Picket Fence Promises

Like a beagle on the trail of a bunny, Alex lifted his nose and started down the street. Every Tuesday morning, Sally makes homemade cinnamon rolls and sells them for fifty cents apiece. It sounds reasonable, but she also raises the price of coffee seventy-five cents. The whole town smells like a bakery and we respond like Pavlov’s dogs and eagerly pay the difference. Donald Trump could learn a few things from Sally Rapinski.

I pushed the luggage out of the way with my foot as I jogged to keep up with him. Just the sight of that luggage—and not one overnight bag but a whole matched set—added another reason why Alex Scott could not vacation in Prichett.

“There isn’t a motel in town. Where are you planning to stay on this alleged vacation?” I panted. My lungs were reminding me that they weren’t used to this. Exercise always ranks either one or two on my list of New Year’s resolutions every year, sliding dismally to the bottom by mid-February, only to disappear completely by Easter. Too many chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks to compete with. Why even try?

He didn’t break stride. “No motel? Really?”

He chuckled and my palms started to sweat again.

I had a sudden epiphany. “There is a bed-and-breakfast. Not four-star or anything like you’re used to, though.” Desperate times called for desperate measures so I squashed a twinge of guilt for mentioning the only place open for guests in Prichett during the off-season.

Everyone in town referred to it as the Lightning Strike Inn. Charity O’Malley owned it and she had to be as old as the Victorian itself. Prichett’s houses were mostly modest one-and two-story structures but the Lightning Strike was on the historical register because it was a true painted lady from eons ago. The first banker had built it for his new bride, when everyone thought that Prichett would someday be the capital of Wisconsin. Delusion rears its ugly head!

Charity’s husband had passed away before I moved to town but from what I’ve been told, instead of selling the house and buying a condo in Florida, she had the upstairs remodeled with two guest rooms and a bathroom, hammered a sign next to the mailbox by the road and started advertising it as a bed-and-breakfast in the Prichett Press. The Weeping Willow Inn was what she’d named it, although there was no weeping willow in sight. There was a twisted-looking crab apple by the front steps.

The bed-and-breakfast may have been a good idea except for two things. The first thing was a rumor that Charity had adopted a noisy bird that allowed the guests to get as much sleep as Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. The second thing was that the house kept getting struck by lightning. So far, it had happened three years in a row. The farmers that lined the counter at Sally’s Café tried to guess which storm was going to produce the next strike that would singe Charity’s steepled roof.

“Bed-and-breakfast?” Alex’s hand reached toward the door to Sally’s. “Sounds good to me.”

I summoned the adrenaline that I knew was lounging around somewhere inside me and pushed in front of him. “Are you sure you want to do this? It isn’t a vacation if you have hundreds of people clamoring for your autograph or picture, is it? I have half a tuna sandwich in my shop. I’ll share.”

“Hundreds of people? In a café the size of my living room?” Alex’s eyebrow lifted. “Right. And you should have offered the tuna fish ten minutes ago. I would have taken you up on it.”

We took our first step together and got wedged in the doorway. I rotated one hip and let him through, sure that my face was as red as my jacket.

Sally was standing behind the counter with a pot of coffee in hand. Lined up in front of her like canned goods in a pantry were the retired farmers that made the café their second home. She didn’t even glance our way.

Neither did the farmers.

Neither did the other people sitting in the café, absorbed in their newspapers and cinnamon rolls.

“I hope I have enough ink in my pen,” Alex whispered.

There was something wrong with this picture. Sally should already have Alex’s picture on the Prichett’s Pride and Joy Wall by the coffeepot, ready and waiting for his autograph. Mayor Candy should be standing nearby, ready to greet us with a bag of sunflower seeds tucked under her arm. Maybe they were planning an ambush. As we were sitting down, someone was probably organizing a parade and an ice cream social….

“What can I getcha, Bernice?”

Sally was like me, a control freak who not only owned her own business but made sure she was there from the time it opened until the last customer left in the evening. She grudgingly employed waitresses only because arthritis was slowing her down and she couldn’t move as fast as she used to. There was a time when she’d operated the café completely on her own, just as I did the salon.

“I’ll have a BLT and a chocolate shake.”

“Sounds great. Make mine on wheat, please.” Alex smiled and Sally finally looked at him. Like he was a bug who’d turned up in the oatmeal.

“Wheat.” She repeated the word.

“Or whole grain.”

Alex, Alex, Alex. Why don’t you just ask for a veggie burger and a smoothie made with organic bananas and tofu?

He had no way of knowing that Sally still put a pat of real butter on every hamburger that landed on the griddle in the kitchen. This is the dairy state, after all. Judging from the expression on Sally’s face, I knew he was going to get a BLT on white. And he was going to like it.

What was going on? My town wasn’t acting like my town. Sally’s life centered around the café but I know she went to an occasional movie. She had to recognize Alex. She pivoted sharply and did her own interpretation of stomping back to the kitchen. And I was officially in an alternate reality.

“Friendly little town,” Alex murmured.

I saw the sparkle in his eyes but refused to get caught up in a humor-fest with him. That’s exactly what had launched our relationship the first time and now I could recognize the signs. Honestly, Alex Scott should have a Surgeon General’s warning tattooed on his arm.

This man may be dangerous. Any contact with him could have long-term effects on a woman’s heart…including but not limited to sweaty palms, rapid pulse and the loss of her ability to think straight.

The door to Sally’s opened and ushered in a gust of cold air. I glanced up and bearing down on us like a torpedo in plaid flannel and denim was Prichett’s mayor.

Sally may have acted strange but I could count on Candy to pull me back into reality. Funny, though, no bag of birdseed tucked under her arm…

“Are those your suitcases cluttering the sidewalk by the Cut and Curl?” She stopped right next to our table and glared down at Alex.

“I thought they’d be safe there while we grabbed some lunch,” Alex said, smiling up at her.

“Alex, this is Candy Lane, Prichett’s mayor—” I tried to interject.

“Of course they’re safe there.” Candy looked thoroughly offended. “But they’re a hazard to pedestrians. If you don’t get rid of them, I’m going to have to cite you for violating ordinance number B31, section eighteen.”

Alex laughed. Candy didn’t.

“Candy, you can’t be serious.” I tried again but Candy shifted her weight and didn’t crack a smile.

“I’ll give you fifteen minutes to remove them or they’ll be confiscated.” With a short nod at me, she swept out. Do not pass go. Do not collect your bag of birdseed.

The temperature in Prichett may have been chilly but now it was downright arctic. Not exactly a warm place to vacation. And I had no idea why. As far as I knew, no ordinance B31, section eighteen even existed. Maybe Candy had written it on the way to the café.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” I muttered, feeling strangely embarrassed. Maybe a tad more embarrassed than I would have felt if the whole town had been waving paper and pens in his face.

“I do. They’re protecting you.”

“Protecting me? Don’t be silly. Everyone knows that I don’t need to be protected.” I’d been living on my own for…well, a long time. And only in Prichett for the past ten years. My roots weren’t nearly as deep as most of the people who lived in the area. For the first five years I’d lived here, I was regarded cautiously, like a strange weed that had popped up unexpectedly in their little garden. I guess at some point they got used to me.

Alex stood up and for a second I thought he was going to leave.

“Um, could I have everyone’s attention, please?” he said. Loudly.

The stools at the counter swiveled on cue as the farmers swung around to face him. The rest of the people sitting at the tables all looked in our direction.

“I just want to know right now how many guys I’m going to have to arm wrestle to take Bernice Strum out for dinner tonight?”

Hands shot up around the room. I stopped counting at eight. Closing my eyes, I prayed once again for those green pastures and quiet waters that God had promised me!

“Now do you believe me?” He sat down just as Sally marched back with our food. I dared a look at the plate she dropped in front of Alex. BLT on white.

“That’s the palest-looking wheat bread I’ve ever seen,” he said, winking at me.

His milk shake was a bit on the anemic side, too. In fact, it looked suspiciously like vanilla. Sally was giving a whole new meaning to the term food fight.

“Okay, what have you been doing? Using a poster of my face as a dartboard? Why is everyone circling you like a wagon train under attack?”

The sip of shake I’d just taken took a quick detour from my esophagus into my lungs. Nothing had prepared me for this. A phone call was one thing, but to be sitting two feet away from Alex with only our BLTs separating us, was a whole different story.

Alex was right. Incredibly, annoyingly, unbelievably right. And suddenly, as if someone yanked the curtain in my brain to the side, I knew what was happening. I knew why Sally was probably in the alley, stirring a barrel of hot tar and why everyone would gladly part with some of their ruffled feathers to roll Alex in before he was chased out of town.

The only thing that made sense out of the way people were reacting to Alex’s arrival was that they’d taken one look at him and connected the DNA dots. Heather. She looked like him. She may have inherited my green eyes, but his genetic code had waged war with mine and fortunately his had won. Heather was beautiful. Not only on the outside, but on the inside, too.

And just this past summer, Heather had used all the brand-new Internet technology at her disposal to find her birth mother. Me.

Chapter Three

But I couldn’t tell him that. Not yet. After so many years, how did a person drop that bombshell into a conversation? By the way, remember when I left twenty years ago? I didn’t realize I was pregnant. I decided not to tell you and I gave the baby up for adoption. I didn’t think you were serious about me…about us…and I was too scared to take the risk.

“Alex, why are you here? Really?” The tangled threads of the past, the ones that God and I had been painstakingly snipping over the past few months, were starting to wrap themselves around my feet again, threatening to trip me up.

“I told you—”

“You’re on vacation,” I finished, rolling my eyes. “Well, those of us who aren’t on vacation need to go back to work. I have an appointment in five minutes.”

How could I get rid of him? Maybe a case of frostbite from Prichett’s cold shoulder would discourage him from staying.

“I’ll tag along. I have some suitcases to move before they get confiscated. Ordinance B31, section eighteen.”

It wasn’t fair that he had a sense of humor about all this. I searched for mine and realized it had probably left at the same time the limo did.

Alex paid the bill and left a generous tip for Sally. The skittering up my spine told me that everyone was watching us as we walked to the door. Alex thought that everyone was protecting me, but I realized that I was protecting him, making sure that he was in front of me on the way out. One never knew when a rogue dinner roll could fly out of nowhere and hit someone in the back of the head. I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“So where is this bed-and-breakfast you were telling me about?”

“The Lightning—um, the Weeping Willow? It’s three blocks down, turn right and it’s the last house at the end of the street.” Another twinge of guilt but I rationalized it away, reminding myself that it was too late in the season for thunderstorms. At least if he wasn’t safe from Charity’s bird, he was safe from another lightning strike. I could live with that.

“So, how about dinner?”

Why was it that I couldn’t remember where I’d left my car keys or why I’d walked into the kitchen, but I could remember that those had been the exact words Alex had said to me the day we met? Another question to ask God when we finally met face-to-face. I’d started a list.

“I can’t.”

“You have a date.”

I almost laughed. A date. Oh, those gross brown fruit things that look like crayfish with no legs? Because that’s the only kind of date Bernice Strum is familiar with….

“No, just plans I can’t change.”

“Where do you live? Maybe I can stop by later this evening.”

“Look up.”

“What?”

“Up.” I repeated the word patiently, even though my heart had just shifted into high gear. I didn’t want him to stop by later. Stopping by meant conversation. Conversation would lead to questions like, What’s been happening in your life? Which would lead to answers like, Our daughter found me after twenty years and she’s smart and beautiful and she has your smile….

Alex was looking around, trying to figure out if I was nesting in one of the oak trees in the park or maybe on the roof of the post office.

“Do you see those windows? I live there. Above the salon.”

“I thought you always wanted a house with a picket fence.”

Something snagged in my throat. It took a minute before I could squeeze some words out around it. “It made sense to be close to where I work.”

“This town is the size of a nine-hole golf course,” Alex pointed out helpfully. “I can’t imagine that anywhere you lived would be that far from work.”

The house I’d had my eye on for years wasn’t for sale but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I couldn’t pay rent on the building plus make a house payment. Even with some creative stretching, my budget couldn’t perform those kinds of fiscal gymnastics. When I’d moved to Prichett and opened the salon, I told myself the apartment would be temporary but somehow it had become my “temporary” home for the past ten years.

“Well, your suitcases are still here. All five—” how long was he planning to stay? “—of them.” Again, stating the obvious is a gift of mine but I hoped Alex would take the hint.

“There probably isn’t a taxi service here, is there?”

“Munroe has one but it’s half an hour away. By the time they got here…”

Alex’s hand lifted. “I get the picture. Small town. No extras.”

“Prichett has plenty of extras.” I had to correct him because the snowflakes returned as if on cue. Tiny white parachutes that drifted down and got caught in Alex’s hair. “Just not the kind that you expect.”

“Intriguing.” Alex’s box-office smile surfaced for a moment and he gathered up his luggage. “I’ll see you later.”

I had just enough time to unlock the door and turn the lights on when the bells jingled and Mindy came in.

“How are you today, Bernice?”

For Mindy Lewis, this was not a polite greeting. She wasn’t inquiring about my overall emotional well-being, either. Thank goodness. No, Mindy wanted specifics. Do I have an upset stomach? A low-grade fever? The sniffles? In other words, do I have anything wrong with me that has the potential to jump track via the germ train and get her sick?

“I’m fine. Have a seat, Mindy.” I smiled and patted the chair by the sink. Snapping the cape around her neck, I fought the irresistible urge to cough.

Be a grown-up, Bernice.

“I saw a man dragging a bunch of suitcases down the street,” Mindy said. “But I didn’t get a good look at him. From the direction he was headed, it looked like he was going to the Lightning Strike.”

If grapevines had taproots, Prichett’s would be Mindy.

I tried to postpone the inevitable by changing the subject. I wasn’t about to tell Mindy that Alex Scott had chosen Prichett over the French Riviera for his vacation. “How’s Greta doing these days?”

Greta is Mindy’s niece, her brother’s youngest daughter. There aren’t many teenagers like Greta in Prichett. She dresses in black from head to toe, but that’s just to throw people off. She designed Elise’s dress for the pageant and I know she has a colorful soul.

“Tired lately. Senior year, you know. She’s supposed to find out any day now if she’s been accepted by that college in New York.”

The door opened and Jim Briggs stepped inside. Mindy began to bounce up and down so much that I was tempted to make her sit in the elephant chair. It came equipped with a seat belt for rambunctious toddlers but there were many times I was tempted to stuff fidgety adults into it, too.

If there were an eligible bachelor in Prichett, it would be Jim. He’d sold the family farm and started an excavating business, which must have been successful because a few years ago he built a brand-new, two-story house just outside the city limits. I tried really hard not to drool over the picket fence.

Jim and I had met shortly after I’d moved to town. He’d shocked me by stopping in at the salon even though the majority of the men in Prichett seem to regard personal grooming the same way a stray dog would. When they got too shaggy, they’d go to the barbershop, which had the macho name of the Buzz and Blade. I never confessed to anyone that that was the reason, in a moment of attempted wit, that I named my salon the Cut and Curl. The trouble was, no one got it. So much for being witty.

For reasons that I didn’t want to question, Jim had passed the Buzz and Blade that day and stopped in to see if I had time to cut his hair. His reason became obvious while he was in the shampoo chair. His warm, chocolate-brown eyes stared up at me as he’d tried to woo the new girl in town. I may have been flattered, except that his unique brand of romance was telling me that since we were both over twenty-one and single—and because I had a past the town could only guess at—maybe we should get together. As an afterthought, he mentioned pizza.

So I dyed his hair green.

He ran all the way to the Buzz and Blade and I don’t quite know what happened after that. All I know is that Jim has avoided me ever since and no one else—the cowards—had asked me out on a date since.

And now here he was, shaking snow out of his hair and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“That’s regular,” I told him.

He made a face. “Is there anything else?”

I’d seen Jim in church just this past Sunday. Elise told me he’d been attending for a few years now but I wouldn’t have known that because I just started to go to church a few months ago myself.

“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked cautiously. Wax your eyebrows? Dye your hair green?

He smiled. “Two things.”

Uh-oh. For his sake, one of those things better not be pizza. I could tell by the way that Mindy’s body had gone completely still that her brain was already set on Record.

“I just joined the PAC and Candy told me I should talk to you about what subcommittee to serve on.”

PAC was the Prichett Advancement Council. Candy had started it shortly after she was elected mayor. Most of the businesses on Main Street were represented, the Cut and Curl included. Candy had finagled me into serving as vice chairman right at the beginning and ten years later I was still the vice chairman. Not because I was such a great vice chairman but because no one else wanted the job. The other committee members had the responsibility of bringing brownies or making sure there were disposable coffee cups for the meeting. I had to convince everyone that change was a good thing. Brownies were definitely easier.

“We don’t have subcommittees.” What was Candy thinking? “We all just kind of pitch in and do whatever needs to be done.”

“She mentioned there was a new committee forming because of the grant the city received last week. Something about the arts?”

“We got that grant?” I couldn’t believe it. Prichett was barely a dot on the Wisconsin map and we’d actually received the grant that Candy had applied for two years ago?

“So she says. She’s pretty excited about it.”

I could only imagine.

“A grant for what?” Mindy interrupted.

Sorry, were we talking too fast for you to take mental notes?

“Candy applied for a special state grant that pays for something in the area of the arts. If we got the grant, we decided to put a sculpture in the park.”

“That’s a good idea.” Mindy’s head bobbed enthusiastically, almost dislodging the clips I’d put in her hair. “Especially since we’re getting new playground equipment in the spring.”

The new playground equipment was compliments of Elise. When she won the pageant, she received a check to donate to her favorite cause. Since the playground equipment had been in the park before the invention of a neat little thing called plastic, it definitely needed replacing.

“What’s the sculpture going to look like?” Jim poured himself another cup of coffee. I was tempted to tell him that I hoped he had a good book handy, because with that much caffeine speeding through his system, he wasn’t going to fall asleep until Saturday.

“We haven’t decided yet.” Honestly, the chances of receiving the grant had been so small we hadn’t even discussed it. “I suppose that’s why Candy wants a separate committee.”

In a way that was good because our PAC meetings lasted three or four hours as it was. It may have had something to do with the fact that Prichett’s idea of advancement was one step forward and three steps back. As vice chairman, it was up to me to nudge them into taking the one step forward. Sometimes the nudging took months.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll put myself on that committee, then,” Jim said. “It sounds like fun.”

Fun? The words “PAC” and “fun” just couldn’t exist in the same sentence as far as I was concerned.

“I will, too,” Mindy chimed in.

“You have to be a business owner to be in PAC,” I reminded her. I took out the blow dryer and glanced at Jim before I turned it on. “You said there were two things?”

“Yeah, I also need a trim. Do you have a few minutes between appointments?”

I could tell Mindy wanted to linger and find out if there was something going on between me and Jim by the way she counted out my tip in change instead of parting with the five-dollar bill I saw peeking out of her purse.

“Oh, Greta needs an appointment to get her hair done for the Senior Tea,” Mindy remembered. I may have denial down to an art, but Mindy has perfected delay tactics.

I checked my appointment book. The Senior Tea was one of the highlights of the year and my schedule was always tight that day. According to legend, The Tea started years ago as the final exam for a chapter on etiquette in the home economics class. Somewhere along the way, finger sandwiches and punch served in foam cups evolved into its present-day extravaganza—a rite of passage for the senior girls that gave them the chance to wear formal dresses, have their hair done and sip tea out of bone china cups in Charity O’Malley’s music room.

It had gotten so popular that I had the girls calling me over the summer to book their hair appointments but I knew I would squeeze Greta in.

“I’ll schedule her at seven-thirty before my first appointment. It’s on the early side but otherwise I’m booked solid,” I said.

“I’ll tell her.” Reluctantly, Mindy took a slow, measured step away from the counter. Jim was already in the shampoo chair. A trim, huh? Where was the hair dye? Maybe orange this time, to coordinate with the Thanksgiving napkins…