Summer Shadows (19 page)

“Mom! Please!” Abby bent and glanced his way. To spare her, he made believe he hadn’t heard. He typed
thimnderfulinthebes tyellowrjoud
. She straightened and tightened her grip on the beach chairs. “Get up here, Mom,” she hissed, “before I lose my apartment!”

“Stop right where you are, Abby,” Mr. MacDonald commanded from above.

Ah
, Marsh thought,
he’s been the most recent baby-sitter
.

“You shouldn’t be carrying those chairs by yourself.”

“Dad, please. I’m fine. They’re not that heavy. They’re only aluminum beach chairs.”

Mr. MacDonald made little tsking noises, but he didn’t rush to help her. In less than a moment Marsh saw why.

“And look, baby. You’ve got company.”

Marsh saw the long legs of the silver-templed man move down the steps.

“I’ll take those for you, Mrs. Patterson.”

Marsh caught Abby’s flash of surprise as she looked at the man.

“Dr. Schofield?” She pushed her dark curls off her forehead.

Marsh noted that her nose was red. She probably got so caught up playing with the kids that she forgot her sunscreen. He shook his head. She needed a keeper, but he had to admit she looked cute.

“You stopped to see Karlee.” Abby sounded impressed. “How thoughtful of you. I didn’t know doctors still paid house calls.”

“Only for very special people.” It was obvious he didn’t mean Karlee.

Abby blushed.

The MacDonalds preened.

Marsh rolled his eyes.

In no time everyone was upstairs and a semiquiet reigned once again. Marsh knew he should get back to Craig and Marguerite, but all he could think about when he wasn’t thinking about pushy doctors was being considered dangerous. He couldn’t decide whether to laugh at the absurdity or take offense at the slur. Just because he’d been a bit grumpy when the MacDonalds had wakened him this morning. If their daughter had come home at a decent hour, he’d have had a good night’s sleep and been his usual charming self.

He grinned. Dangerous. Errol Flynn swinging from the rigging. Luke Skywalker dueling with Darth Vader. John Wayne taking on the bad guys. Keanu Reeves on the speeding bus.

Then his grin slipped away as he thought about Mrs. MacDonald’s accusation: He was the driver of that car. That meant she thought he was too much of a coward to stop and help an injured child, someone too frightened, too concerned about himself to help a little girl who needed help desperately.

His already grouchy mood descended further into the dumps. It didn’t help that soon the aroma of wonderful things cooking wafted into the air, torture for a man who lived on frozen entrees much of the time. When Marsh caught Fargo sniffing and looking toward the stairs, he scowled at the animal.

“We are hibernating for the summer, remember?” he growled. “We are pulling in the drawbridge, shutting out the world. The idea is to create a masterpiece here. We are not going to be seduced from our purpose by the mouth-watering scent of what smells like real, made-from-scratch spaghetti sauce.”

Fargo gave him a disgusted look.

Marsh swallowed the saliva that pooled in the back of his throat as he sniffed again the tangy bouquet of tomatoes, garlic, and the mysterious combination of herbs that made spaghetti one of his favorite dinners in the whole world. He forced himself back to his laptop. He backspaced over his last two unintelligible entries and then reread what he’d written today.

He frowned. It sounded heavy on the romance, for Pete’s sake. Of course he had romance in his books. It was a big asset in attracting women readers. The movie versions of his tales would have added romance if he hadn’t already put it in, and all for the courting of women viewers.

But romance per se? He didn’t care if it made up the largest segment of the popular fiction market. He didn’t care if the readers were as dedicated as any Penn State alumnus was to the Nittany Lions. He didn’t care if the writers of romance garnered sales figures and incomes in stratospheric numbers. He was not writing romance.

He respected his heroines, wrote for them all the politically correct though historically inaccurate things that today’s women readers expected. But moonlight and roses? Lavender and lace? Never! If he could get away with it, his heroes would ride into the sunset kissing their horses, not the girls.

What was it about women and romance anyway? He had never felt the stars fall or the earth tilt, and neither did his heroes. They were men of honor and ethics, not fire and passion, men like him, except they were smart enough to avoid women like Lane and the resultant first-degree burns.

Even now it hurt to remember Lane, she of the beautiful face and flawed character. Not that he missed her; he didn’t. He thanked God with a fervent heart that he’d escaped before the vows were said. What hurt was the knowledge that though he’d basically groveled at her feet, mistaking his infatuation with her beauty for love, she’d never really cared for him. She had loved the prestige of being engaged to Senator Winslow’s son, the excitement of campaigning, of being treated with special deference, of getting to sit on the platform. She had positively panted at the idea of developing a political dynasty like the Kennedys and Bushes
with Marsh himself as the second lead. She, of course, had the starring role. His father had shared her dream.

The only difficulty had been that Marsh didn’t like politics.

“But you’re out there campaigning every day,” Lane had said five years ago when it finally dawned on her that he wasn’t going to cooperate. “You’ve put your graduate program on hold for a year to help your father. You must love it.”

“I love my father and want for him what he wants,” Marsh said. “This past year has been difficult for him since Mom’s death. I want to be there for him, and helping in the campaign is one way I can do that. Because he wants the senate seat so much, because he’s very good at being a senator, and because the election only happens once every six years, I’m willing to help. But hear me, Lane. Help is the operative word.”

“But I love politics.” Her face had that stubborn cast he’d seen before when she was thwarted. As before, he ignored the warning.

He smiled and took her hand. “I’m going to seminary as soon as the election’s over.”

“Seminary! But you’ve already got a Ph.D. in philosophy. If you’ve got to get more education, though I don’t know why you do, go to law school.”

“Why would I go to law school? I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“But think how many politicians are lawyers. The two go together.”

“Lane, I’m not going into politics. I’m going to seminary.”

She stared, appalled. She jerked her hand from his. “You want to be a minister?”

“I told you my plans when we started to date.” He remembered with clarity how he’d told her his heart dreams six months ago when they met at a party fund-raiser. She’d smiled and nodded, looking so beautiful he couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to capture her attention. Apparently she hadn’t listened after all.

She shook her head, her platinum hair swaying. “I didn’t think you meant it, not really, not with the chance to work in Washington with your father and prepare for your own career in government.”

He’d taken her hand in his again, aware that she was looking at him like he was daft. “I don’t want a career in government. I’m too private a person to want to be scrutinized like that.”

“What about me?” She stared at him with angry eyes. “What about what I want?”

“I thought you wanted to be my wife.”
Ask not for whom the bell tolls
, he thought.
It tolls for you
. With a sinking heart he looked at her lovely face. “You don’t, do you? Want to be my wife, I mean. You want to be Senator Winslow’s daughter-in-law.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to be a seminarian’s wife! Or a minister’s.” She shuddered. “What’s it to be, Marsh? Me or seminary?”

His father had gotten into the argument too, after Lane went to him with crocodile tears. “Marsh, Marsh,” he said in his most political, sorrowful voice. You’d have thought he was orating at the funeral of a powerful political ally or grieving over the misuse of campaign funds by someone in the other party or dealing with a recalcitrant foreign dignitary over grave human rights issues. “You have become too religious. Show moderation, Son. You don’t want to become a fanatic.”

Marsh knew his conversion had distressed his father. It was good to go to church, to be photographed there, even to be pictured carrying a Bible. But to read that Bible? To believe it? To build your life around it and the Christ it taught about? Extremism.

“God has called me, Dad.” Even as he said it, Marsh knew his father didn’t understand. “I have to obey.”

“What about law school instead?”

Marsh shook his head.

“You’re going to lose Lane with this hardheaded attitude of yours, and you don’t want that.” The senator spread his hands wide and smiled with great warmth. “Think how she’ll look, standing at your side when you announce for your first political contest.”

“No, Dad.”

He had lost Lane. He’d also lost his close relationship with his father. Marcus Winslow was proud of Marsh’s Ph.D. and D. Min., but he never told anyone they were in philosophy and theology. He was proud that Marsh taught on a postgraduate level, but he never told anyone that he taught at a seminary. Rather it was my-son-the-college-professor. Any visits were brief, any conversations surface.

What would the good senator think if he knew about Craig and Marguerite? The thought made Marsh shudder.

At six-thirty Celia again climbed the stairs to Abby’s and was greeted with a chorus of “Mommy, Mommy!” The running thuds across the porch above sounded more like Jack and the Beanstalk’s ogre than the steps of a little girl.

“Jess, my love,” drifted down, followed by, “Karlee, sweetheart, how are you, my little pumpkin?”

Marsh rose and walked into the house. Now seemed a good time to take another break. Five minutes later, his frozen pizza nuking in the microwave, he walked back to the porch, prepared to grind Marguerite into the dust as Craig nobly brought her home.

As he positioned his laptop, he watched with disfavor as the two little boys from next door pushed and shoved each other up the stairs. In less than a minute, the littler one was at the railing. “Hey, Mom! Mrs. Patterson invited us for spaghetti! We’re going to eat with Jess and Karlee! Okay?”

When Marsh heard the word
spaghetti
, he lost all interest in his frozen pizza. He put his feet on the railing and attacked his laptop. The only trouble was that when he stopped to read what he’d written, it was terrible. Dull. Lifeless. Worst of all, it was pro-Marguerite.

He was preparing to hit delete when a little purse dropped out of the sky and bounced off his ankle. It landed on the porch next to Fargo’s nose, startling him into a loud whoof! Marsh set his laptop aside and leaned forward over his railing. He looked up.

No one was looking down, though obviously the bag had fallen from upstairs. A fluffy black-and-white tail flicked and dropped over the edge of the upstairs rail. Marsh knew what had happened. Puppy the cat—it caught in his throat every time he said it—Puppy had knocked the purse over.

Sighing, he bent and picked it up. It must belong to one of the little girls, who didn’t realize what the cat had done. He decided to return it before she was worried. First, though, he had to find something he wanted to take along.

When he stepped onto the upstairs porch, he found Abby and three youngsters pulling chairs up to the glass-topped table. Karlee lay on the chaise, and her little bruised face pulled at his heart.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” he asked as he sank to his knees beside her.

“I’m fine,” she said, but she looked very tired in spite of having napped most of the afternoon. Her pink cast lay in her lap.

Marsh pulled the felt-tipped pen he’d brought from his pocket. “May I sign your cast?”

Karlee looked at Abby for guidance. Clearly she didn’t know about signing casts. Abby nodded. “That’s a very nice idea.”

Uncapping his pen with a flourish, Marsh said, “When someone has a cast on, she’s supposed to collect everyone’s names on it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun. People write things like ‘Get Well Soon’ and ‘Hi, Karlee.’ ”

He balanced her cast on his knee and started to write. She leaned forward to watch. “What are you saying?”

Running his finger under each word, he said, “Hey, hey, Good Looking.”

Karlee giggled. “But I got bruises.”

He put the cap back on the pen while they examined his work. “You’re beautiful all the time, sweetie, bruised or not.” He bent, kissing the top of her head. He held the pen out to her. “This is for you. Get lots of others to sign too.”

Karlee’s eyes shone with excitement.

Marsh rose, turning to the others on the porch. Abby was watching him with a half smile curving her lips. He smiled back. “Well, if it isn’t Katie Luther and the Luther League.”

“Who’s Katie Luther?” asked Jordan.

“What’s the Luther League?” Walker wanted to know.

“Lutherans is a kind of church,” Jess said.

“There’s no church up here,” Jordan said. “Churches got steeples and pews and priests.” He giggled. “We got spaghetti.”

Abby patted the boy on the head. “Dr. Winslow’s making a joke, obscure as it is.” She smiled at him again, very sweetly, impressed, Marsh hoped, that he’d remembered her threat of last night.

“Are you Lutherans?” Jordan asked. No one answered. “I guess that means no.”

Marsh nodded to Jess. “Does this belong to one of you?” He held out the purse.

“Oh! Where did you find it? I put it over there—” She pointed.

Everyone looked at Puppy who was seated on the railing at the exact spot Jess indicated, ignoring them all for the joy of washing her face.

Jess walked to Marsh who handed the purse over. “Here you are. It’s a very pretty purse.”

The sliding glass door opened, and Mrs. MacDonald looked out. The aroma of spaghetti sauce grew stronger and made Marsh’s mouth water.

“It’s ready, everyone,” she said with enthusiasm. Then she saw Marsh. “Oh.”