Summer Of Joanna

There was no mistaking the suggestion. Kate was speechless. The man had just buried his wife. Her friend.

As if sensing his indiscretion, he quickly added, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Simply that I knew very few of Joanna’s colleagues, but I do know that you must have been very special to her. Otherwise she wouldn’t have included you in her will.” He paused and lowered his voice. “It would be nice to get together again and just talk. Do you know what I mean?”

Kate nodded. “Yes, of course Mr….uh, Lance. And I will call you or Mr. Collier as soon as possible. Thanks again for lunch and the ride home.” She slid out the door, closed it and waited by the curb as he drove off. When the red car zipped around the corner of her street, she turned toward her house. Matt Sinclair was leaning against the brick planter box at the foot of the steps.

HE’D BEEN FEEDING a parking meter a few yards away when Lance Marchant’s car screeched to a halt in front of Kate’s place. So he waited at the meter, watching the two of them chatting until Kate got out. Matt knew the surge in his blood pressure was from a long antipathy for Marchant, but the cozy sight rankled even more. When the red Porsche sped off, he strolled over to greet Kate.

She was in the same dress she’d worn to Joanna’s funeral, and her face looked just as red as it had that day, too. The heat or the thrill of Marchant’s company? He’d pegged her for an unassuming schoolteacher. Now he wasn’t so sure. Her chin-length hair fanned up and away from her face, whipped into a froth of knots by the car ride. As she marched toward him, he saw that, although the expression in her pinched face was most definitely schoolteacherish, her manner was no longer unassuming. For a moment he had a frightening flashback to his prep-school days, standing before his headmaster.

“You’ve been following me!” Her voice peaked in anger.

Matt forced back a smile. “Actually, I was here before you. Likewise for this morning at the elevator.” He waited a beat. “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

The lame attempt at humor failed. She hadn’t registered a single word, but came right up to him to repeat her accusation. So close that he sniffed the residue of wine and garlic on her breath. The sudden image of her and Marchant laughing over lunch chilled him.

He raised his palms in a surrendering motion. “Whoa! Doesn’t the word coincidence mean anything to you?”

“Coincidence was the meeting this morning. This is no coincidence. How did you get my address?”

“Phone book?” he countered.

She narrowed her eyes but calmed down, taking a step backward. “What is it you want, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Make it Matt, please. Could we go somewhere for a cold drink and a talk?”

“I’ve been eating and drinking for more than an hour, and frankly, I don’t see how I could possibly have anything to say to you.”

She started to move past him but he placed his hand on her arm. Looking down at the hand and then up at his face, Kate said, “You have an unpleasant habit of doing that and I’d like you to remove your hand this instant.”

Matt’s hand flew off her arm as if she’d taken a ruler to it. He tried again. “Look, after seeing you this morning I realized there were a lot of questions you must have about Joanna and, well, the things I said about her the other day.”

“Go on,” she said.

The stare made him think she must be a good teacher. Probably never had to raise her voice. Just fix those eyes—what color were they, anyway?—on an unruly kid and order would prevail.

“There’s a coffee place around the corner. Why don’t we go there? Not for long. I’ll leave whenever you tell me.”

She frowned as she considered the invitation, then nodded curtly and began walking toward the corner. He had to lope to keep up with her, in spite of the difference in their heights and leg length. She only came up to his shoulder but had no trouble keeping enough distance between them to make him feel like a pup on a leash.

The blast of frigid air as they stepped into the coffee house was nothing to the cool appraisal she gave him as he ordered iced cappuccino for them both. Her face could have been chiseled from Siena marble, he thought. Not a hint of emotion.

She got right to the point. “You wanted to tell me something about Joanna.”

He tipped an invisible hat to her. She was good. Making it look like the wanting and telling were both on his side when he could see, even under that neutral expression, that she wanted—no, needed—to hear whatever he had to say. He thought for a moment, knowing how important it was to choose his words carefully.

“My father and Joanna got married when I was seventeen, as I think I told you the other day. My mother had died just six months earlier.” He paused to stare down at the table for a long moment before raising his face back to her. “I was in Europe at some fancy boarding school my parents decided I needed at that point in my life.”

The waitress arrived with their cold drinks. When she moved away, he went on. “I got a telephone call about their marriage just the day before,” he explained. “They were in Las Vegas. It was all a last-minute thing. That’s what my father claimed, anyway.”

The bitterness in his voice just slipped out. He swallowed some of the frosty cappuccino, reminding himself to relax. It was a long time ago.

“To make a long story short, they got married and were on the verge of divorcing two years later when my father died of a heart attack. The last time I saw Joanna was at Dad’s funeral. I was nineteen and hardly knew her. We exchanged a few words and that was it.”

“You were going to tell me why you disliked her so much.”

Matt forced himself to keep his voice neutral. “To give Joanna her credit, she never tried to take anything out of the marriage that my father hadn’t actually given her. So after he died, she willingly handed over all my mother’s things—some jewellery and photographs—as well as most of Dad’s personal papers and such. But she certainly managed to go through most of his liquid assets in those two years, and they’d been substantial. Dad had been a highly paid executive at the bank. By the time taxes and lawyers were paid, there wasn’t much left, anyway.”

“And?”

He flushed with annoyance. She was cool, all right. Not a murmur or flicker of sympathy during his whole speech. Suddenly he wanted to blurt out the whole of it. See if that finely sculpted marble would crack under the heat of what he’d say.

“A while ago I learned that she hadn’t returned everything of Dad’s. I’ve been trying for several months now to get hold of some papers of his. They weren’t important to her, but they are to me. That’s why I was at Marchant’s office this morning. To ask about them.”

“What did he say?”

He wasn’t expecting the question. She was obviously more interested in Marchant’s response than in his story, and he felt a surge of irritation. Then she sat forward in her chair, folding her elbows on the tabletop. Her iced cappuccino, still untouched, was sitting in a widening puddle of condensation. Merely keeping eye contact with her blue-green and very direct gaze obliterated his rehearsed reply. Matt wet his lips and glanced down at his own empty glass.

“Mind?” he asked, indicating hers.

“Go ahead,” she mumbled.

Matt took a long swallow. “Lance told me he hadn’t found any of my father’s papers among Joanna’s things.”

Kate shrugged as if to say, what did you expect?

“But after I left his office, I thought the papers might have been stored at that camp of her parents. Can’t recall the name.”

“Limberlost,” she said. She was sitting straight as a poker now, all ears.

“Right. I wondered if you could look for them for me.”

Kate tilted her head questioningly. “Say again?”

He cursed under his breath. Well, he thought, there was no going back now. The proverbial cat was definitely not only out of the bag, but scampering across the table.

“Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, but I heard that you’d inherited the camp from Joanna and, uh, I was wondering if you’d look for the papers for me. At the camp.”

“Where did you hear that?” she demanded. “Who told you I inherited the camp?”

She leaned across the table, the end of her nose almost touching the iced cappuccino sitting in front of him.

He made an effort not to pull his head back. In spite of the dizzying warmth of her breath enveloping his face, he managed a casual shrug. “I don’t know. I…I guess Marchant. When I saw him this morning.”

She eased back into her chair, a faint smirk on her face. “I don’t believe you. Your meeting with him was before the will had been read.”

Matt knew he’d never come up with anything convincing enough to sway that haughty, self-assured expression in her eyes, but he made a stab at it. “I’m sure he mentioned it. How else would I know?”

The rhetorical question hung over the table. After a long moment, Kate pushed her chair back and stood up. “I don’t know who you are—oh yes,” she said, holding up a palm, “you say you’re Matt Sinclair and your father was married to Joanna and so on, but we haven’t really been introduced at all, have we? I mean, you could be just anyone telling me whatever you want, and you still haven’t explained why Joanna was a target of your hate. I’ve no idea how you learned about my inheritance, but seeing as it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with you, I’m leaving.”

Color bloomed in her face again, and in spite of the frizzy hair and a bra strap drooping off her shoulder, Matt knew that she was mustering all her reserves to make a dignified exit. He remained in his seat as she marched to the door and left without a backward glance.

Strike three. So now you’ve blown all three encounters with Kate Reilly. Way to go, champ.

KATE KEYED IN HER password so hard she chipped the end of her index fingernail. With the telephone receiver clamped in one hand, she patted down her hair with the other. Then she noticed her bra strap hanging limply from under the shoulder of her sleeveless dress and swore. The safety pin must have unfastened. She should’ve taken a few extra minutes that morning to sew the damn thing. Knowing that she’d left the café disheveled as well as angry added to her conflicting emotions about Matt.

Her voice mail clicked on, repeating Carla’s message.

“Hi, Kate, it’s me, Carla. It’s already two and you haven’t called yet. Are we still on for shopping tomorrow? Can you call and let me know later, ’cause I’m going out right now. Bye.”

Kate hung up and swore again. In spite of the casual tone of Carla’s voice, she knew from experience what a broken promise meant to a troubled teen. She replayed Carla’s message. Hadn’t she been grounded? If so, why was she going out? Kate rapidly punched in Carla’s number, but the line was busy. Reluctant to play telephone tag, she hung up and headed into her bedroom.

She’d forgotten to close the blinds before leaving that morning, and the room, filled with sunlight for hours, was like a Swedish sauna in spite of the air conditioner pumping away in the kitchen. Kate rushed to the window and reached for the rod. Glancing downward, she noticed a man standing on the pavement a few feet away from the entrance to her row house. Matt Sinclair.

Kate frowned. She’d managed to put the coffee-shop scene out of her mind for five minutes and now the whole humiliating event surged back. She leaned closer to the window. He had his back to her and seemed to be swaying from side to side, his right arm raised. Kate pressed her nose against the glass to get a better look. Then she realized what he was doing. Talking on a cell phone. She almost laughed, except he chose that moment to crane around and look up at her window.

Ducking to the side so he couldn’t see her, Kate continued to watch him talk and survey her windows. Finally he tucked the phone into his suit jacket pocket and stepped off the curb to a silver-gray car. As he unlocked the car, he glanced up once more. Kate jerked her head back again and waited before chancing another peek. He was inside the car now and pulling away from the curb. She watched him drive down her street to the main intersection, then turn right.

Stepping out from her hiding nook, she yanked the blind rod and the slats swooshed noisily into place. Her fingers were still trembling as she unzipped her dress, letting it fall onto the floor. A wake of lingerie marked her path to the linen closet and bathroom.

Seconds later, a full spray from the shower nozzle cooled her body temperature to normal. A brisk scrubbing with her loofah sponge had her skin pink and glowing. If only, she thought ironically, she could eliminate all memory of Matt Sinclair and his annoying habit of dropping into her life every few days. No, not days. Make that hours.

Kate used the corner of her towel to clear a circle in the steamy mirror. She tapped her reflection lightly. Why do you care so much, anyway? Matt Sinclair is nothing to you.

By the time she’d dressed and poured herself a tall glass of ice water, she was ready to call Carla’s foster home again.

“Rita? It’s Kate Reilly calling. Is Carla there?”

A slight pause on the other end, followed by a muffled exclamation and a wail. “Shh! Hi, Kate. Sorry, just had to change arms there. I’ve been rocking the baby all afternoon and she just this second fell asleep.”

“I suppose the phone woke her. Sorry about that.”

“No, no. It’s okay. She’s gone back to sleep again. Worn out. Like me,” she whispered.

“Is she sick?”

“Teething. She was up all night, too. Look, Carla’s taken off again. I should call Kim. I…I don’t want to, Kate, but she really left me in the lurch. Promised to be home all afternoon ’cause you were calling. I’d hoped to catch a nap….”

Her voice drifted off, as if she were too exhausted to even finish the sentence.

Kate didn’t know whether to be angry at Carla or herself. If she’d called on time, would the girl have stayed? Who could tell with Carla?

“Okay, Rita. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“It doesn’t look good.”

Kate sighed. “Yeah. It sure doesn’t.” She said goodbye and hung up. She understood Rita’s reluctance to call Carla’s social worker. It seemed like a betrayal of loyalty, going behind Carla’s back to discuss her. That was how Kate would have interpreted it, when she’d been in Carla’s shoes. But now she could see the other angles. What worried her was the fear that she’d no longer be able to get through to Carla herself.

Kate wandered into the darkened living room and flopped onto the couch. She felt drained of energy and initiative. No wonder, she thought, considering all that had happened that day.

Lunch in the most exclusive restaurant she’d ever been in, not to mention a ride in a foreign car that probably cost more than her annual salary. Two strange encounters with Matt Sinclair. She shivered. What’s his problem, anyway?

And how did he know which flat was hers, because he’d seemed to look straight up at her windows on the second floor. She took another sip of water, set the glass down on the coffee table beside the couch and lay back. A nap would be nice, she decided, plumping the pillows behind her. If she could clear her mind of all the unpleasant thoughts—Carla, in trouble again. Matt Sinclair. She sighed and closed her eyes. A brighter picture appeared.

Camp Limberlost. Now hers.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I SAID I WAS SORRY.”

Kate closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

Carla hung back on the door stoop. “I wanted to phone, honest. But the others started laughing and calling me a baby,” she continued, her dark eyes fixed on Kate’s face, willing her to believe.

And Kate wanted to. Except that she’d heard it all before in a hundred different ways, so that even Carla’s turned-down mouth and slumped shoulders failed to arouse pity. But the hint of moisture in her eyes did the trick, because Carla never cried.

“Come inside,” Kate said gently, standing aside as the girl slinked past. Instead of making for her favorite canvas hammock chair as she usually did, Carla stood in the center of the room, hugging herself tightly. She was a pathetic sight, but Kate resisted going to her.

“Care for a glass of lemonade? I was just getting one for myself.” And without waiting for a reply, Kate headed into the kitchen. The few extra seconds gave her time to put together some kind of strategy. Confrontation, she knew only too well from her own turbulent adolescence, was like turning up the heat. Too much sympathy would offer an escape route that Carla had already learned to use to her advantage. Of course there was also appealing to reason. With an emotionally charged teenager? Forget it.

After handing Carla her drink, Kate casually sat down on the couch. She sipped, wondering how long it would take Carla to follow suit. Three seconds later, Carla perched on the edge of the wicker armchair Kate had bought at a yard sale. It was a horribly uncomfortable chair and Carla never sat on it. Kate had to stifle a smile. A sign, perhaps, that the teen wanted to punish herself? She waited, taking a longer drink of lemonade. Finally Carla began to talk.

“Okay, see, there’s this girl I met. She doesn’t live near me, but a couple of subway stops away. She belongs to this gang. And, like, she’s been trying to get me in.”

Kate reached over to set her glass onto the coffee table. She was afraid if she held it a moment longer, it would shatter from the force of her grip. I’ve been too complacent, she thought. Assuming that Carla’s problems could be solved with shopping trips and sleepovers. How could I have forgotten so easily? But then, by the time she was Carla’s age, she’d already met Joanna Barnes and made her promise to take a different path from the neighborhood kids.

“Go on,” Kate said, keeping her voice as neutral as she could.

Carla glanced up at Kate for the first time since she’d entered the flat. The expression in her face begged for understanding. “They’re nice to me, Kate. That may be hard for you to believe, but they are. They don’t try to get me to do, you know, bad things like shoplift or smoke dope.”

“Do they do those things?”

Kate realized at once it was the wrong question to ask. Carla stared down at her lemonade and simply shrugged. After a moment she mumbled, “I don’t know.”

But of course she did, thought Kate, and I’ve just made her rush to their defense. She tried to make amends. “It’s okay, Carla, I’m not asking you to snitch on them. Forget I mentioned it. Go on.”

But there was a wariness in Carla’s voice now and she spoke in a stilted way, as if talking to her social worker. Or a teacher.

“Anyway,” Carla said, “I told Rita I’d help her out when I got home and I would have, only…”

“Only?”

She swallowed a mouthful of lemonade, then said, “I didn’t realize how late it was, and Toni—that’s my friend—said if I waited a couple more hours, her boyfriend would drive me home when he got off work.”

“She has a boyfriend? How old is this Toni?”

“Sixteen.”

Kate took a deep breath. “What are the ages of the rest of the kids? In the gang, I mean.”

“I dunno. Maybe fifteen up to eighteen or so.”

“Carla, you’re only thirteen.”

Carla raised her head, eyes flashing with anger. “Yeah, but they don’t hold that against me, you know. They think I’m, like, cute and funny. They even call me their mascot.”

Kate resisted responding to that, in spite of images of inflated birds and oversize fluffy dogs.

“And you couldn’t have called Rita? Or even me?”

“Like I said, they’d have teased me. Besides, what would have been the point by then?”

Kate leaned forward on the couch. “It might have meant that Rita wouldn’t have worried half the night, wondering if she ought to phone Kim or maybe the police.”

“The police?” Her face paled.

“Carla, if you’d stayed out an hour longer, Rita would probably have called them.”

“So much for trust.”

Kate sighed. Here we go again. “You have to earn trust. There’ve been too many other times like this. Rita feels that she’s expended all of her options. She doesn’t know what to do anymore.”

Carla lowered her head, seemingly intent on picking at a scab on her finger. But Kate noticed the trembling across her shoulders. After a moment, Carla wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Silently, Kate went to the bathroom for a box of tissues, which she placed in Carla’s lap. Then she sat down, waiting for the girl to stop crying.

When Carla had used two or three tissues to daub her face, she set the box down on the coffee table and looked across at Kate. “I know I’ve been giving Rita a hard time, but…but I don’t mean to. I like Rita. She and Eddie have always been good to me. Strict, but fair. I’ve been with them for two years now and I want to stay with them. If they still want me.” She glanced away, her chin wobbling again.

“They do want you, Carla. They’ve never stopped wanting to care for you. It’s just that they’ve never raised a teenager before and—”

“A problem teen, like me.”

“No, Carla. A teen with some problems, yes, but that’s all. The important thing is to keep talking to them. Don’t be afraid to just go to them and say, ‘Look, I know I screwed up and I’m going to try harder the next time.’ They’ll be more sympathetic if they see that you really want to change. Trust me, after all, I’m your Big Sister.”

Carla’s big brown eyes, damp with tears, fixed on Kate. “I hope you’ll always be,” she whispered.

“I will be.” Kate felt the prick of tears in her own eyes, but forced them back. “You know, I just had a great idea Carla. I’ve inherited some property in the mountains and—”

“Wow!”

“Yes, though I don’t know yet how exciting that is because I haven’t seen it for years. I was thinking of renting a car and driving into the mountains for a couple of days. If I get permission from Rita and Kim, would you like to go?”

A confusion of emotions battled in Carla’s face. “Would it be, like, camping or something? Would there be wild animals there? ’Cause I’m not real good with stuff like that.”

“Me, neither. No camping—there’s a lodge with beds—but it may be a bit dusty and cobwebby. Think you could handle that?”

“Yeah! It’d be cool, just you’n me. Will you rent a car with a CD player?”

Kate laughed. Typical teen—getting right to the important things. “If there’s one available. If not, we may have to settle for tape cassettes. Anyway, this means I’ll have a few phone calls to make. Shall I try to plan it for the day after tomorrow? Is that too soon for you?”

“I think that’ll be okay.” Carla frowned. “Do you think my behavior is going to make them say no?”

“I don’t know, Carla. That’s up to Kim and Rita. But I do think another apology and a real effort to help out over the next couple of days will influence their decision.”

Carla stood up. “I will, Kate. Thanks for…everything.” She reached out and gave Kate an awkward hug.

It was the first sign of physical affection Carla had ever shown to her, and Kate knew to play it down. She smiled and tapped the girl’s chin lightly with her finger. “I’m always here for you, Carla, remember that. Now, you’d better head home and I’ll start making my calls.”

After she’d closed the door behind the girl, Kate sagged against it. Yesterday’s impulsive idea to visit Limberlost was now a commitment. She didn’t know whether to curse herself or praise her ingenuity. She took a deep breath and moved away from the door. If she was going to make her promise to Carla a reality, she had a lot to do.

“MISS REILLY? Greg Collier here, returning your call.”

“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Mr. Collier. I wanted to talk to you about Camp Limberlost.”

“Ah! You’ve made a decision already?”

“Well, no, not really. I thought I’d like to visit it before deciding anything.”

After a slight pause, he said, “I see. Now, tell me, Miss Reilly, do you know that area at all? Other than having gone to Limberlost once as a child?”