Finders Keepers (9 page)
“I think it came unscrewed at the top,” she panted.
“Is it still attached to the wall?”
“Barely. One corner is swaying … and … uh-oh!” She grabbed the awning as it toppled over, knocking the man to the sidewalk and burying him in billows of dusty, sun-bleached canvas. Elizabeth dropped to her knees and pushed at the fabric.
“Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“I’m seeing stars. Is it night?”
“Oh, thank God you’re OK. I can get you out, but I’ll need to move this pole here—”
“Elizabeth.” His hand emerged from under the awning and grabbed hers. “Get … Bud Huff.”
“I can do this, Zachary. If I can just lift this off your chest—”
“Get … Bud … now!”
“OK, OK, just a minute.” Heart hammering, she flew across the street to the hardware store. Bud was sorting nails in the big metal bin at the back. “You have to come! The awning fell on Zachary, and I think he’s hurt. I tried to move the pole, but there’s so much canvas that—”
“Whoa, slow down, Liz. What’s the problem?”
“The awning on the Corner Market! It fell on Zachary Chalmers.” She grabbed the man’s hand and tugged him out the door. As they hustled back to the grocery store, Elizabeth could see that Pearlene Fox and several of the women who’d been shopping at Très Chic had gathered on the sidewalk to gawk at the commotion. Bud’s father, Al, had hobbled down to the corner from his gas station. The two men began to lift the metal frame that pinned Zachary.
On her knees again, Elizabeth took Zachary’s hand. “Bud’s here. Al, too. Are you all right? Can you breathe?”
“I can breathe,” he said. “Sort of.”
As the frame lifted, she pushed away the canvas that covered his face. He mustered a grin and sucked down a deep breath. She brushed back the dark hair that had fallen across his forehead to examine a scrape near his hairline.
“You tried to kill me,” he murmured.
“I did not. It was an accident. I saved you.”
“In that case.” He edged up on one elbow, cupped her cheek with his free hand, and gave her a firm kiss right on the lips. “Thank you.”
At the chorus of delighted
ahhs
that escaped the Très Chic women, Elizabeth scrambled to her feet and set her hands on her hips. “Get up, Zachary Chalmers,” she snapped.
He sat up on the sidewalk and rubbed the back of his head. “Anybody want to buy any cherries?” he asked.
“They’re going fast.”
“My mom says you are a bloodsucking bleach,” Nick informed Zachary, who had knelt to greet the child on the sidewalk in front of Finders Keepers. “She says you are going to suck the life right out of the whole town.”
The boy’s green eyes regarded him seriously, and Zachary did his best to keep a straight face. “A bloodsucking bleach?”
“Yes, and I think if you suck the life out of Ambleside, then we will all be dead and in heaven with the teeny-tiny gate made out of a pearl. How big is a pearl?”
Zachary held up his thumb and forefinger. “Pretty small. But I’ll tell you what, Nick, I’ve never been a bloodsucking bleach, or a bleach of any kind, for that matter. In fact, I think I’m a pretty good guy for the most part.” He glanced at the lace-curtained front window. “Is your mom working this afternoon?”
“She works every day except Sunday, and that’s when we go to church. Do you go to church? Are you a Christian? I don’t think you can be my dad if you’re not a Christian.”
“You know, if your mother thinks I’m a bloodsucking bleach, she’s not going to let me be your dad.”
Nick pondered this one. “God can change anybody,” he said. “Even you.”
“I’ll remember that.” Zachary stood and gave the boy’s hair a rub. “Don’t run off, OK? You scared your mom the last time you did that.”
“I’m going to get Magunnery. She plays at my house after school, because her mother is still sick. Boompah’s sick, too. Mom says you’re running the Corner Market. She says, ‘That man ceases to amaze me.’”
Zachary laughed. “I ceased to amaze myself a long time ago. See ya, big guy.”
As Nick scampered away, Zachary climbed the old building’s limestone steps and pushed open the glass-windowed front door. As before, he was greeted by the mingled scents of beeswax candles, fragrant potpourri, and lemony furniture polish. A fan turning overhead rustled the lace curtains and white linen tablecloths. On a small side table against the wall, a silver teapot sent out a thin drift of steam. Near it, a plate of golden cakes beckoned.
“Be with you in a minute!” Elizabeth called from the back room. “Make yourself at home.”
At home.
Zachary surveyed the collection of aged furniture, heavy oak tables, simple pine cupboards, worn rocking chairs, and soft-edged footstools. Then he thought back to the crowded trailer in which he’d lived his early life.
Most of his nights had been spent in a sleeping bag on the floor. Meals were consumed from aluminum trays in front of the television set. A brown-and-black shag carpet underfoot had collected the debris of the multitude of children that roamed it—a million crumbs of cookies and potato chips, dozens of sharp-edged plastic blocks, a collection of headless action figures and green army men. Shelves held everything from half-empty cereal boxes to hairbrushes to chewed-up crayons.
That had been home. Nothing like this.
“Oh, it’s you.” Elizabeth’s voice held a note of disappointment. “I see you decided to pay a visit to my musty little junk shop.”
A pang of guilt stabbed Zachary as he turned to find the woman crossing the room, her dark brown hair pulled up into a soft bun from which stray tendrils brushed against her neck. In the half light of the shop, her pale blue dress seemed to give off an angelic glow. She reached across a green brocade sofa and switched off a lamp.
“I’m closing for the day,” she said. “Do you need something?”
That question could be answered a dozen ways, Zachary thought, and most of them involved Miss Elizabeth Hayes.
“I need to apologize,” he said, uncomfortable at the knot that seemed to have formed in his throat. “I shouldn’t have insulted your business. Finders Keepers is not a junk shop, and it’s definitely not musty. In fact, I came here to pay for my teacup. I picked one out the first time I was here, and then I forgot to take it with me.”
“You ought to apologize for your behavior to me on the sidewalk the other morning. Pearlene Fox hasn’t stopped jabbering about it. Everyone in town knows what you did.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Apologize for kissing you under the awning?”
“We weren’t under the awning. We were out in broad daylight. Al and Bud both saw it. Al thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world. He was filling up my gas tank yesterday, and he couldn’t stop giggling.”
“Giggling?”
“Yes, he was giggling!” She crossed her arms and regarded him.
Zachary took a step closer. “I apologize for kissing you in broad daylight.”
“Thank you.”
“But,” he went on, moving near enough to catch a whiff of the floral scent she wore, “I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
A pair of pink roses blossomed on her cheeks. “You didn’t have my permission, and I don’t like surprises. Besides that, if everybody in town thinks that you and I—”
“When was the last time somebody kissed you, Elizabeth? Not counting me on the sidewalk.”
“None of your business.”
Her answer told him everything. “You intrigue me. You’re a beautiful woman, you’re obviously intelligent and ambitious, and you have a good heart. Obviously you want a family, or you wouldn’t have adopted Nick. So why aren’t you married?”
“That also is none of your business.”
She moved past him and picked up the teacup and saucer he had chosen. Vanishing behind a counter, she left only the whisper of her fragrance. Zachary leaned over, elbows on the glass top, as she emerged with a handful of purple tissue paper and a gift bag. He knew he’d be ushered out the door within the space of a minute if he couldn’t think of another topic that wouldn’t offend her.
Why did he even care to keep this woman talking? She clearly disliked him. Didn’t she?
“There you go.” She pushed the bag across the counter. “Twenty-five dollars. Plus tax.” On an old-fashioned register she rang up the purchase.
“Nick says you think I’m a bloodsucking bleach,” he commented as he wrote out a check.
Startled, she glanced up, her blue eyes wide. “Oh, Nick. He’s so blunt …” She shrugged. “He meant
leech.”
“So it’s true?”
“My opinion of you is not high, Mr. Chalmers. If you and Phil Fox think you can bulldoze this town—”
“Phil Fox came to my office to talk to me. Just like you did. Just like Nick and Montgomery did. That doesn’t mean I’m in cahoots with the guy.”
“What’s he planning to do to Ambleside?”
“Modernize.”
“Oh!” She slapped the glass countertop. “You know why I’m not married? Because I don’t like change. I want to keep my life calm, serene, and genteel. That’s why I moved to Ambleside.”
“And you think time should stand still here?”
She sighed, and Zachary felt uncomfortably like a dim-witted schoolboy.
“You see this glass counter?” Her fingertips traced along the surface. “This used to be in a country store in southern Missouri. It’s more than a hundred years old. Thousands of people have stood and leaned on it, right where you’re leaning. The oak frame is smooth from their touch. They’ve lived a little bit of life right here—a child chose a piece of penny candy from a glass jar, a gentleman selected a new collar to button onto his shirt for his wedding day, a young mother purchased flannel to sew a blanket for her newborn baby. Those people are all gone now, but the counter remains. If you destroy it—the way they destroyed the country store to make room for a discount mart—then you lose something very special. You lose the chance to touch those people’s lives, to think about them, and to learn from them. You lose a little bit of yourself when you destroy the past.”
Spellbound, Zachary could almost see the line of customers Elizabeth described. She picked up an old album—a huge velvety thing with a massive brass clasp and thick pages filled with tattered sepia-toned photographs.
“I don’t know whose this was,” she said softly. “I got it from a man who had bought it at a garage sale for three dollars. Here’s somebody’s daughter. Here’s a grandmother with a baby on her lap. See the names? Hubert, Jeremiah, Ettie. Do you know where your name came from, Zachary Chalmers? Do you know what your great-grandfather looked like? Maybe you don’t care, but you should. He was a part of you, and he’ll be a part of your children and grandchildren someday.”
She shut the old book. “I have to lock up now. Nick and Montgomery will be playing in my yard.”
Zachary caught her hand. “This is all about the mansion, isn’t it? That’s all you see when you look at me. A bulldozer.”
“Actually,” she said, “that was all about me. I was telling you who I am and what I believe in. For some reason I can’t figure out, I need to make you understand me.”
“Do you want to understand me?”
“I already do.” She tucked a stray tendril of hair into her bun. “I resist changing things on the outside—but you don’t want to change on the inside. That would mean trading the will of Zachary Chalmers for the will of God.”
Leaving the counter, she started through the shop, turning off the array of electric lamps. He watched her figure transform slowly into a silhouette, an ethereal shadow that seemed to float past the furnishings of yesteryear. He pondered the people whose lives had touched that table, this chair, the cabinet across the room. The objects weren’t junk. They were treasures. Relics. Pieces of history.
In his own way, Zachary realized, he was creating a heritage he hoped would last beyond his lifetime. The homes he had designed, the offices and restaurants he had conceived were his legacy. They were a part of him, an emblem of who he was and what he believed in.
“Good night,” Elizabeth said at the door. “At least we didn’t have a fight this time.”
Or a kiss,
he thought.
“That white cupboard,” he said, spotting the piece Phil Fox had referred to in his diatribe against Elizabeth’s antiques. “How much is it?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
She set her hand on her hip. “What is this? You haven’t even looked at it. Where are you going to put it? And how do you know that’s a fair price?”
“I need that cabinet.”
“What for?”
“For my teacup.”
With a laugh, she shook her head. “Maybe I don’t understand you as well as I thought.”
He walked to the door. “I’ll pick it up Saturday morning before I open the Corner Market for the day.”
As he passed, she touched his arm. “Zachary, thank you … for helping Boompah. It means a lot.”
Taking a chance, he bent and kissed her cheek. “And I’m not going to apologize for that one.”
He could hear the bells jingle behind him as he descended the limestone steps to the street. Nick and Montgomery waved from the corner where they were chatting with Al, the fellow who ran the gas station up the street. As Zachary passed, he tapped the boy on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.
“I kissed your mom.”
The green eyes lit up. “Did she like it?”
“I don’t know—but I sure did.”
As Nick laughed, Zachary crossed the street toward the Corner Market. For some reason, he felt like his feet were three inches off the ground.
