The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club (14 page)

“Oh.” Lacy remembered running into Heather on her first day home at the grave of her sister. “Because of Jessica.”

Heather nodded and sighed. “She was the golden child. I was the also-ran. When she died, I was sure my parents wished it had been me who drove that car into the lake.”

“Heather, I'm sure they didn't.”

“I am, too. Most of the time.” She took a long sip of her tea. “Guilt over being the one ‘not taken' drove me nuts all through college and well past graduating from nursing school.”

“So what got you through it?” Lacy asked.

“Do you remember Mrs. Chisholm?”

Lacy frowned. “Wasn't she the town librarian when we were in grade school?”

“The same.”

“I remember she complained about everything. We were always too loud. We didn't handle the books carefully enough to suit her. We let the door shut behind us too hard. She was positively ancient when we were little,” Lacy said. “Is she still alive?”

“And still complaining.” Heather chuckled. “Being confined to a wheelchair hasn't sweetened her temper one bit, but she's lucky enough to still be in her own home. Her poor niece Peggy takes care of her.”

“Sign her up for the Mother Teresa Award.” Lacy raised her teacup in salute.

“Amen.” Heather lifted her cup as well and clicked rims with Lacy. “Anyway, I could see how Peggy was flagging each time she brought her aunt to the hospital for this or that. So on my next day off, I offered to take care of Mrs. Chisholm so Peggy could have a little time to herself. I don't know what possessed me to do it.”

“Martyr complex?”

Heather shook her head. “It was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. The old lady is just as difficult as she ever was. In only one afternoon, I was exhausted by her constant demands, but Peggy was so pathetically grateful, it was worth giving up my free day.” A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “And I noticed something as I walked home.”

“What?”

“I didn't feel crappy about me for a change. Compared to Peggy's burden, mine felt light.”

Lacy chuckled. “You know that's why horror films are so popular, don't you? They prove however awful we think things are, they could always be worse.”

“It was more than that,” Heather insisted. “Feeling guilty for breathing is a full-time job, and believe me, I'd been gainfully employed for a long time. When I helped Peggy, I got out of myself for a while. I stopped feeling guilty about me while I put someone else first.”

“And that put everything in a different light,” Lacy said in sudden understanding.

“Right. After that, I started organizing regular respite days for Peggy, setting up a rotation of alternate caregivers. Then I experimented with other ‘random acts of kindness.'” Heather made air quotes with her fingers. “In every case, I got more out of the deal than the people I helped.”

“I'm not sure that's true, but it's good you felt that way,” Lacy said. “So how did this experiment morph into a club?”

“I discovered there were other people who felt the same way—people who've got things they're trying to work through and have discovered that getting their minds off themselves is the best cure. Not that the club is a substitute for therapy or anything,” Heather hastened to add, “but it certainly can't hurt. So now we meet to compare notes.”

“What kind of notes?”

“We share who we've helped and how helping them helped us. See? Like I say. We have an ulterior motive,” Heather said. “And if we need to, we team up for some projects.”

“Projects like what?”

“Like shoveling for shut-ins last winter.”

“Shoveling? Really? You got snow here?” Boston had suffered through a record-breaking winter last year. The Coldwater winters Lacy remembered were barren, but not white.

“Oh, yeah. We got four inches one time. With ice.”

“Bostonians call three or four inches of snow a dusting.”

“Yeah, but even New Englanders better take our ice seriously or they'll end up in the ditch.” Heather tipped back her cup, and then headed for the kitchen for a refill. “Want some more?”

“No, I'm fine,” Lacy said. But she wasn't fine. Not only was she worried about Jacob having PTSD, the first payment on her loan from the O'Leary brothers was coming due in a couple of days. She'd scraped together enough to make that payment, but it would gobble up nearly all of her first paycheck from the
Gazette
to do it. How she'd stay current with that infernal loan and keep body and soul together was a total mystery.

Helping people and getting a warm fuzzy over it was all fine and good. But a warm fuzzy wouldn't solve her problem.

Lacy needed cash. Lots and lots of cash.

And she had no clue where she'd get it.

 

—George Evans, Esq., attorney at law and prosecutor, judge, and jury for squirrels of any stripe

 

 

 

W
hen Lacy pulled into her parents' driveway, she discovered her dad working out on his front lawn with a spray bottle in his hand. Spritzing away, he circled one of the hundred-year-old oaks. She turned off the Volvo and climbed out.

“Lacy! There you are,” he said in his usual booming voice. “Say, I saw that piece you did on the Rotary Club. Well done, daughter. Dorie Higginbottom, huh?”

“I thought it would be best if I use a pen name for my byline.”

“Hmph! You might have picked a better one than that. Your mom hated her maiden name, you know,” he reminded her. “Looks like the job is going OK though?”

“Yes, Dad. The job is fine.” Writing for the
Gazette
didn't thrill her like a beautifully designed space did, but it paid the bills. Barely. Dad
would
think the article was good. Having been a Rotarian for ages, he was in favor of anything that publicized the group's activities. But the piece took no particular talent for Lacy to pull together. Just the facts with a dash of human interest about the Rotarians' upcoming project, the article had practically written itself.

When Lacy gave her dad a hug, she was nearly knocked off her feet by the whiff of a pungent, and horrifically unpleasant, odor. “Phew! Why does it smell like a moldy taco in a dirty bathroom around here?”

Dad brandished his spray bottle. “My secret weapon. It's do-it-yourself squirrel repellent.”

“Smells strong enough to peel wallpaper.” Lacy wrinkled her nose. “What's in it?”

“A pinch of this and a dash of that. I chopped up onions and jalapeños and garlic and boiled them half to death. Then I drained off the liquid into this spray bottle and added a little cayenne pepper for good measure.” He gave her a sheepish glance. “And a bit of urine, too.”

“Urine!”

“That's how animals mark their territory, isn't it? This yard is mine and I mean for those rascals to know it.”

He glared up at a trio of reddish-brown squirrels on one of the limbs of the tree whose trunk he was spraying. Well out of range of his spray nozzle, the animals chattered down at him.

“You have to come down sometime,” he yelled up at them, and then turned back to Lacy. “Once the little buggers get this on their feet, they'll give my trees a wide berth.”

“I see Fergus is giving you one, too.” The Yorkie was pacing the front porch, alternately whining and sneezing.

Her father had the grace to look embarrassed. “Poor little guy. Guess he got a bit too close when I was spraying. I'll have to give him a bath in a bit. Don't tell your mother.”

“I'll add it to the list,” Lacy said as she headed toward the house.

“No need to go in. Your mom's not here. My squirrel repellent . . . well, let's just say it repels more than squirrels. Your mother decided she'll stay with your sister until the smell clears out of the kitchen.”

Lacy's older sister, Crystal, was Coldwater Cove's answer to Mary Poppins—practically perfect in every way. Instead of bolting away to a university after high school, she'd pleased their parents by staying in town to continue her studies at Bates College. Then she went on to become the exclusive school's dean of admissions. Crystal married Noah Addleberry, oldest son and heir of one of the town's founding families. In Coldwater society, the match was roughly equivalent to becoming a Kennedy by marriage. Crystal and Noah had two above-average children, two BMWs, and two pedigreed poodles, all neatly wrapped by a white picket fence around a two-story Craftsman.

Lacy had only seen her sister at their parents' home in passing since she'd returned. She could never live up to Crystal's standard and had given up trying.

“Mom asked me to come over when I had time to help her sort out what she should sell in a yard sale and what she should keep.” Lacy couldn't wait to get her hands on the living room and clear out some of the extraneous stuff. But now that her mom was ensconced at Crystal's house, who knew when, or if, the Mother-of-all-Garage-Sales would get off the ground. “Doesn't she still want to have a sale?”

“Oh, yes. She's very keen on that. She's sure you'll find some real treasures among her things, just like you did for Mrs. Tyler.”

“I'm probably banned from Secondhand Junk-shun for life over that.” News about the rare Fiestaware had made the rounds. Phyllis Wannamaker, the owner of the Junk-shun, was still furious that Lacy had been able to find a well-heeled buyer among her former New England clients for the set of soup bowls. Jake's mother was floored when Lacy delivered a check for a little over $4,300 for them. Then Mrs. Tyler insisted on writing a check back to Lacy for fifteen percent of the amount.

“After all, I'd have paid Phyllis her cut if the bowls had sold at the Junk-shun,” Jake's mom had said. “This is only fair. I insist.”

Lacy hadn't wanted to take it, but in the end, she had and was grateful. It meant she didn't need to eat ramen noodles every night for the rest of the month.

“Dad, can Jake and I use your garage on Thursday?”

“Sure. What for?” he asked without glancing her way as he continued to spray down the trunk. This battle in the War of Squirrel Insurgency required his complete attention.

“I'm going to help him refinish a chair for his mom and he wants it to be a surprise.”

“Okay. Sure. Just put the tools back where you find them. But speaking of surprises, I'm a little surprised you're seeing so much of Jacob.”

“Why? Don't you like him?”

“It's not that. I like him fine. He's a good man. Works hard. Served his country and paid the price for it.” Her dad stopped spritzing long enough to fix her with a searching gaze. “But didn't you always say Jacob Tyler wasn't the sort of fellow a girl could count on for long?”

“I did.” It would do no good to remind him that years had passed since Jake was the town Don Juan. “But don't worry. Jake and I are just friends, Dad. We're not dating or anything. I just helped him open his family's lake house and found a chair worth redoing. That's all.”

“Good. I'd hate to see you hurt again so soon after that business with Bradford Endicott.” He started to spray the tree again and then stopped and stared at his secret weapon. “Say, if you think this stuff will remove wallpaper, it might take off old varnish, too. Want me to brew up another batch to use on that furniture you're redoing?”

“No,” she said quickly. Putting that vile stuff on the Tylers' Danish modern side chair would be sacrilege, and more importantly, if her dad kept making squirrel repellent, her mother might never come home. “Don't make any more. We won't need any varnish remover for our project.”

Lacy's dad continued to work his way around the biggest oak's trunk. A handful of twigs and acorns rained down on him. He jerked upright to glare at the squirrels, but the animals were just sitting on a branch, seeming to ignore him.

“Look at 'em. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Let's see how cool they are once they climb down this tree.” The bark glistened with the odiferous repellent.

“Well, I guess I'd better get going, then.” Lacy needed to escape the smell. Her nose hairs were starting to curl.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Your mother said if you came by to help her go through her treasures, I was to say she wants you to call her cell phone so she can meet you at Gewgaws and Gizzwickies.”

“Why? I thought the point of having a yard sale was to get rid of things.”

“It is. To make room for new things, your mom says. Call her, Lacy. It'll make her day. And it'll make my day if those little rats would just . . .”

At that moment, the three squirrels bounded away from them, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree until they chased each other down the trunk of an oak . . . in Mr. Mayhew's front yard.

“Dad, I think there's a flaw in your plan.”

* * *

Lacy trailed her mother down the narrow aisle at Gewgaws and Gizzwickies with all the enthusiasm of a three-toed sloth. Unlike the Secondhand Junk-shun, this shop wasn't chopped up into small booths. Mom explained that while everything was here on consignment, just like at the Junk-shun, in Gewgaws and Gizzwickies similar items were displayed together regardless of who the vendor was. Only the color and style of the price sticker indicated the original owner of each piece.

“What if a price tag comes off?”

“Don't worry. Gloria will know who it belongs to,” Mom said. “She knows to the inch where everything is in her shop. One day I was in here after some kids had come roaring through the store. It all looked fine to me. Nothing broken, at least. But Gloria made a quick sweep, stopped beside a perfectly lovely arrangement of artificial fruit, and said, ‘Would you look at that? Those fool kids have been messin' with the grapes.' She moved the bunch over a half an inch or so and was satisfied it was right again. The woman has a memory like a steel trap.”

“Or OCD,” Lacy muttered. Who cared whether plastic grapes were moved a smidge?

“Lacy Dorie Evans, I'm surprised at you.” Her mom glowered at her. “That was unkind and uncalled for. I raised you better than that.”

Lacy sighed. Her mother was right. It was OK when her snark was directed at herself. Not so OK when she unleashed it on someone else. “Sorry.”

“That's better,” her mother said as she meandered on. She paused before a display of vases and picked up the most ghastly of the bunch. No flower arrangement on earth would compensate for its horribleness. The ceramic monstrosity was totally out of proportion with a minuscule foot and a bulbous body. But the oversized gilded handles caught her mother's eye. Like a moth to flame, Shirley Evans was drawn to bling, in whatever form it presented itself.

“Mom, I really wish you'd wait until after your yard sale to start accumulating
more
stuff,” Lacy said as she tried to ease the vase from her mother's grip. Mom wasn't having any of it. She hugged her find closer.

“You mean more
treasures,
not more
stuff,
” she said defensively. “Honestly, even if I do sell some of my things, you can't expect me to leave my living room as bare as that apartment of yours.”

“No, of course not. I'd never suggest such a thing.”
As if Mom would take my advice if I did!
“It wouldn't suit you or the house. Your home is traditional, so if you want to keep true to the bones of the place, you need classic accessories. Like this.” She picked up a crystal vase with a simple fluted shape. “It may not be Lalique, but it's not a bad imitation.”

“How do you know it's not Lally-whatever?”

Lacy turned the vase over and showed her mother the smooth base. “No maker's mark. If there's no R. Lalique etched into the glass somewhere, chances are it's not a real Lalique.”

“Seems real enough to me,” Mom said.

To Lacy's relief, her mother returned the blingy vase to its place on the shelf and took the crystal one from her.

“I guess this'll be all right if you think it's the one I should have,” Mom said with a sigh. “But you've become a terrible snob, Lacy. Do you know that?”

Lacy blinked hard. It was as if her mom had slapped her. “Knowing about fine things doesn't make me a snob.”

“No, but sneering at the rest of us for enjoying what we like does.”

Lacy opened her mouth, but no words came out. Would her mother give her sister Crystal a smackdown like that? No, because Crystal never did or said anything wrong. But even her brother, Mike, who was habitually in trouble, wouldn't get treatment like that from their mother. He hadn't come home in years. But if he did, Mom would be afraid to rock the boat with too much scolding.

The injustice stung. She was about to say so when Gloria came up behind them and slid a hand through her mother's arm, linking elbows with her.

“Shirley, how did you and your daughter slip in here without me seeing you?”

“You were ringing up a sale,” Lacy's mom said. “You always have the prettiest things. They must just fly out the door all day.”

“Look, Shirl, I know you're always on the hunt for roosters for your kitchen,” Gloria began.

“George threatens divorce whenever I bring a new one home, but there's still a little room above my kitchen cabinets,” Lacy's mother said. “If I don't point it out to him, he won't notice another anyway.”

“What our husbands don't know doesn't hurt us,” the shop owner said. The two women tittered together for a moment, and then Gloria went on. “Well, I just got in this new piece that I think you'll like even if it's not a rooster.” She started toward the front of the shop, motioning for Lacy's mom to follow.

“What is it?”

“It's a life-sized ceramic hen,” Gloria said. “She's brooding on her nest and, honest to Pete, she looks so real I catch myself wanting to check for eggs every time I walk past her.”

Mom started down the aisle after the shop owner, but stopped when Lacy didn't trail her. “You coming?”

“Go on ahead without me,” Lacy said. Whether it was snobbish or not, she knew she couldn't hold her tongue over a decorative laying hen, no matter how lifelike it was. “I want to take a peek at the wall art.”