means it was probably valuable. How do you suppose it got broken?”

They’d speculated, bending together over the two-inch-long shard. Finally, his hand had closed tightly over it and he’d placed it ever so carefully in his pocket, determined not to lose it. It wasn’t a glass float, but it had come all the way from China. That’s what Mom had said, so it must be true.

“How are you doing?” Lucy asked from the doorway.

Adrian started, his hand closing around the shard of pottery just as it had then.

“Fine,” he said, voice harsh, scratchy.

She hesitated. “Lunch is almost ready. But there’s no hurry.”

“I think I’m mostly done.” His gaze swept the pitifully few boxes. “What a life.”

“Did you find anything else you remembered?”

He hesitated, then opened his hand. “This.”

Lucy stepped forward and peered at it with interest. “How pretty! I’ve seen jewelry made with antique shards of pottery like that. Where did it come from?”

“China.”

“Really? Did you go?”

She looked so interested, and was so easy to talk to, he found himself telling her the story.

“I must have forgotten about it by the time I got home. Or maybe later I lost interest but it reminded her of the fun we had on that vacation. I wonder if you’d asked her, what she’d have said about it.”

Lucy sat on the edge of the bed, still gazing pensively at the worthless piece of pottery in his hand. “I grew very fond of her, but she never showed me any of her treasures. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe because she didn’t remember why she’d kept them.”

She nodded slowly. “That would have bothered her terribly. Or perhaps she remembered snatches but not enough to put them into any kind of coherent narrative. That’s what distressed her the most, when some bit floated through her mind but she couldn’t nail it down.”

“Some bit, like the fact that she had a son?”

She frowned at him. “Do you think she forgot you because she didn’t love you at all?”

Adrian hated the clutch at his throat that would have made speaking difficult. He liked to be in control. He knew underlings at the firm whispered about what a cold bastard he was, and he wouldn’t have argued about the characterization. But something had happened to him since he arrived at this strange little town in the middle of nowhere.

Middle. Suddenly he wanted to laugh. Now he knew how it had received its name. It was in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Depression swept over him. “No. I know she did.” He dropped the shard into the box and closed it. “Lunch sounds good.”

Lucy let him get away with the change of subject and led the way to her kitchen.

He liked her house. She’d filled it with antiques, but she hadn’t gone over the top like her sister had at the bed-and-breakfast. No wallpaper, but the walls were painted with color. Moss-green in the living room, a softer shade of it down the hall above cream-colored wainscotting, rust and peach in the kitchen to set off white cabinets. He guessed they were the original ones. Old glass bottles lined the kitchen windowsill, the midday sun lighting them with soft hues. Every room had potted plants, too, all luxuriant and healthy. African violets lined the sill in the dining room, where the table was set for two with quilted place mats and a jug filled with daffodils.

The house was comfortable, Adrian decided, as well as…loved. He could see Lucy in it: nothing flashy, but
the decor was serene and pretty. His mother had liked brighter colors and whimsical treasures found at garage sales and art fairs, all of which had disappeared from her house shortly after she had.

“Smells good,” he said, meaning it.

“I should have asked if you liked Mexican. We’re having black-bean burritos. At home I like to make different food than I serve at the café.”

“No soup?”

She laughed. “Well…sometimes. And I do my experimenting at home, although not usually for company. The other day, I tried a coconut-potato soup that—”

A brisk rapping on the front door brought her around. Almost without pause, it apparently opened, and a woman called, “Yoo-hoo! Are you home, Lucy?”

“Crap,” she muttered.

“Lucy, dear!” another voice chimed in.

Adrian thought he heard Lucy growl.

“In the kitchen,” she said, unnecessarily, for two women appeared in the doorway.

Both studied him with interest. “Oh, dear,” one of them said. “Are we interrupting?”

Lucy had gotten over her flash of irritation—or maybe just hidden it—and said resignedly, “Mom, Aunt Marian, meet Adrian Rutledge. He’s—”

“The hat lady’s son,” the taller, more buxom of the two said. “Weren’t you at the café the other day?”

“Well, of course he was,” the other woman said. “You know Lucy’s taking care of him.”

He could see the resemblance between Helen Peterson and Lucy. Her hair was short and styled, her eyes brown rather than blue, but the bone structure and shape
of the face was the same. She’d remained as slim as her daughter. Today she wore a light blue skirt and short jacket over a white blouse.

He shook hands and mused that although the two were sisters they didn’t look much alike. Marian was shorter, plump, darker-haired.

“We missed you at church,” Helen told Lucy, studying Adrian quite frankly. “We thought we’d stop by to be sure you were all right.”

“I took Adrian to the service at Saint Mary’s so he could meet Father Joseph.”

“Are you Catholic?” her aunt asked.

Lucy’s eyes rolled.

He shook his head. “Mom was raised Catholic, though. She grew up in Nova Scotia. My grandmother is French Canadian.”

“Really.” Lucy’s mother actually sounded interested. “She sounded so very British.”

“My grandfather was.”

They all looked at him and waited. Apparently he was expected to elaborate.

“Ah…
Grandpère
emigrated when he was a teenager. He let my grandmother decide on the church, but he talked about home a lot. That’s what he always called England. Home.” Adrian pictured his grandfather, tall and white-haired and invariably dressed in rumpled tweeds like any country squire. He smoked a pipe, too, although he chewed thoughtfully on it more often than he actually lit it. “He graduated from Cambridge with a first in English literature and was…a gentleman, I guess you’d say. Mom loved his stories. I suppose those were what she reached for, when she got confused.”

“That makes sense,” Lucy mused. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Beth from
Little Women…
And of course she’d have loved
My Fair Lady.
”

“But Elizabeth Taylor?” her mother asked.

“My grandfather admired her,” Adrian said, recalling his grandmother’s pique when
Grandpère
had rented several Elizabeth Taylor movies to share with his grandson.
Cleopatra
and
The Taming of the Shrew.
“Wait. Wasn’t she in
Little Women,
too?”

“All the pieces go together, don’t they?” Lucy observed.

Did they? As far as he was concerned, the missing years gaped horrifically, and he sensed that those pieces would never be found.

Lucy invited her mother and aunt to lunch. What else could she do? “I’ve made burritos,” she told them.

“Beans?” Aunt Marian said. “You know they give me…” She cleared her throat. “Indigestion.”

“No, no,” her mother said. “Everyone’s coming to the house. I have a turkey roasting. It’s Sunday.” A cardinal sin, apparently. “How could you forget?”

“I didn’t forget, Mom!” Lucy’s cheeks colored. “I just…well, didn’t call you. I’m sorry.”

So, she’d ditched her family for him. It should bother him, how pleased he was to know that.

Her mother and aunt left at last. When Lucy came back from seeing them out, Adrian said wryly, “I can guess what everyone in the family will be talking about this afternoon.”

Lucy made a face. “I’m afraid so. I’m sorry. I should have known if I didn’t let her know in advance Mom would come by to find out why I wasn’t at church.”

“Close family?” The idea was foreign to him.

“You have no idea,” she said in a tone of loathing. Giving herself a little shake, she went to the refrigerator. “What can I get you to drink?”

As they poured drinks, he asked, “If you don’t like having all your family nearby, why do you live here?”

She slipped by him into the dining room, enabling him to catch a scent he hadn’t noticed outside. Lavender, maybe?

“I ask myself that at least every other day.” Setting the drinks on the table, she sighed. “It just…happened.”

“Happened?”

Dumb question; of all people, he knew how easily life just happened. Hell, hadn’t most of his been in lockstep with his father’s expectations?

Again, she whisked past him, not being obvious, but also clearly self-conscious about being too close to him. Adrian was glad, until he remembered how obvious her dislike had been earlier. Maybe he repulsed her.

When he offered belatedly to help, she handed him a bowl of salsa and a basket of chips, warm from the oven, then carried the casserole dish with the burritos to the table.

Once they’d sat, Lucy continued as if there’d been no interruption. “I came home from college thinking I’d work here for the summer, put away a little money for first and last month’s rent when I moved to Seattle or Portland. Somewhere more exciting. I started cooking at the café, and then I had the chance to buy it, and…” She spread her hands.

They dished up, and he wasn’t surprised to find her burritos were delicious. She admitted to making the salsa herself.

“What about you? I know your father was an attorney.”

“Yeah, I think it was a given that I’d go in to law, too.”

“Do you like it?”

Head cocked slightly, she asked as if she really wanted to know. Instead of the brusque, “Why else would I do it?” he might have returned to someone else, he found himself hesitating. Did he?

Adrian couldn’t quite imagine doing anything else. It wasn’t as if he’d been fixated on some other career, beyond the usual fancies any kid had. He remembered wanting to be an airline pilot at one point, a veterinarian at another. That dream withered, given that his father had never let him have a pet. Even earlier, he’d been determined to grow up to be a ferryboat captain. He supposed that had come from living in Edmonds, where they saw the ferry come and go all day long. One summer, he remembered begging to walk down to the beach beside the ferry dock almost every day.