Wild Orchids Part 22

Truthfully, I was afraid Tessa wanted gnomes in the garden because she liked me.

I peeled Tessa off my body, stood her on the floor, and began picking up the papers.

"Who's that?" she asked, looking down at the photo of the recreated face.

As with most kids, Tessa conserved her energy and didn't help me pick up the papers.

"Just somebody," I said, shoving all the papers back into the cardboard envelope. I didn't want Jackie to see anything inside the packet, so I put it in plain sight on the hall table. I figured that if I hid it inside a book in the library on the top shelf, she'd find it in about three seconds.

"Okay," I said to Tessa. "What's this all about?"

"You bought the biggest gnome statue in the whole world and put him in the garden. He's wonderful and I love him. Thank you."

For a nanosecond it flashed through my mind that Jackie had got together with Dessie and commissioned a gnome statue. Sure. And a frog was coming next week.

I put my hand out for Tessa to take and we walked out to the garden together.

She was right.

Sitting in the shade on one of the old park benches Nate had repaired was what looked to be a gnome. Standing, it would have been about five foot four, with a big head, a powerful torso and short, strong limbs. The eyes were wide open, but sightless, the mouth slightly open. It had big eyes with thick lashes, a wide nose with a horizontal end, full lips, huge ears flat to the head, and long black and gray hair pulled back into a braid.

"Ssssh," Tessa said, pulling me by the hand. "He looks real, doesn't he?"

I let her lead me around the bushes to see the rest of the "gnome." He had on dark green pants, a worn yellow shirt, and a purple vest that was covered with hundreds of little enameled pins of insects. An entomologist's dream.

While Tessa went forward to get closer to the creature, I stood back and stared. He wasn't a statue, but a man. And he was sound asleep. He was sitting upright on a bench, his eyes wide open, but he was asleep.

Way inside my mind I knew I should be telling Tessa he was real and that she should get away from him, but I couldn't seem to move. Of course I knew who he was. It was just that I'd never seen him in person before.

Reaching out, Tessa touched the man's cheek. He didn't so much as move an eyelash, but I saw that he instantly went from asleep to awake. A light came into his eyes and he was looking at me.

"h.e.l.lo, son," said my father.

"h.e.l.lo, cousin," said my cousin n.o.ble as he stepped out of the bushes.

Both of them were smiling at me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Jackie All I wanted was to be with Russell. He made me feel good in a way I'd never felt before.

All my life I'd been accused of being angry. So many women I'd met had decided to play therapist and tell me that my sarcastic remarks stemmed from a deep anger inside me.

I could agree with that, but what I didn't agree with was when they said I should "let it all out." They weren't happy when I refused to tell them my deepest secrets. I think they thought I wasn't playing the girl-game by the girl-rules, which clearly state that everybody has to tell everybody else everything.

The truth was that I had no reason for my anger. The bad that had happened to me wasn't all that bad and in fact, I felt guilty for having any anger at all. In one town my dad and I'd lived in for a couple of years while I was in high school, my best friend confessed to me that her father got into bed with her at night and "did it" to her. She swore me to secrecy before she told me, but I didn't keep my word. I told my dad.

When the dust settled from the turmoil my father raised, he and I left that town.

No, I had nothing deep-seated to be angry over. It was just that for most of my childhood I'd felt torn in half. I loved my dad a lot, but I was also angry at him for not telling me about myself. As I'd grown up and seen and read about what went on in the world, I realized that something awful must have happened to make my father take me away in the middle of the night.

All I wanted was for him to tell me what it was.

But whenever I hinted at wanting to know about my mother, or the aunt he'd mentioned, my dad would either mumble something that contradicted what he'd said before or he'd clam up. It used to make me furious! It was especially infuriating because I could talk to him about anything else in the world. As I grew up, we girls would loftily inform each other about the birds and the bees. Then I'd go home and tell my dad every word, and he'd tell me what was true or not. Later, the girls would say, "You asked your dad that?!"

But my dad wasn't embarra.s.sed by anything. One time he said, "I used to be normal. Long ago I was like your girlfriends' fathers and was embarra.s.sed by s.e.x and other private matters. But when you go through what I did, it puts life in perspective."

Of course I asked him what he was talking about. What had he been through? But he wouldn't tell me.

So I had to control my anger over my father's refusal to tell me about our past. And I had to conceal my resentment over the fact that my father and I seemed to belong nowhere and to no one. How much I envied my friends'

families. I used to fantasize about huge Christmas dinners with fifty relatives at the table. I would listen avidly to my friends describing the "horror" of their holidays. They told how this cousin had done that dreadful thing, and that uncle had made their mother cry, and that aunt had worn a dress that shocked everyone.

It all sounded wonderful to me.

My father was a real loner. He and Ford would have been great friends.

They could have hidden inside books together. My father had his love for Harriet Lane who was long dead, and Ford had his late wife to love. That a sculpture of her could reduce him to tears showed how much he still loved her.

Oh, well. Ford's problems had bothered me until the Sunday I met Russell Dunne. With Russell, I felt a kinship that I'd never felt with another man. Physically, he was just my type: dark, elegant, and refined in a way that reminded me of my father. And Russell and I had so much in common, like photography and our love of nature. And we both liked the same kind of food. I hated the term "soul mate," but that's what flashed through my mind when I thought of Russell.

After I got home on Sunday night, I spent about an hour in the tub.

When the water grew cold, I got out, put on my best nightgown and robe, and sat on the little porch off my bedroom for a while. The night seemed especially warm and fragrant, and the fireflies looked like little jewels sparkling in the velvet air.

Just having such sappy thoughts almost made me sick. When other females had said dopey things like that about some guy, I'd nearly barfed. I even refused to read novels that were about falling in love with a man.

"Check his references," I'd say, then close the book.

Of course I'd done all the logical things with Kirk and had planned everything carefully, yet I'd still been hornswoggled. But at least I'd never rhapsodized about the color of his eyes or the "cute little way his nose crinkles." Gag me with a spoon.

I could have gone on and on about Russell Dunne, though. His eyes had little flecks of gold in them that caught the sunlight when he moved his head. His skin was the color of honey warmed in the sun. His beautiful hands looked as though they could play the music of angels.

Et cetera. I could go on-and did in my thoughts-but I tried to force myself to stop. I really tried to get my mind off of Russell and put it on my work-whatever my work was. I was still waiting for Ford to tell me how he wanted me to help him with his writing, but he never said anything.

Instead, I was a sort of housekeeper c.u.m hostess. Basically, if Ford didn't want to do it, it was my job.

On Monday, the day after I met Russell, I had a hard time keeping my mind on anything. There was a lot to do outside, and I still hadn't tackled the library and gone through the books in there. And of course I needed to go to the grocery. Also, I wanted to call Allie and set up a time for Tessa to come and pose for me so I could get my photography studio started.

On Sat.u.r.day my mind had been full of all the things I wanted to do, but after Sunday, I couldn't seem to remember any of them. Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and spent what seemed to be hours looking at the little printer Russell had lent me. He'd slipped a pack of photo paper in my bag, and after fiddling with the machine, I managed to produce an index print showing tiny, numbered pictures of every photo on the disk. I sat there staring at the pictures until I'd memorized them. Maybe I was hoping that a photo of Russell would appear on the disk, but it didn't.

Ford came thundering downstairs sometime during the day-I hadn't even put on my watch-and took over the printer. He had a real knack with machines so he figured out how to operate it in seconds. He punched b.u.t.tons and out came a big photo of the picnic Russell had laid out on the sweet gra.s.s.

I don't know what got into me, but I shoved that disk back into the camera and pushed the little garbage can icon as fast as I could. There was something so private about that scene that I didn't want anyone else to see it. And I knew that if I let him, Ford would make derogatory comments about our lovely picnic. Where was the fried chicken? he'd ask, thinking he was being amusing. The cooler full of beer? What kind of picnic was it with just a bunch of cheese and crackers?

No, I didn't want to hear his comments.

In my haste, what I didn't realize was that I was spiting myself. After I erased them from the disk, and burned the photos, including the index print, I had nothing for me to look at.

But such was my euphoria that I didn't get upset over my stupidity. Oh, well, I thought, I had my memories. And that thought nearly made me burst into song.

I carried Russell's card with his name and telephone number inside my bra, on the left over my heart. There wasn't a minute of the day that I didn't want to call him. But I had an ironclad rule: I didn't call men.

Of course I called Ford. I called him from the grocery on the cell phone he'd given me and asked if he wanted roast beef or pork roast. (He said, "I thought pork was cooked in a skillet.") I called him from the fruit stand to ask if he liked yellow squash. ("This is a joke, right?") And I called him from the service station to ask what kind of oil to put in the car. ("Don't let those monkeys touch my car. I will change the oil.") I could call Ford because I wasn't trying to impress him. Long ago I'd learned that you never called men you really, really wanted. Not for any reason. If you saw smoke coming out of his house, you called his neighbors and got them to save him. But you don't call a man.

I'd learned this lesson from years of living with a handsome, single man: my father. Sometimes I thought he moved from one place to another just to escape the women who pursued him. I was eleven before I knew what a kitchen was. My dad and I never had to use one because single women gave us food. "I had this left over and I thought you and your adorable little girl would like some," they'd say. One time I looked at the perfectly cooked ca.s.serole and asked how it could be "left over" when none of it was missing.

My dad, who sometimes had a wicked sense of humor, had stood there and let the poor woman flounder about in her attempt to answer me.

Truthfully, they didn't care about feeding my dad as much as they wanted a reason to call and ask after their "favorite dish." Always, but always, the women delivered food to my dad in their "favorite dish," as doing so gave them a reason to come back. Or call. Then call again. When we moved into a town, it wasn't unusual for my dad to change his telephone number four times in three months.

So, anyway, when I was growing up, I made a sacred promise to myself to never call a man I was interested in. I was sure that a man as beautiful as Russell Dunne had calls all night long, so I wanted to be different, unique.

I needn't have worried because Russell stopped by the house on Tuesday afternoon. I quickly maneuvered him into my studio because I didn't want Ford to see him. I couldn't imagine Ford being gracious about another man being around "his" a.s.sistant.

"I hope I didn't interrupt you," Russell said in that soft, silky voice of his.

Why hadn't I done something with my hair? I asked myself. "No, not at all," I managed to say. I wanted to offer him food. Actually, I wanted to offer him my whole life, but I thought I should start with lemonade. But Ford's meanderings were unpredictable so he could possibly wander into the kitchen while Russell was there.

"So where are your photos?" he asked, smiling at me in a way that made my heart flutter.

"You'll be my first," I said as I grabbed my dear F100, aimed and snapped. Isn't automatic focus great? I thought.

But I knew from the sound of the click that the picture hadn't taken. I glanced down at the LCD panel. No film.

No, I didn't burst into tears.

Russell was shaking his head at me and smiling. "You are truly naughty,"

he said in a way that made me blush. If Ford had said those same words I would have said something about dirty old men, but when they came out of Russell's mouth they were s.e.xy.

"I want to see everything," Russell said and I started talking.

I showed him the equipment Ford and I had chosen, and I told him Ford's idea of putting retractable awnings over the windows. I told him about the afternoon Ford and I had painted the interior of the storage room, and how Ford and Nate had put the shelves up for me.

"You seem pretty attached to this man," Russell said.

I nearly fell for that trick, but since I'd seen my father use it a thousand times with a thousand women, I caught myself. I used to look away in embarra.s.sment when a woman would turn verbal somersaults as she tried to make my father believe that there was no other man in her life.

"Yeah, I am," I said, looking at the floor as though Russell had pried some great secret out of me. I tilted my head up to see how he was taking this news. I was pleased to see that he was looking a little surprised. Good, I thought, since I didn't want him to know how I felt about him.

"I guess I'll just have to try harder, won't I?" he said, smiling.

I took a tiny step toward him, but Russell looked at his watch.

"I have to go," he said, and was at the door before I could reach him.

Pausing, he stood there for a moment, a ray of sunlight on his cheek.

"Jackie," he said softly. "I think I said too much the other day about... You know."

I did know. About the woman who was crushed. "That's all right," I said.

"I don't mind."

"It was all long ago and-" Breaking off, he gave me a grin that made me weak-kneed. "Besides, who knows? The woman may actually have been in cahoots with the devil. I heard she used to have visions."

"Visions?" I said, blinking fast and not trusting my voice. He was trying to be lighthearted, but I wasn't feeling very light. In fact, I wanted to sit down.

"Yeah. She had visions of evil deeds. No one in town could do anything bad because she saw what they were going to do before they did it."

I swallowed. "But wouldn't visions like that be a gift from G.o.d? To be able to stop evil would be from G.o.d, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps," he said. "I think it started out that way, but her visions got stronger until she began to see the evil in people's minds. It was said that she-" Breaking off, he waved his hand, as though he meant to say no more.

"What?" I whispered. "What did she do?"

"My father said she started preventing people from doing what she saw in their minds."

I didn't like to think about what that meant. I put my hands to my temples.

"I've upset you," Russell said. "I knew I shouldn't have told you about what happened. It's just that I've carried these secrets so long and you seem so caring. It's as though..." He didn't finish his sentence.

"I am," I said. "It's just-" I didn't want to say what was in my head. I couldn't very well tell him that I'd had two visions, a car wreck and a fire.

What if I next saw that someone was plotting to kill someone else? How would I stop it?

Russell looked at his watch again. "I really must go. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," I said, trying to smile.

"How about lunch this weekend?" he asked. "Another picnic? And no ghost stories."

"Promise?" I said.

"Sacred honor. I'll call you to set up time and place." Then, with one more brilliant flash of a smile, he was gone.

Leaning back against the wall, I tried to still my pounding heart. The first vision had upset me a lot, and when I'd seen it in reality, I'd been shocked into immobility. The second time, Ford had been there and the whole thing had been almost fun.