“So tell me, Amy, what did you do when you ran away from Jason? Hide some more? Did you stay in an apartment somewhere and draw your little pictures and only go out with your son?”
“Yes,” Amy said softly as tears began to form in her eyes again. Great big drops were spilling over and running down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away.
“Okay, Amy, I’m going to tell you some hard truths. You’ve hurt Jason Wilding to the point where I don’t know if he’ll ever recover. He’s had a difficult life, and he’s learned not to give his love easily. But he offered his love to you and Max, and you spit in his eye and walked away from him. You really, really hurt him.”
Amy took a deep breath. “So how do I get him back? I was horrible this morning. I lied and said dreadful things. Should I go to him and tell him the truth?”
“You mean tell him that you’ve learned your lesson and that you want him so much that you ache inside?”
“Yes, oh, yes. I didn’t know how much I wanted him until I saw him again.”
“Honey, if you go to a man and tell him you were wrong, you’ll spend the rest of your life apologizing to him.”
“What? But you just said that I’d hurt him. Shouldn’t I tell him that I’m sorry I hurt him?”
“You do and you’ll regret it.”
Amy stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it as she tried to open the passage. “Forgive me, but I seem to have gone deaf. Would you go over this again?”
“Look, if you want a man, you have to make him come to you. You know you’re sorry you ran out, but you can’t let him know it. You see, to a man, conquest is everything. He has to win you.”
“But he did already. He went to a lot of effort for Max and me before, but I had some weird idea that I wanted—”
Mildred cut her off. “Who cares about the past?”
“But you just said that I run away and hide and—”
“You do. Now, listen, I’ve just come up with a plan. That’s ‘Plan’ with a capital P. By the time we get through with Jason Wilding, he won’t know what hit him.”
“I think I’m jet-lagged, because I’m not hearing things properly. I thought your sympathy was with him. I thought he was the wronged person.”
“True, but what has right got to do with it? Look, you can’t win a man with apologies and truth. No, you win them with lies and tricks and subterfuge. And sexy underwear helps.”
Amy could only blink at this woman with her fantastic hairdo. Mildred Thompkins didn’t look like the type of woman to use subterfuge on a man. No, she looked more as though she were the type to rope and brand a man. “Underwear?” Amy managed to say.
“Did you ever get that body of yours in shape?”
“I, ah . . .”
“Thought so. Well, I’ll get my hairdresser Lars to do something with you. In front of Jason, of course. And maybe we’ll even get Doreen her house. Why not? Jason can afford it, and Doreen will probably marry some gorgeous man who knocks her around, so she’ll need a house. And you’re going to need a lot of help with those murals of yours. And—Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this before.”
“Honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Now, let’s go see my grandson.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHEN AMY AWOKE TWO MORNINGS LATER, SHE KNEW exactly where she was. She was in what had once been her own bedroom in the Salma house. Quietly, she threw back the comforter and padded into the next room to check on Max. He was sound asleep, on his stomach, looking as though he hadn’t moved all night.
Poor little thing, she thought, he’ll probably sleep another couple of hours.
After tucking the cover about him and smoothing his hair back, she went into the kitchen. But this kitchen bore no resemblance to the old kitchen she’d once tried to cook in. There were no more rusty, broken appliances, no more cracked and peeling linoleum.
Amy wasn’t surprised to see freshly brewed coffee in an automatic maker and muffins, still hot, on the counter. “With love, Charles,” the card beside the pot read. On a hunch, she opened the refrigerator door and wasn’t surprised to see that it was fully stocked. There was a breakfast meal of crepes and strawberries for Max, a red bow tied around the top of the little basket. That Charles somehow knew that Amy and Max were now staying in the house where Max had spent his first seven months didn’t surprise her. No one kept a secret in Abernathy.
With coffee, two muffins, and a warm hard-boiled egg in her hand, she went into the living room, and smiled when she saw a fire in the fireplace—a fire that didn’t smoke. It would be heavenly to sit and drink and eat and to be able to think in peace about how she got here in a mere twenty-four hours.
It had all started because Max wouldn’t stay with Mildred and the new nanny, she thought with a smile. But then, didn’t everything start with Max?
Yesterday, as Amy had entered the library, she could feel the heat of Max’s body as he lay against her, his head down on her shoulder as he did when he was hurt or, as now, exhausted. Nine-thirty, she’d thought. She’d wanted to have two drawings transferred onto the walls by now, but instead she was just arriving at the library.
Jason had greeted her with a face full of fury.
“How do you expect us to get this done in just six weeks?” he said angrily. “Are you unaware of the time pressure we’re under? The opening of the library is six weeks away. The president of the United States is coming. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but it means a lot to the people of Abernathy.”
“Be quiet, will you?” Amy said, not in the least intimidated by him. “And stop looking at me like that. I’ve had all I can take of bad-tempered men this morning.”
“Men?” Jason said, his face darkening. “I guess your . . . your . . .”
She knew that he was trying to say “fiancé,” but the word wouldn’t pass his rigid lips. Maybe it would eventually be fun to play the little game that Mildred had concocted, but not now. Now she was too tired.
It was as though Jason suddenly read Amy’s mind. “Max,” he said softly. “You mean Max.”
“Yes, of course I mean Max. He was awake most of the night. I think that being in a new place frightened him, and after a few hours he didn’t like being pawned off on the nanny Mildred hired. Max has never liked staying with strangers. He’s very selective about the people he likes.”
Jason gave her a raised-eyebrow look that said, That’s how we got into all this in the first place, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, with an ease that was as though he’d been doing it every day for years, Jason took the tall, heavy, sleeping toddler from Amy and settled him on his shoulder, where Max lay bonelessly. “He’s exhausted,” Jason said, frowning.
“He’s exhausted? What about me?”
“As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never had any sleep,” Jason said quietly, his lips playing with a smile.
“True,” she said, smiling back.
“Come on,” Jason said as he walked toward double doors at the end of the room. When he opened one, Amy drew in her breath.
“Beautiful, huh?” Jason said over his shoulder, his voice quiet so he didn’t wake Max. “This was the room the Abernathys built so if they wanted to go to the library, they didn’t have to sit with the hoi polloi.”
The room was indeed nice, but not because there was anything unusual in it, no carved moldings, no imported tile work. What made the room so beautiful was the proportion of it, with windows all along one side of the room, looking out over the little garden at the back of the library. Going to the windows, Amy looked out and realized that the garden was walled off from the larger play area behind the main part of the building.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Is that a private garden?”
“Of course. You don’t think the Abernathys were going to play with the town’s kids, do you?”
“They sound lonely,” she said, then turned back to Jason and held up her arms to t
ake Max. “Here, let me have him. He gets heavy.”
Jason didn’t bother to answer her, but carefully put Max down on a couple of cushions that were piled on the floor, then pulled a Humpty-Dumpty quilt over him.
“Looks like you’re prepared for children’s naps,” she said, turning her head away so she didn’t have to watch him with her son. Sometimes Max stared at men as though they were creatures from another planet, and it made Amy feel bad to think of his growing up without a father.
“Yes,” Jason said as he held the door open, waiting for her to leave before him. He didn’t shut the door but left it open so they could hear Max if he awoke. “I’m making that into a children’s reading room,” he said. “We’ll have storytellers and as many children’s books as the room will hold.” He didn’t ask, but his eyes were begging her to say that she liked the idea.
“The children of Abernathy are very lucky,” she said.
“Mmmmm, well,” he said, embarrassed but pleased, she could tell.
“So where do I begin?”
“What?” he asked, staring into her eyes.
“The murals? Remember? The ones that can’t wait.”
“Oh, yes,” Jason said. “The murals. I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I need an overhead projector and some assistants and—”
“There’s just me.”
“I beg your pardon,” Amy said.
“Me. I’m your assistant.”
“Look, I’m sure you’re good at completely renovating a whole town, but I don’t think that you can paint camels. Besides, you must have lots to do. After all, you are getting ready for your wedding, aren’t you?”
“Wedding? Oh, yeah, that. Look, Amy, I really have to explain.”
Part of her wanted to keep her mouth shut and listen, but part of her was scared to death to hear what he had to say. She liked to tell people that she’d been happy when she was married but the truth was that the whole idea of marriage, maybe even the idea of a relationship, scared her to death.
“Could it wait?” she asked nervously. “I mean, whatever you have to tell me, could it wait? I really need to . . . to call Arnie. He’ll be worried about me.”
“Sure,” Jason said as he turned his back to her. “Use the phone in the office.”
“It’s a long distance call.”
“I think I can afford it,” Jason said as he went back into the room where Max was sleeping.
“It’s awful between Jason and me,” Amy said to Mildred over the phone. “Really awful. And I don’t know how long I can keep this farce going.”
She paused to listen. “No, he hasn’t asked me to marry him. He’s going to marry Doreen, remember? Stop laughing at me! This is serious.
“No, Max is fine. He’s sleeping in the Abernathy Room. Jason is going to make that into a reading room for children.
“No! I am not going soft on you. It’s just that I have never been good at being devious, underhanded, and deceitful.” Pause. “Well, if the shoe fits . . . Wait. You’ll never guess who just walked in. That’s right, but how did you know? You sent her? And you bought her that dress? Mildred! What kind of friend are you? Hello? Hello?”
Frowning because Mildred had hung up on her, Amy put the phone down and found that her anger at her mother-in-law had put some starch in her spine. Also the sight of Doreen in a teeny, tiny blue dress that looked to be made of angora, a dress that she’d just found out her mother-in-law had bought for the woman, had sent more anger through her. Whose side was Mildred on?
“Doreen, don’t you look lovely?” Amy said as she left the office, then gritted her teeth as she saw the blonde wiggle up to Jason. But when Amy saw Jason watching her and not Doreen, Amy gave a big smile. “So when do we start looking for a house for you two, and buying furniture?”
“I think that we need to get these murals done first,” Jason said sternly. “Every second counts.”
“We have to eat dinner,” Amy said brightly. “So why not have take-out in the car on the way to a furniture store? Or, better yet, how about antiques?”
“Used furniture?” Doreen said, sounding disappointed in Amy. “I want new things.”
“True antiques go up in value should you ever need to sell them,” Amy said, her eyes boring into Doreen’s. “Not that you ever would want to sell, but if you buy new furniture, six weeks later you won’t be able to get what you paid for them. Antiques increase in value. You can sell them and make a profit.”
With great solemnity, Doreen nodded. “Antiques,” she said softly, then nodded again.
And in that moment Amy and Doreen formed a bond. Amy wasn’t sure how Doreen knew or for that matter how she herself knew what was going on, but both women knew everything. There was a look exchanged between them that said, You help me and I’ll help you. Doreen couldn’t be so dumb as not to know that within a very few days she was going to lose her job for gross incompetence, so why not get what she could while she had the opportunity?
“Oh, Jason has no idea how long these wedding plans take. He won’t even take time to look at all the goodies I’ve registered for over at the mall.” Doreen frowned and shook her head disappointedly.
“I bet you’ve chosen Waterford and sterling, haven’t you?”
Doreen’s smile broadened. “I knew you were a good person. Isn’t she, Jason, darling?”
“Look,” Jason said, peeling Doreen’s hands off his arm. “I think we should get something straight here and now. I am not—”
“Oh, my goodness, look at the time,” Amy said. “Hadn’t we better get to work? And, Jason, I would like it very much if you helped me paint. I can use the time to tell you all about Arnie.”
Jason’s face darkened. “Give me a list of what and who you’ll need and I’ll see that you get everything.” With that he turned and walked out of the library.
For a moment Amy and Doreen stared at each other; then Doreen took a breath. “Tonight?” she asked. “You’ll go shopping with me tonight?”
Amy nodded, and Doreen broke into a grin.
And that, Amy thought now as she sipped her coffee and ate her muffin, had been the beginning of one of the most extraordinary days of her life. Looking back at that long day now, she couldn’t decide who had been the strangest: Max or Doreen or Jason.
Smiling, Amy settled back on the cushions and tried to sort out her thoughts. First there was Max. She could understand his fit when she’d tried to leave him with his grandmother and the nanny; after all, both women were strangers to him. And, besides, she and Max hadn’t spent more than three hours apart since he’d been born, so to suddenly spend a whole day apart would have been traumatic for both of them.
But in the end, Max had hurt her feelings by the way he’d attached himself to both Jason and Doreen. I’m glad he likes other people, she told herself, but still she felt some jealousy.
It had started at the art supply store, where Jason had driven them so she could buy whatever she needed for the job. As usual, Max started getting into everything, and out of habit, Amy told him no, to leave that alone and don’t break that and don’t climb on that and get down from there and—
“Does he talk?” Jason asked.
“When he wants to,” Amy said, pulling Max down from where he was trying to climb onto a big wooden easel.
“Does he understand complex sentences?”
Amy pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked up at Jason. “Are you asking me if my son is intelligent?” She was ready to do battle if he was insinuating that because Max’s father was a drunkard that maybe Max wasn’t as bright as he should be.
“I am asking about what a two-year-old can and cannot do, and I—Oh, the hell with it. Max, come here.”
This last was said with authority, and it annoyed Amy that Max obeyed at once. Even when she used her fiercest tone with her son, all he did was smile at her and keep on doing whatever she’d told him not to do.
Jason knelt down so he was at eye level with the
tall toddler. “Max, how’d you like to paint like your mother does?”
“Don’t tell him that!” Amy said. “He’ll get paint all over everything and make such a mess that—” She broke off because Jason had given her a look that told her her comments weren’t wanted.
Jason straightened Max’s shirt collar, and the boy seemed to stand up straighter. “Would you like to paint something?”
Max nodded, but he was cautious; he wasn’t usually allowed to touch his mother’s paints.
“All right, Max, ol’ man, how’d you like to paint the room you slept in this morning?”
At that Max’s eyes widened; then he turned to look up at his mother.
“Don’t look at me; I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut,” Amy said, her arms crossed over her chest.
Jason put his hand on Max’s cheek and turned the boy to face him. “This is between you and me. Man to man. No women.”
At that Max had such a look of ecstasy on his face that Amy wanted to scream. Her darling little boy could not have turned into a man already!
“So, Max,” Jason said, “do you want to paint that room or not?”
This time Max didn’t look up at his mother but nodded vigorously.
“All right, now the first thing you need to do is plan what you’re going to paint, right?”
Max nodded again, his little face absolutely serious.
“Do you know what you want to paint?”
Max nodded.
Jason waited, but when the child said nothing, he looked up at Amy.
“This wasn’t my idea,” she said. “You are going to clean him up after this.”
Jason looked back at the boy and smiled. “Tell me what you want to paint.”
At that, Max shouted “Monkeys” so loud that Jason rocked back on his heels.