Jar Of Dreams Part 17

"So how did you know about Jack's family? He's never mentioned any of them except his little brothers. He used to take them cookies and talk about them sometimes, but he doesn't anymore. He hardly talks at all."

Kelly didn't answer right away. She drove to the high school campus on the edge of town, waving at the deputy who was directing people into empty parking spots.

"His father embezzled money from the place where he worked," she said finally. "I'm the a.s.sistant prosecutor and I drew the short straw. He was a popular man, a husband and father, a model citizen who'd never been in trouble, even a deacon at his church. But he was in over his head and he stole money and I helped send him to jail." Without waiting for Lucy to answer, she got out of the car, slamming the door.

Lucy got out on the other side and spoke across the top of the Volvo. "Well, obviously it bothers you, but weren't you just doing your job?"

"It does and I was. The judge was unbelievably severe, slapping my hands because I didn't ask for enough of a penalty. The guy was a first-time offender, for G.o.d's sake, no more a threat to society than I am, but His Honor was in a punitive mood that day, and Jack's dad's paying the highest price that could legally be charged." Kelly led the way toward the entrance gate to the football field. "Unfortunately, Jack and his family are paying the price too, and that payment's just going to keep rippling out. You have little boys who only know the father they worshiped is gone, a wife who's so overwhelmed she doesn't know which end is up, and-" Her voice caught, and she struggled for a moment before going on, "-you have Jack, trying to be a man before his time."

"It's a shame." Lucy remembered when her father had hired Andy. Johnny had caught him sneaking out of the restaurant without paying and hauled him to the police station himself, scaring the stuffing out of him all the way. After a great deal of huffing and puffing and yelling while they were at the precinct, he'd dragged the boy back to the restaurant and shown him how to bus tables and run the dishwasher-shouting the whole time. Andy'd never left. "Did you get Jack the job with Gert?"

"Yes." Kelly hesitated. "But that's-"

"It won't go any further," Lucy promised. "I just wondered." And was glad to know.

They paid their way in, bought coffee at the concession stand and took seats in the home-side bleachers, waving at the fullback wearing number thirty on his black jersey. He nodded slightly in their direction, and the women grinned at each other. "I don't think he wants anyone to see he knows us," Lucy said. "You suppose it's because we're too old?"

"Can't be."

Lucy nodded. "You're right. You still sort of resemble a cheerleader. Daphne with an edge."

Kelly's whoop of laughter reminded Lucy painfully of Boone. As if in response to the thought, the cell phone in the hand-warmer pocket of her sweatshirt rang.

"Gert said you two were at the game," he said without preamble when she flipped the phone open. "Don't embarra.s.s the kid. When it's over and everyone talks to the players in the parking lot, don't hug him. Just say 'good job' and go on so he can pretend it's no big deal you guys came to watch him."

"His mother's not here. She works nights. And his dad's in jail."

"Yeah, I knew that part." He was silent for a few seconds. "Okay, go ahead and hug him. Try to rub the sweat line from his helmet out of his hair so he'll be embarra.s.sed-he'll like that. Tell Kelly 'hey.' I miss you."

"Same goes." She closed the phone and put it back into her pocket. "He says-"

"I know." His sister waved a hand. "He says 'hey.' I miss him something fierce. I didn't expect that after all the time he's lived away, but I do."

"Me too," Lucy said, and stood for the national anthem.

Taft's Warriors won the game. Lucy surprised herself by yelling until her throat hurt and even occasionally being able to find the football in the swarm of players on the field. Following Boone's suggestion, both women hugged Jack in the parking lot before heading back to the house.

It was easy to forget that the tall and well-muscled boy was just that-a boy. But there was a still-young fragility to Jack that Lucy felt when she'd hugged him, a narrowness through his ribcage that made her hold him an extra few beats in time. She'd wanted to cry, but knew he'd neither understand nor thank her for it.

"I want to check on Gert before I go home." Kelly got out of the car and followed Lucy inside.

"I'm going to get her some hot cider. Want some?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

A few minutes later, Lucy carried a tray with three mugs of cider into the room where the other women were talking. She sat in a wing chair with her feet on the bed while Kelly leaned up against the headboard beside her aunt.

"We used to do this sometimes when we were kids." Kelly reached for her cider. "Only I sat in the chair and the boys sprawled across the foot of the bed. They'd get to wrestling and Uncle Mike would toss them onto the floor. Then they'd pull him down there with them and they'd all wrestle."

Gert chuckled, though she coughed on the end of it. "Those were the days, weren't they?" She stroked Kinsey, who lay across her lap, and the little cat's constant purr became a rumble. "When my baby died, I thought my life was over. Then we lost your parents, Kelly, and you and Boone came here to live and Crockett came, too, a few months later. That was when I found out your family lives in your heart, and it doesn't matter a d.a.m.n who gave birth to them." She hugged Kelly to her and reached to pinch Lucy's sock-garbed toe. "Nope, not a d.a.m.n."

There you go, Lucy Goosy. What'd I tell you?

Boone hung up the phone from calling Lucy for the results of the football game and went back to the drawing board. There was Daphne, sitting in the bleachers in her formal gown with a beauty-queen sash across one bare shoulder, her hair swept into an elaborate updo. Her makeup and jewelry were exaggerated the way they always were, but she was still beautiful. Next to her sat- Who?

Drawing her was no problem. She had big green eyes and curly red-gold hair and wore a sundress with an ap.r.o.n even in the bleachers. She was Daphne's friend-probably a bit of a stretch-but what was her name?

He called Lucy back when he had the panel done. "You asleep?"

"No, I'm baking pecan pies for the soup supper," she said cheerfully. "But it is two o'clock in the morning. Stranger things have happened than people being asleep at that hour." Her voice changed perceptibly. "Are you calling to tell me you're not coming down tomorrow?"

"No, why would you think that?" Although he wasn't hurt by the disappointment he heard. Nope, not one bit hurt.

"Because it's two a.m. and you have a six-hour drive in front of you."

"Nah. I'm flying down. Crockett will get in at almost the same time and we'll be at the house about noon. Sims is picking us up. What I called to ask is, what did you want your name to be when you were a kid?"

"Anything but what it was."

"Aw, come on, give me something to work with."

"No, seriously. I love Lucille Ball, but when I was a little kid named Lucy with curly almost-red hair, I didn't. The only thing worse would have been Ethel."

"So what name would you have chosen?"

"Let me think a minute. I'm going to put the phone down while I put the pies in the oven. Don't hang up."

He pictured her moving the pies to the oven racks, her bottom lip captured between her teeth in a usually vain effort to keep from spilling something. G.o.d, he missed her. Noon seemed a long time away.

She returned in a couple of minutes. "Okay, you still there? I remember now. There was a waitress at the restaurant who taught me to make salads when I was little. She had bright red hair that came from the same bottle Lucille Ball used and big b.o.o.bs that may or may not have been real, and she wore big earrings. Sparkly dangly ones, with bracelets to match that slid up and down her arms. Her name was Gladys Marie, so for a year or so there, that's who I wanted to be. How's that?"

"Perfect. What was her last name?"

"Vojtasek."

"What?"

Lucy's laughter was like music. Oh, Lord, Brennan, you've got it bad. "Vojtasek," she repeated. "There's a 'j' in there-that's how I learned about silent letters. I was the only kid in the first grade who knew what they were before we learned to spell 'comb.' The teacher was really impressed with me until she found out I could spell 'Vojtasek' but not 'comb.'"

"So how do you spell it?"

"C-o-m-b."

"No, I mean Vo-" Her snort stopped him, and he grinned into the phone. "Never mind. What's your favorite color?"

"Green."

"Yeah, that's-"

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's blue. And I love fall colors."

He sighed. "What was your mother's maiden name?"

"Doyle. She used to say she married Dad because she already had monogrammed linens and that way she didn't have to change them. Of course, she didn't. Have monogrammed linens, I mean, though I've got a few pretty things that were hers. I think my grandmother made them. Not borrowed-grandmother Isobel, but real-grandmother Abaigeal. My mother's mother. She died before I was born."

For a minute there, he considered "Abaigeal," but he knew he couldn't spell that, nor could he insert the Gaelic accent that had slipped effortlessly into Lucy's voice. "Okay. I'm good." He scribbled "Gladys Doyle" on the paper in front of him. "So. What are you wearing?"

In the moment of silence that followed, he closed his eyes and imagined her trying to decide what to say. He chuckled silently, waiting.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked cautiously.

"Phone s.e.x. I've never done it, but I haven't seen you in two weeks and I'm willing to learn."

"We'll have a study session on it." He could have sworn her voice was blushing. But she laughed again, too, and he closed his eyes to store the sound behind his heart. "I'm hanging up now, Boone. See you tomorrow."

"'Night, Lucy John."

He disconnected and pored over the panel he'd drawn. It was good to be back in his studio. Convenient. But he didn't like the rest of the apartment anymore. It had been home with Maggie, a place they'd both loved. Now it was just a place.

Suddenly tired and aware he hadn't packed for the weekend at home-at Taft-he turned off the lights in the studio and went through the apartment, stopping to stare at the empty s.p.a.ce in the dining room where Maggie's piano had sat. He remembered when he'd given it away. He'd felt relief, as though he were shifting a weight off his shoulders.

He'd sorted things then, that same day, choosing remembrances for himself-her favorite coffee cup, the CD of children's music she'd recorded, a few photograph alb.u.ms, notes they'd left each other. A few weeks later, her sister and brother-in-law had come from Florida to visit and Boone had asked Emily to take what she wanted of Maggie's clothes and other personal items so he could give the rest to Salvation Army. Another weight'd gone away.

But the empty places remained. He'd never put a desk where the piano had sat, had never stored winter clothes in Maggie's closet or filled the shelves where her books had been.

He packed quickly and went to bed, lying in the room he'd shared with her and staring at the ceiling. He gave himself the luxury of thinking about his wife. Remembering the fun and funniness of their life together. But the memories were fading around the edges. He no longer recalled the exact sound of her voice or feel of her hair between his fingers. When he listened for her laugh, it was Lucy's he heard.

It was strange how it worked. The idea of Lucy replacing Maggie was untenable to even think about. People couldn't replace other people, couldn't fill those s.p.a.ces left by loss. But when they created places of their own, it was like the candle thing Gert had told him and Kelly about when they'd felt disloyal by being happy with her and Mike after losing their parents. She'd lit a whole box of candles, explaining that each of the tapers stood for a person, and the more you loved-or lit-the brighter the love and the light.

He turned on his side and stared toward the windows. The Chicago skyline was out there, beautiful and alive, and he still loved the excitement and convenience of the city. But he didn't want to live here anymore. It was no longer home.

Chapter Sixteen.

"I haven't missed a soup supper in over twenty years. They count on me. I can't believe you expect me to miss this one because I have a sniffle." Gert punctuated her tirade with a series of sneezes.

"You'll be there in spirit." Lucy handed her the dose cup of cold medicine. "I read the alcohol content in this. You'd be way over the legal limit anyway and Eli would be using you for an example from the pulpit. How embarra.s.sing would that be?"

Gert swallowed the orange liquid with a grimace. "Did you get all the pies taken over to the church without those boys getting into them?"

"I took them this morning before they got here. Eli helped carry them into the church, so I'm sure they've been gotten into by now."

"Probably." Gert sighed, but she smiled at the same time. The pastor was one of "her boys." She handed the dose cup back to Lucy. "There's that birthday party here at seven-thirty. I can be up in time to help with that."

"No, you can't. Kelly and I will both leave the church at seven so we'll be here for the party. Everything's already set up or on low in slow cookers in the kitchen. All we have to do is get the food into the dining room then stand aside in case anyone needs anything." Lucy handed the cup back. "Drink it all, like a good girl, and you can have a cookie."

"Make them leave by ten. They probably have a curfew anyway." Gert drained the cup. "I'll want a snickerdoodle. Actually, I'll want two. I earned them swallowing that stuff."

"The birthday girl is sixty and this is a get-together with her friends from high school, so they can probably stay out late."

"They can, and they'll think they want to, but the truth is they won't be able to stay awake. Take it from someone who knows." Gert gazed out the window of her room at where Crockett, Boone and Jack were raking leaves into huge piles and scooping them into orange plastic bags with jack-o-lantern faces on them. They were throwing nearly as many leaves at each other as they were getting into the bags. As Lucy and Gert watched, Crockett and Boone picked Jack up and tossed him into a freshly raked pile.

"I hate to admit it," Gert said, "but I wish they'd move back home. I miss seeing them."

Me too. One of them anyway. But Lucy didn't say it aloud. It might not be much of a secret, this love that seemed to be taking her over, body and soul, but she thought she'd try and keep it to herself anyway.

The four "young people," as Gert referred to them, walked to the church together. Crockett and Kelly were sarcastic and silent in turn, and Boone and Lucy finally rolled their eyes at each other and separated them. "I'm telling Aunt Gert," Boone complained, pushing Crockett and glowering over his shoulder at Kelly, "and she'll ground your a.s.ses, is what she'll do."

Eli St. John issued neon orange vests to the men when they got there. "We're playing poker after the supper. We put it off till the weekend so you two would be here. Maria's on call, so we're playing at Tom's house. She said we could as long as we cleaned up after ourselves and didn't let Tom gamble with the kids' college funds."

Boone frowned at him. "Does the congregation know you're a card shark?"

Micah joined them, reaching for his vest. "We know he thinks he is, but since he usually loses, we overlook it. Of course, there's the drinking, too."

Crockett and Boone spoke in unison. "Drinking?"

"Yeah, and he's not choosy. If someone else pays for it, he'll drink it."

Eli cleared his throat and took a moment to glower at everyone. "You are to tell people where to park. This does not mean we want them parking over at the Catholic or Baptist churches-they have their own dinners on different nights. This also doesn't mean you're to run into the middle of the street and tell people they have to come here. We want our customers to be willing and generous. You cannot accept tips. This means you're not to go around hiking up your pants leg, Boone. That doesn't work anyway."

"Told you it wouldn't." Crockett nodded sagely at Boone. "Especially with those legs."

Lucy snickered, then smiled brightly. "I've tried to tell you that about your legs, but you never listen to me."

Eli grinned. "If anyone asks you to park their car, because the parking lot gets a little wonky as it fills up, that's fine," he continued, "but don't let Boone do it. The church doesn't have enough insurance."

"I'll see you whenever you get back to the house," Lucy told Boone. "Kelly and I are going to work the party at seven, so don't come in drunk and disorderly while there are people there, okay? At least unless you're prepared to sing and dance."

Boone sniffed righteously. "I won't, but I'm not being responsible for Crockett. He's older than me so he should know how to behave, but you've seen for yourself how he is. We had to separate him and Kelly while we walked over here, for heaven's sake."

"Come on." Kelly pulled on Lucy's arm. "I don't want to have to dip vegetable soup. I get it all over me."

Lucy did too. The difference was, she didn't care, so she wasn't surprised to find herself at the stove, wearing an ap.r.o.n streaked with chili, vegetable, and oyster soup.

"You're awfully good at his." Jessie St. John, Eli's very pretty wife, took a bowl from her and handed her a gla.s.s of cider. "Are you having a good time?"

"I am." Lucy sipped. "This is from Miller's Orchard, isn't it? It is so good."

"The next church supper is in March, when we have the Welcome Spring ham dinner. Will you chair it?"