The Summer of Our Discontent (14 page)

She turned her attention back to Faith. Her eyes were closed and her jaw sagged slightly. Slowly, she listed from starboard to port like a boat on gentle seas. As much as Rachel would’ve enjoyed seeing her fall off the bench or wear her breakfast, she didn’t want to share the experience with those at the other end of the table. “Faith.” One of Faith’s eyes opened slightly, then shut. Rachel grabbed her wrist and gave it a sharp tug. “Wake up.”

She inhaled sharply and blinked. “Is this coffee decaf?”

“No, it burned a hole in my stomach lining, and the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. Did you sleep at all last night?” Faith didn’t reply as her eyelids fluttered. Rachel tugged on her hand again. “Go take a nap, I’ll cover for you.” She continued to pull on Faith’s hand until she roused. “Go nap, I’ve got this.”

“Okay, but just for an hour.” Faith got up and staggered out of the mess hall like a drunk.

Rachel gathered their dirty dishes and smiled at the women at the other end of the table. “Early menopause, she doesn’t sleep much at night.” The looks of sympathy made Rachel want to laugh.

*******

“Momma, I’m homesick, please come get me.”

Bev laughed. “Is Kaycee having a good time at least?”

“Are you kidding?” Rachel watched her and Sophie play chase. “She’s having the time of her life with her new best friend.”

“I went by your house the other day just to check on things, and I ran into Patty. She says that Faith is chaperoning, as well. Are you calling me from jail?”

“We called a truce.”

Bev laughed again. “Will wonders never cease? It’s like that movie
Parent
Tr
—”

“Don’t say it. That movie had a happy ending. I plan to hogtie Faith to a tree before we leave. You didn’t hear that. How’re you?”

“Tired. I finally got your daddy to till up that ground near the fence, and I planted a rose garden. As you can imagine, my back is sore and my hands are just a mess. Chance misses you. He drove by the other day and visited. He doesn’t like having to work with Sheridan, who’s covering for you. Chance said he eats too much and won’t shut up, so he’s been hiding. He actually helped me lay the mulch.”

“Wow, Chance and manual labor? He must be miserable. If you see him again, tell him I’m just as pathetic.”

“I will. Are you keeping sunscreen on Kaycee?”

“Yes, I get her right when she wakes up. She’s too groggy to protest.”

“Good, are you keeping yourself coated?”

Rachel looked down at the redness on her thighs. She had six coats on her face but had forgotten everywhere else. “You know me.”

“Yes, I do, go put it on. You always forget about yourself. I’m not there to remind you, so don’t make me call Faith.”

“Momma, that’s just mean.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too. See you soon.”

Rachel slipped the phone into her pocket as Faith walked up. “I slept like a dead woman, even though it’s hotter with the sun up. What’re we doing now? I’m rested and ready to go Australian shepherd on some kids.”

“Free time right now,” Rachel said as she looked out at groups of girls sitting beneath the trees or running wild like Kaycee and Sophie.

Ashlyn
stepped onto the field. “Blue team, guess what? It’s time for a scavenger hunt. Pick your partners.”

It was no surprise when Sophie and Kaycee latched on to each other.
Ashlyn
patted them on the heads as she walked over to Faith and Rachel. “We make scavenger groups much smaller so we can assign a chaperone to every pair of girls. The children focus on the hunt and don’t keep a lookout for things like snakes or holes they could step off in, so please keep a close eye on them.”

“I call the girls,” Rachel said when
Ashlyn
walked off.

“Bull shoes,” Faith said and looked at Sophie. “Pick a number, baby, between one and ten, don’t—”

“Four, that’s my favorite,” Sophie said with a grin.

Faith held out a hand. “Don’t tell me the next one you pick until I ask you, okay?”

Sophie cupped her hands around
Kaycee’s
ear and whispered loudly enough for people in New York to hear. “I’m gonna pick seven this time.”

Faith rolled her eyes and turned to Rachel. “You got a quarter?”

“No, but I’ve got the girls. I called it first.” Rachel made a slurping sound. “Suck it up.”

Faith moved so close to Rachel their noses were almost touching and spoke lowly. “If anything happens to my niece on this hunt, even a scratch, I’ll gut you like a fish.”

“Oh,” Rachel said with a soft moan, “now you’re turning me on. I could just lose my mind for a second and forget all the hate between us and…your breath smells like ham, get out of my face.”

Faith was assigned two girls who moved at the speed of light. To Rachel, she looked like she was on a basketball court in a fast-paced game, arms stretched wide, skipping one way, then the other. Rachel snickered as she pulled her phone from her pocket, hoping to catch her on video.

Kaycee ruined the photographic moment when she pulled on Rachel’s shorts. “Momma, is that a mushroom? It looks funny.”

Rachel stared at the circular thing on the ground, then pulled the girls back. “Son of a bunch of biscuits, no, let’s move along.” She knew a king snake when she saw one. They weren’t poisonous, but they did bite. She walked past Faith and pointed to the fallen tree near the snake. “Don’t go over there unless you want something that slithers in your basket.”

Faith immediately turned and herded her girls in the opposite direction.
Rendy
, the nasally of the pair she’d been charged with said, “Ms. Fate, we need a guns ball.”

“A what?” Faith looked at the paper. “Oh, a gumball. I’m assuming they’re not talking about the kind you get out of a machine,” she said as she looked around for one of the trees. As luck would have it, she found one growing in the middle of a briar patch. She went over and warily kicked at the leaves until she found one of the spiky balls and handed it to the girls.

“This one’s old and mushy, Ms. Fate,”
Rendy
said, scowling at it.

Faith put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t a beauty pageant for gumballs, it’s a scavenger hunt. What’s next on the list?”

“A pine comb,” Harper said as she peered over
Rendy’s
shoulder at the paper.

Faith rubbed the back of her neck. “Pinecone or comb.”

Harper nodded. “Yes.”

Something struck Faith in the back, and she turned to find Rachel walking past her. “Just helping,” she said with a smile.

At Faith’s feet was a pinecone.
Rendy
scooped it up and tossed it into the basket. “And now we need a large acorn.”

Faith stared up at the trees, trying to remember which one made the big acorns she used to like to stomp. Normally, they littered the ground in the fall, but it was spring, which meant some rooting had to be done. “I’d like to get my hands on whoever made this list,” she whispered under her breath as she began to walk around the trees.

“Momma, what’s Ms. Aunt Faith doing?”

Rachel followed
Kaycee’s
gaze to where Faith was on her hands and knees picking at the ground. “Well, baby, being out in the country air like this makes her resort back to her primal instincts. She may walk on all fours for the rest of the trip and bark.”

Sophie dropped a blackberry into the basket. She grinned up at Rachel with lips and teeth stained purple. “I ate the rest.”

Rachel gave her a high-five. “We only needed one, baby, you rock!” She consulted the list. “Now all we need is a magnolia leaf.” She looked up and stared straight into Faith’s eyes as she tried to remember where she’d seen the magnolia. Apparently, Faith was doing the same thing and took off running. “Catch her,” Rachel said with a laugh, “stop her.”

Four girls ran after Faith with Rachel behind, trying to keep all the contents in their basket. Faith made a power slide as though she were diving for home plate and grabbed a dead leaf on the ground. “It’s gotta be green, Ms. Fate,”
Rendy
said excitedly.

With dead leaves fisted in her hands, Faith yelled, “Who made this list—Satan?”

Rachel scanned the tree line for another smaller magnolia. She’d seen them all over the place, but now that she needed one, they all seemed to have disappeared. The young tree they were gathered around had been pruned, and its branches were too high to reach. Rachel looked back at the tree and wondered if she could use a stick to pull one of the braches down when she noticed Sophie halfway up. “Oh, honey,” she said, “come back down, we’ll find another tree.”

“I can get it,” Sophie said as she hugged the tree and pushed with her feet.

Faith stared up at her eyes wide. “Sophie…baby, come back down.”

“I’m not a baby. I can get leaves for all of us.”

“Seriously, Sophie come down right now,” Faith said firmly.

Something about that tone didn’t sit well with Sophie. She began to sniffle on her way back down. When Faith could reach her, she pulled Sophie into her arms. “I
coulda
gotten the leaves,” Sophie said tearfully.

Kaycee folded her arms and glared at Faith. “She
coulda
done it, and now we’re in last place.”

“Watch your tone,” Rachel warned.

“I know you could’ve gotten the leaves. You could’ve climbed all the way to the top of the tree, of that I have no doubt.” Faith kissed Sophie’s cheek and wiped her eyes. “Leaves are not worth breaking a bone over. We’ll find another tree.”

*******

Both teams were in last place when they crossed the finish line with all the items on the list in their baskets. The girls were given a prize anyway, and all hardships were forgotten as they ate their frozen yogurt with special sprinkles.

“That was my bad,” Rachel said as she and Faith ate their own yogurts. “I got caught up in the competition, and I took my eyes off Sophie.”

“I did the same thing, which really disappoints me, because now I can’t justifiably abuse you.”

“This truce sucks,” Rachel said with a smile. “So I’ll go ahead and ask your forgiveness for this.” She turned her empty yogurt cup upside down and planted it on Faith’s knee. The remnants of the frozen treat drizzled down Faith’s leg into her sock.

“You looked hot,” Rachel called over her shoulder as she walked away.

*******

Rachel dragged a chaise lounge beneath the shade of a tree while the girls were swimming in the lake. The scouts were lifeguarding, and she felt comfortable closing her eyes for just a minute or two. She’d gotten more sleep than Faith did the night before, but it had taken her a while to doze off after the ghostly cow incident.

*******

Refreshed from her swim, Faith walked up on the hill and planted her chair in the sun. Rachel’s foot twitched slightly, indicating that she’d fallen asleep. All sorts of ideas formed in her mind—slipping a fish into her shorts was her favorite. But Rachel had been kind that morning, despite the yogurt on the knee thing. There was no way she could’ve functioned on a couple hours of sleep, and had Rachel not awakened her, she probably would’ve ended up flopping on the floor in front of everyone.

They were only four days into their sentence at the camp, and it seemed odd to Faith that the only thing she’d really enjoyed about it was Rachel. Had she not been there, Faith would’ve surely lost her mind or worse, maybe have joined the chaperones who were currently swapping coupons under the pavilion. Faith shivered at the thought and noticed that once again Lisa was staring at Rachel.