Love Sign

No wastrel of words, Shelby filed the line away for literary use. She rubbed her throbbing temples, slipped out of her platform sandals and stretched out on the bed. It was plush and cozy and comforting. But she couldn’t relax. She hadn’t in days. Locking her hands behind her head, she invited a story line to wander in and make order of her muddled thoughts. But before she could conjure up any story characters a slim, attractive, auburn-haired woman in a cotton shirt and jeans knocked at the open door.

“You must be Shelby. Don’t get up. Just popped in to say hi.” A smiled warmed her face. “There’s ham and fruit in the refrigerator. Help yourself when you get hungry.”

“That’s kind of you, thank you, but I’ll get something out.”

“There is no ‘out.’ Except Newt’s Market, and you’ll soon tire of that. I’m Paula Blake, by the way. Jake’s sister.”

“He mentioned you,” Shelby said. She introduced herself.

“Jake says you write and edit and all sorts of interesting things,” Paula continued amiably. “Excuse me while I get that.”

Shelby swung her feet off the bed and into her shoes as Paula crossed to the nightstand and the ringing phone.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation, Joy,” Paula said. “Give Mr. Wiseman a break, would you? No, Dirk can’t come over. I’ll see you at four. I love you. Bye-bye.

“My daughter,” Paula explained, hanging up the phone. “She’s doing some field work over her summer vacation. Or supposed to be. Her boss didn’t pick her up this morning. His van is gone. She can’t reach him on the phone, now she’s conjuring wild scenarios. He’s sick. He’s lost. He’s fallen and can’t get up,” Paula ticked Joy fancies off on her fingers and rolled eyes as blue as Jake’s. “Kids! Now be sure and eat something,” she continued without stopping for breath, and backed out of the door, still talking.

The silence in Paula’s wake was nagging. Shelby found her way to the bathroom, tidied up and went downstairs. She made a sandwich, washed it down with a soda, then returned to her room and set up her laptop. Once upon a time…she told herself, fingers poised and waiting. The anticipated lights did not flash. No icons. No whirring. Just a black screen.

“Come on, come on,” murmured Shelby. “Give me a break. Please?” she muttered. But the screen remained dark and cold. At length, Shelby gave up. She fished pad and pen and dime-store reading glasses from her shoulder bag, took a seat and tried to recall the idea she had had before Patrick pushed the lead domino and brought her well-ordered future tumbling down around her. But her thought screen was as blank as her computer screen.

Shelby grumbled and wandered to the window and hiked it. She tapped folded glasses against the frame. Voilà! As if by design, a girl rode into the alley below, then flung her bicycle down. A skinny, sunburned, straw-haired preteen in cutoff jeans, she pinched off hollyhocks greens with bright-tipped fingernails and left a shredded trail of leaves into Jake’s shop. Moments later, she reappeared with Paula at her heels. Paula turned the girl toward a vegetable patch and gave her a nudge.

“But Mom! I don’t even like vegetables.” The girl’s voice carried through the open window. “Yikes! A bee! I think I’m allergic! Well, I could be. M-o-o-o-m!” she wailed, hands on skinny hips. “Oh, all right! How much are you paying me?”

“A nickel a weed,” Paula said.

“A nickel? Is that all?”

“Make it a penny,” Paula returned.

“Mom!”

“Keep whining, Joy, and you’ll be weeding for free.” Paula retreated into the shop.

Shelby pressed her nose to the window screen and watched Joy flounce over the garden. She plucked a weed here, a weed there, all hop-and-stop energy with no logical system. It was hard to picture a girl like that willingly weeding fields that ran on for acres and acres.

So what made Joy tick? What movements turned behind those eyes and turned-up nose and sullen brow? Shelby played what-if until a distant rumbling broke her concentration. Cool air rose from a vent on the floor below the window. Air-conditioning.

Shelby closed the window, took the chair again and balanced the pad on her knee. An opening sentence trickled across the page to be joined by more words, inserted here and there until it became a nice fat paragraph. She reached for her glasses.

Cranes, crushed cars, trapped book bags and blue-eyed men retreated as a Joy-like girl in frayed shorts and peeling freckles appeared on the lined yellow tablet. A Patrick-like guy took shape beside her. The resemblance startled Shelby from fiction to reality. She hadn’t deliberately chosen him for inspiration. It was automatic. Finger memory, like a pianist’s hands finding the right keys when the pages to a familiar song fluttered shut.

Shelby marked out the Patrick clone and reeled through male acquaintances, seeking hero inspiration elsewhere. None seemed to fit. Again, the Patrick-like character beckoned. Stubbornly resisting, she stirred from her chair and paced to the window. Sunshine glittered off the nearby building, lighting the lettering on the side of the building: Jackson Signs South.

Jake Jackson. He had been kind. Helpful. Patient. A gentleman. The heroics of everyday life. And he had those arresting eyes. Here, here! Her heart might be curled into the fetal position, but she still had her story world. A world with a voracious appetite, it fed indiscriminately on new situations, new people, fresh material to keep her upright and writing. That was the upside of this unsettling, upside down day. “This is the day the Lord has made.”

The snippet of verse ran through Shelby’s head. Not the day she had expected or long anticipated, rather a day marked by adversity. Yet in God’s hands, even shrapnel was a windfall, a deposit, a hedge against creative bankruptcy.

Shelby added Jake to her characters cast. She reshaped him into a seventeen-year-old in studious dark-rimmed glasses with a knack for mystery solving and a love for dirt-track racing.

A leggy raven-haired beauty barged onto the page. Tara. Before Shelby’s delighted eyes, Tara challenged her Joy-like character for the hero’s heart. Sparks flew better in triangles. No sparks. No conflict. No story. Not a problem today. The words flowed, the headache fled.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you. You always know just what I need.

Chapter Three

It had been a while since Jake had met a woman who interested him enough to make the day stretch long. He played catch-up all afternoon and fell several jobs short of completing his service calls. By the time he returned to the Bloomington shop, his crew had left for the day.

Two brothers-in-law worked with him in the erecting and servicing of signs. A third oversaw the computerized banners in the Liberty Flats shop while Paula shaped neon for custom-made signs. It was a skill both she and Jake had learned from their father, John Jackson.

A two-car automobile accident had claimed Jake’s parents’ lives when Jake was nineteen. Colton, Paula’s husband of just a few weeks, had been at the wheel of the second car, and had escaped with minor injuries. With his parents gone, and Paula’s marriage on the rocks as quickly as it had come together, it was only by the grace of God that Gram Kate had kept the family together, and the sign company, too. Now, a dozen years later, Jackson Signs was thriving.

Recently Paula had transferred all their records onto computer. She had taken some classes and was at ease with the new system. Jake wasn’t. But he did appreciate the options gained by linking the sign shops and their home offices. Now, he could go home and relax a while before entering the day’s business.

Jake locked up the shop, stopped for chicken and the fixings, then took the highway south. Once home, he put supper in the oven on low, set the table and climbed the stairs. The second-story landing circled past the guest room. Shelby’s door was closed. Jake grabbed clean clothes and closed himself into the upstairs bathroom to shower and change.

The whistled rendition of a catchy advertising jingle penetrated Shelby’s subconscious. By and by, the hum of an electric razor muted the cheery tune. Shelby sank back into to her story only to emerge again when the whistling ceased. The razor was quiet, too. Focus broken, she rose on cramped limbs and crossed to the door.

Jake was at the top of the stairs. A short-sleeved navy-blue shirt hugged the contours of muscles that flexed as he tucked his shirttail into his jeans. The denim, faded and softened by wash and wear, suited the lean, fit lines of his body as he turned and surprised her watching him from the open door.

“I heard you whistling.”

“Was I?” He smiled. “Hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“Not at all,” Shelby said.

His dimples deepened. There was a sheen to his clean-shaven jaw that caught the light. His hair was damp from the shower and bore the tracks of a comb. “Are you ready for dinner?” he asked.

“If you’ll let me help,” she offered.

“No need, it’s on the table.”

“Next time, call me and I’ll help,” said Shelby, flushing. “I guess I should have warned you—when I’m writing, everything fades away. Time. Good intentions, everything.”

“It’ll stand you in good stead in this house,” Jake replied. “Family tracking in and out at all hours. It can turn into a regular zoo if you don’t hold your mouth just right.”

Shelby noted his was nicely held. His eyes, too. The dark shirt heightened their striking hue. The observation was part of her craft, a writing thing, as natural as breathing. She smelled soap, and something else, too. Something tantalizing. Or was that dinner? Since the breakup, Shelby had almost forgotten what hunger felt like. Her stomach gave a sharp reminder. “I’ll be right down.” Quickly, she retreated to tidy up after herself.

Jake waited for her, watching from the open door as she gathered the paper wads strewn about her chair. In contrast to those carelessly scattered papers was the precision with which she aligned her notebook, pen and reading glasses on the dresser.

“You write in long hand?” Jake asked as she snapped off the reading lamp.

“Not as a rule. But my laptop is on the fritz.”

“Not another crane casualty,” he said and clucked his tongue.

“There’s not a scratch on it,” replied Shelby. “It may just be a glitch. I’m not much good at troubleshooting.”