Lydia was waiting for her at the counter with a cup of her own. “Have you got a few minutes?”
Alix noticed her friend’s anxious look. “Of course. What do you need? Shall we go outside?” she asked, and Lydia nodded. They’d have more privacy there.
The sidewalk tables were set up with the umbrellas open and Alix chose a shady one close to the café. Lydia sat across from her.
“I hope you don’t mind me interrupting your morning.”
“Not at all,” Alix assured her. Actually, she was grateful for a reprieve from her scattered thoughts.
“It’s about Casey.”
“Who?” As soon as Alix asked the question, she remembered. “Oh, yeah. The foster kid.”
“Right.” Lydia held her coffee mug with both hands, resting them on the table.
“Wasn’t Casey only supposed to be with you for a week?” She knew that because of a comment Margaret had made during last week’s class.
“She was.” Lydia sighed. “Now it might be longer.”
Alix didn’t ask her why. Lydia would explain if she wanted to. But Alix didn’t have any difficulty figuring out that the social worker hadn’t found another home for Casey. Alix wasn’t surprised, either; she’d been shuffled around enough to know what that was like.
“So, how’s it going with Casey?” she asked, although she had a fairly clear idea.
“About all I can say is that we’ve tolerated one another. When Casey comes home from day camp, she goes straight to her room and closes the door.” Lydia paused. “It’s the craziest thing…”
“What?”
“She hoards stuff.”
“Like what?”
Lydia looked mildly embarrassed. “Toilet paper. I came across six rolls in her bedroom. Last Monday I got groceries and then later couldn’t find the crackers. They were in Casey’s room, hidden under the bed. The end of the box was sticking out and when I knelt down to pick it up, I found a box of cereal, some cookies and the toilet paper. When I asked her about it, she said she might need them.”
“Did you take the stuff away from her?” Alix asked.
Lydia shook her head. “I decided that if she felt more secure keeping those things in her room, it was okay with me.”
Alix suspected there’d been a time and a place when necessities like crackers, cereal and toilet paper had been withheld from Casey. During her years in foster care, Alix had developed some idiosyncrasies of her own.
“Dinners are the worst,” Lydia went on to say.
“How do you mean?”
Lydia’s expression was strained. “At least she eats, but she barely talks. I’ve done everything I can to draw her out. Nothing I say or do seems to reach her. From the looks she gives me, it’s as if she resents my showing any interest in her. Cody’s been great lately and Brad, too, but there just doesn’t seem to be any way to connect with her.”
Alix had been in enough foster homes to recognize the behavior. “She knows she’s going to be leaving soon, so she’s trying not to care about any of you.”
“But why? Brad and I have bent over backward to make her feel welcome.”
This was so hard for others to understand. “Listen,” Alix said, leaning toward her friend. “Let me put it like this. You’ve got a piece of tape and you stick it to something and it stays put. Okay?”
Lydia blinked. “Okay. Yes.”
“Peel it off and stick it again and what happens?”
“It still sticks,” she answered.
“Right. But what happens when you peel it away for the third or fourth time?”
Lydia shrugged. “Most of the stickiness is gone.”
“Well, it’s the same with kids. Casey’s protecting whatever stickiness she has left for the family who’ll keep her and care for her and love her. She can’t risk her heart on a family that’ll be part of her life for a couple of weeks.”
Lydia shook her head again as if she wanted to argue. “Brad and I do care about her.”
“Sure you do.” Alix didn’t mean to sound flippant or cynical but she couldn’t help it. “You care about her now. Casey knows that six months down the road you’ll have trouble remembering her name, especially if you take in other foster kids in emergency situations.”
“Oh.” Lydia appeared to mull that over. “Would it be better if we didn’t care?”
“No. Give her all the attention and love you can. It’ll fill her up. And that’s a good thing, especially when it comes time for her to change homes.”
Looking down, Lydia clasped and unclasped her hands. “She’s been with us for nine days now.”
“It seems longer than that, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah.” Lydia grinned. “She’s already tried to run away once.”
“Did she make it obvious?”
Her question surprised Lydia, who nodded.
“Typical.” Alix had tried it more than once herself. If Casey had really wanted to slip away unnoticed she would’ve managed to do so. It was a ploy to see if Lydia and Brad would stop her.
“What do you know about her family background?”
“Next to nothing,” Lydia told her. “Evelyn didn’t think it was necessary to tell us much, seeing that Casey was supposed to be with us for such a short while.”
“So now what?”
“Evelyn phoned yesterday afternoon and asked if there was any way Brad and I could keep Casey for another couple of weeks—until her classes are finished. Apparently the state will have to place her in a home in a different school district. Evelyn said there’s a real shortage of foster homes this summer.”
“What are you going to do?” Alix asked without emotion.
“I talked to Brad and Cody, and the three of us decided we’d be okay with having Casey stay longer. Only…only we don’t believe she wants to stay with us.”
“She does,” Alix told her confidently. “The problem is, she’s been moved around so much she’s afraid to let anyone know what she wants for fear it’ll be taken away from her.”
Lydia’s frown showed her dismay. “You mean…love? Security?”
“Yes…and even toilet paper,” Alix said with a small laugh.
This was a whole different world to her friend. Lydia couldn’t understand the mind of a child like Casey, not the way Alix did. Alix, too, had been a case number, a name on a file. Evelyn Boyle did her best; she was a good woman with a huge heart but she carried a heavy load.
“You talked about the tape and stickiness,” Lydia reminded her.
“Yes.”
“How can I give Casey some of her glue back?”
Good question. Alix leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table, and thought about it, recalling that time in her own life. When she was in the eighth grade, she’d lived in three different foster homes and attended three different schools. It’d been a bad year for her, and she suspected that once Casey left Lydia and Brad’s, her year would follow the same downward spiral.
“Does Casey have any family? A grandmother? Aunt? Cousins? Does—” She stopped when Lydia started to nod.
“She mentioned a brother,” she said eagerly, then paused. “Actually, I think it was Evelyn who told me that Casey has an older brother. Apparently he’s at the Kent Juvenile Facility.”
Alix had briefly been incarcerated there herself. Kent was a south Seattle community with the largest juvenile facility in the area, possibly the state.
“It would help if you could arrange for Casey to visit her brother.”
“But how?” Lydia sounded perplexed.
“Get Evelyn involved. I can guarantee that Casey will feel a whole lot better if she can spend even a small amount of time with him.”
Alix had loved her brother, too. She didn’t talk about Tom and very few people knew about him. Tom’s death had been the turning point in Alix’s life. Up until then, she’d experimented with drugs, hung out with losers and generally got herself into trouble.
Then Tom had been found dead. He
’d choked to death on his own vomit after shooting up heroin. As long as she lived, Alix would never forget the day she’d learned that the only person who’d ever truly loved her was gone. Forever. She’d wanted to die herself.
Giving herself a mental shake, Alix returned her attention to Lydia.
“I’ll call Evelyn as soon as I get back to the store,” Lydia said. “I appreciate the advice.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
“Anything else you can suggest?”
“Well…you’re going to need lots of patience.”
“You mean more than Brad and I have already given her?” Lydia asked wryly.
Remembering her own youth, Alix nodded. “Lots more.”
“I was afraid of that.” Lydia laughed a little.
Alix laughed, too. She wondered whether Lydia’s sister had any opinions on this latest development—and was sure she did. “What does Margaret have to say about the situation with Casey?”
“You don’t want to hear.” Lydia’s smile wavered and she shook her head. “Margaret means well. It’s just that she’s so used to looking after me. Even now Margaret’s always positive that she knows best.”
Alix glanced at her watch and realized her break had ended five minutes earlier. She’d better find out why Winter had asked to see her.
“I need to get back to work,” she said and stood, collecting their empty cups.
“Thanks again,” Lydia murmured.
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Or if you ever need to talk,” Alix said, and she meant it.
CHAPTER 13
“Hutch” Hutchinson
Hutch sat at the table in the back of A Good Yarn and tried to concentrate on his knitting. The sampler scarf was progressing well as far as he could see, at least the first and second sections were. He’d learned to knit and purl, which seemed to impress everyone, from his mother to his assistant, Gail. This was the third class and Lydia was showing them how to make cable stitches, which was bound to really impress Gloria and Gail.
Lydia was teaching them in stages, and he suspected the stitches would become progressively more difficult with every week. He felt a little hesitant about this, since knitting didn’t come naturally to him. He’d hoped for relaxation, not another challenge—despite the bragging rights conferred by his new skill. He might have considered dropping out if not for an even more interesting challenge.
Phoebe Rylander.
She was already there when he arrived, and he’d been distracted from the moment he sat down. He hoped his fascination with her wasn’t obvious; he was afraid of embarrassing himself and frightening her off.
He couldn’t believe how romantically inept he was, although he told himself there were extenuating circumstances. Phoebe was still grieving the death of her fiancé, and he didn’t want to appear insensitive to her pain. At the same time…well, he’d like to get to know her.
He was trying to heed his mother’s advice—to go slow—but if he went any more slowly, the next ice age might overtake the world before he’d managed to ask her out on an actual date.
This was the third week he’d sat across from her. He felt as if he was still in junior high—and he didn’t like the feeling. He’d offered to escort her to her car that first class. Phoebe had declined, so during the second class he didn’t mention it again. They’d spoken a few times, about inconsequential things. She’d laughed at his jokes. That was a good sign, but then Alix and Lydia had laughed, too.
“I’ve really come to enjoy these classes,” Phoebe had said at the end of class as she packed her knitting bag.
Hutch continued to keep his supplies in his briefcase. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want anyone to know he was knitting. He just preferred not to walk around carrying an oversize purse, especially one of those quilted ones that looked like a diaper bag.
At the end of the second class Phoebe had started to leave first. Hutch had hurried forward to open the door for her and she’d smiled her appreciation.
Hutch had smiled back, then stood there like a dope as she’d moved down the sidewalk.
Phoebe had been a half a block away when he’d instinctively begun to follow her. He’d stopped abruptly midstep, uncertain what to say or do next. After that initial statement during the first class, she’d said nothing more about her fiancé. Hutch had assumed the other man’s death was recent but couldn’t be sure.
He was definitely interested in getting to know Phoebe, but he didn’t want to start a conversation by opening a half-healed wound. He had no idea whether it would be appropriate to refer to her fiancé, yet it seemed heartless to completely ignore this man she’d so obviously loved.
The way he figured it, he needed to make a move soon or forget it entirely. And forgetting Phoebe was definitely something he didn’t want to do. But if he waited too long, didn’t make his interest clear, the whole thing would become awkward. For both of them. He’d tried to work out the best approach.
Unfortunately he’d come up blank. He’d never had trouble starting conversations with women while he was in college and in his twenties. Of course, he’d never encountered a situation like this one, either. It didn’t help that he hadn’t dated anyone in so long his skills had rusted away.
“Would you like me to check your stitches?” Lydia asked, breaking into his thoughts. He’d reviewed what he had—and hadn’t—said to Phoebe a dozen times. In the end, he hadn’t approached her, and regretted it for the rest of the week. This third class was it, he decided. If he didn’t act now he was afraid he never would.
Hutch glanced up at Lydia and found her regarding him expectantly. Thinking he might have missed part of the conversation, he handed her his knitting.
She took it from him and frowned.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked. Although his attention had been on Phoebe, he’d carefully tried to follow Lydia’s instructions.
Lydia gave him a reassuring smile. “The pattern’s perfect.”
Hutch had thought so, too, but it felt good to have Lydia confirm it.
“The problem is your tension, Hutch. See how tight these stitches are?”
It was true that he had difficulty moving the yarn on the needles, but it’d been like that from the moment he cast on his first stitches.
“It’s almost as if you’re knitting armor,” she teased.
“I’ve done it like this from the start.”
“Relax,” Lydia said. “That’s the reason you signed up for this class, isn’t it? To relax?”
Hutch nodded.
He looked quickly at Phoebe. Lydia was right; he’d enrolled in this class to help lower his blood pressure and learn new techniques for dealing with stress. However…he’d met Phoebe, and she’d inadvertently increased his stress. At least his thumb was improving. The knitting had benefitted him there.
“I have just the opposite problem,” Phoebe volunteered after Lydia had left the table. “My stitches are too loose. At the rate I’m going, this scarf is going to be ten feet long.”
“And mine will be ten inches.”
She laughed at his rather lame joke, which encouraged him. “Are you enjoying the class?” he asked, then wanted to groan. If his joke was lame, this effort at conversation was even worse.
Phoebe smiled at him. “Very much. What about you?”
“A lot.” Hutch didn’t mention that she was responsible for about ninety-nine percent of his pleasure. He’d been looking forward to this evening and dreading it at the same time. His thoughts had been on Phoebe all week and now here she was—yet he felt as much hesitation as he had before. He was even more reluctant to take a risk with her for fear of offending her so soon after a major loss…and perhaps a fear of being rejected, too, although he hated to admit that. He paused, hoping for further encouraging signs. None came but, determined now, he forged ahead. “I don’t suppose…I mean, after class…but if you’ve got other plans, I understand…” That sounded so pathetic, it was all he c
ould do not to get up and walk away. He closed his mouth, deciding he wouldn’t say another word. What was wrong with him? He was a competent businessman who headed a family-owned enterprise and commanded the respect of over a hundred employees. Yet around Phoebe he acted like a kid in junior high.
“Other plans for what?” she asked curiously.
Well, he’d bungled that, despite his attempt to sound casual. “Would you like to have coffee?” he asked, his voice gruff now, almost angry. This was going from bad to dismal.
To his utter astonishment, Phoebe nodded. “I’d like that.”
He clamped his mouth shut before he could talk her out of it.
“There’s the French Café across the street.” Alix looked up from her knitting. “They’re open until ten tonight.”
“Great idea,” Phoebe said. “You work there, right?”
“Sure do. I’m part of the morning staff. I do the baking.”
“So you’re the one responsible for those wonderful pastries,” Phoebe commented. “I stopped by the other day and picked up a half-dozen for the clinic. They were fabulous.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” Alix said.
“Yes, you can,” Lydia cut in. “I’ve seen and tasted Alix’s handiwork.”
“Me, too,” Margaret agreed. “You see this extra fat on my hips? Blame Alix.”
“Hey, you’re the one who chose to eat those Danishes and croissants,” Alix reminded her.
“I second that,” Hutch added, remembering the lawsuit hanging over his head. It wasn’t just the candy business that could be jeopardized by this lawsuit. If he lost, bakeries would be prime candidates, too. And restaurants. No telling where this craziness would end.
“All right, all right.” Margaret sighed. “I deserve every ounce of this extra weight.”
Hutch grinned, then caught Phoebe watching him. She smiled back. He felt a sensation of warmth. Of happiness—and comfort. Maybe he hadn’t seemed as big an idiot as he’d thought.
“Shall we walk over to the French Café after class?” she asked.
“Sure.” If she’d suggested they have coffee in Costa Rica, he would’ve found a way to get there. Walking across the street was no problem—if he didn’t do something stupid like throw himself in front of a bus.