Janice Macdonald - Return To Little Hills

“Thank you,” she said again. She would never call, she knew that, but it was a sweet gesture. “I appreciate it.”

“I mean it sincerely. The offer. I’m a very good listener. I also used to have an elderly mother…”

She smiled.

“I don’t know why Ray doesn’t like him,” Maude said as they drove away. “Seems very nice to me. ’Course, you can never tell.”

PETER HAD FELT some misgivings as he watched Edie drive away with Maude in the car. Perhaps he should have done more to calm her down. He could imagine the headlines in tomorrow’s Little Hills Union. Noted Foreign Correspondent Throttles Elderly Mother. He’d felt the tension radiating off her.

He stood in the quad now, almost an hour later, watching a troupe of young actors, all dressed in black, perform for the assembled students. Perhaps he would ring her this evening, just to make sure everything was all right. He remembered that he’d meant to tell her how inspired the students had been by her talk. She’d like to hear that, he was sure.

Sophia might be right about the unsuitability of a foreign correspondent as a wife, but it would be very agreeable to get to know Edie as a friend. That said, how could it hurt to call? He did wonder, though, at the remark about killing her father. What was that all about? Bit of melodrama, maybe. One would hope.

On a stage across the quad, an antidrug message was being conveyed through mime, dance and ear-splittingly loud rap. His temples throbbing, he snaked a hand down over the shoulder of a boy in the back row and plucked a bag of sunflower seeds, forbidden on campus because of the mess they created, from the surprised boy’s grasp. He wondered if, at forty-one, he was too old for this sort of thing.

And then Beth Herman tapped him on the arm. He shot her a quick sideways glance and did a double take. Normally, he didn’t pay a great deal of attention to women’s clothes—a shortcoming of which Amelia had frequently complained—but Beth’s blouse was really quite extraordinary, patterned with brilliant butterflies that danced over her entire upper body. Another surreptitious glance revealed small black script identifying the various species. By then, mercifully, the music had stopped and he turned to take an even closer look, realizing as he did so that he was ogling her left breast.

“Sorry,” he said, although Beth did not seem at all offended. “Very nice blouse.” The students were now ambling off to their classrooms and Beth was smiling and it seemed necessary somehow to say something else. Would you like to be a mother to my children? seemed a bit peremptory. “Very nice cupcakes, too,” he said instead.

“Cupcakes?”

“The cakes you brought in this morning with the little silver balls. Quite delicious.”

“Oh,” she said. “They weren’t mine. One of my aides brought them in. I’ll thank her on your behalf,” she said. “Actually though, I do love to cook.”

“And I’m sure you do it very well,” he said, trying to imagine Amelia’s response if he were to suggest she bake cakes. Probably about the same as if he were to suggest they marry and raise a dozen children together. Edie would react similarly, he suspected. But he must stop thinking about unsuitable women. Which reminded him of Edie again—or, rather, her mother. “I have a proposal,” he said.

“A proposal?” Beth’s face reddened and the pile of papers she’d been carrying like a baby slipped from her arms and fell to the ground. “Sorry.”

Peter joined Beth on the grass to help retrieve some papers that had been scattered by a sudden breeze. For a moment or so they were both on their hands and knees, and he glanced up to find Beth’s nose inches from his own.

“A proposal?” she said again.

“A proposal.” Peter held out his hand to help her up. “You seem a little…flustered.”

“Flustered?” She raked her brown curls. “Oh no, no. I’m fine. I mean, this is the way I always am. Sorry. Um, what can I do for you?” She laughed. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right—”

“Beth, you’ve just apologized for the third time in as many minutes,” Peter said. “Stop it. You’re making me feel like an ogre.”

“An ogre? Oh no, I’m sorry I…”

Peter shook his head. She’d caught her lapse and was looking at him with such dismay that he couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry…” He grinned. “God, you’ve got me doing it. Look, all I wanted to suggest—”

“Would you like some tea? I could make some if you’d like to walk back to the center. Peppermint? Apple? Chamomile?”

“Oh no, thank you.” He loathed tea, particularly the herbal variety, but people were always offering him cups of it. “About my proposal, though. You do know Edie Robinson? I met her mother today and I rather had the sense that time hangs heavy on occasion and she becomes depressed. I know you’re always short of volunteers and—”

“Perfect.” Beth beamed. “The girls would love having a surrogate grandmother to help with the babies, and if Mrs. Robinson is anything like my mother, there’s nothing she’d enjoy more than being surrounded by babies and young people.”

“Good. I’ll ring Edie today,” he said, quick to grasp at any excuse. Perhaps he could determine whether there really was a safari-suited boyfriend, or if that was just a polite excuse, in which case… He realized that Beth was watching him as though she had something more to say. He smiled and she glanced down at her feet, then up at him.

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