A Different Light Read online

“Don’t be silly.” He smiled and a buzz went off somewhere in her head. “You look all digged out for today. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Ah …” She sought to remember the names Callie and Ms. Evelyn had bandied about, names that had meant absolutely nothing to her. “Ah … maybe some, ah, aquilegia.”

  “Sure. That’s one of my favorites, too. Always makes me think of the house I grew up in. My mother always had tons of dark blue and pink columbine along a walk in the backyard.”

  Columbine? Aquilegia is columbine? Who knew?

  “Now, did you want the caerulea, the canadensis, the red star? She certainly has a variety here, doesn’t she?” He bent to inspect the leafy fronds as Athen buried her face in her hands and fought the urge to scream.

  “Ah … the red star would be fine.” Never order anything you can’t pronounce, she reminded herself.

  “I always liked the caerulea myself. Did you know that it’s the state flower of Colorado?” He looked back at her as he began to dig.

  “Ah, no. No, I didn’t know that.”

  She tried to act casual, as if strange men always appeared out of nowhere to do things for her like dig up plants she’d never heard of, flowers she couldn’t identify on a dare.

  “Mom, Ms. Evelyn sent you a Pepsi—it’s diet, like you like.” Callie handed Athen the cold can and eyed the stranger suspiciously. “Who’s that?”

  “Just someone who likes to dig.” Athen tilted the can back and swallowed gratefully, then pulled her hair to one side and placed the ice-cold can against her neck. It felt wonderful.

  Callie began to pile the plants she’d dug onto the heavy plastic flats.

  “Hey, it’s the runner.” The stranger plunked a large clump of dirt and dried leaves onto a flat. “That was a good race you ran a few weeks back.”

  “Not good enough to beat that geeky little butthead Timmy Forbes,” Callie replied.

  The stranger laughed out loud.

  “Oh, Callie, that’s an awful expression.” Athen cringed.

  “Well, he is.” She picked up one of the flats and headed to the car, calling over her shoulder to her mother, “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

  Athen stood up and brushed herself off. Not that it helped. Her jeans needed more than brushing, she noted with some embarrassment. The knees were caked with dirt and she saw lines of grime on her arms where the sweat had streaked downward. It had been a long time since she’d been this dirty.

  “Let me get that for you.” Smiling, the dark-haired man leaned over and effortlessly picked up two flats. He had deep dimples on each side of his mouth. She wished she hadn’t noticed. “Lead the way.”

  While he loaded the flats into the back of her car, Athen sought out Ms. Evelyn in the greenhouse to negotiate payment for the plants. Her unexpected helper went back up the hill to give Callie a hand with the remaining flats. Athen noticed a young boy walking toward Callie as she started back to the car. He looked as if he wanted to stop and talk, but Callie barely acknowledged him.

  The man in the white shorts placed the last flat into the trunk of her car. Athen watched from the greenhouse as he looked around, then shrugged, and after calling to the boy, got into a dark SUV.

  I didn’t even thank him, Athen thought as he drove off.

  “Who was your friend?” Athen casually asked Callie on the way home.

  “What friend?”

  “The boy who was speaking to you at Ms. Evelyn’s.”

  “Oh. You mean Timmy Forbes.” Callie scowled. “He goes to my school.”

  “Timmy Forbes?” Athen recalled Callie’s previous description of the boy, and her face went white. “That man, the one who was helping me dig, was he …”

  “Mr. Forbes.” Callie nodded. “I heard Timmy call him ‘Dad’ when they were leaving.”

  Athen grimaced. The helpful blue-eyed man with the great legs and a fondness for digging was the geeky little butthead’s father.

  QUENTIN FORBES LOADED THE LAST of his plants into the back of the Explorer and slammed the door.

  “Let’s go, Tim,” he called to his son, who was wandering down the hill, kicking a stone.

  Quentin slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Tim got into the passenger seat and strapped himself in.

  “Want to stop for pizza on the way home?” Quentin asked.

  “No thanks.” Tim shook his head and looked out the side window.

  “How ’bout a burger, then?”

  “Not unless you want one.”

  “I can always eat a burger.” Quentin put the car in reverse and waved to Ms. Evelyn as he headed for the road. “So, do you think Grandma will like the plants you picked out for her birthday?”

  “I guess.” Tim shrugged.

  Quentin turned on the radio and racked his brain, trying to think of something else to say. His son was obviously bothered by something but he wasn’t sure how to get him to open up. Just one more reason to resent his wife for taking off and leaving them the way she did. Not that Cynthia would have been more tuned in to Timmy than Quentin was, he reminded himself. Cynthia had never been tuned in to anyone but Cynthia.

  “The girl who was at Ms. Evelyn’s,” Quentin said. “Is she a friend of yours from school?”

  Tim snorted. “I wouldn’t call her that.”

  “What would you call her?”

  “A snotty little brat.”

  “I trust you have good reason for that,” Quentin said cautiously. He didn’t like to hear his son speak like that about anyone. On the other hand, he remembered what the girl had called Tim, and wondered what was at the bottom of the mutual animosity.

  “She just isn’t very nice, that’s all.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Callie Moran.”

  “She’s an awfully pretty kid. What’s your problem with her?”

  “What’s her problem with me?” Tim retorted. “She hasn’t said anything nice to me since I moved here.”

  “She can’t be the only kid in your class.”

  “She’s the most popular. She’s the smartest girl in the whole fifth grade, and she’s the best athlete.” He paused to reflect, then amended that to, “Well, the best after me.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like being the best after anyone. Sounds to me like she’s used to being the best at everything.”

  “Yeah, well, too bad for her.” Tim folded his arms over his chest and stared straight ahead.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Timmy said, “All the teachers treat her like she’s something special ’cause her father was a cop who got killed.”

  “What?” Quentin thought of the girl’s mother. “When?”

  “Some guy shot him when he was trying to arrest him or something.” Tim shrugged.

  “Wow. That’s terrible.” Quentin thought of how Timmy was dealing with the fact that his mother had left him to pursue her career. How much worse would it be to have a parent taken from you the way Callie Moran had? “I’ll bet it’s been really hard for her.”

  Tim declined to comment.

  Quentin thought this might be a moment he could use to get his son to open up to how he felt about his mother leaving.

  “It’s hard to lose a parent, Tim, under any circumstances.”

  “Well, at least her father didn’t run away from her and go to France to take pictures for a stupid magazine.”

  “Tim, you know your mother will be back to see you sometime this fall.”

  “Big deal. I’ll bet she doesn’t even come.” He kicked the bottom of the dash.

  “She said she would.”

  “She says a lot of things.” Timmy’s bottom lip began to quiver. “And she lies a lot.”

  Quentin wished he could assure his son that his mother would, in fact, be back to see him in a few months as she’d promised. But they both knew that she did, in fact, lie when it suited her, and one thing Quentin had vowed when she left was to never lie to Timmy. Instead, he tried to shift the co
nversation from those dangerous waters and back to Callie Moran.

  “I’m sure Callie would love to be able to say that maybe she’d see her dad again sometime,” Quentin said softly. “Anytime.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Quentin silently cursed his ex-wife. For months after she left, he’d kept their home in St. Louis, thinking that maybe his son would be better off in familiar surroundings. Tim went to the same school he’d always gone to, played for the same sports teams, hung out with the same kids. But as time went on, it became apparent that there was no point in trying to pretend that nothing had changed in Tim’s life except for the fact that his mother was gone. Nothing was the same, and Quentin had some hard decisions to make. In the end, he’d decided to move east, to the New Jersey town where his mother now made her life with her new husband. If nothing else, Tim would have extended family members. He’d have time to spend with Quentin’s mother, and he’d get to know his stepgrandfather and his stepaunt.

  Tim had seemed so happy there when they visited over Christmas vacation that Quentin hadn’t hesitated to accept when his stepfather offered him their gatehouse as temporary living quarters. They returned to St. Louis only long enough for Quentin to list the house with a Realtor and pack their belongings. The Forbes guys were back in New Jersey by March, and neither of them had looked back. St. Louis held few good memories. Quentin had hoped that the change would be good for Tim, and in some ways it had been. The boy loved his grandmother and his new grandfather, both of whom doted on him. There were stables with horses to ride and meadows to ride through, streams to follow into the woods, and new challenges on the playing fields to be met.

  But Quentin had noticed that Tim kept to himself much of the time and didn’t seem to have made any friends. At first he told himself that it was because they’d moved in the middle of the school year. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  “So what’s it going to be, sport?” Quentin came to a stop at a red light. “Burgers? Or no burgers?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “How about burgers on the way to the beach?”

  Tim’s head spun halfway around to face his father.

  “The beach is cool. I’d be up for that.”

  “In that case, it’s back to the house to pick up our stuff.” Quentin turned left when the light turned green.

  “It’s nice of Grandma to let us use her beach house.” Tim smiled for the first time since he got into the car. “It’s such a cool place. I love the ocean.”

  “Me too.”

  “If we’d stayed in St. Louis, I’d probably never get to see the ocean.”

  “We’d have come for visits,” Quentin reminded him.

  “It wouldn’t be the same as being able to go any time we want.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be.”

  Ten minutes later, they were driving through the gates of Quentin’s mother’s home.

  “Dad, it’s okay if Callie Moran doesn’t like me,” Tim told him before he got out of the car. “You can still like her mom even if Callie doesn’t like me.”

  “What makes you think I like her mom?”

  “’Cause you dug up all that stuff for her and carried it down to her car.” Timmy grinned, his parting shot before jumping out of the car. “Besides, her mom’s hot.”

  Out of the mouths of babes, Quentin thought as he followed his son into the house. Callie Moran’s mom was, indeed, hot.

  6

  It was an obviously depressed Dan Rossi who stepped off the elevator on a sultry Monday morning in late August.

  “Can I get something for you, Dan?” a concerned Athen asked. “Some coffee? Maybe something cold? Or some aspirin?”

  “Aspirin and cold drinks won’t help, Athen, but thank you.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Anything I can help you with?”

  “I appreciate that. But this is something I have to deal with myself.” He made a gallant effort to smile.

  She tiptoed out of the office, wondering at the cause of his troubles. She all but knocked over Edie, who’d obviously been lurking outside the door.

  “Find out what’s ailing him?” Edie nodded in the direction of the door.

  Athen shook her head.

  “If you ask me, it’s that damned city charter,” Edie volunteered.

  Athen sat down at her desk and looked for a copy of the email she’d typed yesterday, the one Rossi had her send to Wolmar right at the close of the day. Maybe there was a clue in it. He’d seemed agitated at the time he’d dictated it to her.

  “Yup, that’d be my guess. It’s that damned charter, all right,” Edie repeated.

  Athen did her best to ignore her. Maybe Edie the chatterbox would see she was busy and go away.

  Maybe little people from Mars would land on the roof and turn them all into marshmallows.

  “You know that part that says you can only serve four consecutive terms?” Edie droned on. “A mistake, if you ask me, putting something like that in there. Now poor Dan has to give up the office.” She tsk-tsked. “A finer man never sat in that chair, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” She lowered her voice and added, “Everyone’s waiting for Dan to name his successor, and it’s going to have to be soon, too. The Labor Day rally is next week already.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s when he has to announce who gets the nod to run. Not that an election means anything in this city. Don’t get me wrong,” Edie hastened to add, “I’m a faithful member of the party. Always have been, always will be. And I’m loyal to Dan. God knows I’ll be just as loyal to whoever it is that Dan picks. It just seems to me to be a waste of money, though, going to the expense of a campaign when everyone knows who’s going to win.” She paused, then added, “Once we know who’s running, of course. That’s the beauty of having a one-party town.”

  “I thought there was more than one political party in Woodside Heights.” Athen frowned.

  “Well, technically, there is, but only one party has won an election in this city for over a hundred years.” Edie smiled. “It takes the drama out of the election when you know who’s going to win, but that’s okay with me. Who needs the agita?”

  The elevator doors slid open noiselessly.

  “Oh my, would you look at Himself,” Edie whispered as Jim Wolmar strode toward them, a jovial smile plastered on his face.

  “Good morning, ladies.” He nodded cheerfully, smoothing his tie and shooting the cuffs of the pale ivory shirt under the handsome gray Italian silk suit jacket. “Dan’s expecting me, Athen. Don’t get up. I can show myself in.”

  Something about Wolmar had bothered Athen since day one. It could have been the fact that he always wore the same self-satisfied expression. Maybe it was the overly solicitous manner in which he always agreed with Dan, always nodding vigorously, proclaiming, “Absolutely, Dan. Without question,” as if Dan’s words had been Jim’s very thoughts. It could be the way he looked. Tall and trim with a full head of perfectly groomed silver hair, Wolmar might be handsome if he lost that lifeless plastic gaze. He always reminded Athen of an older version of Barbie’s friend, Ken.

  It was generally believed that Wolmar was Rossi’s protégé, that Dan had been priming him to take over the office someday. Apparently, Jim believed that day was now near. Contrasting Dan’s mood to Jim’s lively steps, it seemed only one of them was happy about it.

  Jim was still wearing that same sappy smile when he emerged from Dan’s office ten minutes later. The smile seemed to slide to one side of his face somewhat when he approached the opening door of the elevator as Harlan Justis was stepping out. The two men greeted each other warily, like opponents who were sizing each other up for the first time. Athen caught Wolmar trying to steal a peek through the closing elevator doors as Justis entered the confines of Rossi’s office.

  Harlan Justis looked exactly the way a solicitor of a small city should look. He was well-spoken, well dressed, and well manicured. He was also apparently certain that when the dust set
tled, he, not Wolmar, would be Rossi’s choice to succeed him.

  Justis, too, stayed behind closed doors for about ten minutes before emerging with a hopeful look about him. Until Jack Sheldon, the front-runner from the third ward, stepped out of the elevator, smiled, and walked confidently into the mayor’s office.

  And so it went till noon, resuming again at two. Prospective candidates in, prospective candidates out.

  The usual Council meeting was subdued, lasting less than an hour before Dan stood to indicate the session had concluded. As an apparent afterthought, he added that he’d come to no final decision on “that other matter.” Wolmar and Justis both seemed inclined to linger for as long as possible, as if waiting to see if Rossi had words of encouragement for either of them. Both were disappointed when it became clear there’d be no further discussion that day.

  Athen was in the process of gathering up the used coffee cups when Dan closed the office door.

  “Can you sit and talk with me for a few, Athen?” He slumped into his chair.

  “Of course.”

  He motioned to a chair close to him, and she sat.

  “I have a terrible dilemma, Athen, a terrible decision to make.” He shook his head as if the weight of the world rested upon it.

  “The election?” she ventured quietly.

  “Yes, of course, the election. How insightful of you to pick right up on that. I have to choose the right candidate, and my heart’s burning over it. There is no clear choice here, you see. Jim is a good man, but he’s never developed a true feel for the people. Harlan’s years away from being the man he needs to be to lead this city. Ah, and the worst of it, Athen, is that in my heart I know I haven’t finished the job. There’s so much more I’d wanted to do for all those good people out there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the windows that fronted on the town square.

  He turned his head from her, as if to shield her from his display of emotion.

  “And the saddest part is that I know all the good things I’d planned will go undone.”

  “Well, surely your successor . . . Jim, Harlan, whoever . . . will follow your agenda.”

  “Ah, Athen, you’re so naïve.” He smiled kindly, as a father might at his child. “Everyone has their own priorities. No, I’m afraid that Dan Rossi’s plans for a better Woodside Heights will leave this office with him.”