The Great Escape (35 page)

“Definitely. They’re going to sell like crazy.”

“I hope so. Labor Day’s only a month away, and then …” She made a vague, helpless gesture.

Lucy wished Bree would let her cover the initial printing costs of mass-producing some of the note cards. But even though Lucy had presented it as a business proposal, Bree was too proud to accept. On the positive side, Bree had found a new sales outlet through Pastor Sanders, the minister at Heart of Charity Missionary Church and owner of the local gift shop. He’d just started carrying some of her products.

“How did your nautical excursion with Mike go yesterday?” Bree said, too casually.

“Great. I had fun.”

“Then Mike must have fallen overboard.”

Lucy pretended not to notice the edge in Bree’s comments. “Nope.”

“Too bad.” Bree snatched up a bag of tiny sampling spoons and poured them into a basket she set next to a dish of the individually wrapped chocolate-dipped honey caramels Lucy had finally perfected.

Lucy spoke carefully. “I like him.”

“That’s because you haven’t been around him long.” She wrenched the lid off a fresh container of comb honey she set out for customers to sample. “I’ve known him since he was younger than Toby.”

“Yes, he said he wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular.”

“You have no idea.”

“I sort of do. He told me what he did to you.”

She went still. “He told you?”

Lucy nodded. “He’s an interesting person. Unusual. As open about his mistakes as he is about his accomplishments.”

“Yes, I’m sure he loved telling you how important he is.”

“Not really.”

Bree finished arranging the honeycomb and spoons, along with some stick pretzels for dipping into a cocoa-flavored honey she’d started putting out as an experiment. “I don’t like Toby spending so much time with him.”

“Mike cares about Toby.”

“Yes, they have a real love fest going on,” she said bitterly.

Lucy cocked her head. “Are you jealous?”

“Of course I’m jealous.” She swatted a fly swooping too close to the honeycomb. “Mike doesn’t have to nag him into taking a shower or going to bed at a reasonable time. Mike only does the fun stuff, and I’m the wicked witch.” She stopped, her expression troubled. “I know I’m right about Mike. People don’t change that much. But …” Another of those helpless gestures. “I don’t know … Things are getting confusing. I’m not even sure why.”

Lucy had a few ideas about that, but she kept them to herself.

B
REE LOCKED UP THE FARM
stand for the night. The frames in the hives were heavy with honey. Earlier today, she’d cleaned Myra’s old hand-cranked extruder, and at dawn tomorrow, she’d start this year’s harvest. The work would be backbreaking, but that didn’t bother her as much as the implications of harvesting honey for next summer. She’d accepted the fact that she had to stay on the island, but she was far from sure she had enough money saved to survive the winter until she could sell this new crop.

She gazed around at what she’d created—her little fairy castle farm stand with its carousel ribbon trim and Easter egg Adirondack chairs. It shocked her how happy this world she’d created made her. She liked watching her customers settle into the painted chairs and enjoy samples of her honey. She enjoyed seeing them testing her lotions, sniffing her soaps, and pondering her candles. If only she could live in a perpetual summer, with no threat of winter, no obsessing over money, no worries about Toby. She sighed, gazed at what she could see of the sunset through the trees, and headed for the house.

The first thing she noticed as she stepped inside was that the kitchen smelled delicious, like real food. “Toby?”

He wore his favorite jeans and T-shirt along with a baseball cap and a pair of red oven mitts with the batting coming out of one thumb. He took a casserole dish from the oven and set it on the stove next to a pair of wrinkled baked potatoes. “I made dinner,” he said.

“By yourself? I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Gram taught me some stuff.” Steam rose from the casserole as he pulled off the aluminum foil. “I wanted Mike to come eat with us, but he had business.”

“He has a lot to do,” she managed, without sarcasm. “What did you fix?”

“Cowboy casserole, noodles, and baked potatoes. Plus we have the bread Lucy made today.”

Not exactly carb light, but she wasn’t going to criticize. She washed her hands, avoiding the pan of cold, soggy noodles in the sink, then took two plates from the cupboard. She pushed aside a copy of
Black Soldiers in the Civil War
to set them on the table. “It smells delicious.”

The cowboy casserole turned out to be a concoction of ground beef, onion, pinto beans, and, judging from the empty can on the counter, tomato soup. Six months ago, she’d never have eaten anything like this, but despite some undercooked onions and overbrowned ground beef, she had seconds. “A great meal, Chef,” she said when she finally put down her fork. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Anytime you feel like cooking, you go right ahead.”

Toby liked having his work appreciated. “Maybe. How come you don’t cook?”

Exactly when was she supposed to add that to her schedule? But the truth was, she’d never liked to cook. “I’m not much of a food person.”

“That’s why you’re so skinny.”

She gazed around at the kitchen with its dated pickled oak cabinets and yellowing vinyl floor. How odd to feel more comfortable in this shabby cottage than she’d ever felt in the luxurious house her cheating husband had bought. As for the money she’d once spent so freely … Not a penny of it was as precious as what she was earning for herself with her own hard work and imagination.

“Your mother liked to cook, too,” she said.

“Really?” Toby stopped eating, fork poised in midair. His eagerness made her feel petty for not talking to him about Star. Just as Mike had asked her to.

“Gram never told me that,” he said.

“Sure. She was always trying out new recipes—not just cookies and brownies, but things like soups and sauces. Sometimes she’d try to get me to help, but mainly I just ate what she made.”

He cocked his head, thinking that over. “Like you’re eating what I made.”

“Exactly.” She searched her mind. “She wasn’t crazy about bees either, but she loved cats and dogs.”

“That’s like me, too. What else about her?”

She stole the man I loved.
Or was that merely what Bree wanted to believe because it was easier to think bad of Star than to admit that David had never really loved her?

She made a play out of pleating her napkin. “She liked to play cards. Gin rummy.” Star cheated, but Toby had heard enough negatives about his mother. “She loved Janet Jackson and Nirvana. All we did one summer was dance to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ She stunk at softball—none of us wanted her on our team, but we always let her because she made us laugh. She liked to climb, and when we were younger, she’d hide from me in that big old tree in the front yard.”

“My tree,” he said with so much wonder that her heart ached.

She told him what she should have understood from the beginning. “Your mom wasn’t perfect. Sometimes she didn’t take life as seriously as she should, but I can tell you this. She never intended to leave you. She always meant to come back.”

Toby dipped his head so she wouldn’t see his eyes filling with tears. She reached out to touch him, then thought better of it. “Let’s go to Dogs ’N’ Malts for dessert.”

His head came up. “Could we?”

“Why not?” She was so stuffed she could barely move, but just once, she wanted to be the fun person in Toby’s life.

They climbed into her car, and she drove to town. Toby ordered a super-size concoction of ice cream, M&M’s, sprinkles, peanuts, and chocolate sauce. She ordered their smallest vanilla cone. As luck would have it, Mike showed up not long after they’d sat at one of the picnic tables. “Hey, Toby. Sabrina.”

Sabrina?

Toby jumped up from the bench. “Sit with us, Mike!”

Mike glanced toward Bree. She wasn’t going to be the bad guy, and she nodded. “Sure. Come and join us.”

A few minutes later Mike returned with a small chocolate sundae and settled next to Toby, which put him directly across from her. Her heart twisted as Toby shot her a pleading look, imploring her not to ruin this. Mike avoided looking at her altogether.

Her cone was beginning to drip, but she couldn’t take another lick. She didn’t like feeling as if there was something wrong with her because she refused to join the Mike Moody fan club. Even Lucy liked him. But how could Bree forget the past? Except wasn’t that beginning to happen? Each day it grew more difficult to reconcile the adult Mike Moody with the boy she remembered.

A young couple—the husband carrying a baby in a Snugli—stopped to talk to him, followed by an older man hauling an oxygen tank. Everybody was glad to see Mike. Everybody wanted to say hello. Toby waited patiently, as if he’d been through this before. Finally they were alone. “Toby, this sundae is so good I think I’ll have another.” Mike dug in his pocket and handed over a five-dollar bill. “Mind getting one for me?”

As Toby went off, Bree noticed that Mike had barely touched his first sundae. He finally looked at her. “I was coming out to see you tomorrow.”

“I thought you were done with me.” She managed not to sound too petulant.

“This is about Toby.” He pushed aside his ice cream. “The Bayner boys aren’t coming back to live on the island.”

It took her a moment to place the name. “The twins who are Toby’s best friends?”

“His only real friends. Their parents are splitting up, and his mother is staying in Ohio with them. Toby doesn’t know about it yet, and this is going to hit him hard.”

“Great. One more problem I have no idea how to solve,” she said.

He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I might be able to help out.”

Of course he could. Mike could fix everything, something she should have thought harder about before she’d dismissed him.

He balled the napkin. “I never liked how Myra kept him so isolated, but she was odd that way, and she refused to talk about it. Toby’s with other kids at school, but she wouldn’t let him invite them to the cottage or go to their houses. The only reason the twins were friends was because they lived close enough to walk. She overprotected him.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” It was odd asking Mike for advice, but he didn’t seem to find it strange.

“I coach a soccer team,” he said. “It’ll be a good place for him to start making new friends. Let Toby join.”

She’d already become a beekeeper. Why not add soccer mom to her résumé? “All right.”

He seemed surprised that she’d agreed so quickly. “I’m sure you have some questions. I’m not the only coach. There’s another—”

“It’s fine. I trust you.”

“You do?”

She pretended to examine a ragged fingernail. “You’ve been a good friend to Toby.”

“Here you are.” Toby popped up at Mike’s side with the sundae. Mike surreptitiously moved the first one under his napkin and took up the plastic spoon to start on the second. Toby asked him about fishing rods, and they were soon immersed in conversation.

Long after she should have been asleep that night, Bree was still sitting on the back step, staring out into the darkness, thinking about Mike and the upcoming winter. Her honey was selling better than she could have hoped, and the bee Christmas ornaments were a surprise hit. Pastor Sanders was displaying her products in his gift shop without charging her a percentage. He said he’d take his commission in honey and give it away to any of his parishioners who needed their spirits lifted.

She was saving every penny she could, but she was spending it, too. And not just for more jars. After days of agonizing, she’d placed a big order for some very expensive hand-blown glass globe ornaments that she intended to paint with island scenes and—cross her fingers—sell for three times what she paid for them. But with only a month left before Labor Day, when her customers would disappear, the purchase was a huge risk.

She still had a dribble of cash coming in from the consignment shop at home where she’d left most of her clothes. With luck, that money, combined with steady sales at the farm stand for the rest of the month and a big profit from the hand-painted ornaments she’d just received, might carry her through the winter. If Toby didn’t keep growing out of his clothes, and the old furnace kept running, and the leaky roof didn’t get worse, and her car didn’t need brakes, and …

Winters are long, and people here only have one another to depend on.

It had been easier dismissing Mike’s words in June than it was now, with fall creeping closer each day. If the worst happened, she had nowhere to turn. She needed Mike.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that ignoring him was a luxury she could no longer afford. She had to change direction. She had to convince him that she no longer hated his guts. Even if it killed her.

Toby’s sleepy voice drifted through the screen door. “What’re you doing out here?”

“I—couldn’t sleep.”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“No. What about you? Why are you up?”

“I don’t know. Just woke up.” He yawned and came out to sit next to her. His shoulder brushed her arm. The sleepy, sweaty boy smell of him reminded her of summer nights with her brothers when they’d sneak into one another’s rooms and tell ghost stories.

He spoke through another yawn. “Thanks for the ice cream tonight.”

She cleared the lump in her throat. “You’re welcome.”

“A lot of kids are scared of the dark, but not me,” he announced.

She wasn’t either. She had too many real things to be afraid of.

He leaned over to examine a scab on his ankle. “Could we maybe invite Mike over for dinner soon?”

She began to bristle, then realized he’d handed her the perfect method to begin mending her relationship with Mike. One way or the other, she had to make him believe she’d put the past behind her.

“Sure we can.” She briefly wondered when she’d become so cold-blooded, but standing on principle now seemed to be a luxury only the wealthy could afford. “I think it’s time we both got some sleep.” She rose from the step.