In My Dreams

She gave him a quick hug. Good. One of his cheerful days. “Great, handsome. How are you today?”

“Hungry! What are we having?”

“Vegetarian sausage and cheese omelet, and I brought you a few fat-free brownies for later, but don’t eat them all at once. Like you did the lemon bars, remember? Walgreens ran out of Tums because of you.”

He followed her into a small but well-equipped kitchen. Photos of his wife and children covered the refrigerator. “I had no regrets,” he said. “Those were the best lemon bars I’ve ever binged on. Want to get married?”

She turned the heat on under a frying pan and smiled at him over her shoulder. “Not today, Vinny. I have a meeting later with John Baldrich about you guys buying the Cooper Building to use as a seniors’ center.” She added sausage to the pan.

“What kind of meeting? I thought all we had to do was form a nonprofit corporation and the city would let us have it. We did that.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There’s another buyer involved.”

He frowned. “Who?”

“Not sure. But I like to think city council will give priority to the seniors.”

“What does city council have to do with it?”

“They make the decision on whom to sell it to, because the city took possession of the building when the owner defaulted on three years’ worth of taxes.”

“What’s the decision based on?”

She turned the sausage and then added the omelet mixture she’d brought in a plastic container. “I think it all depends on how the city’s code is written. John’s checking it out.”

Vinny nodded. “He’s a good guy. I can’t imagine he makes a fortune. His rate for having you come every day during the week for an hour is ridiculously reasonable.” He grinned at her. “And you always do more than you need to. I hope he pays you more than I pay him.”

She made him toast, poured his orange juice and served his breakfast at a small table in a sunny window. While she cleaned the kitchen, she listened to stories she’d already heard about his great-grandchildren and his daughter’s promotion.

After breakfast she drove him to the seniors’ center in a building that the owner had decided to boot the seniors from to refurbish for a tenant who could pay higher rent. She helped him out of her car and walked him to the door. He leaned on his cane and squeezed her hand with his free one. “The omelet was delicious. Thanks, Sarah.”

“Have a great day, Vinny.”

“You too, gorgeous.”

His friends came to greet him and she left him in their care, probably to play pool and solve the world’s political problems. She drove on to Margaret’s.

* * *

AN ELEGANT WOMAN in her early eighties, Margaret Brogan lived in a little apartment in a downtown complex. She used a walker because of a fall that had left her with a painful limp. She dressed in soft, pretty colors, and her carefully tended helmet of white hair looked precisely the same every day. She always wore jewelry and lipstick and smelled of some spicy floral scent.

She always prepared her own breakfast of fruit, granola and yogurt, but loved to have morning coffee with Sarah. Suffering from mild depression, she refused medication, wanting instead to work through the issue herself. Her doctor thought the regular visits of someone who cared might help.

Margaret’s apartment was spotless. It had a blond coffee table with matching end tables, and a comfortable burnt-orange sofa and chairs. The tall, filigreed birdcage that stood by the window had plants in it, tendrils of ivy spiraling out. Three dining stools were lined up in front of a white Formica-topped bar that separated the living room from the white-and-yellow kitchenette. The rooms looked dated but stately, like Margaret herself.

“What did you bring today?” Margaret asked as she led the way to the kitchen.

“Blueberry muffins from the Bountiful Bakery. You got coffee going?”

“Yes. You have a date tonight?”

Margaret was very interested in Sarah’s social life. She, herself, had had a very active one as a young woman. It had resulted in a long marriage, three children scattered across the country and a lonely old age.

“I do, as a matter of fact. Ben and I are going to the Farmhouse.” Sarah put the muffins on plates and retrieved low-fat margarine from the refrigerator. She helped Margaret sit at the table.

“How’s Jack doing now that he’s back? My daughter lived a few houses down from Jack and his biological mother, Charlene Manning, when Jack was a boy. I used to babysit my grandson Marty at my daughter’s while she worked. Marty’s a lawyer now, you know...” She trailed off, then came back to the subject of Jack. “He and Marty often played together. Jack wasn’t wounded, was he?”

Sarah remembered the nightmare that had landed her on top of a very agitated Jack. “No, no serious injuries. I haven’t known him very long. I met Ben after Jack was deployed to Afghanistan and met Jack for the first time a couple of weeks ago.”

Margaret cut her muffin in two. “It’s unfair that a boy should have to go through even more than he did as a child.” Margaret seemed to be looking at an image in her mind and shook her head at what she saw there. “Charlene was a terrible mother, but she was as beautiful as a movie star. She used to sing, you know, but after Jack’s father died, men came and went from that house as though she sold sporting goods.”

Sarah arched an eyebrow at the appropriate simile. “A few of them were not very good to those children. I often heard angry shouting. I called the police several times, but they never took action. I don’t know what she told them, but those children stayed with her till the day she shot and killed that last boyfriend.”

Ben had told her a little about Jack’s childhood and the murder that had resulted in him becoming one of the Palmers. But she didn’t know very much about Jack’s mother. “You wonder how that can be allowed to happen.”

“That family was all over the front page of the newspaper. It doesn’t seem right that a child should witness a murder at eight years old and then have to go to war and see men get killed when he’s an adult.”

“It’s a rotten world sometimes.”

“It is. More for some people than for others.”

Ben had told her Jack had been blown up in a Humvee on two separate occasions, involved in several firefights and nicked in the earlobe by a bullet while he’d been loading a mortar shell on his last deployment. She couldn’t imagine how life altering it must be to come so close to death.

“I gave them things to eat on more than one occasion,” Margaret said. “If it hadn’t been for that boy, those little girls would have gone hungry. He took care of them all the time. And then that murder happened.” She shook her head despairingly.

No wonder Jack had nightmares, Sarah thought.

“Well, shall I tell him you said hello?” Sarah asked, poking at her half of the muffin. Her appetite was waning. “Would he remember you?”

Margaret nodded and smiled. “I think he would. Tell him I’m the lady with the peanut butter cookies.”

“I will. How come I’ve never had your peanut butter cookies?”

Margaret reached out to pinch her cheek. “Because you’re not a hungry little waif with a world of sadness in your eyes.”

* * *

JOHN BALDRICH, WHO’D been an ER nurse before he’d started Coast Care five years before, welcomed Sarah into his small downtown office at the back of Johnson Medical Supply. He was tall and professional looking with gray hair and glasses. His office, too, with its dark paneling and wall of medical books, looked scholarly and tweedy.

After exchanging pleasantries and asking about her clients, he smiled, his manner becoming paternal.

“Sarah, I know how you feel about your experience in caring for children, but it’s almost criminal that you’ve signed on here as a home-care worker rather than as a licensed nurse. You cook and make beds and do laundry, rather than assess your clients’ conditions, give medications and make more important contributions to their health. You’re like an orchid disguised as a daisy.”

He grew orchids at home and won competitions all around the state for his perfect specimens. She appreciated the sincerity of his compliment. “Thank you, John. But I really like what I’m doing now.” She wanted nothing to do with a more important role in patient care. She liked this one.

He nodded, though the expression in his eyes seemed troubled. “Margaret calls me once a month to tell me how much she likes you. That you’re caring and conscientious and go the extra mile.”

“Good. I’m glad she’s happy.”