Showers in Season Page 2

  “Everybody back in the car!” she yelled, desperately trying to take back the reins of her life. “We have to go to the drugstore.”

  “Can I get a Darth Vader?” Spencer asked, seizing on his mother’s obvious distraction.

  “Yes.”

  “I want M&M’s,” Brittany shouted.

  “Okay.”

  As she grabbed her purse and headed back out to the car, she checked off her list in her mind. Action figure, M&M’s…

  And the fastest pregnancy test she could find.

  CHAPTER Two

  Cathy didn’t give Tory’s nausea another thought as she finished up the load of laundry she had folded during her lunch hour. She tripped over Mark’s backpack as she was taking a stack of folded clothes to his room. Since he was supposed to be at school, and she was quite sure that they hadn’t had any kind of seventh grade holiday, she was baffled. She unzipped it and saw a couple of textbooks, several dirty, dog-eared folders, three pencils, a sharpener, and pencil shavings on the bottom of the bag, along with other filthy substances she didn’t want to examine too closely. His lunch was smashed in a sack between his English and history books. He obviously hadn’t changed backpacks or decided not to use it today. Everything he needed was in here.

  Had those adolescent hormones so flooded his brain that he had forgotten to take it? Had he not noticed, when he got on the bus this morning, that he was empty-handed? She sighed, conceding to herself that she was about to enter the twilight zone of teenagehood with him. It was too soon. She didn’t know if she could survive it with a third child. Rick and Annie had already driven her to the brink of insanity.

  She picked up the backpack, wondering if they made textbooks out of cement these days, since the pack was so heavy that no normal backbone could support it. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to carry it. But it was after lunch by now. Hadn’t he noticed that it was missing? Why hadn’t he called her and asked her to bring it to him?

  She got into her pickup and dropped the backpack on the seat. Maybe all her admonitions to her children that they’d better be in serious physical jeopardy to call her at the clinic had finally gotten through. But it seemed unlikely that he would heed her warnings now. This was the same kid who had called her during his lunchtime last week and asked her to bring him a Snickers bar before fifth period because he needed it to bribe his teacher. She remembered shouting something about how Mrs. Jefferson’s dying cat was more important than a stupid Snickers bar, and that if he’d done his homework he wouldn’t have to worry about bribing teachers. He had slammed the phone down, as if she had done him wrong.

  Now, just a few days later, he was too considerate to call her about his backpack? She didn’t think so.

  She got to the school, parked in front of the door, and flung the backpack over her shoulder. Trudging along like a hiker carrying a VW on her back, she made her way to the office.

  The overworked office worker looked up at her as she came in. “May I help you?”

  “Yeah,” she said, out of breath as she slid the backpack off and dropped it onto the counter. “These things weigh a ton. They ought to put wheels on them or something. Our kids are all going to grow up bent over like ninety-year-old men.” She saw that the lady was in no mood for her humor. “Uh…I need to send this to Mark Flaherty, seventh grade.”

  The woman turned to her computer to look up Mark’s schedule, then lowered her glasses and peered at Cathy over the top of them. “Mark is absent today.”

  “No,” she said, leaning across the counter to look on the screen. “He’s here. He just forgot his backpack.”

  The woman looked at the screen again. “Sorry. He’s been marked absent in every class.”

  Cathy’s mouth fell open. Had he been kidnapped on the way to the bus stop, or had he deliberately cut school? “Would you do me a favor?” she asked. “Would you look up his friends? Andy Whitehill and Tad Norris? Are they here?”

  She typed their names in, then shook her head. “No, I’m afraid they’re absent, too.”

  Her face grew hot. She wondered if smoke was coming out of her ears. Any minute now the top of her head would blow off. “So you’re telling me that my son and those two are playing hookey?”

  “They’re not here,” the woman said, smiling now, as if she finally heard something that amused her.

  “Well, don’t you people call parents when kids don’t show up? I mean, what if he’d been kidnapped or something? They’d have made it to Memphis by now.”

  “You’re supposed to call us,” the woman said. “If your child is going to be out, you’re supposed to call by nine.”

  “But if he’s not supposed to be out, and I don’t call, what then?”

  “Then he’s marked unexcused.”

  “Well, if he’s dead, it doesn’t really matter if it’s unexcused, does it?” she asked, raising her voice more with each word. “As some kidnapper hauls my child across the country, it’s not really relevant if he gets zeroes on his assignments!”

  The woman removed her glasses and gave her a disgusted look. “Mrs. Flaherty, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? Your son obviously skipped school with his friends. Instead of blaming us, why don’t you go look for him? I suggest you try the homes of the other two boys. They’re probably there.”

  Flinging the backpack back over her shoulder, she trudged back out to her car. She was perspiring as she flew to the home of one of the boys. Looking up, she saw that one of the upstairs windows was open and smoke was drifting from it. Someone was home, and they were smoking enough to fill a saloon in Marlboro Country.

  She went to the door and rang the bell, then banged on the door like someone with authority. She wasn’t sure if that would help or not. Authority might be just the thing to keep them from answering the door.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs, heard someone say, “It’s your mother, man!” Then more footsteps…

  After several moments, Andy opened the door. He was faking sickness. He squinted his eyes as if she had gotten him out of bed, and wore an expression that was a perfect counterfeit of the one Tory had worn earlier. “Oh…hi, Dr. Flaherty. What are you doing here?”

  She crossed her arms. “You should really join the drama club, Andy. Your talents are wasted here.”

  “Huh?”

  She sighed with disgust. “I’m looking for Mark. I know he’s here.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m sick, and nobody’s here.”

  She was getting tired of this, so she pushed open the door and bolted past him into the house. “Mark Flaherty!” she called upstairs. “I know you’re here. Get down here immediately! You don’t want me to come after you.”

  Slowly, Mark emerged from the room upstairs. He came down the stairs, reeking of cigarette smoke. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Get in the car.” She waited as her son rushed out of the house, then turned back to the boy who lived there. “Get one of your parents on the telephone, Andy. They need to know about this.” She looked upstairs and raised her voice again. “And Tad, you’d better get down here and when Andy’s finished, you can call yours.”

  “But Mrs. Flaherty…I really am sick,” Andy whined. “It’s not my fault Mark and Tad came over here.”

  “Just call them.”

  She spoke to both sets of parents—neither of whom knew their kids weren’t at school—and prayed that they would do something about it, instead of just shaking their fingers at their wayward sons. Then she went back out to her car. Mark looked as if he feared for his life. As she started the car and popped it in reverse, he turned his round, innocent eyes to her.

  “Mom, I’m sorry. I’ll never do that again.”

  “Got that right.” She glanced over at him. “You were smoking, too, weren’t you?”

  “We were just playing around. I didn’t even inhale.”

  “Oh, now there’s an original thought.” She turned right at the red light.

  “Where are we going?”

  �
��Back to school,” she said.

  “Mom, you can’t take me there. There’s only forty-five minutes left till the bell rings.”

  “You got unexcused absences in every class, but by golly, you will not get one in your algebra class. You’re going to go to that school and face that principal with what you’ve done, and then you’re going to go to that class and learn something. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And then you’re going to come home and learn something.”

  “What? Are you going to ground me from breathing oxygen for a month?”

  “Worse. And frankly, Mark, I need time to think about it. I’ll have figured it out by the time you get home.”

  “Well, how bad is it gonna be? Will I be better off running away from home?”

  “Don’t even think about it. I’ll hunt you down and find you.”

  “You know, they’ll probably suspend me for cutting school. You realize that, don’t you? That you might be responsible for getting me suspended?”

  “I’m not responsible, Mark, you are. And I’m willing to let you suffer whatever consequences you’ve brought on yourself. I don’t like it, and it makes me so mad that I can hear my heart beating in my ears…” She swallowed and tried to calm her voice. “But that’s the way it goes, and I want this to be such an unpleasant memory for you that you never want to repeat it.”

  “I’m already there.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Not by a long shot. You have a long way to go, kiddo.”

  CHAPTER Three

  Brenda Dodd went from sanitizing her bathroom to interviewing for the job she had been praying she could get, but she worried that she smelled of Lysol as she stepped into the busy room. It was a telemarketing firm, and she looked around and saw dozens of people sitting in cubicles with headsets on, talking to people who didn’t want to be bothered.

  She swallowed back her trepidation and, clutching her purse, looked for someone who seemed to be in charge. She saw a real office, with four walls and a ceiling, at the back corner of the room, so she cut across the floor. Everyone was talking at once. How could they hear themselves think?

  She reached the door. Peering in, she saw a disheveled man sitting at a desk behind a mound of paperwork. She knocked.

  “Yeah,” the man said without looking up.

  She stepped into the doorway. “Uh…I’m Brenda Dodd. I spoke to you on the phone?” When he still didn’t look up, she added, “I’m here for the job interview?”

  He finally looked up at her and gestured toward a chair. “Have a seat.”

  He turned back to the computer he’d been typing on, and got a scowl on his face. “Give me a break!” he bit out, then shot to his feet and headed to the door. Without saying a word about where he was going, he burst out into the workroom. She watched through the door as he raced to one of the cubicles and bent over to chew someone out. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clear from the look on his face that he was livid.

  The young woman he had verbally assaulted winced and began to clear her desk. He kept railing behind her, and finally, she abandoned the rest of her personal items and took off for the door.

  Brenda’s heart sank.

  He came back in and took his seat, still angry. His face was red, and she wondered if he had high blood pressure and ulcers. “So…what did you say your name was?” he demanded.

  “Brenda Dodd,” she said, trying to smile.

  “And why, exactly, do you think I’d want to hire you?”

  She didn’t know if that was a deliberate insult, or one of those psychological employers questions designed to see what she was made of. She sat straighter, and clutched her purse more tightly. “Because I’m good with people, and I’m diligent and hard-working. I need a job I can do at night when my husband isn’t working, because one of my children had a heart transplant not too long ago, and I need to be there for him during the day.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, looking down at something that she assumed was the application she had sent in earlier. It was clear he had little interest in her problems. “Any experience?”

  She had decided on the way here that she wouldn’t let her stay-at-home-mom status get in the way of this. “Yes, lots. I’ve been an educator, a health care provider, a bookkeeper, an administrator, an interior designer, a chef, and an executive assistant.”

  He frowned and looked up at her. “You must not stay at anything very long.”

  Her smile broadened. “Actually, I’ve been doing all of them at the same time for thirteen years.”

  She could see the struggle on his face to picture a job that encompassed all of those things. “Well, then you may be overqualified to work here,” he said. “The last thing I need is some over-educated bonehead—”

  “Oh, I’m not over-educated,” she cut in, realizing she had made herself look too good. “Really. I don’t even have a degree.”

  “Then where did you work all those years?” he asked, flipping through her application. “Says here you were a housewife…” His voice faded off, and he looked up at her as the light dawned. “Wait a minute. You were being cute, weren’t you? Making yourself out to be some kind of genius when all you are is a lousy housewife.”

  Her smile crashed. She thought of defending herself, telling him that she had not overstated her qualifications, that she had home-schooled her four children until this year, that she had nursed her child when he was at death’s door, that she had managed the bills and the finances in their home, that she cooked and cleaned and decorated on a shoestring, that she was her husband’s biggest supporter and helpmeet. But this man would not be impressed.

  She got up and smoothed out the creases on her skirt. Her voice trembled as she said, “Mr. Berkley, I don’t think I want this job after all. I’m sorry I wasted your time.” She started to the door, her knuckles turning white as she clutched her purse.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She didn’t know why she stopped, but she did, and slowly turned around.

  “Sit down,” he ordered.

  She hesitated.

  “Come on,” he said impatiently. “If you come back in here and sit down, you’ve got the job.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. She wasn’t sure if the emotion flooding through her was relief or dread. Slowly, she went back to the chair and sat down.

  “I don’t care if you were a housewife or a princess in Peru. Can you work seven to midnight?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But…who do we call that late? I mean, aren’t people in bed?”

  “We reserve our West Coast calls for the later hours, since they’re three hours earlier.”

  “What exactly are you selling here?” she asked.

  “Lots of things. We have a number of accounts. We sell everything from magazine subscriptions to diet programs. When can you start?”

  “Uh…well, maybe tonight.”

  “All right,” he said. “Report here at seven. I’ll get you set up before I leave for the day. And don’t be late. I hate people who are late.”

  As she headed back out to her car, Brenda tried to tell herself that she was excited about her new job. It would bring much needed income into the household, and take some of the pressure off of David, who made furniture for a living. She would be there all day for Joseph, and still get to spend three and a half hours with Leah, Rachel, and Daniel before she had to report to work. She and David could make up their time together on weekends. It would all work out.

  But as she got back into her minivan, she sat there for a moment, making a valiant effort not to cry. When she was certain she had her emotions under control, she started the car and headed home. She wished Sylvia was still living in Cedar Circle. This was one of those times when she would have called her neighbor and asked her to pray. But Sylvia was in Nicaragua, working as a missionary. Noble work. Purposeful work. Godordained work.

  She wondered what Sylvia would say about Brenda reentering the work for
ce this way. She would probably blame herself because she and Tory and Cathy hadn’t raised more money to pay Joseph’s hospital bills. The truth was that her friends had raised more than enough to pay for Joseph’s transplant. But now the costs of the drugs he took, the frequent visits back to the doctor, and the weekly biopsies to head off his rejection of the heart were phenomenal. She had wondered more than once over the last few weeks if they had done the right thing when they took their house off the market. Maybe they should have sold it after all.

  But as she began to sink into depression, she began to sing the soft, clear chorus of “I Love You, Lord.” As always, her spirits rose back to bearable heights. She was blessed, she thought. Joseph was alive. Her other children were safe and healthy. David, though an unbeliever, was a wonderful father and an attentive husband. And now she had a job.

  Yes, she told herself as she headed up the mountain to Cedar Circle. She was blessed, indeed.

  CHAPTER Four

  The secondhand car that Harry had insisted on buying for Sylvia in León, Nicaragua, was a 1975 Fiat Berlina that sounded like a lawn mower and drove in fits and starts. The morning they had bought it, the back window had fallen out and shattered on the backseat. They had not been able to get the glass to replace it, so they had taped plastic across the hole with duct tape to keep out the rain.

  She wished it wasn’t the rainy season in Nicaragua. If it weren’t, she might not have had so much trouble getting around. Her windshield wipers didn’t work, and despite all the duct tape, there was a leak somewhere that caused a puddle to form in the backseat every time she took the car out in the rain.

  She found the university, which was her main landmark in her directions to the restaurant, since the Nicaraguans weren’t big on addresses. The restaurant where she was meeting another American missionary couple was a half block north. She found it with little trouble, located a place to park the car, and got out.

  A child about the age of Joseph Dodd, her little nine-year-old neighbor back home, approached the car, soaking wet from the rain and carrying a dead chicken. In Spanish, he asked her if she wanted to buy it, but she shook her head and thanked him. She wished she spoke more Spanish. She missed talking to children, hearing their funny little thoughts, laughing at their antics. The children here were no different than they were in Tennessee. Except they were much more conscious about money, because they had to help their families make a living.