Elizabeth Bevarly - Father Of The Brood

Annie, too, stood and ambled after him, stopping to pick up her duffel bag and toss it into the back seat. “I’m ready when you are,” she said again as she opened the passenger side door and climbed inside.

Ike nodded and joined her in the car, then eased his way into the street at about a half a mile an hour to avoid the wildly scattering kids. When he braked for a stop sign at the corner, Annie looked over at him with a broad smile and asked, “If you could be any vegetable in the world, what would you be?”

As questions went, it wasn’t one Ike heard often in his line of work. “I beg your pardon?”

“If you could be any vegetable in the world,” she repeated, “what would you be?”

He turned right and headed toward the Schuylkill Expressway. “Why?”

Annie’s smile broadened. “Because it occurs to me that we know absolutely nothing about each other, other than the fact that we were both gullible enough to be sucked into going to that bachelor auction. We’ve got a long drive to the shore ahead of us, so why not use the opportunity to find out a little bit more about each other, right?”

Sounded reasonable, Ike thought. But… vegetables?

“I’d be an eggplant, myself,” she volunteered without being asked. “Eggplants seem to have it so together, don’t you think? Not to mention having a sleek design and gorgeous coloring.”

Ike drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and said nothing.

“Now you I see as more of a cauliflower kind of guy.”

He flicked his right turn signal, veered onto the entrance ramp and melded smoothly with traffic before glancing over at Annie and repeating blandly, “Cauliflower.”

She nodded. “Cauliflowers are pretty moody.” She offered the observation as if that explained everything.

Ike sighed again, slipped on his Ray·Bans and settled back in the driver’s seat. As Annie had just pointed out, it was going to be a long drive to the shore.

It was also, he admitted grudgingly some time later, a rather enjoyable drive, one that allowed him to discover a great many surprising things about his companion. In addition to wanting to be an eggplant, if Annie could be any fruit in the world, she wanted to be a kiwi. If given the choice of any animal in-the world, she would be an ocelot. Any color, she would be green. Any musical instrument, she would be a banjo. Any supermarket product, a box of Velveeta. Any mode of transportation, a streetcar.

And so it had gone across the entire width of the great state of New Jersey. Whether he’d wanted to or not, Ike had learned more about Annie Malone than he had about any other human being he’d ever met. He knew she was thirty-two years old, a Virgo, and the youngest of two children. He knew she had two degrees in social work and one in child development, and that she had kicked the smoking habit three years ago, but still craved a cigarette now and then. On the few occasions when she indulged in alcohol, she always drank vodka martinis, very dry, no olive. She had gone to her senior prom stag and had received six stitches in her knee when she was seven years old.

Oh, yeah. And she was a widow.

That bit of information, when she’d offered it, had nearly sent Ike driving off the side of the road. She was too young to have experienced such a loss. Too fresh-looking. Too nice. She hadn’t mentioned how her husband died, only that he had five years ago. And even having known her a short while, Ike could tell that Annie hadn’t surrendered the information easily. Her husband’s death was simply a part of her, like everything else she had told him, and therefore worthy of mention.

In turn, Ike had spoken little of himself, other than to oblige her with one- or two-word responses like “grapes,” “wolf,” “black,” “tenor saxophone,” “top sirloin” and “steam locomotive.” He didn’t like to talk about himself, preferred to keep private things private. He hadn’t pried into Annie’s life or asked many questions of her. She was just the type of person who revealed herself freely. Ike liked that about her. But it didn’t mean he had to unburden himself in the process.

Now as he tossed his leather weekend bag on the bed in his room, he couldn’t quite put thoughts of Annie to rest. She was, to say the least, an enigma. She was bright, attractive, and capable of doing just about anything she wanted to do. She smiled freely and spoke without inhibition. She was the kind of person one would expect to find living in sunshine and wide open spaces, amid nature’s bounty, if not an actual part of it. Yet Annie Malone had buried herself in a decaying urban landscape, and had surrounded herself with damaged children who were the victims of life’s darkest secrets.

It made no sense to Ike. He was the kind of man who put unpleasant thoughts as far from himself as he could. He’d had the most ordinary of upbringings and a very happy childhood—middle middle-class suburbs, public schools, a bicycle for Christmas when he was ten, twenty-five cents from the Tooth Fairy on a pretty regular basis, a craving for marshmallow cream on graham crackers that he’d never quite outgrown. He’d never had a reason or opportunity to suspect that other people had grown up any differently.

And although as an adult, he did know better, he still couldn’t begin to understand the drive or motivation behind people who purposely put themselves into ugly situations when they didn’t have to. Why would someone like Annie choose to live the way she did? What could she possibly be getting out of it?

Unable to answer the questions, he unzipped his bag and began to halfheartedly unpack. The early afternoon sun hung high in the sky, its rays tumbling through the open window to spill over the hardwood floor in streaks of white and gold. Across the street from the Hanson House Bed and Breakfast, the mighty Atlantic roared and crashed against the beach like a hungry beast. A warm breeze danced with the lacy curtains, redolent with the fresh scent of salt and the far-off fragrance of a barbecue grill warming up for lunch.

Ike paused in his activity to move to the window, inhaling deeply as he pushed it open more. He loved the ocean. Even with Craggedy Annie along for the ride—who, was growing less craggedy, he had to confess—it was going to be nice to get away for the weekend. His work had become so demanding since he’d joined his company with his partner’s some years ago. The merger had come at an ideal time and had suited well both men’s needs. Ike had wanted more business, more opportunity. His partner, Chase Buchanan, had wanted more time to spend with his family. Both men had gotten exactly what they wanted from the deal, and the business had grown by leaps and bounds as a result.

Buchanan-Guthrie Designs, Inc. was now enormously successful, and Ike had more work than he had ever imagined he would. He ate, drank, breathed, slept…he absolutely lived his career, and liked it that way just fine. Working was what Ike did best. Maybe Chase was a family man, the perfect father. But Ike couldn’t imagine living his life that way. He was too full of ambition to ever settle down. What would he do with kids?

Kids. He couldn’t stop thinking about that kid.

That kid at Annie’s. The one with the eyes so big and blue, they seemed to peer right into his soul. The one who had screamed in terror that Ike was going to hurt him. The one who had been so badly abused by his parents he didn’t know any other way of being treated. Even a guy like Ike, who had no desire to have children, couldn’t begin to understand how anyone could do that to a kid.

A soft rap on the door connecting his room to Annie’s pulled him away from his thoughts, and back into his room. The Hanson House was a Victorian wonder, the owners clearly having cared for it as if it were a much-loved relative. Outside, the looming structure was trimmed in yellow and green, and it soared three stories high in a seemingly unplanned zigzag of angles and corners. Inside, the rooms were furnished with period pieces and accessories, painted soft colors suited to ocean living, and filled with sunlight. Ike and Annie had been placed in rooms on the third floor, rooms that had apparently been assigned to the servants way back when the Hanson House had been a private residence. And although his room was a bit small, the ceiling slanted on one side, it was cozy and welcoming and surprisingly accommodating.