Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

“You must have taken care of little ones before—” Barbara had said.

“Not unless they had four feet and a tail,” Judd told her firmly. He’d nursed calves and stray dogs and even a pony or two. But kids? Never.

No, Judd wasn’t the one his cousin needed. “You’ll need to find someone else. Believe me, it’s best.”

“But—” Barbara said and then swallowed.

Judd didn’t like the look of desperation he saw in her eyes.

“You’re our only family,” she finally finished.

Judd figured she probably had that about right. The Bowman family tree had always been more of a stump than anything. Ever since his uncle had died, Judd had thought he was the last of the line.

Still, he hesitated.

He thought of suggesting she turn to the state for help, but he knew what kind of trouble that could get her into. Once children were in the state system, it wasn’t all that easy to get them out again, and he could see by the way she kept looking at the kids that she loved them.

He might not know much about a mother’s love himself, but he could at least recognize it when he saw it.

“Maybe you could get a babysitter,” Judd finally offered. “Some nice grandmother or something.”

“You know someone like that?”

Judd had to admit he didn’t. He’d only moved to Dry Creek this past spring. He’d been working long and hard plowing and then seeding the alfalfa and wheat crops. He hadn’t taken time to get to know any of his neighbors yet.

He wished now that he had accepted one of the invitations to church he’d received since he’d been here. An older woman, Mrs. Hargrove, had even driven out to the ranch one day and invited him. She’d looked so friendly he’d almost promised to go, but he didn’t.

What would a man like him do in church anyway? He wouldn’t know when to kneel or when to sing or when to bow his head. No, church wasn’t for him.

Now he wished he had gone to church anyway, even if he’d made a fool of himself doing so. Mrs. Hargrove would probably help someone who went to her church. She wasn’t likely to help a stranger though. Who would be?

“Maybe we could put an ad in the paper.”

Barbara just looked at him. “We don’t have time for that.”

Judd had to admit she was right.

“Besides, this is something big—the kind of thing family members do to help each other,” Barbara said with such conviction that Judd believed her.

Not that he was an expert on what family members did to help each other. He couldn’t remember his uncle ever doing him a kindness, and the man was the only family Judd had ever known. His uncle had lost all contact with his cousin who was Barbara’s father.

He had to admit he had been excited at first when Barbara had come to his doorstep. It was nice to think he had family somewhere in this world.

He looked over at the kids and saw that they were sitting still as stones. Kids shouldn’t be so quiet.

“Are they trained?” he asked.

Barbara looked at him blankly for a moment. “You mean potty-trained?”

He nodded.

“Of course! Amanda here is five years old. And Bobby is six. They practically take care of themselves.”

Barbara didn’t pause before she continued. “And it might only be for a few days. Just enough time for me to drive down to Denver and check out that women’s shelter. I want to be sure they’ll take us before I drag the kids all that way.”

Barbara had arrived in an old car that had seen better days, but it had gotten her here, so Judd figured it would get her to Denver.

Still, if she had car trouble, he knew it would be hard to take care of the kids while she saw to getting the thing fixed. He supposed—maybe—

“I guess things will be slow for the next few days,” Judd said. He’d finished putting up the hay, and he had enough of the fence built so his thirty head of cattle could graze in the pasture by the creek. He meant to spend the next few days working on the inside of the house anyway before he turned back to building the rest of the fence. He supposed two trained kids wouldn’t be too much trouble.

Judd didn’t exactly say he’d keep the kids, but he guessed Barbara could tell he’d lowered his resistance, because she turned her attention to the kids, telling them they were going to stay with Cousin Judd and she’d be back in a few days. That was at the end of August. It was mid-November now.

Judd still hadn’t finished all of the fencing, and it was already starting to snow some. If he waited any longer, the ground would be frozen too far down to dig fence holes. That’s why he was at the hardware store today getting nails and talking to the old men by the stove.

Judd watched the old men as they smiled at the kids now.

Jacob nodded slowly as he looked at Amanda. “I saw your mama when she brought you and your brother here. She stopped to ask directions. You’re right, she was pretty, too.”

“My mama’s going to come back and get us real soon,” Bobby said.

Jacob nodded. “I expect she will.”

Judd gave him a curt nod of thanks. Barbara had asked for a few days, but Judd had figured he’d give her a week. By now, she was at least two months overdue to pick up the kids.

Judd hadn’t told the kids he’d contacted the court that had issued the restraining order their mother had flashed in front of him and asked them to help find her. Fortunately Barbara had listed him as her next of kin on some paper they had. The court clerk had called every women’s shelter between here and Denver and hadn’t located Judd’s cousin.

Judd had had to do some persuasive talking to the clerk, because he didn’t want to mention the kids. He figured his cousin needed a chance to come back for them on her own.

“She’s just hurt her hand so she can’t write and tell us when,” Bobby added confidently.

“I expect that’s right. Mail sometimes takes a while,” Jacob agreed, and then added, “but then it only makes the letter more special when you do get it.”

The older men shifted in their seats. Judd knew they were all aware of the troubles Amanda and Bobby were having. They might not know the details, but he had told his landlady, Linda, back in the beginning of September that he was watching the children for his cousin for a couple of weeks. By now, everyone in Dry Creek probably knew there was something wrong.

Even if he was a newcomer, he would be foolish to think they hadn’t asked each other why the kids were still here. Of course, the old men were polite and wouldn’t ask a direct question, at least not in front of the kids, so they probably didn’t know how bad it all was. They probably thought Barbara had called and made arrangements for the kids to stay longer.

“Speaking of letters, maybe we could write a letter to the new woman and tell her we all want a bakery more than a ballet school,” Charley finally broke the silence with a suggestion.

“We can’t do that,” Jacob said with a sigh. “You don’t write a letter to someone who’s right across the street. No, we need to be neighborly and tell her to her face. It isn’t fair that we let her think she’ll make a go of it here with that school of hers.”

“Well, I can’t talk to her,” Charley said. “I’m the one who promised her everything would be fine.”

“Too bad she wasn’t the one who was deaf,” one of the other men muttered.

“I’m not deaf. I had a bad connection is all,” Charley said. “It could happen to anyone.”

“Maybe he could go talk to her,” the other man said, looking up at Judd. “He seems to hear all right.”

Judd felt his stomach knot up at the idea. “I got to count me out some nails. I’m building a fence.”

He walked back to the shelves that held the boxes of nails. Amanda and Bobby trailed along after him. Judd looked down at Bobby. “Why don’t you take your sister and go across to the café and put your order in for some of that cocoa? Tell Linda I’ll be along in a minute.”

The Linda who ran the café was also his landlady. She was renting him the Jenkins place, with an option to buy come next spring. Judd had saved the few thousand dollars the state had given him when it settled his uncle’s estate and added most of the other money he’d gotten to it for the past six years.

He’d started out working as a ranch hand, but the wages added up too slowly for him, and so he’d spent the next couple of years on the rodeo circuit. He’d earned enough in prize money to set himself up nicely. Right now, he had enough money in the bank to buy the Jenkins place, and he’d already stocked it with some purebred breeding cattle. He could have bought the place outright, but he wanted to take his time and be sure he liked it well enough before he made the final deal. So far, the ground had been fertile and the place quiet enough to suit him.

Judd watched Amanda and Bobby leave the hardware store before he reached into the nail bin and pulled out another nail. Fortunately, the older men had given up on the idea that he should talk to the new woman. They probably realized he’d botch the job.

Outside of talking with Linda at the café and smiling politely when Mrs. Hargrove had delivered the books the school had sent him when he’d decided to homeschool the kids, Judd hadn’t had a conversation with a woman since his cousin had left the kids with him. Well, unless you counted the court clerk he’d talked to on the phone.

Judd never had been much good at talking to women, at least not women who weren’t rodeo followers. He had no problem with women at rodeos, probably because they did most of the talking and he always knew what they wanted; they wanted a rodeo winner to escort them around town for the evening. That didn’t exactly require conversation, not with the yelling that spilled out of most rodeo hangouts in the evening.

As long as his boots were polished and his hat on straight, the rodeo women didn’t care if he was quiet. He was mostly for show anyway—if he was winning. If he wasn’t winning, they weren’t that interested in talking to him, or even interested in being with him.

The few temporary affairs he’d had with rodeo followers didn’t leave him feeling good about himself, so eventually he just declined invitations to party. By then he was counting up his prize money after every rodeo anyway, with an eye to when he could leave the circuit and set himself up on his own ranch.

In those years, Judd hadn’t known any women outside of rodeo circles, and he thought that was best. Judd never seemed to know what those women were thinking, and he didn’t even try to sort it all out. He liked things straightforward and to the point. The other kind of women—the kind that made wives—always seemed to say things in circles and then expect a man to know what they meant. For all Judd knew, they could be speaking Greek.

Judd had a feeling the new woman in Dry Creek was one of that kind of women.

No, he wasn’t the one to talk to her about what she was doing here, even though he had to admit he was curious. She sure knew how to hang a sign in that window.

Chapter Three

Lizette shifted the sign with her left hand and took a deep breath. It had taken her the better part of three days to get the practice bar in place along the left side of the room and the floor waxed to a smooth shine. She still had the costumes hanging on a rack near the door waiting to be sorted by size, but she’d decided this morning it was time to put the sign she’d made in her window and start advertising for students.

She could still smell the floor wax, so she’d opened the door to air out the room even though it was cold outside. At least it wasn’t snowing today.

Lizette had bought a large piece of metal at the hardware store yesterday and some paint so she could make her sign. The old men sitting around the stove in the store had obviously heard she was setting up a business, because they were full of suggestions on how she should make her sign.

Of course, most of the words centered on the Baker part of the school’s name, but she couldn’t fault them for that. She was heartened to see they had so much enthusiasm for a ballet school. If this was any indication of the interest of the rest of the people in the community, she just might get enough students to pull off a modified Nutcracker ballet for Christmas after all. She’d even assured the men in the hardware store that no one was too old to learn some ballet steps. In fact, she’d told them that lots of athletes used ballet as a way to exercise.

The old men had looked a little dismayed at her comments, and she wasn’t surprised. At their age, they probably didn’t want to take up any exercise program, especially not one as rigorous as ballet. “You’d want to check with your doctor first, of course,” Lizette added. “You should do that before you take up any new exercise program.”

The men nodded as she left the hardware store. All in all, they’d been friendly, and she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t get a student or two out of the bunch. And if she didn’t get any students, at least she’d gotten some good neighbors. One of them had already been over to check on the smoke coming out of the small kitchen off the main room when she’d been baking some cookies earlier and had forgotten they were in the oven. He’d even offered to bring her over some more flour if she was inclined to continue baking. He’d expressed some hope of a cherry pie.

The chair Lizette stood on gave her enough height so she could lift the sign and hook it into the chain she’d put up to hang it with. The sign had a white background with navy script lettering.

Lizette planned to take a picture of the sign later and send it to Madame Aprele. She wasn’t sure she’d tell her old teacher that she didn’t have any students yet, but she could tell her that the school was almost ready for classes now that the practice bar was in place. Lizette had planned to use a makeshift practice bar at first, because she couldn’t afford a real one. Madame Aprele had surprised her by sending her one of her own mahogany bars. Her old teacher had shipped it before Lizette left Seattle, and Linda, next door in the café, had kept it for Lizette until she arrived.

Lizette had called Madame Aprele, thanking her and insisting that she accept payment for the equipment. It would help enough, Lizette explained, if she could just pay for the bar over time. She didn’t add that she had no need of charity. Madame Aprele agreed to let Lizette make payments if Lizette promised to call her with weekly updates on her school.

At first Lizette was uncomfortable promising to call Madame Aprele, because she knew her mother would disapprove. But then Lizette decided that whatever problem there had been between her mother and Madame Aprele, there was no need for her to continue the coldness.

Twenty years ago when Madame Aprele had bought the school from Lizette’s mother, the two women had been friends. But, over the years, Jacqueline spoke less and less to Madame Aprele until, finally, her mother wouldn’t even greet the other women when she picked Lizette up after ballet class.

At the time, Lizette didn’t understand why. Now she wondered if her mother didn’t look at Madame Aprele and wish her own life had turned out like the other woman’s.

Not that there was anything in Jacqueline’s life to suggest she wished for a different one. Madame Aprele had been born in France in the same village as Lizette’s mother. Both women had studied ballet together and had left France together. Lizette’s mother had become more Americanized over the years, however, especially after she’d started working in the bakery.

As Lizette’s mother became more conservative in her dress, Madame Aprele became more outrageous, until, in the end, Lizette’s mother looked almost dowdy and Madame Aprele looked like an old-fashioned movie star with her lavender feather boas and dramatic eye makeup.

Lizette stepped down from the chair just as she saw two little children cross the street from the hardware store. The sun was shining on the window so Lizette could not see the children clearly, but she could tell from their size that they were both good prospects for ballet.

Lizette didn’t know how to advertise in a small town like Dry Creek, but she supposed she could ask about the children at the hardware store, find out who their parents were and send them a flyer.

When the children passed her door, they stopped. The little girl was staring at something, and it didn’t take long for Lizette to figure out what it was. The sunlight was streaming in, making the Sugar Plum Fairy costume sparkle even more than usual. Lizette’s mother had used both gold and metallic pink on the costume when she’d made it, and many a young girl mistook it for a princess costume.

“If you go ask your mother if it’s okay, you can come in and look at the costumes,” Lizette said. She doubted things were so casual in Dry Creek that parents wanted their children going into strange stores without their knowledge.

The girl whispered something in the boy’s ear. He nodded.

Lizette had walked closer to the children and was starting to feel uneasy. If you added a few pounds and took away the scared look in their eyes, those two kids looked very similar to that snapshot she’d seen several days ago. She looked up and down the snow-covered street. There were the usual cars and pickups parked beside the hardware store and the café, but there were no people outside except for the two children. “Does your mother know where you are?”

Both children solemnly nodded their heads yes.

Lizette was relieved to know the children had a mother. Their father hadn’t looked like much of a parent, but hopefully their mother was better.

“Our mother won’t mind if we look at the dress,” the boy politely said after a moment and pointed inside. “That one.”

The rack was very close to the door and Lizette decided she could leave the door open so the children’s mother could see them if she looked down the street. Really, if she moved the rack closer, the children could touch the costumes while they stood outside on the sidewalk.

Lizette pushed the costume rack so it was just inside the door. “The pink one is my favorite, too.”

Lizette watched as the little girl reached out her hand and gently touched the costume.

“That’s the dress for the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker ballet,” Lizette said.

“What’s a ballet?” the boy asked.

Lizette thought a moment. “It’s like a play with lots of costumes and people moving.”

“So someone wears that dress in a play?” the boy asked.

The boy and Lizette were both seeing the same thing. The little girl’s face was starting to glow. One moment she had been pale and quiet, and the next her face started to show traces of pink and her eyes started to sparkle.

For the first time, Lizette decided she had made the right decision to come to Dry Creek to open her school. If there were more little girls and boys like this in the community, she’d have a wonderful time teaching them to love ballet.

Chapter Four

Lizette heard a sound and looked up to see a half-dozen men stomping down the steps of the hardware store and heading straight toward her new school. She wasn’t sure, but she thought every one of the men was frowning, especially the one who was at the back of the group. That man had to be forty years younger than the other men, but he looked the most annoyed of them all.

“The children are still just on the sidewalk,” Lizette said when the men were close enough to hear. While she hadn’t thought anyone would want children to go into a building alone, she certainly hadn’t expected there would be a problem with them standing on the sidewalk and looking at something inside. If the citizens of Dry Creek were that protective of their children, she’d never have any young students in her classes.

Lizette braced herself, but when the men reached her, they stood silent. Finally, one of them cleared his throat, “About this—ah—school—”

“The children will all have permission from their parents, of course,” Lizette rushed to assure them. “And parents can watch the classes any time they want. They can even attend if they want. I’d love to have some older students.”

The younger man, the one who had hung back on the walk over, moved closer to the open door. He seemed intent on the two children and did not stop until he stood beside them protectively. Lizette noticed that the young boy relaxed a little when the man stood beside him, and the girl reached out her hand to touch the man’s leg. She knew the man wasn’t the children’s father because she’d met that man already. Maybe he was their stepfather. That would explain why the father hadn’t known where the children lived.

“Well, about the students—” The older man cleared his throat and began again. “You see, there might be a problem with students.”

“No one has to audition or anything to be in the performances,” Lizette said. She wasn’t sure what was bothering the men, but she wanted them to know she was willing to work with the town. “And public performance is good for children, especially if it’s not competitive.”

“Anyone can be in the play,” the boy said softly.

The men had all stopped talking to listen to the boy, so they all heard the next words very clearly.

“I’m going to be a Sugar Plum Fairy,” the girl said, and pointed to the costume she’d been admiring.

Judd swallowed. Amanda never talked to anyone but Bobby, and then only in whispers. Who knew all it would take was a sparkly costume to make her want to talk?

“How much is the costume?” Judd asked the woman in the doorway. He didn’t care what figure she named—he’d buy it for Amanda.

“Oh, the costumes aren’t for sale,” the woman said. “I’ll need them for the performance, especially if I want to have something ready for Christmas. I won’t have time to make many more costumes.”

“About this performance—” The older man said, then cleared his throat.

Lizette wondered what was bothering the old man, but she didn’t have time to ask him because the younger man was scowling at her.

“So the only way Amanda can wear this costume is if she’s in your performance?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say it was my performance.” Lizette felt her patience starting to grow thin. “All of the students will see it as their performance. We work together.”

“About the students—” The older man began again and cleared his throat for what must have been the fourth time.

“I’ll sign Amanda up,” the younger man said decisively. “If she signs up first, she should get her pick of the parts, shouldn’t she?”

“Well, I don’t see why she can’t be the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Lizette agreed. After all, Lizette herself would be choreographing the part for the children’s ballet, and could tailor it to Amanda’s skills. She’d just gotten her first student. “She’ll have to practice, of course. And we’ll have to have a few more students to do even a shortened version of the Nutcracker.”

The younger man squeezed the boy on his shoulder.

“I’ll sign up, too,” the boy offered reluctantly.

“There—I have two students!” Lizette announced triumphantly. “And I only just hung up my sign.”

The older man cleared his throat again, but this time he had nothing to say. All of the older men were looking a little stunned. Maybe they were as taken aback as she was by the fierce scowl the younger man was giving them.

“You might want to see a doctor about the cold you’re getting,” Lizette finally said to the man who had been trying to talk. “Usually when you have to clear your throat so often, it means a cold is coming on.”

The older man nodded silently.

“And you might ask him about taking up ballet while you’re there,” Lizette said. “Just to see if the exercise would be all right for you. Now that I have two students, I can begin classes, and you’d be more than welcome.”

Lizette decided the older man definitely had a cold coming on. He had just gone pale. He even looked a little dizzy.

“You’ll want to wait until you’re feeling better before you start though,” Lizette said to him. That seemed to make him feel better. At least his color returned.