Along Came Zoe

“Dollar-fifty.” Zoe took the bills the girl handed her, made change and handed over a recipe card.

“They’re not all the same size.” The lettuce woman was still checking things out. “You should charge less for the smaller ones.”

“Or more for the bigger ones.” Zoe imagined hurling an overripe tomato. Splaat. Like a caste mark, right in the middle of the woman’s forehead

“Typical Seacliff,” Roz muttered as the woman walked away.

Zoe grinned. Seacliff might be one of the most picturesquely located farmer’s markets, but it had the lion’s share of patronizing, demanding customers. Not surprising, really. Seacliff was one of those chichi California coastal communities where you either were very rich, or you worked for the very rich. Phillip Barry’s family was very rich, old family money. Until they were thirteen and fifteen respectively, Zoe and her sister Courtney had grown up in a cottage on the Barry family’s oceanfront Seacliff estate, where their mother, Janna, worked as the housekeeper for Phillip Barry’s family.

These days, Phillip, the oldest of the four Barry sons, was a hotshot surgeon at Seacliff Medical Center, while she grew vegetables that she sold at farmers’ markets and occasionally delivered in fancy wicker baskets to oceanfront houses where people like Phillip Barry lived.

Although she didn’t live in Seacliff anymore—wouldn’t want to even if she could afford to—her son Brett…trumpets and fanfare please…attended school there, the same elite private academy that Phillip Barry’s daughter, Molly, now attended. Brett hadn’t been thrilled about changing schools, but the classrooms at the high school were overcrowded, the teaching impersonal and his grades had been dropping. After one semester at Country Day, Zoe had seen enough improvement that, in her mind at least, it justified the expense.

To her way of thinking, Brett himself justified the expense. Not to be overdramatic or anything, but Brett was her life. Plus, he was a terrific kid—bright, popular and destined for big things. And she’d do anything to make them happen. It took endless scrimping and saving, but if sending him to a good school meant starving herself, which, God knows, she never had, or dressing in thrift-shop clothing—which, no problem at all, she did—her son would never, ever have to settle for second best.

She’d never met Molly Barry, but Brett said she had been kicked out of the last fancy school she’d attended and only got into Country Day because her parents were big shots in the community. That’s what drove Zoe crazy about the excuse Phillip Barry had given for closing emergency services. “We have to protect our families.” Huh, if his family came first, she was Mother Teresa.

Maybe that’s what got under her skin. Parents should put their children first, all the time, and not just after the kids had run so far off the rails that their school expelled them. Maybe she’d organize a protest group. Parents Putting Kids First. PAPUKIFI. Sounded like some exotic Hawaiian fruit.

She grabbed a tube of sunblock from her purse under the counter and dabbed the cream on her nose, which had an annoying habit of turning crimson in the sun. Her shoulders and arms were beginning to freckle, and the tops of her breasts were getting a little toasty, too.

Tonight, she suddenly remembered, was her mother’s barbecue. These days Janna was a high-powered real-estate broker. She was also about to become engaged to her boss, Arnie. Zoe had quickly discovered that Arnie knew everything, including what Zoe needed to do to go from growing and selling vegetables as a part-time hobby, his definition, to a dynamic business. Last week Janna had complained that Zoe didn’t like Arnie.

“I adore Arnie,” Zoe had said. “I worship the ground he walks on.”

“You don’t like him and he knows it,” Janna shot back. “And I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. Arnie doesn’t understand why he can’t…connect with you. He and Courtney get along beautifully. She had us over for cocktails last week and we all had a wonderful time. Arnie gets such a kick out of Brett.”

This had prompted Zoe to ask her mother what exactly she’d meant by the remark. Janna had laughed and reached forward to squeeze Zoe’s chin. “Oh, honey, you should see your face. I mention Brett’s name and you’re immediately on the defensive.” She’d laughed some more. “It’s so cute, you’re like a little terrier sniffing out injustice.”

“I am not.” Her face had gone hot. “I just asked what Arnie found so funny about Brett.”

“I didn’t say that,” Janna had corrected her. “I said Arnie got a kick out of him.” Her hand shot out again, but this time Zoe ducked. “See what I mean about you being defensive,” Janna said.

Thinking of Arnie now, Zoe decided that what she’d really get a kick out of would be shoving Arnie and his Mercedes off the cliff. For good measure she’d send fancy-schmancy Phillip Barry along for the ride. She felt hot and disgruntled and tired of people in general.

A woman who was inspecting the bunches of blue delphinium that Zoe had picked that morning selected a bouquet and handed her a ten-dollar bill. Zoe forced herself to smile. She knew she should be focusing on her customers, but her thoughts kept wandering to that conversation with her mother.

“Don’t tell Arnie that I used to be a housekeeper,” Janna had reminded her. Janna’s pretensions drove her crazy. What the hell did it matter if Janna had once been a housekeeper? In fact, sometimes she imagined herself walking into Phillip Barry’s office and cashing in on the family connection as a way to get a discussion started about the trauma services. Hi, I used to be the housekeeper’s daughter…

“Parsnip,” she said aloud to a surfer type a few years older than Brett as he slowed down by her stall to inspect the cartons of fruit and vegetables. “Here.” She handed him a recipe card. “You’ve probably never cooked them, right?”

He grinned. “I thought they were albino carrots.”

“Gotta grate ’em, though, that’s the trick.”

“I’ll remember that,” he said.

“And don’t forget the honey,” Roz said, “which I just happen to have on sale at the next stall.”

“Cool.”

Zoe watched his face. The kid was about as likely to go home and cook parsnips as she was to invite Phillip Barry to join her in a cup of coffee, just for old times’ sake. And, while I’m here, not to get personal or anything, but how could you just let a girl die?

She shook her head. “So, how many pounds you want?” Focus, she told herself. On the customer, not on Phillip Barry.

“Uh…”

“How about a pound to start with?” She grabbed a plastic bag and delved into the crate of parsnips, picked out a couple, inspected them briefly, then discarded them. “Gonna find you some real good ones,” she told him.

“He’s going to find the nearest bin and dump them,” Sandy said a few moments later. “Cute buns though.” She eased herself up from the chair. “Guess I better go troll for a while.”

“IT’S THAT DAMN farmer’s market,” the real estate agent was explaining to Phillip as she tried to find a spot to park her Mercedes. “Not that I don’t like fresh vegetables, but I swear to God, every Wednesday, the parking is a nightmare. And the worse thing is, it brings in the hordes from all around. Let them go to their own markets, for God’s sake. Now this first house I’m going to show you is right on the bluffs. You can sip a martini on the balcony and watch the sun set.”

“Sounds good.” He decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home in time to watch the sun set. “It’s on Neptune, you said?”

She turned to smile at him. “You know Neptune?”

“My family’s place was—”

“Oh, of course.” She shook her head. “Silly me. When you told me your last name, I remembered thinking that you were probably one of those Barrys. Well good.” She expertly maneuvered the Mercedes between a landscaper’s truck and a sports car. “I always say, if you can afford Seacliff, why would you ever leave?”

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU’RE LOOKING in Seacliff, of course,” Phillip’s ex-wife said when she called from New York to ask about his house-hunting search.

“Seacliff and Seacliff Heights.” He’d eaten a dinner of microwaved bean soup and had been dozing off over a pile of catch-up reading when the phone rang. “There was a house in the Heights—”

“God, Phillip. The Heights is awful. No ocean view and it’s full of those hideous new places that they get away with charging millions for just because of the name. I don’t want Molly living there.”

Phillip picked up the journal he’d been reading when he fell asleep, realized he was still hungry and wandered into the kitchen. “I’m still looking,” he said ambiguously. In fact the apartment he’d lived in since their divorce suited him just fine, but if Molly was going to live part-time with him, as he and Deanna had agreed, he needed something with more room. Which reminded him that his ex-wife had agreed to cut down on her traveling.

“Who is with Molly?” he asked. “I thought you weren’t going to New York until next month.”

“My mother is staying at the house…much to Molly’s chagrin. ‘I am not a child, I don’t need a baby-sitter.’ Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to be here, but they’re having a reception for me. I thought it might seem churlish not to show up.”

Deanna would never change, he decided, giving up and switching the subject to one that might be more productive. “So what’s this about her charging up your credit cards?” he asked. Deanna had mentioned this in an earlier call to him at the hospital, but he hadn’t had time to discuss it then.

“The new woman who’s handling all of my business affairs called to question some purchases,” Deanna said. “Specifically a three-hundred-dollar surfboard. She said she didn’t think I was the surfing type.”

Phillip carried the phone out to the balcony. The ocean was dark and calm. He sat down, leaned his head back against the glass of the French door. “Did you talk to Molly about it?”

“I’m in New York, Phillip. And, quite honestly, I’m losing patience for all this. What more could we possibly do for the girl? I haven’t had a minute and I don’t expect things to get better. You have no idea how completely exhausting these tours are. I’ve said I’ll cut back and I will, but for now if you could take care of things—maybe have her for a few weeks, just to give my mother a break—I’d really appreciate it. I told you, didn’t I, that I think it’s a boy again?”

“Specifically, why do you think there’s a boy this time?”

“Call it a mother’s intuition.”

Silence, Phillip decided, was the only tactful response.