“Except for when you sent me to the shrink,” I pointed out.
He continued more loudly, “—and I was terrified of messing that up.” He turned to McGillicuddy. “But now you’ve got a foot or two out the door.” He turned to me.
“And you’re—” He sighed. “Grown. I thought it would be okay now.” He took still another sip of coffee, nonchalant, but his eyes darted to McGillicuddy and me in turn.
“Even if it’s not okay, I’m still going out with her.”
We sat in silence a few moments more. Then McGillicuddy hollered, “Fanny the Nanny!”
“It’s all very Jane Eyre of you, Dad,” I said. McGillicuddy had read Jane Eyre in ninth grade English, and then I’d read it in ninth grade English. We’d wished we had Frances back just so we could make Jane Eyre jokes.
McGillicuddy snorted. “Hide the lighter fluid.”
“Check the attic,” I said.
Dad sat back in his chair, relaxing a little.
“No wonder she used to get so mad when Sean sang to her from The Sound of Music,” McGillicuddy said.
“Does this mean we have to start drinking soy milk again?” I asked Dad.
“I’m glad we’ve gotten this settled,” Dad said. “Bill, what’d you dream about?”
McGillicuddy blinked at the change of subject. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” I grinned.
“She’s a real person.”
I took this as my cue to head for the marina. Dad would probably coax the dream out of McGillicuddy—Dad was a lawyer, after all—and I didn’t particularly want to hear just then about Tammy beating McGillicuddy at wrestling in chocolate pudding.
But McGillicuddy stood when I did. Dad looked up at him and said, “You take care of your sister today.” McGillicuddy shrugged. “How?”
Dad looked at me. “And you watch out for those boys.”
It was way too early in the morning for a breakdown, so I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the tears and stepped out the door, calling, “I’m afraid I have nothing to be afraid of.”
In the garage, balanced on the handle of the seed spreader, looking out of place between the lawn mower and the tiller, was a long-stemmed pink rose.
McGillicuddy passed me. I called, “Tammy left you a gag gift.”
He hardly glanced at the rose on his way out the garage door. “Pink isn’t my color.”
Frances must have left it as a joke for Dad, then. I should take it into the kitchen before it wilted. Almost wishing it were mine, I ran my finger across a soft petal. My hand found a pink ribbon tied around the stem, then a tag hanging from the ribbon. e tag said in Adam’s scrawl, “YES it’s for you.” I let a little laugh escape even as my eyes filled with tears.
He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me one rose. On the other hand, there was no need to stuff it down the garbage disposal. Maybe Adam and I could be friends again after all. Someday. Besides, I adored the scent of roses: perfume and dirt. I put the blossom to my nose, inhaled deeply, grinned, and headed to work.
Another rose lay atop the woodpile.
A third was tied to an oak tree with a hangman’s noose fashioned from kudzu vine.
A fourth stuck out of a broken brick in the seawall.
A fifth lay across the handles of the doors into the marina. ey all smelled so lovely, my blood pressure hardly went up when Mrs. Vader shrieked at me, “Where have you been?”
She must have freaked out because the marina was already swamped with customers. e Crappy Festivities today were divided among the town swimming park and the three biggest marinas on this section of the lake, including ours. We got the crowning of the Crappy Queen. I wished we got a more interesting event, such as the Crappy Toss. I could have thrown a dead fish as far up the beach as anybody. e Crappy Queen contest was just a bunch of high school girls parading up and down the wharf as Mr. Vader called their names and announced the weights of the biggest fish they’d caught all year, and what bait they’d used. At least the event did its job of bringing customers in.
Well, if Mrs. Vader wanted me there sooner, she should have told me the day before. “Where have I been?” I repeated. “I get asked that a lot for some reason.” She took the roses from me without comment and shoved me into the showroom, where a small crowd of people in shorts and flip-flops milled between the displays.
“It’s been a revolving door in here since we opened this morning,” she hissed. “People want to buy wakeboards, and they want to buy them from you.”
“Wow! Really?” I’d feel a little guilty selling people wakeboards, considering my experience two days before. But after all, my wreck was caused by a brain cloud and a broken heart, not equipment failure. I patted my head to make sure my bangs hung down over my stitches.
“Yes, really!” Mrs. Vader said. “Adam’s been covering for you, but he just mumbles at customers.”
“Where is Ad—,” I started to ask. en I saw his broad back, and the door to the warehouse closed behind him. Where he’d stood, a rose protruded from behind a Liquid Force on the wall.
He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me six roses. But I did extract the new rose carefully and put it with the others in the vase Mrs. Vader set on the counter. Then I found another rolled up in the boat twine, and still another lying across the containers of worms.
In the late morning, as I manned the cash register (after pulling out the rose inside), Dad and Frances came in. My heart pounded when I saw Frances. I wanted to vault over the counter and throw my arms around her. Instead, I asked her in a British accent, “Please, marm, are you to be my new mother?”
“Lori!” my dad burst out. Flushing red, he realized he desperately needed a new slalom ski right then, and bolted for the display.
Frances watched him go. “Very funny,” she told me through her teeth. en she leaned across the counter, kissed me on the forehead, and gave me a grudging smile.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you, marm.”
She reached for my hand. “What a beautiful ring.” She moved my finger back and forth so the ring glittered under the fluorescent lights, and smiled at me again. “Your mother would be proud of you.”
“What a pretty dress,” I said. “Is it hemp?”
Holding her chin high, she said self-righteously, “It’s organic cotton.” She took a long whiff of the roses. “You and Adam have gotten yourselves in a mess, I hear. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ Sir Walter Scott.”
I patted her hand. “That’s nice, dear.”
“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Alexander Pope.”
I squinted across the showroom. “I think I have a customer.”
My dad recovered and decided he could put off that slalom ski purchase after all. He came to the counter, put his hand on Frances’s back, and asked her, “Is Lori giving you lip?”
“She’s making fun of me!” Frances exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I’m offering her aphorisms and she’s making fun of me!”
“They do that.” Dad turned to me and said, “We’re going to wish Bill luck before the show. Aren’t you at least riding in the boat with the boys?”
“Ha! I’d rather go shopping.” Snort.
As Frances pushed open the door into the sunshine, she said something in Russian. Something long that she was determined to get out in full. Dad stood in the doorway and waited for her with a look of pure luv while she finished.
I didn’t need any sage advice on honesty and I definitely didn’t need any from Dostoyevsky. “ Do svidanya,” I muttered. en I realized the customer from across the showroom was approaching the counter. “Yes ma’am, may I help—” It was Tammy.