Karen Templeton - A Mother's Wish / Mother To Be - A Mother's Wish

Winnie saw the woman’s glittery mouth twitch as she dumped lettuce, tomatoes and a cucumber on the counter. “You should be married.”

“I’ll put it on my list. But this is your business how?”

“You’re in my kitchen,” she said, pulling several leaves off a head of romaine, “I get to ask the questions. Besides, it’s boring as hell up here, I got nothin’ else to do.”

Grabbing the cucumber and peeler, Winnie went to the sink to strip it. “What can I say, it just hasn’t happened for me yet.”

“Some pendejo dumped you?” she heard behind her.

“More than one, actually,” Winnie said, getting the gist.

“Pretty girl like you, I’m surprised the men aren’t lined up for miles.”

“I live in a town smaller than this one, Flo,” Winnie said, thinking, Pretty? “There’s not enough available men to line up for twenty feet, let alone miles. And half of those…” She shuddered.

“So you should move.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I couldn’t before now. And anyway, it’s not that easy to pull up roots that deep. Especially when you haven’t had two seconds to think about what comes next.” Winnie handed the now naked cucumber to Flo, then glanced outside just as the last rays of sunset gilded the landscape. “It’s really beautiful up here. Closest thing we’ve got to mountains back home is the occasional dead armadillo by the side of the road.”

“The winters can be a bitch, though.”

“Can’t be any worse than gettin’ a sand facial every time you walk out your door.”

Flo almost chuckled. “Tierra Rosa’s jus’ like any other small town, it’s got its good and its bad.”

“You’re still here.”

“Like you said…deep roots.”

Winnie slid up onto a stool across from Flo, propping one booted foot on the railing at the base of the breakfast bar, her arms crossed. “I gather June was from around here, too?”

A shadow crossed the housekeeper’s features before she said, “Nearby. Next town over. Her folks’re gone now, too.” Her knife passing through a tomato in slow motion, she added, “Sometimes, I can almos’ still feel her presence.”

“Whose presence? June’s?”

“Yes. Especially as it gets closer to Los Días de Los Muertos. You know about that?”

“The Days of the Dead? Sure. Well, a little. A couple Mexican families back home observe it. I never really got it, myself.”

“You think it’s spooky, no?” Flo said with a grin. “But it’s not like that for us, it’s a celebration. We don’t go all out the way they do in Mexico, maybe, but it’s still important. We get together, we remember those who’ve gone on before, we laugh, we tell stories, we show them we haven’t forgotten them, that they still live in our memories. Our hearts. So in a way, they really do ‘come back’ to visit us, you see? It’s a time to show we’re not afraid of death, because it can’t really take our loved ones from us. Not in the way that most matters.”

“Oh. When you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. But what if…?”

Flo’s eyes lifted to hers. “What?”

“Nothing,” Winnie said, refusing to let moroseness gain a foothold. Like wondering about people who die with no family. Who celebrates their lives? Who remembers them?

“You know,” Flo was saying, “everybody loved Miss June. She could cut a person down to size with three words if they had it coming, but Dios mío, I never knew anyone with a bigger heart.” Her mouth thinned. “I know people sometimes said things. Mean things. Because Miss June was so much older than the boss. But what does love know about age?” she added with a shrug. “About friendship. ‘Cause you never saw two people who were better friends. And I know he still misses her real bad.”

“I’m sure he does,” Winnie said, thinking, Okay, cutie, time for a reality check. That she was leaving the following day. That she was smart enough not to confuse chemistry and sympathy and loneliness with anything real. “You call him ‘the boss’?”

Flo smiled. “Miss June would call him that sometimes, just to get a rise out of him. They’d be arguin’ about somethin’, an’ she get this real amused look on her face, and go ‘Whatever you say, b-boss…’”

The last words were barely out of the housekeeper’s mouth before she dissolved into embarrassed tears. Winnie immediately went to her and wrapped her in her arms, getting the strangest, strongest feeling that if June had any idea how mopey everybody was around here, she’d be hugely pissed.

And that while Winnie was here, maybe she should see what she could do about that.

Winnie Porter was a strange bird indeed, Aidan decided as he sat across from her at the dining table, its dings and gouges probably hailing from New Mexico’s territorial days.

He’d hung outside the kitchen, listening to her and Flo’s conversation probably far longer than was politic, simply because he’d been too mesmerized to do anything else. Her moods apparently dipped and swerved like a roller coaster, with every bit of the accompanying dizziness and nausea. Women were hard enough to understand when they were levelheaded; one like Winnie…

“Why was six afraid of seven?” Robbie piped up, his mouth full of fresh, aromatic, bubbly-cheesed pizza.

“I have no idea,” Winnie said, aiming a wink in Aidan’s direction, and he thought, What? “Why was six afraid of seven?”

“Because seven ate nine!” Robbie said, both he and Jacob, exploding into knee-slapping laughter, which got Annabelle to barking and spinning in circles for no apparent reason. Winnie laughed, too, just as hard, even though Aidan sincerely doubted she’d never heard the joke before. Then she launched into a series of truly terrible riddles, half of which the boys already knew—which only seemed to make them laugh harder—and the laughter and the barking crescendoed until it seemed the very room would burst.

Winnie’s eyes touched his, begging him to join in.

Barely able to breathe, Aidan got up from the table to refill his tea glass, at which point he realized the jollity had apparently infected his housekeeper, as well. Now this is more like it, he thought he heard her say, although it didn’t really sound like her voice, it sounded like—

He shook his head to clear it. He was knackered, was all, having not slept well in months. Which probably accounted for why the room suddenly seemed brighter than he remembered, the reds and golds and rich blues vibrant in the warm overhead light. He squinted at the fixture: Had Flo changed the bulbs to a higher wattage?

His glass refilled, Aidan returned to his seat. Winnie looked up, grinning full out, breathless, her cheeks flushed, and Thank God you’re leaving and Too bad you’re leaving collided underneath his skull like a pair of daft footballers.

“Dad! Dad! Guess what Winnie taught us?”

“Three-card monte?” Aidan said drily, and Robbie said, “Huh?” as Winnie said, “Honestly, Aidan, give me some credit,” and Robbie said, “No—chess!”

Aidan looked at Winnie. “Chess?”

“Yeah, he had that beautiful set on the shelf in his room, I asked him if he knew how to play and he said no, so I taught him. Him and Jacob,” she said with the kind of smile for Robbie’s friend that young boys had been falling in love with since God did that little hocus-pocus thing with Adam’s rib.

Aidan swallowed down the flare of annoyance, that June had ordered the Harry Potter set for Robbie for his eighth birthday with explicit instructions that Aidan teach their son how to play. That Winnie knew how to play chess.