A Soft Place to Fall (15 page)

"Claudia noticed too, didn't she?"

"You bet your patootie she did and she's out
there right now, trying to figure out what to do about it."

"Claudia is strong-minded, but I don't think
she's manipulative."

"Neither do I, sweetie, but I do know she's
scared and she's lonely and she's not about to lose you if she can
help it."

"Lose me? She's not going to lose me."

"You know what I'm saying. More so than any
of her own children, you're her link to her son. She wanted you to
turn your big house into a shrine to him the same way she did for
John."

Sweeney was right. Selling the house had cut
Claudia to the quick. She could only imagine how Claudia would feel
if she knew the real reason for the sale.

"I'm not looking to replace Kevin and
certainly not with a man I just met yesterday."

"Maybe not, but one fine morning you're going
to open your eyes and find out that, like it or not, you're in
love. Don't postpone the rest of your life just because you don't
want to hurt Claudia."

Annie rested her forehead on the cool wooden
countertop. "Can you tell me why life has to be so damn
complicated?"

Sweeney threw back her head and laughed.
"Honey, if I could tell you that, I'd rule the world."

#

Annie finished assembling the three
bridesmaids' bouquets for the Sorensen-Machado wedding a little
before three o'clock and began the bride's bouquet. Sweeney and
Claudia were working on the altar flowers and Annie was pleased to
see they were all right on schedule despite the holiday weekend and
her move. Her part-timers had done a wonderful job manning the shop
yesterday while she was settling into her new house. She owed Tracy
and Joan a weekend off with pay for stepping into the breach.

She was grateful Sweeney was working with
them today. Sweeney never met a silence she couldn't conquer with
another story from her colorful life. If Claudia had hoped for the
chance to grill Annie about her new neighbor, she never had the
opportunity.

Eileen's daughter Jennifer and her friends
burst through the front door a few minutes later, smelling of
suntan lotion and high spirits.

"Hi, Aunt Annie, Grandma." She kissed them
both then plucked a chocolate candy from the bowl Claudia kept at
her right elbow. "Hey, Sweeney! Can we turn on the radio? Do you
have any soda in the back? You don't think I look fat in this top,
do you?"

"Fat?" Sweeney exclaimed as the girls
disappeared into the back. "My left thigh is bigger than she
is."

"She's beautiful," Annie said wistfully, "and
she doesn't have the slightest idea."

"Neither did you two when you were her age."
Claudia twisted some wire ribbon around the stem of an unarmed
alstromeria. "If I had a penny for every diet you girls embarked
on, I'd be a wealthy woman."

"I wouldn't want to be sixteen again,"
Sweeney said as she reached for a creamy white rose. "You think the
world's spinning on your axis. I didn't realize I wasn't the center
of the universe until I was thirty-three."

"I'd go back to sixteen," Claudia said
wistfully. "All of that wonderful energy and enthusiasm." She
paused for effect. "Not to mention knees that don't click when you
walk up the stairs."

"And no cellulite," Annie said, trying not to
think about how she must have looked when Sam found her asleep in
the tub. "I can't remember my thighs without cellulite."

"Honey," said Sweeney, "I can't remember when
my thighs didn't rub together like two sticks at a Boy Scout
campfire."

Claudia snipped off a length of ivory satin
ribbon with a pair of shears. "Dim lighting and a peignoir set have
saved more marriages than separate bathrooms." She looked across
the table at Annie and Sweeney who burst into laughter. "Go ahead
and laugh," Claudia said, joining in, "but believe it or not, you
won't be young forever. One day you'll be grateful for kind
lighting and a floor-length robe."

Oh Claudia,
thought Annie as she got
up to find more babies breath.
What would you say if I told you
it was kind lighting and a floor-length robe that got me into this
mess?

The girls finished the boutonnieres around
five o'clock and left in a flurry of giggles and broken blossoms.
Sweeney and Claudia completed the last of the centerpieces then
stowed them in the huge refrigerator along with the bridesmaids'
bouquets.

"Sorry to bail out on you, ladies, but I have
myself a hot date tonight and I need a little time to change my
sheets and shave my legs."

"Good Lord!" Claudia sounded appalled but
there was no denying the twinkle in her eyes. "Is there a man in
this town you haven't . . . dated?"

"Honey, I'm importing them from New Hampshire
these days." Sweeney gathered up her huge tote bags and rummaged
around for the keys to her old VW bus. "I'll be here at noon to
help decorate the church."

"You don't have to do that," Annie said,
meaning it. "You've helped me enough already."

"And you'll help me when the Autumn Art Fair
rolls around," Sweeney said with another laugh. "You know I'm not
shy."

Sweeney went out the front door as Amelia
Wright and her sister Terri Cohen came in through the back, carting
a huge box filled with their latest soft sculptures. They
specialized in whimsical creatures like griffins and unicorns and
delighted in setting them in unlikely spots around the shop. When
they saw what Annie was up to, they quickly rolled up their sleeves
and pitched right in.

"I still haven't closed the books for
August," Claudia said, extending her fingers then shaking her hands
in front of her. "Maybe I should see to that while Amy and Terri
are here."

"Sounds fine," Annie said, aware of Claudia's
troubles with arthritis. She felt vaguely guilty for not relieving
the woman much sooner. But then what didn't she feel guilty about
these days? She felt guilty for selling the old house, buying the
new one, auctioning off her furniture, you name it and she was
certain she'd felt guilty over it at one time or another over the
last two years.

Claudia closed the books at six-thirty and
came forward to collect her purse and sweater. "Eileen and the
children are stopping by for breakfast tomorrow morning after
church. You know you're welcome to join us before we set up for the
wedding."

Annie stretched and managed to stifle an
end-of-the-day yawn. "Thanks but I think I'd better tackle some of
those boxes waiting to be unpacked. If I don't do it now, I'll
still be staring at them come Christmas."

"I'd be happy to come over and lend a
hand."

"I know you would," Annie said, feeling like
a rat for thinking unpleasant thoughts about her mother-in-law,
"but you do enough for me already. If I do a little each day, I'll
be finished in no time."

Claudia slipped into her pale ivory sweater
and tucked her purse under her arm. "You work too hard, Annie.
You've looked so tired lately. I worry about you."

"I'm strong as an ox." She flexed a muscle.
"At least Ceil seems to think I look like one."

"That woman's tongue could curdle cream. She
told me about her cousin's eye-lift then gave me one of those
knowing nods of hers."

Annie laughed. It was the first natural
moment they'd shared all day. "Did she offer you the doctor's
business card?"

"No," said Claudia with a shake of her head,
"but that pudgy hand was dipping into her apron pocket for one as
sure as I'm standing here." She cupped Annie's face and Annie saw a
world of caring and love in her soft blue eyes. "You get some rest
tonight, do you hear me? You've been pushing yourself way too
hard."

Annie's eyes closed briefly against a rush of
emotion that was as comforting as it was complicated. "I love you,
Claude," she said softly. "Don't ever forget that."

Claudia patted her cheek briskly. "As if I
could."

#

Claudia always stopped at Yankee Shopper on
Saturday evening to do her marketing. Ceil rarely worked on
Saturday and Claudia considered it a small victory for personal
privacy when she managed to purchase her pair of veal chops and
Idaho potatoes without enduring the woman's shameless scrutiny.

Thomas in produce waved hello to her from
across the aisle and she nodded back in greeting. Thomas had been
one of Kevin's high school friends, a likable young man who hadn't
quite managed to live up to potential. Not that Claudia was being
judgmental. Far from it. It was just a terrible shame when a smart
young man allowed himself to be content stacking tomatoes in a
small town supermarket.

Thomas was nearing forty now and it was
beginning to show in the lines around his dark brown eyes and the
slight paunch billowing behind his Yankee Shopper apron. Kevin had
been built on a grand scale, same as his father. She liked to think
he would have retained his impressive proportions well into old age
without running to fat.

She had bumped into Thomas's mother Audrey
last week at the Breast Cancer Bridge Marathon at the hospital.
Audrey was beside herself with grandmotherly pride as she spread a
fistful of photos on the felt-covered table. "Thomas and Mary Ann
just had number four," she said, beaming with delight over the
little red-faced bundle in the photographs. "That makes six for me
and one more on the way."

Claudia, who was no slouch in the grandmother
sweepstakes, whipped out the thick packet of photos she kept always
at the ready and treated the girls to a rundown of ages, weights,
and accomplishments that would have sent her spinning into a coma
if she'd been on the receiving end.

"Good Lord in heaven," Audrey exclaimed, same
as she did every time. "They're certainly a fertile bunch!"

Eleven grandsons and granddaughters and two
on the way. Claudia loved each and every one of them but not even
the richness of her blessings was enough to make up for the fact
that there would never be a baby for Kevin and Annie. When Kevin
died, he took the future with him and the empty spot he'd left
inside his mother's heart would never be filled. The sorrow she had
known when her husband died had almost destroyed her but even that,
terrible as it was, paled beside the towering grief she experienced
when she buried her son. A mother shouldn't bury her son. It was
against the laws of both nature and man. Some sorrows cut too deep
for healing.

She and Annie had clung to each other during
those early days, one supporting the other when their grief
threatened to overcome them. How grateful Claudia had been that
Kevin had been fortunate enough to marry a girl like Annie Lacy.
Annie had loved him the way a wife should love a husband and
Claudia had loved her all the more for that fact. Sometimes she had
wondered if there were problems in the marriage but, if there were,
Annie kept her own counsel and Claudia respected that. Husbands
were imperfect creatures and it was a smart wife who learned how to
work around the flaws.

Had she told Annie lately how dear she was,
how the family would not be the same without her vibrant presence
at its heart? She couldn't remember. The truth was she thought of
Annie as one of her own, and that was the problem. To Claudia's
mind, Annie was just like Eileen or Susan or any of her other
children and she expected her to know that she was loved and
valued.

But Annie wasn't blood. She had come to
Claudia just before her sixteenth birthday, as scared and needy a
young girl as Claudia had ever seen, and Claudia had done what any
other mother in her circumstances would have done: she opened up
her heart and home to the girl.

When did you stop trying to keep a child out
of harm's way? Did the caring stop when your son turned twenty-one?
Did it end when your daughter turned thirty? How did you steel your
mother's heart against the dangers that waited for the ones you
loved more than life itself? Oh, how young and lovely Annie had
looked this afternoon when that man stepped into the flower shop.
Her dark blue eyes twinkled, her skin grew luminous – she even
walked with a graceful sway that Claudia had never noticed before.
She wasn't so old that she had forgotten the way it all began and
she wished with all her heart that she could protect Annie from the
pain that was certain to follow.

How much safer it was to wrap yourself in the
memory of love . . . .

"No coupons today, Claudia?" Midge Heckel
began running her purchases over the scanner. "There's a cents-off
coupon in
Pennysaver
this week for sweet butter."

Claudia sighed. "No butter for me, Midge. My
cholesterol is giving me fits."

Midge launched into a litany of her medical
woes which Claudia matched, ailment for ailment. The woman laughed
as she bagged Claudia's purchases. "The wonder is we're still alive
and kicking."

"I guess God isn't quite finished with us
yet," Claudia said as she removed two twenty-dollar bills from her
wallet.

"Well, He'd better hurry up," Midge said,
"because it seems to me we're running out of time."

#

"We land in Bangor in fifteen minutes, Mr.
B."

Warren Bancroft looked up at the young man in
the dark blue uniform and nodded his head. "Right on time, Jason,"
he said with a glance at his watch. "That's ten in a row. I'm
impressed."

The young man grinned. "Captain Yardley said
you would be."

Warren managed to withhold a grin of his own.
"You tell Captain Yardley –" he stopped in mid-sentence. "On second
thought, I'll tell her myself once we're on the ground." He liked
to deliver bonus checks personally.

Jason gathered up Warren's empty juice glass,
a discarded copy of
The Wall Street Journal
, and a deck of
playing cards with loons on the back then disappeared into the
galley while Warren folded his reading glasses and put them away in
his breast pocket.