While Madge walked to the back office in rhythm to the catchy tune, Judy checked her watch. When she looked back at Barbara, her gaze was filled with disappointment. “Unfortunately, I’ve only got about half an hour before the first of my afternoon appointments at the Towers, so I won’t be able to stay while you check the pieces for any damage. Why don’t you open the display case? At least I have enough time to help you take the pieces back to your office. I’d call to cancel the appointments if they were in the shop. My customers there wouldn’t mind a last-minute cancellation half as much, but the seniors…well, that’s not your problem, it’s mine. Anyway, as soon as I finish up at the Towers, which should be by five o’clock, at the latest, I’ll pick Brian up from the after-school program. There’s no way I can bring that child here, though. I’ll see if I can find a sitter. Maybe one of my neighbors would mind him, under the circumstances, and I can come back tonight. That’s assuming you can come back—”
“Judy! You’re rambling. Stop!” Barbara almost chuckled out loud when the woman snapped her mouth shut and blushed again. “Take a deep breath.”
She did.
“Now another.”
She did.
Barbara sighed. “Life is a whole lot more complicated for me now, too, especially when John has evening appointments, which he does most nights these days. But don’t worry about staying while I check the pieces for damage. Once we get them to the back room, it won’t take me long to check them over, and in the meantime, you can go ahead and keep your appointments at the Towers,” she insisted and absently smoothed the hair on the back of her head. For the first time in months, she felt self-conscious about neglecting her hair, but blamed her vanity attack on the fact the Judy was a professional hairdresser who certainly must have noticed how wretched her hair had become.
Judy smiled, however, for the first time since she had entered the shop. “I can’t thank you enough for being so understanding, but I can do your hair for you. After hours. During hours. At the salon, or your house, or mine. It’s the least I can do. I know you’re Ann’s customer, but I don’t think she’d object.”
Barbara swallowed hard and focused on retrieving pieces of the wildflower canister set. “I’ve been too preoccupied and too…” She tried to choose her words carefully. Judy was merely an acquaintance, not a friend, and Barbara was not prone to talking about such private issues, anyway.
“Too overwhelmed?” Judy prompted.
Barbara nodded. “Good choice. I was trying to think of a word that wouldn’t make me sound like I was whining.”
Judy set down her purse and the box of baked goods before carefully lifting a cruet from the display case. “Overwhelmed is just one of the words that came to mind. I could have said exhausted or overtired or stressed out or pressed for time or too proud to ask for help—”
“Who needs help?” Madge asked as she blew back into the front of the shop.
“Oh, not me,” said the hairdresser.
“Not me,” said the shopkeeper.
Madge gave each of them a hard stare. “‘“Then I’ll do it myself,” said the little red hen,’” she said, reminded of the old nursery tale of the little red hen who had to do all the work of making bread by herself because no one would help her until the bread was baked and ready to be eaten. In this situation, however, Barbara and Judy were not offering to help. They just needed someone to help them, and Madge was determined to be that someone. “Look, I’ve known you both for years, and I’ve been raising Sarah for two years now, at a time in my life when I thought I’d be enjoying my grandchildren, not another child. So I think I know a little bit about how much your lives have changed in the past few months and how much your lives will change even more in the coming years.”
She held up her hand when Barbara tried to respond. “I know my circumstances are also very different. I chose to adopt Sarah. You two are far more noble. You’ve both accepted responsibility for your grandchildren without question and without hesitation, all the while dealing with heartache I can only imagine. So…here’s the plan. You two get all the pieces of the canister set to the back room and finish up whatever work you have for the afternoon, but don’t worry about dinner tonight. I just talked to Russell about it. Bring the children and meet us at Mario’s at six. We’ll have a pizza party, then Russell and I will take all the children to the puppet show at Welles Park while you two enjoy a little free time.”
Barbara hesitated. Going out for a pizza party tonight was about the last thing she wanted to do. She was not really ready to resume a life quite that normal yet, even for the girls. And free time meant time to think, time for the deep ache in her heart to begin to throb, time to begin to pray, then stop, too full of pain to even remember the words to prayers she had recited since childhood.
“I haven’t had much in the way of time for myself,” Judy admitted.
“Good!” Madge clapped her hands once, sealing the deal without waiting for Barbara to agree, and headed for the front door. She closed it behind her, then opened it again to pop her head back inside. “Listen, you two. When you’re comparing notes and talking about being mothers again instead of grandmothers, there’s something you both have to remember, something this younger generation just doesn’t seem to understand.”
Barbara raised a brow, almost too afraid to ask Madge what she meant. Almost. “Pray tell, what would that be?”
Madge looked around, as if making sure no one would overhear. “Don’t even try to be a superhero. They aren’t real. In fact, they never existed in the first place,” she murmured, and promptly closed the door.
“Amen to that,” Barbara whispered. “Amen.”
Chapter Four
J ust before two o’clock, Barbara let Judy out the front of the shop, turned and leaned back against the door. She took a deep breath and carried the last few canisters to the back room which doubled as both her office and workshop, an odd blend of modern life and yesteryear. Along the right side of the room was a custom-built unit, housing the usual array of modern office equipment: a telephone, fax machine, computer, printer, scanner, coffeemaker, even a small television, DVD and CD player. On the left, a wall-to-wall work counter, set waist high since she preferred to work standing up, held shipping and packing supplies, a case of disposable, white cotton gloves, a hanging shop light and a variety of cleaning solutions and tools, along with the two damaged canister sets.
She set the canisters down, crossed the room and poured a cup of coffee. Carrying the coffee with her, she returned to the worktable, with the familiar sense of walking from present to past, from today back to yesterday. From sorrow back to joy?
She was quite pleased with the way she had handled today’s accident at the shop, but she was usually stoic throughout emergencies of any kind. When the dust cleared, that’s when she would allow herself to collapse. That’s how she had handled news of Steve’s tragic murder, the funeral, the media attention and the process of taking in her two granddaughters to raise, even reopening the shop. Two months later, when life had seemingly returned to some sense of normalcy, few people had any idea that she was coming apart or that her grief was still so raw that it swept over her in waves as spontaneous and uncontrollable as they were unpredictable.
When her arms and legs began to tingle, she sensed another episode about to unfold. She set her coffee mug down on the counter. Just in time. In the next heartbeat,
