Thomasina watched for Trace to move out to Milt and Mary’s farm. But the days passed with no sign of moving boxes. She grew familiar with his habits and patterns as her anger faded and she listened to him come and go. Her hurt diminished, too, making it harder, though all the more necessary, to keep up her guard. Necessary, because her attraction to him jeopardized more than her bruised heart, it jeopardized her hopes and aspirations. Doubts were on the move. And it wasn’t just the knowledge that her dream would rob Trace of his. It went deeper than that How deep, she wasn’t sure, for probing it was too much like putting her hand to the plow and looking back.
“It’s a big decision you’re making, honey,” Flo said one evening as they talked by phone. “But God opens doors as you come to them. If this camp is His work for you, you can be sure He’ll lead you along, step by step.”
If? The word stuck in Thomasina’s mind like a burr, for she hadn’t shared her apprehensions with anyone. Did Flo doubt her ability, too? She waited and prayed for guidance. As if in answer to her prayers, Flo and Nathan called, and suggested she enroll in classes related to camp ministry.
“You’ll make some valuable contacts at Bible college while you’re learning,” said Nathan.
“But how can I work, go to school and get a camp off the ground?”
“One step at a time, baby,” soothed Flo. “God will give you the strength.”
Thomasina called Lincoln Christian College for a fall schedule, and enrolled the following week. Returning to school required some major adjustments. She cut back on her work schedule in order to have time to study, and still her days were so crowded, she saw almost nothing of Winny and Pauly. It bothered her, particularly when Antoinette called one evening, needing a sitter, and she wasn’t free to offer. Antoinette was understanding about it and in time the crippling inertia that had beset her ever since she’d severed ties with Trace faded.
Having returned to school himself, Ricky came one afternoon a week and mowed Thomasina’s yard. Even though he thought it beneath him, and swore he’d dye all of her curtains purple if she ever told anyone, he could be coaxed by dollar signs into staying to run the sweeper, dust and do laundry while she hit the books.
“I cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-purple,” Thomasina promised each time she wrote out his check.
Ricky was a bright spot in her treadmill of school, work and too little free time for the people she enjoyed. He was also a reliable source of information. It was he who told her that Trace had been a chaperone for the youth group’s in-line skating outing which had ended a mile out of town when Deidre, also a chaperone, fell and broke her ankle.
“Trace said she got a kick out of the get-well card I sent her,” confided Ricky with boyish pride. “I made it on the school computer.”
Trace said. Thomasina filed those words in her burr drawer, right next to Flo’s If.
“I have her folks’ address if you want to send her one,” finished Ricky.
Two days later, Thomasina sent Deidre a card just to prove to herself how very little she cared what Trace said, then got her heart stepped on the next morning when Trace showed up at her door to tell her that the Realtor would be showing the house that afternoon.
Other showings followed, with Trace updating her intermittently. Briefly. Politely. No baiting about her chocolate fetish, where she chose to do her laundry, or her taste in books.
Late in September, a sale pending sign went up. Trace phoned when she was out, and left a message on her answering machine, letting her know the potential buyer planned to live in one side.
“He and his wife have a house in town to sell. They don’t intend to move until it’s sold, so you’re free to stay. It’ll save them looking for another renter,” he added. “I’ll let you know where to send the rent check, once we’ve closed.”
A new landlord. The clean break.
Thomasina told herself that it was time, that the weaning was done and she was fine. Then one gorgeous October Saturday, just two weeks before the auction, she pulled into the parking lot at Spanish Cove for a long overdue visit with Milt and Mary, and there was Trace, helping Deidre into his truck. Her heart kicked salt in her wounds. The leaves lost their golden sheen and the air its invigorating autumn nip.
Thomasina parked a good distance away, giving them plenty of time to clear out. She was so busy watching Trace’s brake lights flash at the distant corner, she pushed the lock on the car door only to realize her car keys were still in the ignition.
Stomach sinking, Thomasina muttered to herself and tried the other door. It was locked, too. Her spare set was at home. She called a nearby service station from Milt and Mary’s apartment.
“Bad timing, Tommy Rose,” said Milt, after she had hung up the phone. “Trace was just here. He could have rescued you, and you wouldn’t have had to pay.”
Rescued? He’d nearly wiped her out with the realization she had gained no ground in getting over him. Thomasina tried to slow the backslide of her heart healing as Mary passed along news she’d picked up from Trace and Deidre’s visit.
“Trace’s sister, Tootsie, is home for a couple of weeks.” Mary smiled and pushed a stray lock of hair toward the silver strands coiled so neatly at the top of her head. “She’s having a party for their parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary.”
“Deidre’s helping,” Milt chimed in. He winked and added, “Or making time with your ex-landlord—I’m not sure which,”
“Deidre and Trace?” said Mary with a questioning glance in Milt’s direction. “They’re just friends, as far as I can tell.”
Thomasina supposed anything was possible. Look at the two of them, adjusting so well to their new surroundings. She visited awhile and paid the man from the service station for coming to her rescue. Once home, she browned meat and chopped onions for the luxury of a few tears, and dumped them into a slow cook spaghetti sauce.
Late in the afternoon, Trace’s truck turned up the driveway just as Thomasina strolled out on the front porch with a textbook. Heart lurching, she pivoted, walked back through the house, and hauled a chaise longue to the far side of the largest tree in the backyard and settled in to her studies.
Winny and Pauly found her there. They begged her to play with them. Thomasina had a ton of studying to do. But she hadn’t seen them in such a long time, she couldn’t bring herself to send them home.
At Winny’s request, she carried the dollhouse out on the back porch. They played a good long while, then Winny wandered across the yard to a patch of mums near the carriage house and announced she was “picking flowers for Momma.” Not to be outdone, Pauly followed.
Trace’s shop windows were open. The song playing on his radio was the tender love song that had played just moments before everything had gone so wrong the day of the air show. Did the words conjure forever afters with Deidre now? Perhaps they always had. Thomasina took her studying inside to get away from the music and the images it conjured.
Trace switched off the radio. Tootsie had turned the planet upside down, arranging tonight’s party for their parents. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten on the decoration committee, but here he was, cutting out a shamrock with his jigsaw and painting it the customary shade of green.
A lot of fuss, considering the only reason his father had proposed to his mother at the Shamrock was that the host at House of Beef had lost their reservations on that evening forty years ago. Nevertheless, Tootsie was determined to recreate the setting.
It took the better part of two cans of green spray paint to get the job done right. The paint was supposed to be fast-drying. Trace propped the shop door open to help it along, and went inside to shower for the party. He had thought earlier in the week about inviting Thomasina along. But she hadn’t given him any reason to think she’d go to the end of the sidewalk with him, much less to meet his family from far and near.
Trace showered and dressed and was letting himself out through the laundry room when he spotted Winny and Pauly on the back porch. They were hunkered low. Winny had a paint can in her hand. It looked familiar enough to make his pulse leap. Warily he asked, “What’re you two doing?”
“Decorating. See?” said Winny proudly, and stepped out of his way, swinging her hand to indicate Tommy’s dollhouse!
“Good golly, Miss Molly! Tommy’s going to have a stroke.” Trace grabbed the paint can out of Winny’s hand. “You kids better run. Quick, before she sees what you’ve done.”
Pauly tripped, getting down the steps and away. Winny burst into tears as she scuttled after him. Trace felt like bawling himself as he stooped and inspected the damage. Green dribbles ran through Thomasina’s dollhouse like crocodile tears. Splotchy green floors. Even the roof was green. Trace hated to be the one to break the news. But he couldn’t very well go off and leave her to find it on her own. He retraced his steps though the laundry room and knocked on Thomasina’s door.
“Tommy? Are you there?” He put his ear to the door. She didn’t answer. But he could hear her stirring about. “Listen, I don’t know how to tell you this but…you better come out here.”
Something in his voice must have evoked alarm. She bolted out the door and stopped on the threshold of the porch. Her hands flew to her throat. “Oh, no!”
“I’ve got some paint thinner in the shop. Get some rags and I’ll help you,” he offered.
“It’s too late. It’s dry.” Thomasina moaned. “What on earth…? What were they…? Where’d they get paint?”
“It was mine,” Trace admitted. “I was working on something and left the shop door open. I never thought…”
“Of course not,” she murmured.
The tragic set of her mouth went through him like a knife. “That Antoinette!” he fumed. “If she would just look about for them every now and then! I should have told her a long time ago to keep those kids at home.”
“Don’t, Trace,” Thomasina said quickly. “I don’t want to risk hard feelings.”
“How do you expect the kids to learn if they get away with this kind of stuff?” he asked.
“Promise you’ll stay out of it.” She lifted brown eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Please?”
“If you ask me…”
“Please,” she said again.
“Whatever.” Torn between shaking her and kissing away her bravely held tears, Trace shoved his hands in his pockets and did neither.
She bent her knees and filled her arms with miniature furnishings that the children had removed before “decorating” the house. Still retreating, thought Trace with a sinking heart as the door closed behind her. The least he could do was get the eyesore out of her way.
Trace hauled the dollhouse to the carriage house and glanced at his watch. Tootsie was expecting him to help greet the guests. Yet he was reluctant to leave when his carelessness had played a part in the children’s mischief. Remembering the pictures in his glove box, he slipped them into his pocket, crossed the backyard and porch and knocked on her kitchen door.
“Tommy?”
Getting no answer, Trace tried the door. It swung open. Thomasina was seated in the built in breakfast nook, spooning chocolate icing straight from the can, her feet propped on the opposite bench. She lifted her watery gaze, met his and froze. Everything from her coral-tipped toes up went pink.
“I brought you something.” Trace waved the packet of photos.
She drew a long indecisive breath. Just when he was sure she’d send him away, she shifted her feet to the floor in silent invitation. Relieved, he sat down on the spot her feet had warmed.
“They’ve been in my glove box for months,” he said to fill the silence. “I kept forgetting to give them to you. Wouldn’t have remembered now, except I was looking for my cuff links when—oh, the deuce with it. That’s a lie. I came back to see if…Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. But her eyes lifted no higher than his hands as he slid the pictures across the table.
“I’m sorry, Tommy. I shouldn’t have left paint where they could get it. Though if you don’t mind my saying so, this isn’t going to fix anything,” he added, and reached for the icing can.
“Get your own spoon,” she grumbled.
“I like a cake with my icing.”
She answered his bid for a smile, though it was brief and didn’t quite reach her eyes. Still, she snapped the lid on the icing can and carried it to the sink, along with her spoon. Trace watched her hands squeeze out the dish rag. He caught the faint scent of waning perfume as she came back with it, washed off the table and dried it, too, before sitting down again to look through the pictures.
“I dropped the film off at the mall the day of the show.” Trace shifted in the seat, wishing she’d say something. He fought the urge to wipe the smudge of chocolate off her chin, as she made her way through the photos. Most were of the air show. But there were a few of strangers. Christmas pictures. He saw her expression gentle as she lingered over them. “Are these your folks?” he asked.
“Yes. This is Nathan, opening his scroll saw.” She turned the photograph his way. “That’s what I got him for Christmas.”
“Your dad made the dollhouse?” Trace asked.
She nodded. “When I was twelve.”
“Twelve? It seems that’s about the time Tootsie outgrew dolls,” said Trace.
“I’d never had much interest in dolls until Nathan gave me the house.” She picked at the corner of the photo envelope, struggling to explain. “No one had ever made anything for me like that before. For no reason, I mean. It wasn’t my birthday or Christmas or anything. He just did it because…because he wanted to.” She lifted her lashes and met his eyes a moment. “Nathan is my foster father.”
“So that’s why you—” He stopped himself, uncertain about questioning just when she opened up enough to volunteer some information about her past
“Why I what?” she said.
“Call them by their given names.”
She nodded. “I knew them as neighbors before I knew them as foster parents. They were comfortable with Nathan and Flo, and so was I,” she said.
Trace watched as she returned the pictures to the envelope, then got up to fill a pan with water and put it on the stove. He thought the subject was closed. The electric ignition on the burner clicked. She leaned and blew until the blue flame jumped to life.
“I had lived in nine foster homes by the time I met Nathan and Flo. I’d quit expecting good things.”
Trace recalled holding his breath once, thinking that she was breakable, but was too distracted by her sampling the sauce on the stove to remember the circumstances. Her tongue flicked to the corner of her mouth.
“There was a wooden fence separating the yard from Nathan and Flo’s. I could see flowers through a knot hole.” She avoided eye contact, stirred the pot and resumed her account. “I noticed how Flo sang as she worked in the flowers.” A brief smile flitted over her face. Voice dropping, she added, “I know it sounds silly, but I began to think it was the flowers that made her happy. I thought I’d sneak over and pick a few. I dropped over the fence right at her feet. You’d have thought by her reaction that she’d invited me.”
“She sounds like a sweet lady.”
“Yes, she is,” said Thomasina. “I kept going back. Each time I did, Nathan disappeared into his workshop. I thought that meant he didn’t want me around. Then one day, he gave me the dollhouse and I began to see he liked me, too.”
Thomasina stopped and measured why she was sharing this with him. Maybe just because he was here, being kind when for weeks, she’d given him no reason to care. Leather jacket, dark shirt, dark trousers, kelly green tie, she took stock of him, shined and polished for an evening with someone else. The water on the stove was boiling. She took a box of pasta out of the cupboard. “I’d offer you some spaghetti, but I’m guessing you have plans.”
“I’ve got time.” Certain Tootsie was wondering about him by now, Trace slipped off his jacket anyway. “Where are the dishes? I’ll set the table.”
Thomasina made a salad, browned garlic bread under the broiler and heard his phone ring in the next apartment. “That’s your phone.”
“I know,” he said, but made no move to go answer it. Thomasina heard it ring again over dinner.
Trace ignored it and went on talking about his sister and his parents and what it was like, growing up in what seemed to her a Norman Rockwell-style family. “It was as much ‘rocky’ as Rockwell,” he said, and wadded his paper napkin. “What about you?”
“What about me?” said Thomasina.
“How’d you wind up in the foster care system?” he asked.
A familiar tremor started in the pit of Thomasina’s stomach. “It was just my mom and me. She was young. Even younger than Antoinette. Too young for the responsibility, I guess.”
“What became of her?”
“She ran away from home.” Thomasina thought she’d phrased it lightly. But it came out hard and silenced him. Her hands trembled as she gathered their dishes. He would think she was bitter. She wasn’t. God had more than made up for the losses.
“Your phone’s ringing again. You better get it. Someone may be worried about you,” she said.
Trace nodded. She saw as he uncrossed his legs that his socks were green too. It seemed incongruous with his conservative bent. He went, and came back again.
“You’re not standing someone up, are you?” she asked.
“No,” said Trace, sitting down again in her kitchen. “It’s my folks’ fortieth wedding anniversary.”
“The party is tonight?” she asked.
“You know about that?”
“Milt and Mary mentioned it this morning.” Thomasina’s relief was short-lived. Just because it was a family affair in no way precluded the probability that Deidre was going with him. “I’ve been keeping you. Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’m in no hurry. The party is at the lodge on the lake. Touch football, hay rack ride, bonfire and a late dinner. It’ll go on for hours.” He darted her a glance and made her heart jump. “Would you like to come along?”
She shook her head. “That’s sweet. But no thanks.”
“Why not?” he insisted.
“It’s a family function,” she said. “And besides, I’ve kept you too long as it is.”
“Would you do one thing? Would you tell me the rest of the story before I go?”
Confused, she said, “What story?”
“About your mom.”
Her face lost all expression. “She left with a man she’d been dating. I hope she found what she was looking for.”
“You never heard from her again?”
“No.”
“What was the boyfriend like?”
“Tattoos and gray eyes. That’s about all I remember. Except what he said when he told me to go back to bed. Four words, without raising his voice. Some voices you know you have to obey. I did, and Mom left, and that was that.”
Trace remembered then when it was he’d thought her breakable. It was over Winny, and Antoinette’s boyfriend, Fred. Oh, she’d said, and hung on to Winny so tightly, he’d thought she’d never let go. “Then the foster homes? How many was it—nine?”
She nodded. “But I found a real home in Nathan and Flo.”
“Tell me about it.”
“All of them,” he said.
“It isn’t that interesting.”
“It is to me,” he said.
Thomasina told him. Going over it was what she imagined amputation might be like. A finger here, an elbow there, half a dozen toes. Amazing she was still on her feet with all those subtracted parts. And still he lingered, watching her with the strangest light in his eye.
“Bored yet?” she asked with a brave little smile.
“How could someone who eats her icing for an appetizer ever be boring?” Trace motioned her toward the stairs, knowing he couldn’t leave her now. “Run up and put on something green. You’re coming with me.”
“Green?” echoed Thomasina, alarmed at her willingness to do as he said. “What for?”
“Tootsie’s idea. It’s easier just to go along.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You aren’t I’ll put the shamrock in the truck while you change.”
She didn’t ask, “What shamrock?” Instead, it was Deidre on her mind. She started away, then turned back, struggling with herself. “What about Deidre?”
“What about her?” he asked.
“She was with you this morning,” she said, voice dropping. “I thought maybe…”
It caught him off guard, the realization she’d seen him and he hadn’t seen her.
Color rising to her cheeks, she asked, “You’re not meeting her there or anything?”
He smiled then, realizing what it was worrying her. “I’ve got a one-date limit. You’re it.”
“Trace?”
He turned back again, and watched her flush deepen. It made him think of sunshine lighting a field of red clover. “Never mind,” she said finally.
That she wanted to know about Deidre was a good sign, Trace decided. He could have told her that Deidre and Tootsie were cutting out shamrocks at his mom’s kitchen table when he stopped by on his way to visit Milt and Mary, and that Deidre, still on crutches, had asked if she might ride along. He could have. But she’d given his ego such a winnowing the past few months, he didn’t suppose it would hurt her to wonder a little.