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Authors: Irene Radford

Thistle Down (12 page)

BOOK: Thistle Down
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“Help, help. Let me out!”
Phelma Jo thought she heard a cry. Only her imagination. Imagination would get her into trouble, just like the kids who scared themselves with ghost stories about The Ten Acre Wood, then tripped and got hurt trying to run away too fast to look where they were going.
She held the jar up to the slanting sunlight, admiring the bright colors and wondering how long the bug could evade the spider. Wouldn’t it be funny if she let them both out under her mom’s skirt as she lay on the sofa too drunk to move?
“That’s not really a dragonfly, you know,” Dick Carrick said from right behind her. He reached an arm over her shoulder and grabbed the jar away from her.
“Hey, that’th mine!” Phelma Jo shouted. She jumped, trying to snatch the jar back.
“It’s not nice to hurt spiders and Pixies and things,” Dick admonished her.
“Juth cuth you’re older and bigger than me, doethn’t mean you can tell me what to do. No one can tell me what to do.” Phelma Jo jumped again.
Dick held her still with one hand on top of her head. At the same time, he tucked the jar under his arm and unscrewed the lid with his free hand. The dragonfly slipped through the first opening before the spider had a chance to follow.
“Hey, I worked hard to catch my peth,” Phelma Jo protested.
Dick just watched the dragonfly circle his head and flit away into the woods. “You’re welcome,” he said quietly, almost in awe of the bug.
“You’re ath crathy ath your thithter, talking to bugth.” Phelma Jo stomped away in disgust.
She waited in the shadows of the old railway shed for the boyfriend to turn out all the lights and fall asleep before creeping back into the house. She washed her hands and face from the cold water in the tub. But not her whole body. She wouldn’t take off her clothes and give him the chance to spy on her. Or touch her.
 
“What are we going to do about Thistle, Dick?” Chase whispered to his friend as they stood on the wraparound porch of the Carrick home. The Queen Anne style pile of gingerbread and turrets had been in Dick’s family since it was built over a hundred years ago.
Chase thought it an eyesore with Mrs. Carrick’s most recent paint job of pink with white trim and yellow highlights. Not just any pink either. A screaming harem-pink worthy of a whorehouse.
He hated that Dusty had to live with that image. But then she lived so quietly she’d never found the need to move out on her own. Did she even know how ugly the house was?
Dick thrived away from his mother’s stifling influence. But he’d finally decided he needed to save enough money for a down payment on a house. So he moved in with Dusty for the summer while their parents were away.
Or maybe he moved back home to protect Dusty from being alone. That would be just like him.
“What do you mean, ‘what are we going to do about Thistle?’ ” Dick asked. He kept looking over his shoulder.
“Dick, look at me. The girls don’t need you to put a very drunk Thistle to bed.” Though Dick looked like he really wanted to do just that. “She knows too much about things she has no business knowing. Things about us. How’d she find out?”
“Huh?”
“How’d she know I glued a dragonfly’s wings together with dog drool from my red mastiff when I was eight? Remember the posters I used to glue to the wall with Julia’s dog drool. Better than superglue.”
Dick smiled. “Yeah. Who’d of thought it would work.”
“Yeah. And how’d Thistle know Phelma Jo tried to capture a very similar dragonfly in a glass jar in the same stretch of The Ten Acre Wood?”
“You believed in Faeries and Pixies when you were little,” Dick said. His eyes finally focused on Chase. “I remember.”
“I gave up that notion by second grade. The same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter Bunny. I thought you did, too.”
Dick looked as if he wanted to say something, but he clamped his mouth shut instead and let his gaze drift up to the waxing moon. “We’ll have a full moon for the Masque Ball. Magic happens under the full moon. Especially in The Ten Acre Wood.”
“Only for dreamers and lunatics. You’re no help at all.”
“Should I be? Think about all the wonderful things we did as kids, all the pirate games and exploring the wonders of finding a bird’s nest or watching frogs hop from tuft to tuft in search of the perfect bit of mud.”
“All natural. Except the pirate games. And that’s just kids playing. You’re a trained scientist. You, of all people, should know that Faeries and Pixies exist only in children’s stories.”
“Ever think we might be living inside one giant story?”
Chase snorted. “Just keep Dusty safe. That Thistle woman is a con artist if I ever saw one. Too bad I can’t arrest her without evidence.” He started down the broad stairs. Then he had another thought and returned to Dick’s side. “What made you invite Dusty and her new best friend to the bar tonight? I thought it was supposed to be just us men watching the game.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had fun, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, we had fun.” Chase’s mouth quirked upward despite his best efforts to remain stern. “Especially when the waiter stumbled and spilled an entire pitcher of beer on Phelma Jo. I’ve wanted to do that to her more than once.”
Dick burst out laughing. “Like the time she ran your boxer shorts with red hearts up the flagpole at City Hall the morning after she broke up with you?”
Heat flashed from Chase’s toes to his ears and spread across his cheeks. He was just glad the dim light over the door was behind him. “We were never going together, so we didn’t have anything to break up from. She always got rid of her boyfriends before they got tired of her and left. Always in control of the relationship. That’s PJ. I was a senior in high school and she was a football groupie, sleeping her way through the entire team like we were trophies. She only stayed with the guys she could control.”
Or she was a notch in his own belt of experimentation.
“Wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t scrawled my name along the fly with magic marker.”
“That is one vengeful woman, Chase. Best not get on her bad side.”
“She doesn’t have a good side,” Chase grumbled. Actually she did, but that was one secret he was sworn to keep. The health and well-being of a lot of troubled teens depended on Phelma Jo staying anonymous in helping them.
She made certain teenage runaways didn’t follow the same self-destructive path her mother had.
“Amen to that. I’ve had my own run-ins with her. But damn, she is hot, even with the squirrely overbite and mean temper.”
“Well, I’m going to keep careful watch on her and her new assistant. What kind of name is Haywood Wheatland anyway?” Chase shook his head in puzzlement.
“I’ll ask around. Discreetly. See if anything comes up on Google.”
Chase had his own databases on his work computer. He added Haywood’s name to Thistle’s for deep background checks.
“Anyway, can you find out if he’s a patient of any of your doctor clients? I’ve never seen him around before.”
“Patient confidentiality will rule. But there’s usually a talkative nurse or two leaving a computer screen untended.” Dick flashed a wide grin.
“Let me know if you find out anything. I don’t like strangers in my town associating with a woman of questionable morals and business ethics.” And that went for Thistle Down, too.
He bounced back to his pickup whistling a catchy tune. What was the name of the music? He couldn’t remember it. Great. Now it was stuck in his head until he figured it out. Something to do with May flowers and honey wine.
Nine
 
 
D
USTY DRIFTED ON THE LIGHT BREEZE wafting along the river. She looked about with lazy curiosity, not at all concerned with the distance between herself and the water that would cradle her. For now she was content to allow air to lift her wings and take her wherever she needed to go.
A slow smile spread from her mouth to her eyes to her fingertips as the huge white swallowtail wings carried her along.
Freedom
. No duties or responsibilities or fears chained her to the earth.
No one judged her. No one threatened her. She didn’t fear saying the wrong thing or laughing at the wrong moment. She was who she was and the wind did not care.
She laughed. What were the worries of the world when she could talk to the wind and listen to the river from stupendous heights while her wings took her to new places and marvelous sights?
Slowly, lazily, and carefree, Dusty awoke. She stretched in the small white-painted bed of her childhood and relished the lightness left behind by her dream. And confidence. If she could fly with the wind . . .
Next time she felt the need to hide in the basement, she should remember that dream and face whatever troubled her.
A shaft of sunlight showed her dust motes that could easily be Pixies dancing.
She rolled over just as the alarm clock clicked over to six o’clock and an obnoxious beep reminded her that freedom and self-confidence were only a dream. She had a museum to run and the grant committee to impress. And then a parade to manage and a Ball to organize.
She just had to remember the dream. Remember it and float forward.
Yeah. Right.
 
Dick backed up his dad’s half-ton truck into the loading bay of the nursery while dawn was just a promise on the horizon. He yawned hugely as he set the brake. Just two minutes. All he needed was two minutes with his head on the steering wheel and his eyes closed.
“Hey, Carrick, get the lead out!” Tom Ledbetter, otherwise known as Digger, yelled from right beside him.
Dick jerked awake, swearing.
“We’ve got a pumper wagon to decorate and horses to hitch before we can march in the parade.”
A flash nearly blinded Dick. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids to calm the dazzle. “Did you have to take a picture of me asleep?”
“Candid shots are the best for the social pages.” Digger shrugged and let the camera rest on its vividly striped neck strap.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get those flats of flowers loaded while they’re still fresh. Did anyone bring coffee?” Dick yawned again. A bug fluttered against his lips.
BOOK: Thistle Down
11.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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