were taking care of it. And you are, right?” She leaned back to look into my face. Her own was filled with hope and expectation and confidence.
There was no choice here, none at all.
“You bet your britches,” I said, and hugged her hard. “Mrs. Neff and I will take care of everything.”
“Cool!” She slid off my lap. “Can I try on the dress again? I want to show Oliver.”
Obviously, I’d worked a miracle cure on her stomachache. She ran upstairs, her feet barely touching the treads, flying up as if she weighed nothing at all.
With love in my heart and anxiety everywhere else, I watched her go. Marina and I would take care of everything, I’d told her. Don’t worry about a thing, I’d said.
I blew out a sigh and got to my feet. If I was going to be mom, PTA secretary, bookstore owner,
Jenna and I stood side by side in the entrance to Tarver’s gym, both of us wide-eyed with astonishment. What had been an everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill elementary school gymnasium had been transformed overnight to a barn stuffed full of a summer’s harvest.
The metal joists overhead were wrapped with Styrofoam timbers. Brown canvas hung from fake timber to fake timber, mimicking a barn roof. On the stage, straw bales were stacked high to hide the slightly tattered curtain. Pumpkins, squash, and little teepees of corn were distributed all about, and tables made of barn wood held the punch bowl and cookies. It was a far cry from the brown and orange crepe and construction paper I’d been expecting.
“This is amazing.” I wondered if the money for the decorations had fallen from the sky, or if someone had won the lottery.
“It’s cool!” Jenna twirled, sending her dress out in a small circle. “I can’t wait until Dad sees.”
Since I was a volunteer minion for the dance committee, last week I’d told Richard I would bring Jenna to the school. “Not the most appropriate way for a man to pick up his date,” he’d said, and I was glad this man was the father of my children. The next thing he’d said reminded me of why we’d divorced. “But efficient. You’re learning, aren’t you?”
“There she is.” Jenna was waving at a girl in a pink dress that would have fit in nicely at a cocktail party. She was accompanied by a man who wore a pair of dress slacks, a dress shirt, and a hideously patterned tie. “That’s Bailey and her dad,” Jenna said. And she was off.
A year ago I’d almost worried myself to ulcers over Jenna and Bailey’s exclusionary friendship. I’d gently encouraged Jenna away from being best friends with Bailey, and had been relieved when she started calling Alexis again.
“What do you think?” Marina dug her elbow into my ribs. “Not bad for a bunch of amateurs, eh?”
“It’s gorgeous, but—” I stopped, not wanting to cast a stone into the still pond.
Marina winked. “But how—and more to the point
“Exactly.”
She raised her right hand. “The committee members know nothing, I swear it. We got an unsigned letter in the mail with a list of conditions, if you can believe it. Change the name of the dance, put in all these decorations, spike the punch—you know.”
I stared at her in amazement.
“We didn’t really spike the punch,” she whispered. “That was a joke.”
“You kept a secret from me,” I said. “You never keep secrets from me. You told me when Oliver lied for Jenna about who broke the lamp. You tell me what Claudia Wolff says about me. You tell me what you’re getting me for my birthday two months ahead of time.”
She gave me a pitying look. “There’s a first time for everything, mah dear. Surely, y’all know that.”
A return to the Southern belle, one of her favorites. I couldn’t speak with a good Southern drawl if my life depended on it. The only accent I could manage was a bad Canadian one, eh?
“So what do you think of the sign?” Marina waved her arms, conductor style.
I turned. “Oh . . .”
“Yeah.” Marina made a fist and thumped her chest. “Gets you right here, doesn’t it?”
It certainly did. Hanging high over the stage was a wide banner. Painted on the beige canvas were red and orange and yellow leaves with a scattering of brown leaves and acorns. The words, bold black and two feet tall, proclaimed this dance to be “The First Annual Sam Helmstetter Scholarship Fund Dance.”
“Beats our little Father-Daughter Dance sign all hollow, doesn’t it?” Marina nodded at a stenciled poster board.
“But . . . who?” I gestured at the sign, at the ceiling, at the whole kit and kaboodle. “This must have cost hundreds. Thousands.”
Marina shrugged. “Dunno. The letter was anonymous and the money came straight from the bank.”
“Anonymous? Do you think—”
“Nope. The Tarver Foundation didn’t have thing one to do with it. You should have heard that snotty-nosed lawyer when I called and asked. ‘The Ezekiel G. Tarver Foundation funds important, truly educational projects. A dance does not come close to the scope of the foundation’s mission statement.’ You’d have thought I was asking if they’d contributed money for a field trip to an AC/ DC concert.”
That sounded like the foundation, all right. But if not them, then who? “Why would someone donate all that money?” I mused. “Why would . . .” My question trailed off.
“What’s the matter?” Marina asked. “You look like your last friend just died, and since I’m standing right here I know that’s not true.”
“What if it was Sam’s killer who sent the money?”
Marina put her hands on her padded hips. “Once upon a time I thought you were a smart cookie, but now I realize it’s all an illusion. Why, pray tell, would a murderer want to name a dance after his victim? Why do all this?” She flittered her fingers. “Why start a scholarship fund for the kids?”
“Guilty conscience.”
Marina looked at me fondly. “You’re projecting again.”
“I’m what?”
“Like anthropomorphism. I know you think that Spot of yours is sad about being left alone all day. This is the same thing.”
“Spot is a killer?”
Marina made a rude noise in the back of her throat. “That dog wouldn’t know what to do with a squirrel even if he could catch it. No, silly one, I’m saying you’re projecting your emotions onto the killer. If you killed someone accidentally, you’d feel guilty enough to sign over the store and its contents to the surviving family members and work for free the rest of your life.”
“I’m not the only person with an overdeveloped sense of guilt.”
“Name ten.”
“One, my Grandma Chittenden. Two, Gus Eiseley. Three, Oliver. Four—”
But Marina had already moved on to another topic. “Say, did you hear about Brian Keller?”
“Um, he decided to leave his share of Rynwood Shredding to Rachel and is going to raise alpacas instead?”
She made a buzzing sound. “Wrong again. Someone posted on WisconSINs that Brian was in a car accident. Broken arm, which is nasty, but it could have been worse, so don’t get your tender heart all worked up.”
“What happened?”
“Who knows? It was dark, it was raining, some yahoo in a van ran a stop sign, and whammo!” She slapped her palms together with a meaty sound.
I winced.
“Worst part is the guy who hit him didn’t stop,” Marina said.
“Why do people do things like that?”
Marina shrugged. “Scared, probably.”
My cell phone rang. After fumbling through a collection of toys, small packaged snacks, loose change, and a
