Authors: Irene Radford
Thistle Down (6 page)
Dusty grabbed a tissue from her apron pocket and held it under the candy just as it decided to plop off the stick.
“I didn’t get to finish it,” Suzie wailed. A fat tear appeared at the corner of her eye.
“It’s too hot for lollies, my girl. How about a nice cold drink instead,” Dusty offered, using a second tissue to mop up tears before they grew too plentiful. “I’ve got lemonade in the fridge. Homemade, just for you.”
“Daddy promised us ice cream after dinner,” six-year-old Sharon confided. Her lollipop disappeared into her mouth before it collapsed. “Will you cook dinner for us, Auntie Dusty. You cook better than Daddy.”
“And where is your daddy?” Dusty asked, searching the walkway through the open door.
“Parking the car,” Sharon replied, obviously bored with adult chores.
“Well, come on back to the lounge. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” That ought to fix the problem of babysitting Thistle. Suzie and Sharon could entertain her while Dusty talked to their father, Joe Newberry: her boss, her mentor, and a good friend.
“Go wash your hands, girls, and I’ll be with you in a minute,” Joe said as he entered the museum. He nodded to Dusty, looking weary and worried. He headed straight for his office, a tiny cubicle off the pantry that served as curator’s office and document storage. He barely had room for an antique writing desk and straight chair. Fortunately, the room borrowed air-conditioning from the adjacent lounge.
Last year they’d considered giving him an office in the attic rooms of the gift shop—another historic house, but newer and smaller than the museum. Joe had lasted less than a week before he moved back. He didn’t like being away from the core of the exhibits. And the gift shop didn’t have air-conditioning. Only a couple of fans in the front parlor.
“You look tired, Joe,” Dusty said, following him in and closing the door behind her. Deep lines radiated from his eyes. His naturally pale skin had an almost gray tinge beneath the high color on his cheeks from the heat.
“That’s only half of it,” he muttered, flopping into his chair and letting his legs sprawl. He ran his hands through his thinning brown hair. Then he loosened his tie with a frustrated yank. He wore a suit today, his good navy one, instead of his usual khakis and polo shirt.
“What’s wrong? Trouble with our grant from the state?”
“I wish it were that trivial.” He choked out a laugh.
Dusty held her breath. Keeping the museum in good repair had occupied most of Joe’s life since . . . since Dusty couldn’t remember how long ago. He’d befriended her during her junior year in high school when she started hanging around asking too many questions about history and how the house was built and who built it. Soon after that, he’d given her a job cataloging the books and documents the Historical Society kept in storage without knowing what was there. By the time she’d finished her BA, she was running the place behind the scenes and he was her best friend.
“Don’t look so scared, Dusty. The grant’s in good shape, though the state’s going to ask for a bigger chunk of matching funds. We just have to pass the inspection tomorrow morning, before the parade starts. The committee could have chosen a better time.”
He straightened a little and began fussing with the piles of reference books, papers, fat folders, bits of cloth, and other detritus of museum work that overflowed every flat surface available. “The parade participants are supposed to show up around nine and start marching at ten. So if we meet the committee at seven, we should be in good shape. I just wish they’d postpone the inspection until after Festival,” he continued, filling the silence with banal words rather than coming to the heart of the matter.
“The Ball? Are the plans falling apart without Mom overseeing them?” The annual Masque Ball held in the park at the end of Festival provided a large portion of operating funds for the museum. Townsfolk, and a growing number of patrons from nearby Portland, paid good money for tickets, then dressed in outlandish or elegant costumes and danced the night away to live music in the gazebo. Dusty loved stringing tiny Faery lights through the trees to add a magical flavor to the evening.
“Actually, the plans are going better than usual without your mother’s interference.” He looked down sheepishly.
This time Dusty laughed. “Yeah, Mom does get carried away sometimes.”
“Like the year she tried requiring costumes of Shakespearean characters that all had to pass her scrutiny for authenticity?”
They both laughed at that fiasco.
“You’re doing a good job, Dusty. You’ve managed to keep all the committees on track and out of each other’s hair.”
“The magic of email,” she explained. “Mom prefers face-to-face confrontations . . . er meetings. I don’t think I’ve even met any of the committee chairs.”
“Your mom is a force of nature, not necessarily a good leader and organizer.”
Joe stopped laughing abruptly and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“So spill it. What happened that you’re in your best suit and have the girls with you?”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me?”
“Joe, the only time you propose to me is when your ex starts playing nasty games about custody and you think marrying again will look good to the courts. What’s she done this time?”
“Monica has left her lover, the Italian count turned chef, finished her fancy cooking school in Florence, and gotten herself a very good job in Seattle at a four-star hotel restaurant. She has followed her bliss. Now she wants the girls back.”
Dusty didn’t need to see his deadpan expression to know how much hurt he hid behind the mask. She’d held his hand more than once while he worked through the grief of Monica’s desertion after reading some damn self-help book. The break she “deserved” grew from a three-week vacation to two years of finding herself.
One of these days Dusty might accept one of Joe’s offhanded proposals just to have his children full-time. She babysat them three nights a week while Joe taught a high school equivalency class at the community college. But she knew Joe didn’t love her. Part of him still pined for Monica.
“I guess she found herself, ’cause now she’s suing for full custody, claiming I can’t support her precious children on my salary and that I’m neglecting them.”
“If her children are so precious to her, why’d she walk out without so much as a good-bye, leaving you with two toddlers and a mountain of her debts?” Dusty couldn’t understand how anyone could leave those girls.
“She said I was undervaluing myself and my education by settling for the museum job instead of teaching at a university. I know she never understood the total lack of glamour in faculty politics.”
Monica didn’t deserve him or Sharon and Suzie.
Dusty wished she had a place to sit. The office didn’t have a second chair.
“Will you accept the full-time teaching job at the community college? It pays better than the museum.” Dusty knew to the penny how much it paid. She’d turned down the position when the college offered it to her based upon her academic work and the application her parents had filled out in her name—without telling her because they knew she’d never do it herself.
Her stomached roiled at the thought of facing classrooms full of students every day.
But Joe would thrive there.
“I may have to. That would leave you in charge here. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to love this museum as much as I do.” He grinned at her. “Think how much fun you’ll have working with the county commissioners, the tourists, all the grant committees, designing field trips for school children, teaching special classes for teacher in-service days....”
Dusty ran out of the tiny room, bile burning in the back of her throat. Her hands grew clammy. The moment she cleared the doorway to the basement, her breathing eased. Two steps down into the cool dimness, her stomach settled. She hastened back to her dirty potsherds.
She barely noticed Thistle playing jacks with the girls in the lounge. They hummed an almost familiar tune that followed Dusty all the way to the bottom of the stairs.
Dum dee dee do dum dum
.
.
It reminded her of her favorite music box, broken for fifteen years now. But not quite.
Four
“W
HAT HAPPENED TO DUSTY?” Thistle asked no one in particular.
HAT HAPPENED TO DUSTY?” Thistle asked no one in particular.
The young girls kept bouncing their little ball and collecting the oddly shaped metal stars.
“Oh, some bully beat the crap out of her in the schoolyard about a billion years ago,” the blonde teenager replied, just returning from her tour. She shooed the children into their father’s office.
“Everyone in town knows that story,” snorted the darker girl. “One of the advantages of living in a small town. We all know each other’s dirty laundry.”
Gossip!
Thistle wiggled with excited anticipation. Good gossip provided food for Pixies when pollen was rare. But were these girls
reliable
gossips?
Thistle wiggled with excited anticipation. Good gossip provided food for Pixies when pollen was rare. But were these girls
reliable
gossips?
She eyed them closely: exact opposites, tall and fair, short and dark, heavily made up and bare-faced, careful embellishments of lace and jewelry to the blonde’s pioneer costume, the other’s stark and prim. Yet they seemed joined at the hip, true friends. Like Thistle and Dusty used to be.
“Pretend I’m not from around here,” Thistle prodded the girls. “Pretend I was born and raised by wild Pixies in The Ten Acre Wood.”
Both girls giggled. “If it was The Ten Acre Wood, then you were raised by pirates. More barbaric and unlettered than Pixies. Pixies have better manners,” M’Velle said.
“What about Dusty?” Thistle prodded before the girls went into a gigglefest about childhood games. “I know she was really sick for a while, but I thought she got over it.”
“She beat the cancer with chemo and a bone marrow transplant, but her mom insisted on homeschooling her even after she got better. They always eat organic, take their shoes off at the door, and wash their hands like a hundred times a day. Dusty tutored us last summer, but she did most of it by email. I’m Meggie, by the way.” The blonde tossed the words over her shoulder as she reached inside the icebox for a cold drink. She didn’t clean off the can top as Dusty had.
“And I’m M’Velle,” the brunette with milk-chocolate skin added. “Ms. Carrick takes books from the library around to old folks in town who don’t get out much. And she helps her mom organize Garden Club meetings and stuff, again by email. The old folks, and those of us who work at the museum, may be the only people she sees face-to-face.”
“Her mom went ballistic over the cancer thing,” Meggie took up the story. “Blamed the school system for letting Dusty ‘catch’ it when her scrapes and bruises from a playground dustup didn’t heal. As if you can ‘catch’ cancer.” She rolled her eyes in disgust.
“Sounds like guilt to me,” M’Velle snorted. “Mrs. Carrick blames herself for not being able to protect her child from cancer, and then she couldn’t heal her because she wasn’t a perfect bone marrow match. Anyone who has passed high school biology knows that a full sibling has the best chance of being a match.” M’Velle rolled her eyes. “Ms. Carrick plays in the dust down in the basement rather than face reality. And her mom encourages it because she’s still afraid she’ll catch something from another person that will kill her precious baby girl.”
“You know, if Ms. Carrick got out more, she’d learn a few social skills and feel less awkward in public. She’d learn to talk about something—anything—but history and this museum,” Meggie said quietly. “She tells us all the time that practice makes perfect. She should take her own advice. Maybe she’d make a few friends if she took the trouble to go find them.”
Thistle hummed a bit of displeasure into the tune that clung to the back of her throat.
Dum dee dee do dum dum
.
Dum dee dee do dum dum
.
“What she needs is a date with a bunch of people. Have a few laughs with a guy before she goes on a solo date,” Meggie said.
Thistle wandered around and around the room, her gaze flitting from this to that. Starshine! She missed her wings.
“She needs more than a few laughs. She needs to find someone she can take a mating flight with,” Thistle mused. The music inside her soared in memory.
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