Orchids and Stone (29 page)

“What do you like best now? The failing furnace? The ceramic counter with its hard-to-clean grout?” He rubbed his wry grin. “Hard to compete with this park. Do tell, Daph, what do you think’s the best thing about the house?”

She took her time before replying, making sure he would understand. “The man inside.”

Daphne knew when she came back to Vic’s house, she would wear his grandmother’s silver ring. A lot of people at work—the guys—never wore rings. She’d never worn one, never had one to wear, so didn’t join in the anti-ring conversations.

But she recalled their talk. The electricians didn’t wear rings, most of the plumbers wouldn’t either. Quite a few of the hammer-swingers—framers, roofers, and drywallers—gave excuses about hands swelling while working, about a fear of the metal band catching while loading rock or plywood, about concern of a hammer strike gone awry crushing a ring-encased finger. They said it could be a hazard. You could lose a finger over it.

She’d find out for herself.

The regular foreman, Bob, stopped in on the building project long enough to give his stand-in some instruction. Daphne saw Walt talking to Bob, making some point about more roofers.

“Morning,” Bob said, giving Daphne a nod.

Walt turned and reddened, said nothing, and went back to trying to convince Bob they needed more crew. Hal and some of the other guys were strapping on their tool belts. Daphne grabbed her coil nailer and headed for the ladder, sensing enough tension between the bosses already filtering to the worker bees. They would put in extra hard today, she knew. The guys were climbing the ladder a bit earlier than usual, all had caught the vibe.

They weren’t behind on the roof, she decided. This was a power struggle between a foreman and a wannabe foreman.

“Wants his cousin hired,” Hal said on the roof. “I bet Walt promised him work. No way will Bob take the guy once he sees the name.”

“Why?” the guy on Hal’s other side asked.

“The cousin got himself fired here his second week, way back. Long, long time ago. I remember it, though. He mouthed off more than he worked, running other folks down. Bob sent him packing right away.”

Daphne stood up. “Was that back when Mr. Wellsley started the Women-In-Construction thing? Like, ten years ago?”

Hal rubbed his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

“There was a guy who was a bit of a jerk to me, nothing I couldn’t ignore, but I kind of remember him.”

“Could have been a lot more of a jerk behind your back. I mean, he was. A lot more. He was out of line.” Hal stood as the small air compressor on the roof fired up.

She wanted to think more about a guy years back being out of line and wondered how much worse he’d been out of her earshot. Looking across the slope, she saw Walt crest the ladder, stride onto the roof, and switch on the air compressor.

“Let’s get the lid on this thing,” he hollered.

“Hey, Walt,” Daphne yelled back.

He turned back for the ladder as though he didn’t hear her.

She flipped the switch to kill the air compressor and be heard. “Did your idiot cousin call my house last Thursday? Leave a snotty message?”

Walt turned two shades redder as he looked around, not meeting her stare. Hal and several other roofers watched.

She shook her head. “You’ve been mad at me for ten years over your cousin getting fired? That’s ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. Whatever stupid thing he did or said to get his ass fired, it’s his doing.”

Walt’s jaw set as he looked away. “You’re holding up the work,” he said at last.

She flipped the air compressor back on. She would go to the eave and start the shingles’ exposure and reveal with perfection.

Come the morning break, she’d call the Seattle Police Department’s Homicide division and speak to a cold case investigator about Suzanne sleeping with her English teacher.

Something from twenty years ago could come back and bite a professor in the ass. Surely he wasn’t supposed to be bedding his students. Maybe he had done more.

She’d turn Suzanne’s boxed papers over to the investigators, too.

At the water cooler later, she paused by Walt, but he wouldn’t look at her. Back on the ladder, Walt still beneath her, she waited until he chanced a glance up.

“Be nice,” she called down, “or I’ll push you off my roof if you ever come up again.”

Applause sounded from the roof above. She climbed up, peering. Hal nodded around, enjoying the audience of grinning roofers. “Kiddo, I said it years ago and I’ll say it again. You’ve got stones.”

Daphne grinned, pulling herself to the rooftop. “I don’t need stones.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Countless thanks to my husband, Barry.

To my editors, Alison Dasho and Bryon Quertermous; and to my über agent, Mark Gottlieb.

AUTHOR Q&A: LISA PRESTON, AUTHOR OF
Orchids and Stone

1.
You’ve written several nonfiction books on animals, specifically on the care and train
ing of horses and dogs. Why did you turn to novels?

I’ve always been a bookworm and loved good fiction. As a child, when I finished a wonderful novel, I would hold it and not move, just absorb for long minutes afterward. I felt gratitude and wonder and knew I wanted to someday return the favor of transporting readers to another person’s interesting world. I loved finding meaning and truths in stories, and I liked learning what the characters did, what happened next.

2.
Where do you write?

Mostly at home, with my feet on an old, scarred rolltop desk. I’m someone who never learned to type properly, but I can hunt and peck as fast as many people who did take the right class in high school. Everything I’ve written has been on one little laptop or another—I’ve never owned a desktop computer. When I’m rewriting, working on a hard copy, I can be anywhere. I might go into town with a manuscript and have coffee or a glass of wine or a slice of pizza while I slash and scribble.

3.
What is your writing process like?

My approach is pretty organic. Different ideas will capture my imagination and ask if they can be in a story. Sometimes they fit together and sometimes they don’t. One notion leads to another and I might write pages that will have to go away later, but I’m sketching, getting to know a character, how she or he speaks or lives, so I just let it flow.

Things start to click. I don’t outline before starting, nor do I write one chapter at a time or even in chronological order. If I’m thinking about a scene, conversation, or event that will come later, I page down and write away.

4.
What inspired the idea for
Orchids and Ston
e
?

One day when I was in high school, the entire student body was sent to a church to attend the funeral of a recent graduate. I didn’t know her or even know
of
her. I was standing in the back of a huge, packed church when a young woman was called to speak. She managed two words—
my sister
—before she crumpled up crying. Seeing this survivor so bereft rocked me, and the tragedy cut deeper when I learned that her sister had been murdered. I still tear up at the memory of her raw pain in front of that altar.

Life took me to interesting places and interesting careers. I worked as a fire department paramedic and later became a police officer, routinely encountering situations like domestic violence, going undercover to buy crack cocaine, and chatting with children about their sex lives with their dads. People tried to kill me and I was prepared to use force. I made arrests, served search warrants, cooled down countless squabbles, and handled a lot of traffic accidents. Every day presented scenarios of people not at their best. But sometimes people were at their best. Sometimes, someone stepped up and gave aid or information that was life changing for a stranger. People and the choices they make captivate me.

The novel is from my imagination, although different ideas sparked various parts of the story. A friend called one day because she found Calypso Orchids in her woods, and I thought about what this rare, wild orchid could represent. I saw a woman roofer one day, slinging shingles along with the guys. My husband and I pulled the car over one day because a little girl was bawling horribly at the edge of a vehicle turnout. I asked the man and woman some distance away if everything was okay, and they said they weren’t with her and they had no idea what her problem was. Getting that child home to her parents was the only choice for me.

5.
The novel’s scenario of a little old lady claiming people are kidnapping
and robbing her provokes urgency but could be explained away as the raving of a person with dementia. Do you think people have an obligation to help strangers?

On some level, we certainly ought to help others, but the reasonable extent of our intervention can fluctuate with the scenario and personal factors. There are regular news reports of bystander syndrome and some of these are shocking, but it can feel a bit too pointed if we Monday-morning quarterback an event and remark on what others could have done differently. If the story had begun with
chapter two
and readers put themselves in the park, many would not have intervened. Obviously, I wanted to write about someone who was driven to take one step and then another to render assistance, going as far as it took to solve the problem.

6.
Why did you choose such an unusual and physical job for the central female character?

Not surprisingly, I can identify with a woman making it in a physical and male-dominated career while keeping her femininity. I like out-of-the-box thinking and choices. But Daphne needed a reason to intervene in the coming scenario, so her career choice wasn’t random. It was rooted in her reaction to personal tragedies. No spoilers here, but readers often comment on
chapter one
and its end.

7.
What are you working on now?

My next novel. Really, I write, run, ride, rinse, and repeat.

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS FOR
Orchids and Stone

1. Imagine that you are Daphne when Minerva Watts asks for help in the park. Would you dismiss the plea as crazy talk? When the other woman claimed to be Minerva’s daughter, was Daphne relieved of any civic duty to help Minerva even though Minerva kept asking for help and said she was not the other woman’s mother?

2. The loss of innocence had a profound effect on Daphne. How has her past affected her reaction to Minerva Watts? Is it natural for a person’s resolve to fluctuate?

3. Vic said that lightning has struck twice for Daphne. How do the Mayfield tragedies ten and twenty years past continue to impact the central and peripheral characters?

4. Family stability is a recurring motif in
Orchids and Stone
. How do Lisa Preston’s characters, particularly Daphne, attempt to compensate for the loss of a traditional family? Do the obstacles Vic and his children face differ in nature because of the reasons the two families are fractured? What about Daphne’s parents?

5. Minerva Watts shows Daphne rare wild orchids. What does the orchid represent? Does anything else replace this symbol? What symbols and themes recur in
Orchids and Ston
e
?

6. Daphne’s father felt his job was to keep his daughters safe. To what extent do traditional roles dictate life choices for many people? Do you know someone working in a field that is not traditionally occupied by people of that age, gender, or other stereotype? Can stepping beyond tradition be both empowering and limiting?

7. The suspension of Suzanne’s murder case is echoed in other characters’
lives and choices. In what ways do Daphne and her mother compensate, and are their methods successful? In what ways have other characters made, or not managed to make, healthy progress in their lives?

8.
Daphne sometimes experiences tension because her best friend and her boyfriend do not get along well. How do relationships between friends impact other friends? What does the difference between Daphne and Suzanne’s experience in this area reveal about the characters involved?

9. Daphne wants to know more about her sister’s death. Vic tells her that there are some things we never get to know, and the retired homicide detective tells her that
why
is not a good question because there is no good reason for Suzanne’s murder. Can an unanswerable question be a motivating force? Have you been influenced by a desire that could not be satisfied?

10. What do you think happened to Suzanne? Do you agree with Daphne’s decision about the cold case investigators in the final chapter? How does the balance between letting things go and not letting things go impact our lives?

11. At the heart of
Orchids and Stone
is the question of how far one should go to help others. Discuss how different people in the story display varying levels of tenderness and aggression toward others, especially vulnerable characters. How often might we help or hinder strangers? Have you ever witnessed bystander syndrome?

12. How does the physical resolution scene at
Daphne’s mother’s house
in the second-to-last chapter
comment on violence? Is it ever justifiable to threaten or assault someone? What if the person is helpless at the moment? What do responses to this idea reveal about disparate views on our humanity? What questions remain at the conclusion of
Orchids and Ston
e
?