Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (15 page)

Georgia flipped open her laptop, and after a moment she brought up a page with lowercase letters on it. She took the chair beside Cristy’s and explained what they were going to do. “All you have to do is name the letter for me,” she said.

“I do know the alphabet.”

Georgia knew she was embarrassed. Cristy was about to show how confused she really was.

“Then you’ll show me and we’ll move on,” Georgia said. “Even if you don’t know them all, we’ll move on, too. The point is that from this moment forward we’ll be moving on. One skill builds on another. It doesn’t matter where you start.”

“It matters to me. I feel so stupid.”

Georgia thought before she spoke. “That’s okay.”

“Okay for who?”

“Listen, this is going to be hard. I get that. But, you know what? It’s not going to be as hard as your life has been so far. And once you learn, and you will, I promise it’s going to make your life easier. So dig in and no whining.”

“Whining?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

Cristy was silent and Georgia didn’t look at her. Then something almost like a giggle came from her direction. “When I start whining, you’ll know.”

“I hope never to be on this end of it then.”

“Okay. I’m ready to show you how dumb I really am.”

Georgia gave her a brief smile. “I can hardly wait.”

Chapter Seventeen

GEORGIA KNEW BETTER
than to let one fabulous dinner and a smoldering kiss mean more than they really should. Lucas was probably lonely. She imagined the writing life was meant to be that way, but this particular writer was used to being hip-deep in family. He liked her company—that much was clear—but she didn’t really know him. A man Lucas’s age was usually single for a reason, and one of the biggest was a desire to play the field. He’d been married and unhappy. Now he was probably happily
un
married, and she was just a passing interest.

All that was fine with her. A long time ago she had gotten used to being alone. If it weren’t for Sam and Edna—and now the goddesses—she might be a hermit. Her childhood had marked her. Too many hospitals, too many foster homes, too much rejection.

Arabella, then Samuel, had saved her. She’d been lucky to have him, even for the brief time they had been together. An adopted child, Samuel had understood the lingering sense of inadequacy that haunted her, the part deep inside that refused to be logical.

Then Samuel died, and she had shut down emotionally. She’d understood it then, and she understood it now. She needed to be careful and take things slowly.

So why hadn’t Lucas called?

Saturday morning she was contemplating her disappointment when the telephone rang. She was still in bed, since the week at school had been grueling. Tomorrow she planned to spend the afternoon at the Goddess House tutoring Cristy, and she was giving herself the luxury of a slow morning. She was propped against her pillows, a quilt Edna had made for her from multicolored bandannas draped over her legs.

Assuming the call was from her granddaughter, who liked to chat on weekends, she answered on the second ring.

“Good morning, I’m glad I got you at home.”

Despite her early morning mental gymnastics she smiled at the sound of Lucas’s voice. “Good morning to you.”

“How was your week?”

Lonely, she thought, and was immediately cautious again. “Let’s see, one student pulled the fire alarm because he wanted to get out of a test. Tony, our hippie janitor, decided we needed a mural in the gym and sketched one as a surprise. On the wall. Another boy was caught smoking some strange combination of illegal substances in the restroom.”

“Did he
want
to get caught?”

“Seems likely. I think he’s afraid he might succeed as a student. He was showing signs of it. Anyway, we had to suspend him. No weapons, no drugs, no violence.”

“You’re not working up to one of those boys being Dawson, are you?”

“Wouldn’t he have told you?”

“He couldn’t have. I’ve been out of town at a mystery conference, and I just got home. I thought I told you that.”

She felt foolishly relieved. He had mentioned a conference, but she hadn’t heard a date. “I guess I’d better check your website now and then. You do have a website, right?”

“I’d rather you got your info directly from me.”

She was smiling again, and this time, glad to be. “That was such a good dinner the other night.”

“How about another test?”

“It’s my turn to feed you, isn’t it?”

“You’ll be doing me a favor by critiquing me. Zenzo’s partial to picnics, and so am I, but I need a critic. It’s going to be an exquisite day today, and everything’s bursting into bloom. I thought maybe we could go to the Biltmore. Can you be ready by eleven?”

“You can whip together a picnic that fast?”

“I was hopeful. I started whipping while I waited for you to wake up. Do you have a tablecloth? Plates, utensils? Picnic basket?”

As it happened, she did, including a hand-stitched tablecloth and napkins Edna had made her as a birthday present. Smiling ants and inchworms crawling over red checks.

“You bring the food. I’ll bring everything else.” She gave him her address, then hung up. Okay, she wasn’t going to discount anything she’d told herself earlier. She was going to take this slowly.

Or not.

* * *

Everybody needs a two-hundred-fifty-room country retreat. At least that was what George Vanderbilt must have thought when, in the late nineteenth century, he set out to build the mansion that still dominated the Asheville countryside. These days the house received more than a million guests, and through careful management and innovation remained a family-owned, self-sufficient working estate, one of the few historical landmarks in the country that didn’t receive government support.

Georgia found the history interesting and the house exquisite, but those were never her primary reasons for a visit. The grounds were, simply put, extraordinary. Every year she splurged on a twelve-month pass so she could come often. She visited when she didn’t have time for a hike but needed to appreciate the uniquely beautiful countryside she called home. She saw right away that Lucas appreciated it, too.

They started with a trip to the winery and wandered through the cool, fragrant cellars, ending with a tasting. Lucas bought a bottle of the estate’s Viognier, which was dry but light; then they went in search of the perfect picnic spot.

They chatted casually, the way friends do, and by the time they found the perfect, tree-lined expanse of green, Georgia’s earlier lecture to herself had faded into something gentler, a wisp of a warning. This kind of easy intimacy was almost too nice to question.

Trees and shrubs were already in bloom, and they settled near a creek under a flowering crabapple. There were so many places to spread a blanket or tablecloth where they were out of view, although she could still hear the shouts of children and a dog barking not far away.

“I need a pass, too,” Lucas said. “I can see myself coming here frequently now that the weather’s so beautiful.”

“Will you be in Asheville long enough to make use of one?”

He lay back on the blanket she’d spread under Edna’s tablecloth, and put his hands under his head to look through the arching blossomed branches to a cloud-free sky.

“I might be here a long, long time,” he said. “I’m falling in love.”

She was certain he was talking about Asheville. Almost certain, anyway. “Wouldn’t you miss Atlanta?”

“Not when it’s so close. I’ll have a steady stream of family members coming to visit wherever I am.”

She stretched out on the other side of the blanket and propped her head on her hand. “Have you looked at real estate?”

“That’s no fun alone.”

“Well, if you get curious, it’s one of my favorite pastimes.”

He turned to face her. “Is it?”

“I’m something of a voyeur. I’ve always loved to see the way other people live. Maybe that’s why I love the Biltmore so much. I can imagine living here in the nineteenth century, what my day might have been like, who else was here with me, what I wore. My personal Downton Abbey.”

“Servant or family?”

“Both. And I think about the locals who were hired to build the house, and what it did to and for them. Endless fantasies.”

“I’m warning you. That’s how writing novels starts.”

“I like imagining the lives of others too much to make it my profession. I’d start worrying I wasn’t doing it right and that would spoil the fun.”

“As a child did you imagine what the lives of other children were like?”

She searched for a hint of pity and decided there was none. “I used my imagination to figure out what happened in real families, in case I ever had one. When the time came, I’m pretty sure I was right on target.”

“That’s how intelligent children adapt to foster care, I guess.”

“I went through a period of collecting family heirlooms. Monogrammed silver from junk shops, old framed photos, vintage jewelry. I still love old things, but I don’t fool myself that they have any connection to me.”

“And then came the charm bracelet.”

“Even more ironic than you knew, huh?” She wondered why she had told him all this, but Lucas was easy to talk to, and there was nothing confessional or shameful about what she had said. Telling him was just another layer in their budding friendship.

“I’ve given the bracelet a lot of thought,” he said. “I can tell you what I came up with after we eat, if that’s okay.”

They didn’t get right to lunch. Lucas opened the wine. They lounged and chatted about his trip. From the things he carefully
didn’t
say, she realized he was something of a star in his field, and she wondered how often women at those kinds of events hit on him. Today, in a faded chambray shirt rolled up at the cuffs and khaki pants, he was particularly impressive.

By the time they opened his cooler, she was pleasantly light-headed. The sun filtered through the branches and a warm breeze played with her hair. She was wearing cropped pants and a shirt with a cotton scarf wound and knotted at her throat, perfect for the weather. As flies and gnats had been banned at the gate, the air was crystal clear, and every breath was scented with spring.

“Okay, I’m officially hungry,” Georgia said when her stomach began to rumble.

He opened the cooler and in a moment, between them, the feast was assembled.

“This is caponata,” he said, holding up one of the plastic containers. “Eggplant, olives, red peppers, blah, blah, blah. I spread the bread with ricotta first, then the caponata.” He unwrapped a loaf of sliced and toasted
ciabatta
and held it up. “My favorite sandwich.”

The sandwich was just the beginning. He assembled a plate of meats and cheeses, added fresh cubed fruit, cold shrimp, and promised his mother’s chocolate biscotti for dessert.

“She sends me a package of biscotti almost every week,” he said. “She’s terrified I’ll starve.”

“Not much chance of that. We could feed Asheville on this.”

“What can I say? Zenzo knocks himself out. “

“
Lucas
knocks himself out.”

“I have coffee in a thermos, Italian roast. Eat some of everything and you can have a cup.”

“Is that how your mother got you to eat?”

“My mother put the food on the table, and if we didn’t grab our share, it disappeared, and we went hungry until the next meal, when we made sure we were first at the table.”

She smiled, because there was no chance she was going to leave this blanket hungry. “I was lucky. Sam was one of those kids who ate everything.”

“When am I going to meet Sam and Edna?”

The question seemed huge, and for a moment, she was stumped. Then she reached for a shrimp and nibbled before she spoke. “Whenever you like.”

“I’m hoping you’ll meet my family soon. I’ve talked enough about them.”

“Are they coming up?”

“Not right away. My father had surgery. That’s why I stayed so long. He’s recuperating nicely, but everyone’s staying close to home. He loves the attention, though he’d never say so.”

“I’m glad he’ll be okay.”

“Me, too. He’s a great guy. You’ll love him.”

She was no fool. She saw how quickly this was progressing. From Sam and Edna to his family, and now assurances she would love his father. What part of this was loneliness and what part attraction? She warned herself about the first, but she was leaning toward the second. This was not a man who would ever be plagued by a lack of feminine attention.

He switched direction, as if he knew he might be approaching quicksand. “You’re probably curious about the bracelet,” he said. “I have it with me.” He patted his pants pocket. “But let me show you what I did.” He reached in the canvas bag where he’d stored some of the food and brought out a plastic envelope with photos inside.

“You
really
took pictures?”

“It might seem like overkill, but we can brainstorm each charm this way and write our conclusions on the photos. I already have some things to talk about. But I’ve been thinking about those articles. I pinpointed the papers on a map. There are three different ones. The first article came out about a week after you were born, in the Columbus paper. The second, three days after that, came from Macon, and the third, from the
Statesboro Herald,
came out two days after the second. If your mother was the one who left them for you, maybe she was heading east from Columbus, after your birth.”

She’d already told Lucas that she’d been found in a small Columbus hospital, and had probably been born there, since she’d been less than an hour old when she was discovered. After that, she had been quickly transferred to a larger, better equipped hospital just outside Atlanta, where she had spent her earliest months.

“If it
was
my mother, was she heading home?”

“Or trying to throw the police off the trail?”

“I never heard there was any trail to begin with. I think they were stumped from the get-go.”

“Well, a picture of sorts is forming. Although nothing you could use to track her.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

He looked up in question.

“You’re a real-life Zenzo,” she said, “solving a mystery.”

“Do you mind? I know you must be ambivalent about this whole episode in your life. It relates back to something you’ve wondered about, something hurtful. And I get that. But I guess I’m hopeful this will help you put some of that behind you.”

“Could I ever put something like this behind me? My birth and everything that followed shaped who I am.”

“Then everything that’s happened isn’t nearly as bad as it seems from the outside, because the finished product is pretty wonderful.”

She looked from the photographs of the charms to the charmer himself, and something in her heart began to melt. She had a premonition that whatever it was, that part of her was about to disappear forever, no matter how badly she wanted to hold on to it.