Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

“That was last year,” he said cryptically.

“Right. A year I lost.”

“A year is better than a life. Be careful. Keep the doors locked, the windows closed, the telephone handy.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pad of paper, jotted something on it and handed it to her. “This is my cell phone. Call me immediately if he harasses you.”

She didn’t take it. “You have a good night, deputy.”

He met her eyes. He continued to hold out the paper until she sighed and took it. Then, shaking his head, he went to the door. When he got there, he turned. “Lock up.”

“You really don’t know Jackson Ford, do you? Not if you think the puny lock on that door would make a difference.”

He closed the door gently behind him, but she realized he was waiting on the porch for her to follow his order. She got up and locked the door, which she would have done without his advice. The lock wouldn’t stop Jackson, but at least she would know he was coming in before he got there.

Only when the bolt turned with a sharp snap did she hear Sully’s retreating footsteps.

Chapter Ten

BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON, no student had stopped by to claim the mysterious charm bracelet, and a thorough search of Georgia’s desk hadn’t turned up anything else out of the ordinary. There was no note or letter to go with the bracelet and newspaper clippings. Whoever had left them had not included an explanation.

Casual inquiries of office staff—she hadn’t wanted to stir too much curiosity—had turned up nothing new. The school office was a busy place, and papers were transferred from desk to desk as a matter of course. In addition student assistants came and went each period. No one, staff or volunteers, remembered the charm bracelet.

Georgia knew she could do one of two things. She could relegate the bracelet to lost and found, where she was almost certain it would never be claimed. Or she could face the obvious. Somebody had left the bracelet for her to find. Somebody who thought she should have it.

Somebody who wanted her to search for her mother.

The conclusion had taken days. She had rejected, then rejected again, the possibility that somebody, possibly even her mother, was playing cat and mouse. But the articles and the bracelet had appeared together, one as discordant as the other. And a more careful look at the bracelet had confirmed that it wasn’t a new one. Two charms were dated. One, an open Bible, had 6-15-59 inscribed on the back. Another, a heart—the only silver charm on a gold bracelet—said Forget Me Not on the front and 5-17-63 on the back.

Georgia had been born in 1965—on today’s date.

Staring at the bracelet after a grueling, mysterious week, she looked up from her desk when voices began a familiar song.

She smiled at her daughter and granddaughter, who were singing from the doorway.

“Happy birthday to you...”

Neither Edna nor Samantha was a talented musician, but the sentiment was welcome. She rose and held out her arms, and Edna got there first.

“Happy birthday, Grandma!”

“Now it is,” Georgia said, giving her granddaughter a warm hug.

“You didn’t think we forgot, did you?” Samantha asked. “We have such plans.”

The day hadn’t gone uncelebrated. At noon the office staff had brought in a cake, along with silly cards and a bouquet of tulips that were happily shedding petals on her desk now. But with the advent of Samantha and Edna, the big event seemed real.

“Next year I go into mourning,” Georgia said, embracing her daughter, too. “So let’s celebrate the heck out of this one.”

“Fifty is nifty,” Samantha said, “but I think you ought to end your forties in style. I’m making your favorite dinner.”

“How do you know I don’t have plans?”

“I’m sneaky. I asked Marianne to peek at your appointment calendar.”

“That was sneaky. You could have asked.”

“Well, I didn’t want you to feel obligated, in case something or someone better came along.”

She knew Samantha was referring to Lucas Ramsey, who Georgia had unwisely mentioned, and who hadn’t called or dropped by since their pizza dinner. She had hoped to talk to him about an idea she had proposed that morning to Dawson, a school literary magazine, but when she hadn’t heard from Lucas, she’d forged ahead without his input.

With some disappointment.

She ignored Samantha’s hint and moved on. “Let me get my things, then I’m out of here.”

“Hard week?”

Georgia hesitated. “An interesting week. I’ll tell you about it over some of your fabulous tea.”

“Do you want to go home and change, or can you follow us back?”

Georgia opted for the latter, and twenty minutes later she was parking in the circular driveway that took up the front yard of her daughter’s brick bungalow. The house was the smallest on the block, as if it had been squeezed in by taking slivers of the yards surrounding it. There was no place back or front for Edna to hang out with her friends, but there was a playground not too far away as a substitute. The neighborhood was safe and quiet, and the rent was cheap, virtues that had kept Samantha from looking for something larger.

Samantha and Edna emerged from their bright yellow VW, and the three women went inside together. Georgia laughed when she saw that the tiny living room had been festively adorned with streams of red-and-blue crepe paper and clusters of balloons.

“You went to so much work!” She hugged Edna again, sure this had been her granddaughter’s idea.

“I love birthdays.”

“And people will love you for making them special.”

“Take off your jacket,” Samantha said. “And I’ll make tea. Edna made some goodies to have with it.”

Georgia settled herself on Samantha’s comfortable couch. Her daughter had surprising talent as a seamstress, and she had made wonderful slipcovers and cushions to hide and dress up the unfortunate orange upholstery that had made the couch affordable. The slipcovers were a tweedy camel, and the cushions were rainbow-hued in different patterns and sizes.

Georgia had no idea where her daughter’s talent had come from. She herself had trouble threading a needle, and not because she couldn’t see. Samantha’s father had been an adoptee, so his birth family’s special abilities were a mystery.

Now she wondered if someone in her own family, some distant blood relative, had unknowingly passed on her talent with a sewing needle to Samantha. And, of course, that brought the charm bracelet to mind. Because one of the charms was a sewing machine.

Samantha brought in two glasses of iced herbal tea sweetened with honey and fragrant with lemon. Edna, who loved to cook, came out to serve something she called “devils on horseback,” which were dates wrapped in bacon, broiled and served on toothpicks. Along with them she’d made a cheese ball, which she served with crackers. Edna looked for recipes online the way most girls her age searched for news of their favorite boy band.

“I am impressed,” Georgia said. “This is amazing.”

Happy with the praise, Edna went back into the kitchen to work on something else she was creating for dinner, while her mother and grandmother enjoyed the first course.

“I made the main dish, but she wanted to do everything else,” Samantha said. “This week she’s talking about becoming a chef.”

Georgia thought of Lucas. “She can be anything she wants. Personally I’m voting for a brain surgeon who gives fabulous dinner parties for relaxation.”

“Sometimes I don’t know where that girl comes from.”