Annie's Answer (5 page)

Annie smiled
at her mother’s familiar refrain. She tended to blame any and all illnesses on
a lack of sleep, although Annie had been robustly healthy since having
chickenpox in the fourth grade.

“What can I
get you ladies for breakfast?” Gramps asked.

“Just toast
and tea for me, Dwight,” her mother said.

“And maybe a
boiled egg?” he suggested.

Since Gramps
had moved in with them after giving up the parsonage, he’d been a mother hen to
both his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. The arrangement had been
surprisingly successful, especially since they’d remodeled the rear of the
house so he had a small apartment of his own.

“Not this
morning, thank you,” Mom said. “I need to lose a few pounds.”

Her mother’s
one obsession was her weight. Annie and Gramps never seemed to gain, but Laura
Williams was always on a diet. She was taller than her daughter, who suspected
her weight gain was mostly imaginary, and she walked the mile or so to and from
her job at the bank unless the weather was bitterly cold.

“Well, at
least have some orange juice. I just squeezed it,” Gramps said.

“About your
job….” her mother said.

“It’s fine,
Mom. All I do is provide some companionship for Mr. Sawyer’s aunt.” She
explained about the tornado and Mattie’s sprained ankle while she ate a bowl of
corn flakes.

“I wish I
could do more to help you buy the flower shop,” her mom said. “Your father’s
insurance money is pretty much gone.”

“It’s
something I want to do on my own,” Annie assured her for perhaps the hundredth
time. “Aunt Mattie is a little sharp-tongued, but I’ll only be there for the
summer. The Sawyers will be home from their trip after Labor Day.”

“Wouldn’t it
be nice to travel in Europe all summer?” Mom asked wistfully.

“Maybe your
turn will come someday,” Annie said with an optimism her mother rarely shared.
If her flower shop, as she now thought of it, was successful, she badly wanted
to give her mother a chance to enjoy life more. Raising a daughter alone had
been a constant struggle, although life was easier now that Gramps contributed
to their household budget.

“There’s only
one thing I really want.” 

“Yes, I know.”
Annie didn’t want to hear about her mother’s hope for a married daughter and a
grandbaby. She could see herself sometime in the future with a family of her
own, but she hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in a couple of years. After living
in Westover her whole life, she couldn’t think of a single man she wanted to
date, let alone marry. Not many men like Nathan Sawyer lived in the small Ohio
town.

The last
spoonful of cereal went down wrong, making her choke and alarming her mother.

Nathan was her
temporary employer. What on earth had made her think of him as an eligible
male? The Sawyers were the closest thing Westover had to royalty, and his
mother was just plain scary in her haute couture outfits. Everyone knew the
family donated scads of money to the church, but she couldn’t imagine Mrs.
Sawyer in the kitchen helping with a funeral luncheon or a potluck—or
even folding bulletins, which was one of Annie’s jobs.

“I have to
go,” she said after assuring her mother she wasn’t choking to death.

“Now that you
have another job, will you still have time to go to Carbonville with me
tomorrow?” her mother asked.

“Of course,
I’m looking forward to it,” Annie assured her, knowing it was a big deal to her
mom.

Westover had
one super store and a dollar store, but the closest mall was fifteen miles
away. She knew her mom enjoyed having lunch in the food court and shopping the
stores with her, even if neither of them intended to buy much. A Saturday
afternoon trip worked well because she was scheduled for the early morning breakfast
shift at the pancake house, one of the busiest times for the restaurant.

“I have to
run,” Annie said.

She wasn’t as
nervous as she’d been the day before, but she hoped Nathan wouldn’t come home
at noon to check on her. When he was around, she didn’t feel like
herself—although she wasn’t sure why she had such a strange reaction to
him. Maybe she just wasn’t used to men with movie-star good looks. He made her
feel awkward and inadequate, although he was never anything but courteous.

When she got
to the Sawyer mansion, Mattie was alone in the kitchen.

“You just
missed Nathan,” she said by way of greeting. “He ran off with a granola bar for
breakfast. My Tom would’ve been skinny as a stick without a good farm
breakfast. His favorite was buckwheat pancakes with fried eggs and bacon.”

“Sounds
delicious. How are you this morning, Mrs. Hayward?” Annie asked.

“I told you to
call me Mattie. No point in being formal if we’re stuck with each other all
summer.” She’d put the round box of cereal on the counter and had water
simmering on the stove. “Now I’m going to show you how to make oatmeal.”

Annie watched
carefully, but the lesson wasn’t much help. Mattie added oats by the handful,
scorning the use of measuring cups.

“I make the
best biscuits in Polk County, and it’s all in the eye. Either a person knows
when dough looks right, or she doesn’t.” Mattie balanced on one foot to stir
the bubbling oatmeal and pronounced it ready without using the timer on the
stove. She put  a cover on the kettle with a loud clank and pushed it off
the burner.

“There, now do
you think you can make coffee the right way?”

“I’ll try,”
Annie said mildly, resigned to doing things Mattie’s way all day—and
everyday until she was no longer needed. Hopefully that wouldn’t be until the
end of the summer.

At least she
didn’t have time to be bored. Unlike her time at the restaurant where things
were sometimes so slow she ended up folding napkins and scrubbing tables and
chairs, the day went fast. Mattie had a list of jobs for the two of them to do together,
which meant Annie worked and the older woman supervised. Whenever she was out
of sight for more than a few minutes, she could count on Mattie calling her
with the volume of a foghorn on Lake Erie.

Mattie was the
planner; Annie was the doer. When the older woman had a yen for homemade
vegetable soup, Annie peeled potatoes, chopped carrots, onions, and parsnips,
and rummaged in the cupboards for a carton of chicken stock.

“It’s a shame
to use ready-made stock. On the farm I stewed our range chickens and kept a
supply of broth in the freezer. Of course, that was when I had Tom to cook
for.”

She sounded
nostalgic, arousing Annie’s sympathy. But a minute later Mattie roundly
criticized the peeled potatoes because she could still see some eyes.

Nathan didn’t
come home for lunch.

The afternoon
went much faster when Mattie insisted on walking through the garden, pointing
out things the once-a-week gardener hadn’t done to her standards.

“Careful,”
Annie warned her when she thumped off the flagstone path to examine a clump of
ornamental grass.

She had
visions of the older woman falling and doing even more damage to her slender
frame. What would she say to Nathan if his aunt fell and broke a hip or injured
her good ankle?

Mattie finally
settled down in the shade on the patio to supervise Annie from a distance.

“Fetch my
straw hat from my bedroom,” she said as Annie prepared to do some weeding. “I
don’t want you getting heat stroke on my watch.”

Annie smiled
to herself as Mattie gave her directions on how to tie the wide-brimmed hat
under her chin and advised her to drink a lot of water in the hot sun. In spite
of the heat, gardening was more fun than housework, and Annie tackled the
weeding with enthusiasm.

“Well, at
least you’re not lazy,” Mattie said when it was nearly time for her to leave
for the day.

“I love
growing things,” Annie said, earning a nod of approval.

She settled
Mattie down in the den with a glass of iced tea—none of that herbal stuff
that tasted like cardboard for her—and was ready to leave when she heard
the front door open.

Her face was
damp and flushed, the knees of her jeans were soiled from kneeling in the dirt,
and her hair was plastered to her head from wearing the straw hat. She thought
of ducking out the rear door rather than let Nathan see her looking like a farm
hand, but she was too slow.

“Did you
ladies have a good day?” he asked, coming into the den with the jacket of his
navy pinstripe suit slung over one shoulder.

“There’s soup
in the crock for supper, and I had Annie put out one of those long,
store-bought breads to thaw,” Mattie said, ignoring his question.

Nathan looked
at Annie with a quizzical expression, obviously expecting some kind of response
from her.

“We did have a
good day,” she felt compelled to say. “I did some weeding.”

“You look like
you plowed the back forty.” He said it in a teasing way, but Annie mentally
squirmed under his gaze. “She’s your companion, not your slave, Aunt Mattie.”

“The girl
likes to keep busy,” his great aunt said without a trace of remorse.

Nathan gave
Annie an apologetic look and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll walk you to your
car.”

Much as she
preferred to make a quick departure, Annie could hardly refuse. “I’ll see you
Monday, Mrs. Hayward—Mattie.”

Walking beside
her, Nathan seemed even taller than she’d thought. He draped his jacket over
the banister in the foyer and opened the front door for her.

“You’re not
here to be the gardener, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to do everything
my aunt says.”

“I don’t
mind.” She kept her eyes on the pavement as they walked to her car. The VW
looked like a junkyard relic compared to his shiny gray Lincoln parked directly
behind it.

“Mattie will
steamroll you if you give her a chance,” he warned.

“She means
well. She’s just frustrated because she can’t do everything herself.”

“I’m glad you
understand that. I adore her, but she can be a tyrant.” He stopped beside her
car and smiled down at her. “Anyway, I appreciate how well you’re getting along
with her.”

“I have to
go,” she said, but she wasn’t thinking about getting to her next job. Being so
close to Nathan was unnerving. She liked him a little too much considering they
lived in different worlds. The last thing she wanted was to develop a crush on
him.

“You’ll be
back Monday morning?” he asked a bit anxiously.

“Yes, of
course.”

He opened the
car door for her and leaned down after she slid in. “Thank you for being
patient with her.”

“Thank you for
giving me the job. It means a lot to me.”

She breathed a
sigh of relief when he shut the door and stepped back. Nathan made her nervous,
and it wasn’t just because she needed his job to realize her dream. How was she
going to get through the summer without giving in to some very unwise feelings
for him?

Annie liked
the Saturday morning shift at Yum Yum Pancakes. Customers were happier and tips
were larger than in the evening. Better still a steady stream of people filled
the tables and booths, which certainly made the time go faster.

The only
drawback was fatigue. She had to be there at six a.m. after working until
nearly eleven the night before. By noon when she could go home, she felt
steam-rolled. Fortunately her feet didn’t hurt, a complaint of many of the
employees, but she hated the sensible but unattractive shoes she wore to work.

“What do you
have planned for today?” Nanette asked as Annie walked to the parking lot
behind the restaurant with the older waitress.

“I’m going to
the Carbonville mall with my mother.” Annie took her car keys out of her
shoulder bag.

“You wouldn’t
catch me trudging around the mall after working all morning,” the gray-haired
waitress said. “I’ll be doing good just to stock up on groceries before my
daughter brings her kids to the house. I’m babysitting with them
tonight—the baby and the three older ones. Sometimes I dream about a day
with nothing to do but sit in front the television and eat popcorn.”

“Good luck on
that,” Annie said with a sympathetic laugh. It was a reminder of how much she
didn’t want to be waiting tables when she was Nanette’s age. Was she making a mistake
pinning all her hopes on buying the flower shop?

“I can make a
success of it,” she said to herself as she teased the old motor into starting.
After all, she’d finished two years of business classes at the area community
college, driving the twenty-two miles in rain, snow, hail, and tornado watches.
She felt confident of her business skills, and her love of growing things made
a flower shop the perfect place to test them.

The VW
shuddered and threatened to stall, but Annie managed to keep it going.

Thinking about
her prospects, Annie’s thoughts went to Mattie. Everything depended on keeping
the elderly woman happy. She should ask if there was anything she needed from
the mall. Since nothing was much out of the way in the small town, she decided
to stop by and ask her.

Was she going
there to help Mattie, or was she hoping to see Nathan? No, that was a silly
thought! She glanced down at her uniform and the sticky streak across the front
where she’d leaned against a table. Sponging the blueberry syrup stain had only
made it worse, and she regretted forgetting her apron that morning.

The top story
of the Sawyer house was barely visible behind the stately trees in the front
yard, and she was tempted to forget stopping there. Still, she’d taken on the
job of making Mattie’s confinement more pleasant. What could it hurt to run in
for a minute or two? Chances were Nathan was in his own part of the house if he
was home at all.

The Volkswagen
threatened to stall again when she turned onto the circular drive in front of
the house, but she was used to teasing it along. She down-shifted and slowly
pulled to a stop, only to find herself directly behind Nathan’s big Lincoln.
Worse, he was in the process of washing it.