A Perfect Love Read online

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too, baby.”

  Cleta walked to the waiting area, caught Russell’s attention, and pointed him toward Barbara’s room. He rose and went instantly, and Cleta blinked back tears as her eyes sought Floyd.

  Floyd had been right. Russell didn’t deserve a cotton candy–pink bedroom. What had she been thinking?

  She’d have to change it—maybe she ought to put the old spread back on, the one Russell liked. After all, they’d be moving soon, that much was evident. And in a year or two or three there’d be grandchildren, either biologically or through the miracle of adoption. Either way, Cleta might find another use for that cotton candy–pink fluff—maybe a little girl’s bedroom, with ballerina prints on the wall.

  Change. Micah had done his best to point out that pruning did a plant—and a person—good.

  When Barbara and Russell moved out, she wouldn’t see her Doodles every day, though Barbara might insist they would. Oh, they’d come for Sunday dinners, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. Barbara respected her and Floyd. There never was any doubt of that. But when a baby came, colds and colic and other things would get in the way of coming back to visit Heavenly Daze.

  Cleta closed her eyes against the need to cry for the loss of what had been. As Micah said, she had to embrace the new. But what was the new? What would be her new relationship with Barbara? More friend than mother? More mentor than friend? Could she accept that?

  Yes, she would accept it—even grow to love it, for if she didn’t, she would have no relationship with her daughter. And somewhere in the distance, if God was good, their roles would reverse yet again. When Cleta and Floyd were bent with years, Cleta would be the child and Barbara the caregiver. Barbara would wipe her mother’s chin and spoon soup into her mouth.

  It was the garden all over again, the circle and cycle of life. As plants bloomed and died, new ones grew up to take their places. Just as people left this earthly garden to move to a heavenly landscape where they would bloom forever.

  That thought gave her comfort.

  After sitting with Floyd a while, Cleta returned to the hospital room. Russell was occupying the worn vinyl chair, his hand outstretched toward Barbara’s, Barbara’s fingers resting on his palm.

  Cleta walked over and squeezed his shoulder. “The nurse said she’d sleep most of the day.”

  “I know.” Russell’s voice sounded thick.

  The light on the phone blinked, so Cleta picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Cleta?”

  “Micah! How are things at the house?”

  “Fine, how are things there? I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help.”

  “We’re doing great.” Cleta lifted her arm, stretching her stiff joints. Hospital chairs could be murder on a person’s bones.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”

  “Well—” Cleta looked at her long-suffering son-in-law. “There is one thing, Micah. Will you run over to the mercantile and see if Vernie has a chocolate cake mix and a pound of walnuts? I have an awful strong urge to bake a chocolate fudge cake with walnut icing.”

  The gardener laughed. “I’ll have the ingredients waiting when you get home.”

  Stretched out on his bed, Buddy laughed as Roxy nibbled at his big toe. The sun would be down in an hour, and, true to her nature, his little pet was awake and wanting to play.

  Outside, snow drifted down like silver fleece shorn from a woolly sky, but the thermometer on the wall of Buddy’s room read eighty-six degrees—not quite ninety, but Buddy wasn’t worried about Roxy taking a chill. Yesterday, in a brainstorm born of desperation, he’d remembered a box of old toys Dana had stashed away. So, after church, Buddy went into the workroom, burrowed through dozens of dusty boxes, and finally found the mother lode. Inside, tossed together in a jumble of vinyl, hair, and shiny fabrics, was Dana’s Barbie-doll collection, complete with accessories.

  An hour later, Buddy had designed what he hoped would be a workable outfit for Roxy—clothing comfortable for the animal, yet warm enough for Buddy to keep the temperature at something less than tropical heat wave. The sugar glider now wore a pink tutu from Barbie’s ballet ensemble, featuring a stretchy top and about six inches of netting. Buddy had to trim away three inches of net in the front to keep Roxy from tangling her toenails in the stuff, but the form-fitted top suited the critter just fine. There were even little cap sleeves that slipped over her arms and dangled just below her shoulders—

  “Ouch, Roxy! Don’t bite so hard!” Buddy jerked his toe out of range of the animal’s sharp front teeth. He reached for one of the monkey biscuits he’d picked up at the mercantile. “Eat these, and leave my toe alone!”

  Rolling onto his stomach, he buried his face in his pillow as the persistent animal barked for his attention. Who’d have thought that a six-inch marsupial would work him harder than a drill sergeant? From sunrise to well past sundown he worked for Roxy, hauling firewood, searching for driftwood, preparing her food, cleaning her cage, stoking the fire, training her to sleep in her pouch and eat from his hand. And at night, when Buddy was dead tired and ready to hit the rack, that’s when Roxy wanted to play. If he turned out the light to go to sleep, she began to bark. In order to silence her barking, he had either to leave the light on or put her in the pouch around his neck. Trouble was, after dark Roxy never wanted to stay in the pouch, she wanted to race up and down his bed, wriggle beneath the covers, sharpen her teeth on his toenails, and peek into Buddy’s ears. Though Buddy desperately wanted to sleep, he found himself playing nursemaid and nanny to a fourteen-week-old sugar glider who was only beginning to discover the wonders of the wide, wide world . . .

  Yesterday he’d gotten his best sleep in weeks . . . from two to five o’clock in the afternoon, when he should have been out combing the beach for driftwood. When he woke it was too dark to search, and this morning he’d been forced to burn three stacks of his precious Superman comic books just to keep the room at a lukewarm eighty-five degrees.

  He loved his pet, honestly he did. Roxy could charm the whiskers off a lobsterman, and the quiet shushing sounds she made as she settled into her pouch each morning were music to his ears. She did keep him company, and since her arrival he didn’t feel as lonely as he used to.

  But as he lay on his bed and struggled to keep his eyes open, he wondered why he still didn’t feel complete.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On the morning of Basil Caldwell’s poetry awards ceremony, Dana’s alarm clock woke her at 6:30 AM. Bounding out of bed in the darkness, she shivered her way into the shower where the water took fifteen minutes to heat. After dressing in jeans, wool socks, and her heaviest wool sweater, she tiptoed back through the dark bedroom (where Mike had not budged) and went downstairs to the kitchen. She tuned the small television to Good Morning, Maine, then plugged in the coffeepot and made toast while the weatherman predicted a high of twenty-two, low minus fifteen. The snow, thank goodness, had stopped falling.

  Dana reached into the refrigerator and shivered at the touch of cold air. Basil and his media crew would freeze their noses off on the ferry—they’d probably all crowd into the cabin with Captain Stroble, who wouldn’t have room to turn around. Most Maine folks were tough, but the inland folks didn’t know what cold was until they’d spent a little time on the water in winter.

  As the radiators in the kitchen clanged and hissed, Dana drank her coffee, ate two slices of buttered toast, then checked her “to-do” list. First on the list was a call to Pastor Wickam, but she waited until the clock struck seven-thirty before she picked up the phone. “Good morning, Pastor,” she said when he answered. “Just wanted to remind you that you promised to grill a couple of turkeys for the dinner today.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, Dana.” The pastor’s voice was crusty with sleep. “Guess I’ll go set up the grill.”

  “No need to rush, Pastor. We probably won’t eat until around two or three, dependi
ng upon how long the ceremony lasts. But since Basil and his people won’t even arrive until the noon ferry docks, I don’t think we’ll get started until one.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks for calling.”

  “Um, Pastor—” Dana bit her lip. The situation with Mike had not improved in the last week—he’d kept his secret, and she’d kept hers. He’d been cold, distant, and even more devoted to his eBay business, and she’d thrown herself into preparations for the awards ceremony and the celebration dinner to follow.

  For the last few days she and Mike had been living like two strangers in one house, conveniently managing to avoid a single honest conversation, and Dana knew the stalemate had to end. She and Mike needed to talk about Jodi Standish, and they needed to be completely honest with one another. But before she confronted her husband, it might be nice to get advice from a man of God.

  “Pastor, I’d like to talk to you sometime about me and Mike. Things aren’t going as well as they should be, and I . . . well, to be blunt, I think Mike’s been seeing a woman in Ogunquit.”

  A moment of astonished silence rolled over the phone line, then Pastor Wickam cleared his throat. “Perhaps you’d like to talk to Edith. She’s up, making a pot of tea, so if you’d like to come over—”

  “I can’t come today, Pastor. There’s too much going on here. But I’ll try to stop by later, OK? Maybe tomorrow.”

  Dana hung up and placed a bold check mark next to the first item on her list. Tomorrow’s heartbreak could take care of itself; she had enough to worry about today.

  The sour scent of something funky woke Buddy from a sound sleep. Propping himself on his elbows, he crinkled his nose and looked at Roxy’s cage . . . then realized that he’d fed her too much the day before. “Sugar gliders do not usually smell,” the glider book had assured him. “If you do notice an odor, you have either fed them too much, or you have fed them the wrong things. Remove the soiled bedding, then cut back on the feeding or change to an approved diet and your little pet will be stink-free once more.”

  “Roxy!” Buddy held his nose as he sat up. The petite animal curled in her pouch, oblivious to his discomfort.

  He glanced at the thermometer on the wall. The temperature in his room had fallen to sixty-nine degrees, which meant the fire in the woodstove had guttered and died during the night. He had to crank up the stove, and quickly . . .

  Slipping into his jeans, down jacket, and boots, he ran out to the woodpile, the strings of his boot laces flapping around his ankles. Wincing beneath the sting of the cold air, Buddy used a rock to chip ice away from two split logs at the top of the stack, then scooped them into his arms and jogged back to the carriage house. Dropping the logs on the floor, he slammed the door and bent forward, panting, until he caught his breath.

  “I hope you appreciate this,” he told Roxy as he stood shivering in his coat. He opened the firebox of the stove, slid the logs onto the glowing coals, then tossed a couple of fire-starter cones on top of the logs. Finally, after the flick of a match, the pine cones burst into flame. Buddy waited until the bark of the logs began to crackle before he shut and sealed the door.

  The warmth was welcome, but the smell of wood smoke did nothing to camouflage the sugar-glider stink. Hugging his knees, Buddy made a face, then did some quick computations. A thorough cage cleaning would require him to open and close the door several times, and with the temperature already so low, he couldn’t risk Roxy taking a chill.

  He searched his room for a moment, then found the little mesh-and-cardboard box under his bed. Taking the pouch from the cage wall, he dropped it through the little doorway, then set the temporary pet carrier on top of the warming wood stove.

  There. Roxy would have the warmest spot in the room while he cleaned, and with any luck, he’d be rid of the stinking mess before Dana’s intellectual friends descended upon the house. She had expressly told Buddy she wanted him to attend some one o’clock shindig she was throwing, followed by a spectacular lunch buffet. Buddy didn’t care much for high-society shindigs, but the buffet sounded promising.

  He yawned, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of sleepiness, and then crawled toward his bed. The rumpled pillow and thick comforter looked inviting, but as he lifted himself off the floor a wave of stink assaulted him right between the eyes, knocking the sleepiness clean out of him.

  Maybe he’d clean the cage first and catch a nap later.

  Sitting up in bed, Mike listened to Dana banging pots and pans downstairs, then he looked at the clock. Nine o’clock. He’d slept half the morning and Dana hadn’t even popped in to see if he was sick or something.

  He bent his knees and lowered his head, trying to cast off the lingering fog of sleep. He hadn’t rested well; he felt as though he had tossed and turned half the night. A lady in Florida had received the wrong print, and it’d taken him until after midnight to sort out the difficulty. Then he had to send a conciliatory e-mail and promise to set things right, then he’d worried that she would post negative feedback on eBay, ruining his perfect record.

  He shook his head in dismay. Not that Dana cared about any of this. His wife was all keyed up about Basil Caldwell and his snooty friends; she’d talked of nothing else for days. She hadn’t bothered to discover that he, her husband, had earned his purple star. The purple star on eBay proved at least five hundred people agreed that he was a fair, honest, and efficient merchant, but Dana hadn’t bothered to notice, or even ask why he had been putting little purple stars on his mailing labels. Worst of all, he had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t even appreciate all that a purple star meant.

  A man was what he did for a living, and for the first time in his twenty-nine years, Mike felt he had found his niche . . . and his wife didn’t have a clue. And what did it profit a man if he sold every last item in his warehouse at 1,000 percent profit and lost his own wife?

  Reluctantly leaving the warm cocoon of his bed, Mike rose and slipped into a pair of jeans and his most comfortable sweatshirt, then jammed his feet into his fur-lined moccasins and crept downstairs. Habit nearly drew him to the computer in the dining room, but he resisted the impulse. Pulling his coat from a hook by the door, he shrugged his way into it, then fitted a knitted cap over his tousled hair and strode out the front door.

  The day that opened before him offered the intriguing combination of a frigid wind and a warm sun—rather like his wife’s mood of the last few days. Dana smiled at the prospect of her party, and frowned at the sight of her husband. Cold waves practically radiated from her, and Mike had instinctively withdrawn, preferring the friendly enthusiasm of his customers to the frosty attitude of his wife.

  He didn’t know what had happened between them— all he knew was for the first time in his marriage he needed help. Ordinarily he’d have asked Yakov for advice, but now he needed the kind of advice only a married man could give.

  Last night’s snow still dusted the ground, crunching beneath his moccasins as he skimmed the lawn between his house and the Lansdowns’. He ducked into his coat and lengthened his stride as he crossed the graveled church parking lot. The wind whistled around the steeple and rattled the clapboards, but Mike didn’t even look up. A moment later he was climbing the porch steps of the parsonage.

  Edith Wickam didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Dressed in a quilted robe with a kerchief over her curlers, she opened the door and nodded pleasantly. “Winslow’s out back,” she said, leading Mike through the living room and into the kitchen. Wearing a secretive smile, she pointed to the back door. “He’s right out there; you can’t miss him.”

  Mike stepped back out into the cold. “Hello, Pastor.”

  Winslow nodded, then pointed to a black grill standing on a slab of concrete. “Got a pair of turkeys in there. I figure they’ll be ready by one o’clock if they don’t freeze first.” He forced a laugh, then pointed back toward the stairs. “Come inside, Mike. We’d have to be daft to stand out here and talk. I thought you might be dropping by.”

  “You
did?”

  “Ayuh. But let’s get warm before we discuss it, shall we?”

  A few minutes later, after Edith had served two steaming cups of apple cider and discreetly disappeared, Winslow drew a deep breath and folded his hands on the kitchen table. “Tell me what’s on your mind, son.”

  “It’s Dana.” Mike fingered the rim of his mug as he sorted his thoughts. “I always thought we had a good marriage, but lately she’s been like ice . . . and it has nothing to do with the weather. I saw her in Ogunquit having lunch with that Basil Caldwell fellow last week, and though I know he’s just an old friend from high school, well, it still felt strange to look through the restaurant window and see them in there together.”

  “It may have been completely innocent, Mike. Did you ask her about it?”

  “Pastor, she wore a dress.”

  Winslow whistled softly. “In January? That’s something.”

  Mike nodded. “That’s what I thought. I didn’t ask her about it because she told us all about it at dinner. Basil Caldwell is having some kind of poetry contest, and somehow Dana got mixed up in it. And she’s all worked up about him coming over this afternoon—honestly, I’ve never seen her so excited. Meanwhile, I’m busting my buns trying to make a living for us, and she acts like she doesn’t give a flip.”

  Winslow lowered his hands. “I don’t mean to be intrusive, Mike, but remind me—you guys live mostly off her trust fund, right?”

  Mike felt heat creeping up his neck. “Hers and Buddy’s, ayuh. But Buddy’s money goes mostly to pay off his debts, and most of ours goes to pay for the house— these antique houses are expensive to maintain, you know.”

  The corner of the pastor’s mouth dipped in a chagrined smile. “Oh, I know. My thirty-dollar border idea has mushroomed into a four-thousand-dollar renovation.”

  Mike plunged ahead. “But this month I earned a purple star on eBay, and for the first time I think I’ll be able to bring in a monthly amount equal to her trust fund income. So I finally feel like I’m doing something, being the man—”