| |
SIOBHAN
I woke up to a declared state of emergency for our area, which meant only authorized vehicles on the roads, at least until after noon. My cell rang for the first time at nine on the dot. The Caller ID listed the name and number of one Pamela Birdsong. Without looking at my planner, I knew Pam and her son, Oliver, were my first clients this morning. I took a deep breath. Let the games begin...
“Good morning, this is Siobhan,” I said and braced myself for what would come next.
“Hi, Siobhan, it’s Pam Birdsong. I assume you’ve seen the news.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Obviously I’m going to have to cancel our appointment for today. They haven’t even plowed our street yet.”
I dared a glance out my window at the mounds of snow at least knee-deep on my driveway and the roof of my van. I swallowed my disappointment. “Of course. I understand. It’s treacherous out today. Best to stay home and avoid the road conditions and crazy drivers. When would you like to reschedule?”
“Umm, you see, that’s the thing. I simply won’t have enough time to come to your studio between now and Saturday. I’m swamped with other engagements. I’m sorry, but I think we’ll have to pass this year. Next year, I’ll schedule earlier in the calendar. Hopefully, we won’t get a November snowstorm!”
My luck, we would—not that it mattered if I didn’t survive ‘til next November. I needed a plan, and I needed it fast. “What if I came to you? I mean, not today, unless they lift the state of emergency, but say, later in the week? You pick the day and time, and I’ll set up everything at your house at your convenience.”
“Well...”
“Think how much easier it will be on you,” I pressed. “Not as much prep time for Oliver, no struggling to get him to the studio or finding a time that works with your busy schedule. I’ll bring everything to you. We can use my backdrops, or if you want a more natural feel, we can pose your son somewhere in the house that will make him comfortable.”
“Matty did insist we put a Christmas tree in his room,” she said in a sing-song tone that suggested she was seriously considering my offer.
Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please.
“Oh, what a sweet idea! How big is it? Is it a tabletop? Do the ornaments have a theme? Whether it’s a particular character from a favorite movie or show, or even just a specific color combination, I’m sure I can incorporate it into the portrait’s theme, if you like.” I spread the enthusiasm on thick, hoping she’d warm up to the idea.
“Let me talk to Matty, and I’ll get back to you.”
No. I couldn’t let her off the phone without a commitment. If I did, she’d forget all about me, and I’d lose the gig. “Why don’t we just pencil something in right now? If you change your mind after you talk to your husband, you could always call me back.”
“I don’t know.” Each word came through the phone in a whine that had me stifling a wince. “He hates when I make decisions without consulting him first.”
Please. Pamela Birdsong spent more on a new handbag than on her son’s Christmas photos, and I doubt she asked her husband’s permission before walking into the Gucci store in East Hampton on a whim. She was trying to blow me off. And at another time, I might’ve let her. But not today. Not when every sale was life-altering right now.
“But this isn’t really a new decision,” I countered. “You’re just rescheduling an appointment you already agreed to.”
“Hmm...maybe. Let me look at my calendar.”
Her side of the phone went silent, meaning she’d either muted me or put me on hold. Either way, I took advantage of the break to practice some deep breathing.
Nana tiptoed into the kitchen, one of her kittens cradled against her bosom. Before I could say anything, she plopped the ball of fur into my lap. “Nothing more calming than a sweet, velvety kitten to stroke,” she murmured. “Try it.”
I took her advice and ran my hand over the tiny creature’s thick gray coat from the top of her head to her shoulders. Daphne—Velma?—arched her back and kneaded her claws into my thigh through my flannel pajama bottoms. I sucked in a breath as those sharp nails met my skin. I shot a glare at Nana. Yeah, sure. Very relaxing.
“Give her a minute,” Nana said. “She’ll settle down.”
Sure enough, the kitten let out a teeny yowl, curled into a comma, and lowered her head onto her front paws. Her rhythmic purrs became a soothing lullaby. Some of the tension eased from my shoulders, and I let out a low sigh.
“See?” Nana said with a wink. “It works every time.”
I placed my index finger beneath the kitten’s chin and felt the reverberations in her throat.
A dull click sounded in my ear, snapping unease into my neck and shoulders again.
“Siobhan?”
I sat up straighter in the chair, but the kitten didn’t budge. “Yes. I’m here.”
“Could you come here on Friday morning, around 8:30?”
I would have arrived at the butt-crack of dawn if she’d asked for it. I held my breath. Please, let me not lose this sale. Nana signaled me with her hands, mutely reminding me to keep petting the kitten, and I did. The action gave me a moment’s pause to cool my jets and not sound too eager when I replied, “I’m sure I can. Do you have any ideas where you’d like me to set up in your house? The living room, perhaps?”
“To be honest, I liked your idea about posing him in front of the tree in his nursery. It’s a full-sized Austrian spruce, artificial of course, but it looks decidedly real. It’s sort of a blueish-green color rather than that piney color of more traditional fir trees. And we’ve decorated it with silver and blue glass balls and white satin ribbons.”
“It sounds lovely,” I replied with enthusiasm. No, it didn’t. It sounded dull and sterile and utilitarian.
I glanced through the doorway into my living room where our poor, beat-up artificial tree stood. The branches were uneven and a little misshapen, mainly because each one had to be inserted individually into holes in the brown wooden dowel that served as a trunk. The colored tips meant to indicate which branch went into which hole had long ago faded away. I’d spent Thanksgiving night alone with a hundred fake branches spread out on the carpet, sorting them by eye, according to size and shape and failing to perfectly match a lot of them. Our ornaments had no theme, besides chaos. Some were from Nana and Gramps’s past holidays, mostly painted glass but a few white satin balls with gold braiding glued to them. Then there were the ones my parents had collected, a bunch of tacky figurines from trips they’d taken: Santa in a cowboy hat from Dallas, a jackalope with a wreath around his neck from Denver, a waterskiing reindeer from Cancun, a pewter witch on a broom from Salem. Aside from the souvenirs, my parents amassed milestone ornaments for Dee and me, chronicling our lives. Even if I couldn’t see all of them from the chair in the dinette, I could catalog my own from memory. I had Cinderella for baby’s first Christmas, Barbie somewhere around age five or six, a camera for the year I took up photography, the cap and tassel ornament to represent the year I graduated high school. By next year, would I be looking for a woman wearing a barrel around her middle to commemorate the last Christmas I owned a business that supported me?
No. I shook off my doldrums and refocused on my conversation with Mrs. Birdsong. “If we’re going to use the tree as your backdrop, I’d suggest avoiding blue, white, or silver in whatever you’re planning for Oliver to wear. You’ll want him to stand out, to be the focus, not to blend into a busy background.”
“What an excellent point! That’s why Matty and I insist on using your services every year. You have such a wonderful eye, Matty always says so. And your attention to detail is always impeccable.”
I stroked the cat of my own choice this time. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.”
Nana flashed me a thumbs-up from the other side of the kitchen.
“It’s the truth,” Mrs. Birdsong replied. “Oliver has a darling forest green suit with a red and green plaid bowtie, but it does include a white dress shirt. Do you think there’ll be enough contrast, or should I choose something else?”
I suppose now is a good time to mention that Oliver is fifteen years old. I experienced a twinge of pity for the kid, but only a twinge. He was obnoxious and rude and surly with those he considered “beneath him.”
“I’m sure that suit will be fine,” I assured her. “If there’s anything personal you’d like me to include in his photo, please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll see you Friday morning.”
“Thanks, Siobhan. You’re a doll for accommodating us this way.”
I stroked the cat again. “Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for being such a loyal customer. Stay safe on the roads today.”
And so it went throughout the morning. Of the six customers I had booked who cancelled today, five were willing to reschedule, three of them took me up on the offer to do the pictures in their homes. At eleven a.m., when I talked to my last client, I was feeling more optimistic.
By that time, I’d moved from the kitchen to my father’s old office. The kitten had returned to Nana’s room to play with her siblings, and I was ready to weigh my options. My day with Jimmy yesterday had been fruitful as well as eye-opening. It had been his idea for me to try scheduling home appointments. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself.
“You’re too close to the problem,” he’d said. “You need someone more distant to step back for perspective. Who else have you told about this besides me and Pan?”
“No one,” I admitted.
“Wow. I guess I’m flattered.”
Even now, a flash of warmth enveloped me when I remembered his husky tone and how he clasped my hand across the breakfast nook and added, “You’re gonna get through this. I’ll help you.”
I have no idea why he was suddenly so...nice. But seeing the results firsthand about his idea for me to offer home appointments made me eager to try suggestion two. With a spiral notebook full of dollar signs and figures at hand, I picked up the phone and dialed the cell number on the business card he’d given me.
Paige answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Paige? Hi. It’s Siobhan Bendlow. This snow is crazy, isn’t it?”
“Siobhan? Oh, hi. How are you? I can’t believe how much we’ve got out there already, and the weatherman says it probably won’t stop until this evening.”
I made some kind of banal comment and went into the reason for my call, giving her the bare-bones story of my pending business demise. “Jimmy Vais said you might able to help me.”
She prompted me with questions on specifics while I blurted out answers. A lot of my responses were sheepish as I realized how ignorant I was of my own business plan. “I feel like an idiot,” I said at one point.
“Don’t,” she replied with the bluntness I’d always known she possessed. “The smartest thing you could have done was call me before taking any additional steps. Not me, per se,” she added. “I mean someone in my line of work, a financial planner. Why don’t you come into my office Thursday afternoon, and we can go over some options? Will that work for you?”
I accessed my cell for my appointments list. “It would have to be before three,” I said with uncertainty.
“How’s one-thirty for you?”
I noticed the giant blank space at that box on the grid, and for the first time this month breathed a sigh of relief I had nothing else scheduled. “That’d work fine.”
“Great. Here’s a list of what I need you to email me beforehand so I can review your numbers. Got a pen?”
I assured her I did and took down all the items she wanted: tax returns, bank statements, debits and credits, any business ledger I used. My head spun at all the details.
“Can you get all that together?”
“Uh-huh.” I might not have been up on my business plan, but the organizer-slash-control freak in me could lay my hand on a receipt from 2010 at a moment’s notice.
“Terrific. Send that all over to my email as soon as you can. And Siobhan? Relax. You’re gonna be okay. We may have to make some changes, and it’s not going to be easy. But, provided I don’t find any glaring errors in your paperwork, you’ll be in a lot better shape going forward.”
In other words, if I’d lied to her about my financial situation, I was screwed. Luckily, I’d given her the ugly, unvarnished truth. The millstone around my neck lightened a tad. “Thanks, Paige. I really appreciate your help.”
“It’s what I do. We Snuggies stick together. Someday, who knows? I might need professional photos, and you’ll be able to return the favor.”
I thought about Christmas Eve. Did she know? Suspect? Was she fishing for information from me?
“Anyway, we’ll talk soon,” Paige added.
She either had no idea or didn’t think I did. “Right. See you Thursday.” We disconnected, and I smiled.
I looked up from the desk to see Nana Thea in the doorway. I really should remind myself I no longer lived alone. If I wanted privacy, I had to remember to close the doors.
“Everything good now?” she asked, creeping inside.
I nodded. “Not perfect, but better than it was yesterday, so that’s progress I can live with.”
“Good.” Her expression turned somber. She sat on the hassock near Dad’s desk and clasped my hands.
My heartbeat accelerated. Oh, God, what now? Was she sick? I couldn’t deal with losing another family member.
To my surprise, she grinned at me. “I have something to tell you.”
♥♥♥♥
ALTHEA
“What do you mean you’re getting married? You and Mr. Rugerman just started dating!”
At Siobhan’s outburst, I let out an indulgent giggle. “Trust me. Lou and I have a long history. I know what I’m doing.”
Her expression turned stricken, and her complexion paled. “Nana! Did you cheat on Gramps?”
“Never. Lou and I have always had a platonic relationship.” I reconsidered that statement. “Well, we did in the past. Since we reconnected, though, it’s blossomed into something more.”
She quirked a brow at me. “That was some speedy blossoming.”
I patted her hand. “I’m seventy years old, Bon-bon. Lou’s sixty-five. Neither of us knows how much time we have left. Why should we spend any time apart when we could have every remaining second together?”
Some of the shock faded from her eyes, and she nodded in what I hoped was understanding and not just meek acceptance. “I get that. But why get married so fast? Why not move in together for a while first? Make sure this is for real.”
“Oh, darling girl,” I said with another trill of laughter, “trust me. It’s for real. Lou and I may not have ever consummated our feelings for each other before now, but those feelings have lain dormant for almost fifty years. And...” This was the part I hated to admit, but my granddaughter deserved my total honesty. “Deep down, though you might find it hard to believe, I’m an old-fashioned girl. I believe in marriage and fidelity and all the trappings of traditional family life my parents instilled in me. This new world is for the young. I will always fight to the death for the ideals I hold dear: love is love, women’s equality, and the freedom of each of us to choose our own paths to happiness. I fight for those ideals for you, and your children, and your grandchildren to enjoy. My path to happiness leads to marriage to Lou.”
Pretty speech, right? Well, the truth of the matter was I meant every word.
When I first decided to leave Florida, to pull up my roots again to return to Snug Harbor, I was convinced the universe wanted me here to help Siobhan come to terms with all her losses over the last year. But as I’d come to see her as a confident woman and not the sullen bulimic she’d once been, I’d reassessed. Fate hadn’t brought me here because Siobhan needed me. Fate steered me home because I belonged with Lou.
“So, when’s the big day?” she asked.
“I want to check my star chart, but I’m liking the idea of New Year’s Eve.”
“An end and a beginning, all rolled into one date.”
I squeezed her hand. “Exactly.” Was it any wonder she was my favorite grandchild? She got me.
“That’s only two weeks away,” she reminded me.
“I know, but it’s not like we’re planning an extravaganza. This is a quick visit to Town Hall, vows spoken before a couple of witnesses, and boom! We’re hitched. Although, you’ll never believe what Lou said when he proposed to me.”
“How did he propose to you?”
I smirked. “Take it from me, Bon-bon. Some details, you don’t want to know.”
Her face blanked for a brief second, then twisted into distaste. “Eww. No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
I couldn’t hold back my cackles, and the more I laughed the more red in the face she became.
“Please. Stop. You’re killing me.”
I sobered and said, “No, you misunderstood. What I meant was Lou had this crazy idea about you taking pictures during the ceremony.” I told her about his reporter friend and the headline he wanted. “Can you believe that? ‘Catch of a Lifetime.’ Like I’m some striped bass with my mouth open.” I pursed my lips into a narrow O and feigned blowing bubbles.
For the first time this morning, Siobhan flashed a genuine smile. “It sounds to me like he really loves you.”
“He does,” I confirmed. “And I love him, too. So...” I slapped my hands on my thighs. “Can I count on you to be my maid of honor?”
“I’ll be your maid of honor and official photographer. Maybe you can convince Mr. Rugerman to come up with a better headline. Either way, I’ll make sure you have gorgeous photos of your big day.”
I arched my back. The hassock was not supportive enough for my delicate spine. “Thank you, sweetheart. By the way, call him Lou. After all, you two are going to be related by marriage. I know he’ll never replace Gramps in your heart or mine, but you can’t continue to be so formal with the man who’s sleeping with your grandma every night.”
She reeled back. “Eww! Nana! You did that on purpose!”
I couldn’t squelch my delight, and chuckles rippled over my lips. “I did, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I love you, Bon-bon.” I tilted my head close to hers.
“I love you, too, Nana.”
We gazed into each other’s eyes. In hers, I saw not just the affection we shared, but peace and happiness and a tinge of fright—a fear of her future, I assumed. I hope in mine she saw love and pride and my confidence that her future, golden and full of promise, lay closer than she realized.
I placed a light kiss on her cheek then broke away to get to my feet before I lost the ability to move. “Since it’s so blustery outside, I’m in the mood to bake up a bunch of brownies. You interested?”
Her eyes glimmered with hope. “With raspberry filling?”
I tousled her hair. “I think that could be arranged. You do what you have to do. I’ll get busy in the kitchen.”