Promise Me A Rainbow (10 page)

But there really hadn’t been differences. Sadly, he still wanted to be her friend, and he actually thought it was possible, not only to do that but also to have the friendship encompass his new wife.

People think whatever they need to think.

Jonathan. Pat Bauer. Sasha and Beatrice and the rest of them. Even Joe D’Amaro.

Even me
.

Perhaps she hadn’t recovered so well from losing Jonathan after all. Perhaps there had been more wrong than she—

She jumped because someone pecked on the glass window. Joe D’Amaro stood on the other side of the door. He didn’t look angry any longer, but she still hesitated before she opened it, staring at him gravely through the glass.

She took a deep breath and stuffed the invitation into her pocket, bracing herself for another confrontation. She did care about Fritz, and she opened the door.

“It’s not you,” he said immediately, and she perceived it as a kind of shorthand apology and likely the best she would get.

“No, I didn’t think it was,” she answered. “If I had, I wouldn’t have opened the door.”

“So can we try this again? I . . . thought it over. I figure you must know something, and I’d need to hear it.”

She couldn’t keep from smiling at his heavy-handed appraisal of her expertise.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean you work with kids with problems. You’ve got to know . . .”

“Something,” Catherine finished for him when he realized his amendment wasn’t going to be an improvement.

“Well, yeah.”

The washing machine was going into the rinse cycle, and Catherine put in the fabric softener. “Did Mrs. Donovan send you down here?”

“The lady with the screen door? Yeah. She sent me through the garage here so you could see me before you let me in—in case you wanted to tell me to take a hike. Nice old woman. Smart.”

Catherine glanced at him. He was being serious, not sarcastic, and he was looking at the ceiling again—or rather the building supports.

“Have you changed your mind?” she asked.

“What?”

“The building. You still think it’s built to last?”

“Oh, hell, yes. The only thing that’ll bring this place down is some greedy developer with a wrecking ball. About Fritz. I guess you know I didn’t like her talking to you the way she did. It . . . hurt my feelings more than anything. She doesn’t know you.”

“That’s probably why she did it—because I’m a stranger. Children sometimes do that—pick a grown-up who they think might help but not one that might be hurt. My knowing she’s worried couldn’t hurt me the way it might hurt you.”

“You mean you’ve got kids spilling their guts to you all the time.”

Now
he was being sarcastic.

“No, I mean Fritz isn’t the first.”

He was standing in the patch of sunlight from the glass window, and he was on the verge of being angry again. She could feel the effort he was putting into staying civil.

Blue eyes, she thought suddenly. Not brown. Why had she thought his eyes were brown?

And he was still wary. “Suppose you tell me what it is you are, professionally speaking,” he said, and she wasn’t offended by the question. It was only prudent that he should want to know how credible her opinion might be.

“I have a degree in nursing. I have half a degree in education. Aside from that, I’m not entirely stupid, and I listen to what people tell me one way or another—even if they’re Fritz’s age.”

“One way or another?”

“People don’t always tell you things with words, Mr. D’Amaro.”

“They don’t,” he said, the sarcasm still in his voice, and Catherine turned away from him. The conversation was deteriorating again, and she still had laundry to do.

He followed along behind her as he had in the kitchen. “I think . . . running around thinking you know what people
don’t
say is damned presumptive, Ms. Holben.”

She began putting her wet clothes into the dryer. “No, actually, my thinking I know what people don’t say is a damned nuisance.” She looked up at him, staring directly into his eyes. “Like now.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. He understood what she meant—that she was suffering his rudeness because of what he
hadn’t
said. He looked back at her. She was waiting, probably with more patience than he deserved.

“See, the thing is, Ms. Holben, I was really ticked last night. I got off on the wrong foot with you, and maybe you think I want to stay that way. It’s just that Fritz has never gone off by herself without telling anybody like she did when she came over here. She’s a good kid.”

“Yes,” Catherine said as she started the dryer.

“Yes? What does that mean?”

“It means yes. She seems like what you would think of as a ‘good kid.’ She seems very old for her age. Very responsible.”

“What
I
would think—but not what
you
would think, right?”

“What I think is that she seems like the kind of child who wouldn’t want to cause you any problems if she could help it. That’s usually labeled as ‘good.’”

He was frowning, as if something had just occurred to him, something not entirely to his liking.

“She voted to sell the gnomes,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The gnomes, the gnomes. I didn’t just sell the thing out from under her, Ms. Holben. We needed the money. We had a family meeting. She voted with the rest of them to sell it . . .” He broke off suddenly, as if he hadn’t meant to tell her that. “You think that’s what she did? You think she voted yes to keep from causing me any trouble?”

To Catherine it seemed more an accusation than a question.

“I couldn’t say. The only thing I know is that she loves the gnomes enough to go off on her own to see them.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t, okay? I didn’t know she was so crazy about the sculpture. If I had . . .” He stopped, then sighed. “You’re right about her being . . . old for her age. Even to me she seems that way, like she’s my oldest kid. But I don’t keep things from any of my children. This town’s not exactly wide open for a small builder, particularly one that came here from someplace else. When the mortgage payment’s due and you don’t have the money—you think it’s wrong, don’t you?”

“Mr. D’Amaro, will you stop putting words in my mouth?”

“I’m asking you a question.”

“Fine. Then I suppose it depends on what’s happening and who the children are. But as you pointed out, what do I know?”

He glanced at her sharply, then began to pace aimlessly around the basement. Catherine left him to his thoughts, trying not to intrude while he pitted his desire to help his daughter against the reality of what Catherine supposed was a faltering business with no ready cash.

“The thing is, Ms. Holben,” he said abruptly, “I don’t know what to do now.”

She looked up at him. He was asking for her help, and it was killing him to do it.

“For what it’s worth, Mr. D’Amaro, this is what I’ve learned—not just from books but from experience. Children are very . . . logical. They have reasons for thinking what they think and doing what they do. It may not make any sense at all to an adult, but it does to them. I think Fritz has some reason for thinking she has to protect you, and not calling you anything but Joe is the way she does it. It may have something to do with her mother’s death, but whatever it is, I think she’ll feel better when you know about it, even if she doesn’t want to tell you. You know Fritz better than anyone, and you’ll know when you talk to her how serious the problem is. If you’ll come upstairs, I’ll give you the name of a child psychologist in case you need it. She’s very good, very kind, children like her—or you could talk to her yourself, if you’d rather,” she suggested, feeling his resistance.

“I think you’re making too much of this,” he said finally. “But I . . . I want the name.”

She led the way upstairs, and this time Mrs. Donovan was standing at her screen door.

“This is Mr. D’Amaro,” she said to Mrs. Donovan in passing. “He likes the building.”

“Don’t have any empty apartments now,” Mrs. Donovan called through the screen after them.

“No, he doesn’t want to move in,” Catherine said over her shoulder. “He’s a builder. He likes the architecture.”

“She already knows that,” Joe D’Amaro said as they climbed the stairs.

“I’m not surprised,” Catherine answered. She let them into her apartment, and this time he didn’t follow her into the kitchen.

While she looked for the business card she wanted among the collection pinned to the bulletin board, he looked at the gnomes, picking the sculpture up and turning it around in his hands. He set it down when she returned with the card, as if he thought she might object to his handling it now that it no longer belonged to him. She gave him the card.

“Do you know how expensive something like this is?” he asked as he read it.

“She has a sliding scale for her fees. You pay according to your income and the number of dependents.”

He gave a small sigh and looked into her eyes. “I . . . appreciate your help,” he said.

She held his gaze, not looking away until he did. He didn’t necessarily mean it, and they both knew it.

“About Fritz,” she said. “I really wouldn’t mind if she came to visit the gnomes sometime. Just call first.”

“Yeah, well . . . I don’t know about that. I think we’ve both bothered you enough.” He turned to go, pausing for a moment as he opened the door.

But he had nothing else to say. He had already said more about his personal business to this woman than he should have. He expected her to press him about Fritz’s coming to see the gnomes, and it surprised him that she hadn’t. She had done her good deed, he supposed, and she was now waiting for him to leave so she could get back to her laundry.

He gave her a curt nod and closed the door behind him, anxious now to be gone. He hurried down the stairs, catching glimpses of the faces behind the partially opened doors along the way. Bunch of old busybodies, he thought, but not unkindly, and his suspicions were confirmed as soon as he reached the ground-floor foyer.

“Mr. D’Amaro!” Mrs. Donovan called through the screen door. “Will you be coming back to see Catherine again?”

“No,” he said a little curtly, because he wasn’t sure how Mrs. Donovan perceived him, and he wasn’t here on a social call.

“Do you have a business card with you?”

The question surprised him, and he took the time to hunt through his wallet for a card, trying to find one still halfway readable.

“Do you do good work, Mr. D’Amaro?”

“Yes, ma’am, we do.”

“This building may need some work done. I’ll give your card to my sister. She owns the building. She always gets estimates—you do do that, don’t you? Give estimates?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Thank you for the card, young man.”

“My pleasure, Mrs. Donovan.”

He hesitated, wanting to ask for specifics about the possibility of some work in the future, but clearly he had been dismissed. Maybe his time hadn’t been completely wasted, after all, he thought as he went out the glass doors. At least he’d made a possible business contact. That the coastal property building boom was in a lull was putting it mildly, and D’Amaro Brothers could use all the business contacts they could get.