Winter Winds (2 page)

C
OME ON
, T
RUDY
, sweetheart. Stand tall. You can do it.”

As she raised her hand with the treat in it, Dori MacAllister smiled encouragingly at her little Dandie Dinmont. The dog in turn cocked her ears, watched the hand with the treat, but didn’t move.

“Come on, Trudy, baby. Do it for Mommy.”

Do it for Mommy?
Gag! Dori had promised herself when she spent way too much money to buy Trudy that she’d never become one of those weird ladies who talked to their animals like they were mentally impaired babies.

And here she was, talking to the little beige terrier as if she were a canine Rain Man.

Dori cleared her throat. “Stand tall, Trudy,” she ordered in the sternest voice she could muster.

Trudy immediately went up on her hind legs.

Dori blinked. That was all there was to it? She thought of all the time and money she’d spent on dog obedience classes and the mixed results. Trudy always performed wonderfully before everyone there, but at home she only obeyed when she felt like it.

Dori pictured herself in class. She had always spoken firmly there, and Trudy did as asked. It was only at home she made a fool of herself with baby talk. With a
sigh of disgust, she got to her feet. Just another proof that she needed a life.

The phone rang, and she stared at it for a moment. What if it was Bill Fralinger asking again for a date? Couldn’t the man take a hint? Five refusals ought to make him realize her disinterest, or so one would think.

The answering machine kicked in after the fourth ring. “Dori, I’ve got to talk to you! It’s an emergency! Call—”

She launched herself at the phone, heart in her throat. “Phil! It’s me. What’s wrong?”
Not Trev. Please let it not be Trev
.

“You’ve got to come at once,” Phil said without preamble. “It’s Pop.”

Dori’s stomach dropped. Before hearing
“It’s Pop,”
she’d thought that a stomach dropping was just a phrase writers used to convey distress. Now she knew it was a real sensation. “What’s wrong?” she managed to whisper.

“Heart attack, we think.”

Fear shafted through her, and she leaned against the wall to keep herself upright. Pop! Sturdy, invincible Pop, the man who with his wife Honey had raised her, the man who stood as grandfather to her, as close as or closer than any blood grandparent could ever be.

“How bad?” She held her breath, afraid of the answer.

“It’s too soon to tell.” Phil’s voice shook. “He’s got tubes and wires and oxygen and…” He had to stop and clear his throat before he could continue. “You’ve got to come, Dori.”

“N-no, I can’t.” Not even for Pop. Her conscience and her emotions clashed, and she began to shake.

“He asked for you.”

Was that anger she was beginning to hear in his voice? “Oh, Phil.”

He must have heard her hesitation, her distress. “Look, Dori, you know I’ve never pried.” Yes, he had. Scads of times. “I figured whatever happened was your personal business, but it’s time to come home. He needs to see you.”

“Phil, you just don’t understand.” She heard the slide toward whining in her voice and flinched.

Trudy whimpered. Dori turned and saw her standing on the
sofa, front feet planted on the arm, watching intently. Somehow she had caught Dori’s distress and was worried. Dori swooped her up and cuddled her close, drawing comfort from the animal even as she dodged her relentless pink tongue. There was no question; the little sweetheart was worth every penny.

“I can’t leave Trudy,” Dori said, then flushed at how inane and unfeeling that comment sounded, given the circumstances. But she knew how to worry over Trudy. She had no idea how to respond to the devastating news about Pop.

“Who’s Trudy, and why in the world not?”

“Who would take care of her?”

“Dori, is Trudy your dog?”

“I told you about her last time we talked, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I just forgot her name. Now listen closely because this is what you do. You put her in a kennel. You give her to a friend. You take her to the pound.”

“What?”

“Dori, she’s a dog. We’re talking about Pop here.”

“You think I’m a terrible person.” Dori found she had tears in her eyes. She hated to cry because it meant losing control, but if she was going to shed tears whether she wanted to or not, she might as well make use of them. She sniffed loudly into the phone.

“Are you crying?” Phil demanded, outrage clear in his voice.

She gave Trudy a teary grin. Worked every time. Someday he was going to be putty in the hands of the right woman.

She looked around her small living room with the soft peach walls; the moss green carpet; the peach, russet, and green floral love seat; and the two white wicker chairs with pillows that matched the sofa. She didn’t want to leave its security and safety, but with an inward sigh, she admitted she had to go east.

“Come on, Dori. Enough is enough.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, even though he couldn’t see her.

She’d been seven when she met Pop, nineteen when she left him. She had taken her heart and run to save herself, and though she hadn’t intended it, she knew that Pop had paid a stiff price for her emotional retreat. Honey, too. For six long years, she’d stayed
away, and, coward that she was, she’d planned to extend her absence indefinitely.

But how could she do that in light of, “He asked for you”?

She sighed. Much as she hated to admit it, Phil was right. Enough was enough. “I’ll catch the red-eye.”

“Good girl. Let me know your arrival time, and I’ll meet you.”

“You needn’t bother. I’ll rent a car.”

“I’m picking you up. No arguments.”

Dori stood unmoving in the living room of her San Diego apartment long after Phil hung up. It wasn’t until Trudy complained about being hugged too tightly that Dori moved. First she called for her airline ticket and got a compassionate fare leaving at eleven-thirty that evening, arriving in Philadelphia at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Next she called Meg Reynolds, owner of Small Treasures and her boss.

“Oh, Dori, I’m so sorry,” Meg said as soon as Dori told her about Pop. “Take as much time as you need. I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Meg. I—” Dori stalled. Meg knew more of her story than anyone, and she alone could understand Dori’s mixed feelings. She tried again. “I want to be there for Pop, but—”

“But you’re afraid you’ll see Trev.”

Dori closed her eyes. There it was, spoken brazenly and boldly. “I’m scared to death,” she confessed, her voice a mere whisper. “What would I say? What would I do?”

“Ah, Dori, don’t underestimate yourself. You’ll manage fine. I have every confidence in you.”

The affirming words were a balm on Dori’s unsettled spirit.

When she’d first moved to San Diego six years ago, she was in dire need of a job. She went to a mall, thinking that surely someone there would need a sales clerk. What she found was Small Treasures, a gift shop with the most creative inventory she’d ever seen. She spent two hours looking at all the lovely items, yearning for the money to buy some of them, knowing it would be a long time before she had discretionary money of the type she was used to.

Then she’d taken a deep breath and forced herself to ask for a job. “Your inventory is so wonderful, even I could sell it,” she said. “Please.”

Meg Reynolds, a short, dark-haired woman of indeterminate age, not only hired her; she trained her, taught her, and gave her ever greater responsibility until Dori was now Meg’s right hand with a small percentage of the store in her name.

But most important, Meg had given her love. She became the mother Dori no longer had, the anchor that held her stable in the hurricane-tossed sea her life had become. Meg invited Dori to dinner frequently, sometimes with just her and Ron, Meg’s big bear of a husband, sometimes with her three sons and two daughters-in-law, too. They weren’t Pop and Honey or Trev and Phil, but they were wonderfully accepting of the quiet, wounded young woman she’d become. Slowly Dori learned to relax, to smile again, then laugh freely.

It was Meg who found the small apartment that Dori lived in, and Meg who gave her a used bedroom suite that had belonged to one of her boys. Dori was so grateful she wouldn’t have to bunk on the floor that the Batman sheets, which came with Meg’s gift, seemed like the finest of bed linens.

“I’d give you more,” Meg said, “but the boys cleaned us out when they married or moved.” She grinned. “I still had the bed because it’s a single and these sheets because for some reason the wives don’t want to sleep on Batman.”

Perhaps Meg’s greatest kindness was that she never pressed, never probed. She waited patiently for the time Dori was willing to trust, willing to open her heart. When Dori finally talked and talked and talked about home, about Trev, Meg just listened, her eyes full of tears when Dori told of Trev’s betrayal.

“Ah, lamb, I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around Dori. “Unfortunately, not every man’s as wonderful as my Ron. I’d make it better for you if I could. Since I can’t, I’ll just love you.”

And Dori cried. The unequivocal acceptance helped heal her as nothing else could have.

When the tears abated, Dori smiled at Meg. “I bet you regret the day I walked into your shop.”

“Never. Not for an instant.”

“Why did you hire me if you weren’t looking for help?”

“It was the
please
that did it,” Meg said. “That and the desperation in your eyes.” Her warm smile took any sting from the words.

Dori never wanted to be that needy again. That was why she feared the trip east.

“What are you going to do with Trudy?” Meg asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Let us keep her for you. We think she’s the cutest thing there is.”

“Oh, Meg, would you?” One problem solved.

“You just get your stuff together and go to the airport. Ron and I will collect Trudy. We’ve got your key, remember?”

With a strange mix of anxiety and excitement turning her stomach upside down, Dori made it through security checks twenty minutes before her flight left. She walked right down the Jetway and sank gratefully into her seat, prepared to sleep until Chicago’s O’Hare and her plane change. She grabbed a pillow and a blanket and tucked herself in. All over the plane passengers were doing the same. The only difference between the others and her was that they slept.

Instead, she remembered.

Her mother and Phil’s had gone to college together and become fast friends. Even geography, marriage, and parenthood hadn’t diminished their friendship, and joint vacations were an annual event. Dori vaguely remembered Disney World, Yosemite National Park, and the Rocky Mountains, all shared with Phil and his younger brother, Trev. Every other year, they all trooped to Ocean City, Maryland—the MacAllisters from Chicago and the Trevelyans from Amhearst, Pennsylvania.

Then came the year she was seven. They were vacationing in Ocean City when the police came to their rented condo to tell the three children that their parents, out together for an evening, had been killed by a drunk driver. With no grandparents still living and with her parents both only children, Dori had had no family to come to her aid. In fact, in her little girl’s mind, she had nobody but Phil and Trev.

The authorities sent a woman officer to get her and take her to social services. Even today she could feel her child’s heart hammering against her rib cage, desperate and terrified. She remembered her valiant attempts to stop crying and be brave like the police lady said. Her nose had become so stopped up that she
couldn’t breathe through it, and she felt sick to her stomach from all the phlegm she swallowed.

It was Trev who changed everything. She could picture him, a skinny nine-year-old with ribs you could play like a xylophone, staring at the officer.

“You aren’t taking her anywhere! She’s ours!” He’d pushed Dori behind him to protect her.

When he came for the boys, Pop asked, “What will happen to her?”

“Foster care, I imagine,” the officer said. “She’ll be just fine.”

“Not adoption?”

The officer shrugged. “She’s probably too old to be adopted.”

“We’ll adopt her,” Trev yelled, his voice shaking with emotion. “You can’t have her.”

“Don’t let them take me,” she whispered as she hid behind him again. “Don’t let them, Trev” She wrapped her skinny arms around his waist and buried her face in his back. They’d never pull her free. She would be like one of those barnacles that encrusted the big pilings that went down, down into the bay where they’d rented Jet Skis yesterday. Daddy scraped his leg against one, and the barnacle hadn’t been hurt at all. Daddy had bled.

Phil sidled up beside Dori and put an arm around her heaving shoulders.

Pop, Honey, and the policewoman stood facing the three orphans. The officer held out her hand. “Come on, sweetie. The Trevelyans have to go home.”

“No!” she screamed over and over. “No!”

Pop moved then. He reached over Trev’s head and pulled Dori up and into his arms. Try as she would to hold on to Trev, she couldn’t fight Pop’s strength. Her heart was already broken because Mommy and Daddy were never coming back. She was surprised when it broke a little more. She turned her weeping gaze to Trev.