Radclyffe - Love On Call

Carrie pulled to the curb in a car that looked like a bug escaped from some automotive fun house. The little red convertible with white stripes was the size of a beanbag and ridiculously cute.

“What is that?” Mari asked, walking down the sidewalk.

“Isn’t it just adorable?” Carrie grinned and actually patted the dashboard. “It’s a Mini Cooper. My present to myself. It’s so much fun to drive and really easy to park, and I get lots of looks.”

Mari laughed and slipped into the passenger seat. “I bet you do.”

Carrie’s hair was down and slightly tangled from the open air drive. She wore a tank top and cut-off denim shorts. Her arms and legs were tanned, her eyes sparkling, and she was definitely lookable. The car probably wasn’t necessary to get her a little attention.

“I thought we’d start at my place—well, my new place.” Carrie pulled away from the curb, did a neat U-turn, and headed right on Main Street. “Then we’ll head to the farm for food and Presley’s war meeting.”

“Are you sure I’m not crashing a private thing?” Mari asked.

“Definitely not. Not to worry.”

Carrie whipped around a corner, and within a minute, they’d left the village limits and were in the heart of farmland. Fields of corn and other green things stretched on either side of the road for what looked like forever in every direction. Every few minutes they’d pass a narrow dirt road leading through the fields, far bigger and longer than an ordinary driveway, to a cluster of barns and a farmhouse centered in the midst of the fields.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Carrie said.

“It’s certainly beautiful. You don’t mind living so far from everything?”

Carrie laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And me being a city kid too. When you get home at night, there’s just you and the animals and…peace. It’s never really quiet, but not the noise of other people. I never realized that I might like being away from it all until I actually was. I’m always glad to get to the hospital, or the ball field, or somewhere else with friends, but there’s something really special about your own little piece of the world.”

“You’ve really settled in here, haven’t you?” Mari envied her cousin having found her place, even as she was happy for her.

“You know, I really have.” Carrie’s face grew uncharacteristically solemn. “Thank God Presley is so good at what she does, because I would hate to have to leave. As long as the hospital is healthy, this is home. And I guess, if for some reason I didn’t have my job at the Rivers, I’d have to find something else to do here somewhere.” She glanced over at Mari. “I don’t think I’d want to leave.”

“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we met.”

“Me too. I love my friends more than anything, but there’s something special about family, isn’t there.”

“Yes,” Mari said quietly. “There is.”

Carrie’s soon-to-be new home was just about as cute as her car. The white clapboard two-story square with its slate roof looked like a miniature of all the farmhouses they’d passed on the way: a wide back porch, a small barn, a big garden filled with flourishing plants, some of them already laden with ripening tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers, and a view across a sweeping expanse of meadow toward distant mountains.

“It’s beautiful here.” Mari sighed. “Who is looking after the garden?”

“Presley, Harper, and I take turns coming over to raid whatever’s ripe. Lila—our housekeeper—stops by too.”

Carrie pulled open the screen and opened the back door. “Come on, I’ll show you what I’m planning.”

“Doesn’t anyone lock their doors around here?”

“Oh, probably. The newcomers.”

Mari laughed and entered a bright kitchen, big enough to eat in, that opened directly off the back porch and ran most of the width of the rear of the house. A small table with four wooden chairs nestled around it sat in front of the windows beside the back door. Dark wood counters, oak cupboards with glass fronts, a big gas range, and a white enamel refrigerator with a rounded door that looked like it might be twenty years old completed the decor.

“This is really nice.” Mari ran her hand over the enamel-topped table, like one she remembered from her visit to her grandmother when she was ten. She imagined sitting at that table with a cup of coffee in the morning before work or late in the evening, when she’d finished at the hospital. She could make that picture so easily, but everywhere else she looked was shadows. Would she be alone? Would there be a woman, a life, beyond that bare glimmer of a dream?

“I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Mari jumped, found a smile. “Yes. Amazing.”

Carrie led her through into a living room slightly bigger than the kitchen, with a square black stove of some kind in one corner with a pile of logs beside it. “One bedroom and bath upstairs. We’re going to add an extension with a bedroom, another bath, and maybe a little laundry room. That’s downstairs in the basement right now.”

“Quite a project.”

“I know, fun, huh.” Carrie’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Presley talked to the contractor who’s renovating Abby and Flann’s farmhouse. I haven’t heard the schedule yet, but if anyone can get them to run two crews at the same time, it’ll be Presley.”

“It sounds as if everyone has been here forever—Presley and Abby and you.”

Carrie ran her fingers over the top of a corduroy-covered sofa, glancing around the room. “You’ll feel the same way soon, like you’ve always been here.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Mari wasn’t ready to explain why she’d be content with satisfying work and the occasional company of friends like Carrie. She especially didn’t want to tell her newly found cousin why family was not something she wanted to count on—not for a long, long time.

Chapter Eighteen

Mari sat at one end of a semicircle of high-backed wooden rockers with Carrie, Abby, Presley, and Carson on the back porch of the big yellow farmhouse where Carrie lived with Harper and Presley. She gently pushed her pale green rocker with one foot, lulled by the early morning sun and the rhythmic to-and-fro motion. The worn-smooth seat was so comfortable she’d have sworn it had been carved specifically for her backside. She had to resist searching to see if her name was written on the chair somewhere. When she and Carrie had arrived, the others had welcomed her as if she had always been part of the group. Still, the foreignness of the landscape, with the fenced pastures and hard-packed dirt barnyard populated by chickens and a handicapped rooster who had been introduced to her as Rooster, reminded her she was still very much an outsider. Despite her lingering self-consciousness, she was happy to be there and hoped she’d one day be a real part of the group.

Carrie put her iced tea on the faded gray plank floor, opened her notebook, and balanced it on her knees. “Okay, let’s review.”

Mari smothered a smile as Carrie worked her way from person to person around the semicircle, running down their list of to-dos and ticking off all the things that had been done. She was like a general reviewing battle plans, analyzing troop movements, and shifting assignments between her officers where needed. Presley, Abby, and Carson all accepted her directions good-naturedly, including her mild admonishments when they admitted to not having yet completed all of their tasks. These women were a family, with the same kind of teasing and occasional squabbling Mari was used to at home, although she hadn’t had this many sisters. Brothers were different. As much as she loved every one of hers, they were still boys. To them, everything was a problem to be solved, and once a solution came to light, they considered the issue solved. With a quick dusting off of hands, they moved on, seemingly never troubled by the emotional consequences. Selena understood the emotional aftermath of life’s big and small moments, that even good things came at a cost and unhappy ones could linger beneath the surface for a long time. Mari missed Selena most when faced with the intimacy of others, when she remembered how close they had been and their abrupt parting. She should have been prepared for Selena’s rejection, but she’d let herself hope. Denial was such a dangerous and destructive form of self-delusion.