A Different Light (8 page)

“Aren’t you something, Callie Moran.” Ms. Evelyn’s eyes danced as she called after the girl who was now running
merrily up the hill. “And make sure to take some delphinium—there’s blue, white, and some rose-colored, too, that did real well this year.”

“Ms. Evelyn, we don’t want to dig up your garden,” Athen protested. “We can come back in the spring and …”

“Nonsense, honey. It’ll give me great pleasure to share with you and help rebuild John’s garden. Now you go along with Callie. I see she’s got her shovel. Did you only bring the one?”

Athen nodded. She’d forgotten that the routine at Ms. Evelyn’s was strictly dig your own.

“Now, you just go on over to that box of tools and help yourself to whatever you need. There should be a shovel there that will work for you.”

“Thanks, Ms. Evelyn.” Athen peered into the box that was filled with all manner of foreign-looking implements and selected a short-handled shovel that had a long narrow blade, the only thing in the box that looked vaguely familiar.

“Now be sure not to miss the rose achillea, and my goodness, there must be a dozen varieties of aquilegia … oh, and liatris …” Ms. Evelyn called after Athen as she trudged up the hill in the direction Callie had previously scampered. “And the rose campion is thick as thieves up there. You be sure to dig up a nice clump of that. Stuff self-seeds like nobody’s business.”

Athen waved and continued her climb, reciting the names of the plants Ms. Evelyn had tossed at her so casually. Aquilegia, something campion. Achillea. Weren’t there any common varieties here, like black-eyed Susans or geraniums or pansies?

“Callie, those look half dead.” Athen looked over the stash of brown-stemmed, dried clusters Callie had set aside.

“They’re perennials, Mom,” Callie explained without looking up from her efforts.

“They’re the ones that die back after they bloom and come back again next year?” Athen tried to recall the terms bandied about by John and Callie as they poured over seed catalogs. Perennials. Biennials. Annuals. Half-hardy something or others.

“Very good, Mom.” Callie grinned as she dislodged a clump of something from the ground and carried it to a clear spot.

“Ms. Evelyn said we needed to dig up some, er, rose something. Actually, she said two rose somethings.”

“Rose campion and achillea.” Callie nodded without looking up. “Got ’em.”

“Okay, then. What should I do?” The parent had the feeling she’d just become the child.

“Dig up some of that gypsophilia.” Callie motioned with her head to an area on Athen’s right.

“Ah … which one is that?”

“Baby’s breath, Mom. The white stuff like you get in bouquets from the florist?” Callie was clearly relishing her position of superiority. “Mom, don’t you know anything about flowers?”

“Apparently not.”

Athen was still struggling with the first plant, silently cursing her lack of technique in dealing with the dried, hard earth when Callie ran off to the greenhouse in search of some flats on which to transport their new garden.

“Damn.” Athen inspected splintered fingernails as she brushed dirt from her hands onto her jeans, which were making her legs feel like tightly encased sausages as the temperature rose along with the humidity.

“You know, you’re making this a lot harder than it
needs to be.” An amused voice seemed to float from the edge of the garden.

She looked up, annoyed. The source of the voice leaned casually against the trunk of a tree. Through the sun’s glare she could distinguish only white shorts, a white shirt, and white tennis shoes. She held her hand over her eyes to block the blinding intensity of the sun’s harsh light.

“How long have you been standing there?” Even without the baseball cap, and with dark glasses covering a good portion of his face, Athen would have known him anywhere.

“Long enough to know this is not something you do very often. If at all.”

“How can you tell?”

“No gloves. Real gardeners wear gloves when they’re going to be digging.” He walked toward her through the rows of plants. “And hats if they’re out in the hot sun. At the very least, they’d tie up their hair, if they had as much as you do.”

She became suddenly conscious that her own hair, hanging straight down her back, weighed about seven tons and was white-hot.

“Here, let me help.” He picked up Callie’s discarded shovel. “Would you like me to dig that up for you?”

“That’s not really necessary, I can …”

“Don’t be silly.” He smiled and a buzz went off somewhere in her head. “You look all digged out for today. What’s your pleasure?”

“Ah …” She sought to remember the names Callie and Ms. Evelyn had bandied about, names that had meant absolutely nothing to her. “Ah … maybe some, ah, aquilegia.”

“Sure. That’s one of my favorites, too. Always makes me think of the house I grew up in. My mother always
had tons of dark blue and pink columbine along a walk in the backyard.”

Columbine? Aquilegia is columbine? Who knew?

“Now, did you want the caerulea, the canadensis, the red star? She certainly has a variety here, doesn’t she?” He bent to inspect the leafy fronds as Athen buried her face in her hands and fought the urge to scream.

“Ah … the red star would be fine.”
Never order anything you can’t pronounce,
she reminded herself.

“I always liked the caerulea myself. Did you know that it’s the state flower of Colorado?” He looked back at her as he began to dig.

“Ah, no. No, I didn’t know that.”

She tried to act casual, as if strange men always appeared out of nowhere to do things for her like dig up plants she’d never heard of, flowers she couldn’t identify on a dare.

“Mom, Ms. Evelyn sent you a Pepsi—it’s diet, like you like.” Callie handed Athen the cold can and eyed the stranger suspiciously. “Who’s that?”

“Just someone who likes to dig.” Athen tilted the can back and swallowed gratefully, then pulled her hair to one side and placed the ice-cold can against her neck. It felt wonderful.

Callie began to pile the plants she’d dug onto the heavy plastic flats.

“Hey, it’s the runner.” The stranger plunked a large clump of dirt and dried leaves onto a flat. “That was a good race you ran a few weeks back.”

“Not good enough to beat that geeky little butthead Timmy Forbes,” Callie replied.

The stranger laughed out loud.

“Oh, Callie, that’s an awful expression.” Athen
cringed.

“Well, he is.” She picked up one of the flats and headed to the car, calling over her shoulder to her mother, “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

Athen stood up and brushed herself off. Not that it helped. Her jeans needed more than brushing, she noted with some embarrassment. The knees were caked with dirt and she saw lines of grime on her arms where the sweat had streaked downward. It had been a long time since she’d been this dirty.

“Let me get that for you.” Smiling, the dark-haired man leaned over and effortlessly picked up two flats. He had deep dimples on each side of his mouth. She wished she hadn’t noticed. “Lead the way.”

While he loaded the flats into the back of her car, Athen sought out Ms. Evelyn in the greenhouse to negotiate payment for the plants. Her unexpected helper went back up the hill to give Callie a hand with the remaining flats. Athen noticed a young boy walking toward Callie as she started back to the car. He looked as if he wanted to stop and talk, but Callie barely acknowledged him.

The man in the white shorts placed the last flat into the trunk of her car. Athen watched from the greenhouse as he looked around, then shrugged, and after calling to the boy, got into a dark SUV.

I didn’t even thank him,
Athen thought as he drove off.

“Who was your friend?” Athen casually asked Callie on the way home.

“What friend?”

“The boy who was speaking to you at Ms. Evelyn’s.”

“Oh. You mean Timmy Forbes.” Callie scowled. “He goes to my school.”

“Timmy Forbes?” Athen recalled Callie’s previous description of the boy, and her face went white. “That man, the one who was helping me dig, was he …”

“Mr. Forbes.” Callie nodded. “I heard Timmy call him ‘Dad’ when they were leaving.”

Athen grimaced. The helpful blue-eyed man with the great legs and a fondness for digging was the geeky little butthead’s father.

QUENTIN FORBES LOADED THE LAST
of his plants into the back of the Explorer and slammed the door.

“Let’s go, Tim,” he called to his son, who was wandering down the hill, kicking a stone.

Quentin slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Tim got into the passenger seat and strapped himself in.

“Want to stop for pizza on the way home?” Quentin asked.

“No thanks.” Tim shook his head and looked out the side window.

“How ’bout a burger, then?”

“Not unless you want one.”

“I can always eat a burger.” Quentin put the car in reverse and waved to Ms. Evelyn as he headed for the road. “So, do you think Grandma will like the plants you picked out for her birthday?”

“I guess.” Tim shrugged.

Quentin turned on the radio and racked his brain, trying to think of something else to say. His son was obviously bothered by something but he wasn’t sure how to get him to open up. Just one more reason to resent his wife for taking off and leaving them the way she did. Not that Cynthia would have been more tuned in to Timmy
than Quentin was, he reminded himself. Cynthia had never been tuned in to anyone but Cynthia.

“The girl who was at Ms. Evelyn’s,” Quentin said. “Is she a friend of yours from school?”

Tim snorted. “I wouldn’t call her that.”

“What would you call her?”

“A snotty little brat.”

“I trust you have good reason for that,” Quentin said cautiously. He didn’t like to hear his son speak like that about anyone. On the other hand, he remembered what the girl had called Tim, and wondered what was at the bottom of the mutual animosity.

“She just isn’t very nice, that’s all.”

“What’s her name?”

“Callie Moran.”

“She’s an awfully pretty kid. What’s your problem with her?”

“What’s her problem with me?” Tim retorted. “She hasn’t said anything nice to me since I moved here.”

“She can’t be the only kid in your class.”

“She’s the most popular. She’s the smartest girl in the whole fifth grade, and she’s the best athlete.” He paused to reflect, then amended that to, “Well, the best after me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like being the best after anyone. Sounds to me like she’s used to being the best at everything.”

“Yeah, well, too bad for her.” Tim folded his arms over his chest and stared straight ahead.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Timmy said, “All the teachers treat her like she’s something special ’cause her father was a cop who got killed.”

“What?” Quentin thought of the girl’s mother. “When?”

“Some guy shot him when he was trying to arrest him
or something.” Tim shrugged.

“Wow. That’s terrible.” Quentin thought of how Timmy was dealing with the fact that his mother had left him to pursue her career. How much worse would it be to have a parent taken from you the way Callie Moran had? “I’ll bet it’s been really hard for her.”

Tim declined to comment.

Quentin thought this might be a moment he could use to get his son to open up to how he felt about his mother leaving.

“It’s hard to lose a parent, Tim, under any circumstances.”

“Well, at least her father didn’t run away from her and go to France to take pictures for a stupid magazine.”

“Tim, you know your mother will be back to see you sometime this fall.”

“Big deal. I’ll bet she doesn’t even come.” He kicked the bottom of the dash.

“She said she would.”

“She says a lot of things.” Timmy’s bottom lip began to quiver. “And she lies a lot.”

Quentin wished he could assure his son that his mother would, in fact, be back to see him in a few months as she’d promised. But they both knew that she did, in fact, lie when it suited her, and one thing Quentin had vowed when she left was to never lie to Timmy. Instead, he tried to shift the conversation from those dangerous waters and back to Callie Moran.

“I’m sure Callie would love to be able to say that maybe she’d see her dad again sometime,” Quentin said softly. “Anytime.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Quentin silently cursed his ex-wife. For months
after she left, he’d kept their home in St. Louis, thinking that maybe his son would be better off in familiar surroundings. Tim went to the same school he’d always gone to, played for the same sports teams, hung out with the same kids. But as time went on, it became apparent that there was no point in trying to pretend that nothing had changed in Tim’s life except for the fact that his mother was gone. Nothing was the same, and Quentin had some hard decisions to make. In the end, he’d decided to move east, to the New Jersey town where his mother now made her life with her new husband. If nothing else, Tim would have extended family members. He’d have time to spend with Quentin’s mother, and he’d get to know his stepgrandfather and his stepaunt.