Providence (10 page)

“I sure hope it’s not the last,” I said.

The music turned from a waltz to a two-step. Pete returned Rosie to her chair. She looked flushed, but happier than a kid on her last day of school.

“Looks like you two built up an appetite,” Dottie laughed. “How about one of Ray’s famous pulled pork sandwiches? A nice big scoop of my coleslaw on the side and you’ll be raring to get back on the dance floor.”

I followed Dottie over to the food table. In the corner of my eye, I spotted the boy I had plowed into on the sidewalk the day I arrived in town. He was dancing with the two check-out girls from Haystack’s, and he must have felt me staring at him because he paused in the middle of the song to wave. Embarrassed to be caught staring, I pretended not to notice.

When I returned to Rosie, carrying her dinner, I saw the boy again. This time he was down on one knee in front of Rosie. “Becky, this is John, the young man I told you about. You’ll probably see him someday working in our yard. He keeps everything looking fresh and pretty. We were just talking about a friend of mine, Lily. John thinks she could use some company, and I agree. He brought her by the store yesterday when you were out. We could barely get her to step outside the car, much less come into the store. We had no luck convincing her to come by for the parade or picnic. I think you, Georgia, and I should pay her a short visit on Sunday.”

“Lydie mentioned her surprise at seeing Lily on the street. She said something awful had happened.”

Rosie’s face tightened. “Lydie should be keeping her comments to herself,” she said.

John looked like he was about to say something, but decided to swallow his words instead. After a moment or so he smiled, stretched out his hand, and said, “We’ve run into each other already but we were never formally introduced.”

I allowed myself to watch him walk away for longer than was respectable. If Daddy was here to witness my behavior, I would be feeling the sting of his belt on my backside.

When evening fell on Main Street and the mosquitoes outnumbered the people ten to one, everyone agreed it was time to call it a day. I ran into the ladies’ room in the diner to change Baby Girl one last time and dress her in a sleeper to keep away the bugs. When I came back outside, Dottie’s words pulled the plug on what was left of my celebrating spirit.

“All I’m saying is that when a girl as young as Becky shows up in town with a brand new baby that doesn’t look a bit like her, you have to wonder.” Dottie threw her hands up in the air as if she thought the answers were going to fall from the sky. “Where is she from? Who are her people? Why is she here?”

Rosie’s patience must have been worn thinner than the knees of my favorite jeans, because she let out the only sharp words I’d ever heard pass her lips. “You need to stop sticking your nose into other people’s business. You want to spend your time thinking about Becky, then think about how lucky we are she came to Watson’s Grove. Do you think any of us would be here today, celebrating together if she hadn’t? How many people came to the parade last year? How many people took part in it? How many stores here on Main Street even put up a flag? Becky is taking a layer of dust off this place. Be grateful, it will help you be kinder.”

They lowered their voices and their heads and continued their conversation. I only caught a word here and there, but that was enough for me to know this wasn’t good news for me. Then Baby Girl let out a howl, causing Rosie and Dottie to look up from their chairs and stare at me.

Rosie and I walked home in silence. I knew she must have been wondering what I had heard. I kept replaying the words I’d caught in my mind. Had Dottie convinced Rosie I wasn’t worth the faith she was putting in me?

When we got home, Rosie went straight to bed, but my insides were having such a battle that I knew sleep was a long way off for me. I sat in the parlor with the television turned low and my hands busy with the needle and floss. My heart said to tell Rosie everything. She had been so good to us; she deserved to know the truth. My gut said to wake up early and head back down to the tracks. I had done my best to turn a deaf ear to the questions and comments about me and Baby Girl. That might not have been the best thing—the safest thing—for me to do. Maybe it was time to move on to a town where folks were less prone to ask questions. And my brain didn’t agree with either my heart or my gut. It told me to stay put and be grateful for what we had. Sooner or later, even Dottie would get tired of asking questions.

That night I pulled my notebook out for the first time in more than a week. I read my list of adventures from start to finish. My life sure wasn’t turning out like the stories in the books I’d read. When I finally turned in for the night, I still wasn’t sure which body part to follow.

CHAPTER 13

Baby Girl and I were up and dressed long before Rosie on that next morning. I even made breakfast. I stuck to scrambled eggs, though, not wanting to give Rosie a reason to give up on me on that front. When Rosie sat down at the kitchen table, she was still dressed in her housecoat.

“No work today,” she said. “We’ve earned a day off.”

Even after sleeping in, Rosie looked tired. A full day of partying had worn her out. I decided that today could not be moving on day. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’ll go in myself if you like, so you don’t miss any of the long weekend shoppers.”

“I think folks will be picnicking with their families today. If they are shopping, they’ll probably go down the highway to the mall. No, let’s enjoy a day off. Maybe later on, we can take the bus over to the Mission Creek Mall. We can do a little shopping ourselves.”

I must admit that the prospect of going to a shopping mall did excite me some. I had never set foot in one before; Mama and Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. Spending my afternoon surrounded by people wanting to get their hands inside my wallet was high on their list of ways to waste a day. I had to settle for hearing about the shopping center from Tammy Larson, whose texting skills would have put that girl in the library to shame.

“I think I’ll just steal a little extra rest this morning.” Rosie pushed her chair back under the table. “Do you think you can clean this up on your own?”

After I dried the last of the dishes, I took Baby Girl out onto the porch. I sat there rocking her and thinking. I wondered what Tammy was doing at that moment. When we were younger, we’d spend hours skipping rocks across the pond, racing through the fields, or making stories up behind the barn. But truth be told, Tammy and I had drifted apart over our high school years. Her time was filled with cheerleading practice, dances, and parties. Daddy, of course, would not give his permission for me to do any of those things.

At first, Tammy prodded me to ask Mama to convince Daddy that it was all perfectly respectable. I explained to her again and again that Mama would never say a word against Daddy. Daddy’s word was law in our house and no one, including Mama, had a right to question it. Tammy, whose mama wore red nail polish and went away on business trips, couldn’t understand this. Eventually, she gave up on me and concentrated on new friends.

Thinking about Tammy was making me sad, so I moved on to better thoughts. The prospect of window shopping outfits in the mall was positively thrilling. I had been wearing just the few clothes I had packed and some men’s colored T-shirts that came in neat plastic packages from a rack at Haystack’s. I started imagining myself in some of the outfits the girls back at school wore.

My pleasant daydream was interrupted by the sound of metal clicking. I scanned the yard quickly trying to find the source of the noise. It was John, trimming the shrubs around Rosie’s porch. He took the T-shirt draped over his shoulder and used it to wipe the beads of sweat from his face, neck, and chest. My own chest felt like it did when I flew too high in the tire swing back home.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said.

“Sure is,” I answered and tried not to stare at the way the pink cloth on his shoulders looked against his tanned skin. He nodded in my direction and bent over to pick up the handles to a wheelbarrow. I forced myself to look down at Georgia so I couldn’t watch him push his collection of weeds and cuttings around back.

I sat there rocking Georgia for about an hour. Then the darnedest thing happened. I was singing her a lullaby when she looked up at me and smiled. Now, I know most folks will say it was just a belly bubble causing her lips to curl up like that. But I swear, she looked me right in the eye and smiled like she knew who she was smiling at. It just about caused my heart to explode. It also brought to mind all of the things her real mama was missing. I put her in the stroller and headed to the library to search the papers again.

I’m ashamed to admit that on my way back to Rosie’s, I was feeling relieved about the lack of news in the papers about Baby Girl.

I had been tending to babies that weren’t mine for years. I knew better than to start thinking of her as my own. Feeding, cleaning, cuddling, and keeping her safe fell to me for the time being. Dreams for her future, like Sarah’s parents had for her, were a gift belonging to someone else. But knowing and feeling are two different things.

Rosie was waiting for us on the front porch. She smiled and started down the street toward us when we were still a few houses away. She gave me a big hug like I was some long-lost relative and scooped Baby Girl right out of her carriage. “I woke up and you were both gone. I wondered where you had gotten yourself off to on a Saturday morning.”

“We just took a little walk down to the library. I’m sorry I didn’t think to leave a note.”

“I should have guessed.” Rosie laughed. “How come you never bring anything home to read? I know I tease you some about all of the reading you do but I’m all for it. Bringing the book home to read would be easier than going to the library every day.” She stopped, caught her breath, turned to me, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re not reading any dirty books, are you? ’Cause I won’t have any of that under my roof.”

“No, Rosie. I’m not reading dirty books. I just like being in the library.”

“You’re not thinking of leaving the Second Hand Rose to go work there, are you?”

“No, ma’am.”

As soon as we got back to the house, we packed what we needed for our trip to the mall and headed for the bus stop. It took some doing to get onto the bus with Baby Girl’s deluxe carriage. As soon as I settled into a seat I noticed how cool the air was in there. I was worrying about Baby Girl getting a chill since I always dressed her for the summer heat. I held her close and kept rubbing her little arms and legs to keep the goose bumps away. When we got into the shopping mall, the air wasn’t any warmer. My first purchases of the day were a pair of socks to cover her feet and a new blanket to cover the rest of her.

We walked up and down both sides of the mall and then took an elevator up to the second floor. The walls of the elevator were made of glass so you could see out as you rode the car between the floors. I had never been in one like this before, and was finding the ride to be a mix of scary and exciting. I looked out at the floor sinking below us and the gears holding that car up. It only took a few seconds for me to decide it best to close my eyes until we reached our destination.

At one end of the second floor was the Beautiful Baby Boutique. We stopped and stared in that window for a long time. In the center, there was a whole new baby wardrobe done in yellow, green, and white. On one side of that was a set of mix-and-match baby girl clothes, and on the other side a set for boys. It was the one in front of them all that grabbed my attention. It was an exact match with the baby things we pulled from the boxes in the Second Hand Rose.

Rosie noticed it, too. “Let’s go in for a minute,” she suggested. She went straight for the newborn table. She picked up a white bib and inspected it closely. She paid even closer attention to the price tag. This of course caused the sales girl to come running over. “Ten dollars,” Rosie said. “How many of these do you get for the ten dollars?”

“Each one is ten dollars,” the girl answered. Her smile looked frozen on her face. “They’re made of the softest cotton. We wouldn’t want anything less for our babies, now, would we?”

“Do you have a boy or a girl?” Rosie asked, locking a smile onto her face, too.

“I was referring to our customers,” the girl answered. A phone rang and she looked happy for an excuse to walk away from us.

Rosie continued her price checking and I looked around the store. In one corner they had a stack of diaper bags. The one on top had a name written on it in paint. The sign said that they charged two dollars a letter to personalize the bags. A bell went off in my head. I hurried back to Rosie, because my new idea was ready to burst out of me like those wire snakes in a fake can of nuts.

Rosie had moved from the clothes to the furnishings and was standing next to Baby Girl’s stroller twin. She lifted the price tag and pointed it my way. It knocked the wind out of me. I hoped Rosie wasn’t regretting the fact that the stroller was in my hands and not in the window of the Second Hand Rose.

“It’s a good thing Georgia is a little princess, because her carriage was made for royalty.” Rosie laughed. “What were you so excited about when you came over here?”