teenagers!
For our children we reach out to the world and look at it differently. For me, my son became a small vessel I could fill with all the fairy tales and myths I’d loved. He gave me a chance to again read books that I’d grown too old for. And, night after night, I told him stories, always with a brown-eyed boy as the hero. Sometimes he would tap me on the shoulder as I drifted asleep and beg. “Don’t stop. Keep telling the story.” And, captive to his delight, I would continue.
Children teach us to view the people in our lives in a new way. My love for my husband deepened after I saw how our infant son reached in and with one powerful, baby grip grabbed and held on to my husband’s heart for the rest of his life, enriching it and giving it meaning, changing him.
Reminding us of life’s fragility, our babies teach us to fill each moment with love, to make every moment count. They are a gift, these babies, our bundles of incredible joy.
With affection and joy,
Chapter One
Fanning herself with the folded Manatee Creek News she’d found on the stoop, Phoebe huddled in the porch swing, suitcases piled beside the front door.
Sooner or later Murphy would come home. He had to.
Because she’d just bet her last dime that he would be here. No, not her actual last dime. After buying the plane tickets and paying the taxi from the airport, she had fifty dollars left. Heck, by some folks’ standards, she reckoned she should count herself a wealthy woman.
The swing creaked, rusty chain rubbing against wicker and metal, the sound loud in the hot afternoon silence.
Her daughter’s sticky body was plastered tight against Phoebe as the little girl kicked the swing back and forth with both sneakered feet. Her small, pointed face was peony-pink from the heat.
“Nice breeze.” Lightly tapping the end of Frances Bird’s button nose, Phoebe lifted a hank of sweat-damp hair away from her own neck. “Thanks, baby. Every little breath of air helps.”
In the heat and humidity, Phoebe’s fine, curly hair stuck to her cheek, frizzed. Her lipstick had worn off hours earlier, and the makeup she’d applied so carefully in the fresh morning air of Wisconsin had long ago melted off her face. If she could muster the energy, she supposed she ought to slather on a bright red lipstick, show Murphy a happy face. And she would, too, once she found an ounce of get-up-and-go. Giving credit where credit was due, though, she had gotten up and gone. But now she was here.
And here she’d stay.
Until she talked with Murphy.
The swing wobbled, tilted, as Frances Bird shifted. “I’m thirsty, Mama. I want a cool drink, and I need it now.”
“Patience, Bind.” She tugged her not-quite-a-baby to her. The warm, little-girl scent rose to Phoebe, and she rested her cheek against her daughter’s sweaty forehead and inhaled.
Terrifying, the weight of all this love.
With a wiggle, Frances Bird braced her heels against the wooden porch boards and shoved, sending the swing careening to one side. “Don’t have any patience left. I am parched,” she said, all reasonableness as she stuck her face close to Phoebe’s. “And I would very much like a soda pop. With ice.”
At the moment, Phoebe would have settled for ice. A bucket full. She’d dump ice down the neck of her T-shht, slick the coolness over her neck.
“Maybe there’s a water spigot on the side of the house.” Standing up, Phoebe took Bird’s hand. “That’s the best I can do right now, dumpling.”
“If it has to be, it has to be,” Frances Bird said on a long sigh, straight-as-a-stick brown hair flopping into her eyes.
Watching her daughter’s woebegone expression, Phoebe decided the McAllister women were into sighing altogether too much. Sighing could become a real unattractive habit if she didn’t watch herself. She allowed her voice to take on an edge of tartness. “Come on, Frances Bird. Don’t mope. It’ll be an adventure.”
“Won’t be.” Frances Bird stood and clumped down the stoop with Phoebe, sneakers smacking each step.
They found the spigot at the back of Murphy’s house. “What a mess.” Frowning, Phoebe yanked at the weeds and woody vines screening the lumpy hose lying on the sandy ground. She wrapped the hem of her T-shirt around the hot metal faucet and twisted. Sun-heated, the hose bucked and heaved in her hands, spewing brown water into her eyes and down her arms. “Whoa!”
“Yuck.” Frances Bird leaped backward and wrinkled her nose at the murky brown water splashing onto her legs. “Hot!”
“Water’s water, sugar-dumpling. Let it run. It’ll cool in a second. And when it does,” Phoebe smiled teasingly and waggled the hose at her, “you’re going to be all wet, my darling girl”
“No!” Frances Bird darted behind Phoebe. “You. Not me.” She wrestled for the hose, and Phoebe let the soft plastic uncoil into Frances Bird’s hands. Soaking them, water sprayed and splashed in spar ling drops that clung to Frances Bird’s hair like a rainbow halo.
“It’s as cool as it’s going to be.” Phoebe held the hose steady while her daughter drank. “Well, dumpling, good thing you’re not all dressed up. You have as much water outside you as in.”
Frances Bird shook her head. Water arched, then silvered down to the ground. Looking up, she smiled. “Yes. Water,” she said blissfully and jumped feet first into the mud, happy for the first time that day.
Phoebe let her play. There was no rush. They weren’t going anywhere.
Squashing down her anxiety, she chased Frances Bird. Bird chased her back until they were both breathless, their bare feet covered in pale mud. “Enough, enough,” Phoebe finally panted as she shook sopping strands of hair out of her eyes.
With one final spray of the hose for each of them, she turned off the spigot, leaving the hose neatly coiled underneath. When they returned to the front of the house and its empty driveway, anxiety twisted the knots in her stomach tighter.
Still no Murphy. What would they do if he didn’t come home until after midnight? What if he’d gone out of town? She should have called, she knew she should have. Oh, what a fool she’d been not to call.
But she hadn’t. Couldn’t.
Every woman had her limits. She’d hit hers.
Hiding her apprehension, she plopped down on the step beside Frances Bird, gasping, but finally, blessedly cool.
The sun was edging the tip of the thick, moss-draped branches of the live oaks at the front of Murphy’s house when she heard the rumble of an engine.
She didn’t have time to catch her breath.
