Beauty in Hiding Page 4

  Had there been another choice? She went over the facts again and couldn’t see one. Anyway, what was done was done.

  If only she’d remembered to bring that picture of Gramps’s wife he always had with him. Of all the things to forget, she had to forget the one thing they couldn’t replace.

  She pulled up to the house. The night before, in the pouring rain, it had seemed creepy, but today the word charming came to mind. Sure, it needed a paint job and a lot of work on the inside, but nestled beneath the towering trees, the blue sky beyond the bare branches, the house seemed cozy and safe.

  Please, let it be safe.

  As she opened the car door, Jack stepped out of the house. “Can I help?”

  “Sure.”

  She popped the trunk and grabbed a couple of the lighter sacks. Her wrist felt better, but she was careful with it. She needed it to be back to normal as soon as possible.

  Jack somehow managed to wrangle the rest into his arms and slammed the trunk. “After you.”

  They dumped her purchases on the kitchen table. She peeked in the living room and checked on Gramps, who was sound asleep in the chair.

  “He fell asleep half an hour ago,” Jack said.

  “He’s had a rough couple of days.”

  Jack leaned against the door jamb.

  She tried to ignore him as she put away her purchases—cheap plates, silverware, pots and pans and bowls. If only she could use Gramps’s debit card. There was plenty of money in his account. But that would lead Derrick—and the police and whoever else was looking—right to her.

  And then she’d miscalculated what was in her own account. She’d had to refuse some of the items, going through the sacks and pulling out things they could live without while the checkout girl and a guy in line behind her watched, sharing looks and checking their watches. Her face burned with shame and fear at the memory. She hadn’t planned well enough. She and Gramps barely had enough food to last a week. She had a little cash left, and that wouldn’t last long. And then what would she do?

  She thought about the small package of turkey in the refrigerator. She had to offer to feed Jack. It was well past lunchtime, and Jack had fed them dinner the night before. She sent up a quick prayer, thinking of the Bible story about loaves and fishes. “Can I make you a sandwich?”

  He flashed a smile, but his eyes didn’t seem on board with his mouth. “I had a big breakfast.”

  “Okay.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her relief. “I appreciate your help. You don’t have to stay. I’ve got it from here.”

  When she got no response, she glanced at him. He hadn’t moved except to cross his arms.

  “What?”

  “Did you get a job in Nutfield?”

  “I need to find one.” Soon. She opened the package of flatware and tossed the items in the sink to wash. A glance at Jack showed his eyes had narrowed to accusing slits. Or maybe she was only seeing a reflection of her own opinion, because she was a fool. An idiot and a fool who was in way too deep.

  “So if you didn’t move here for a job,” Jack said, “why did you?”

  “It’s a very long story.”

  “Have you been here before?”

  The container of oatmeal blurred as she remembered all those summers when she was a child. The cabin, the boat, the lake. The joy she’d always experienced. “My family used to vacation in a town like this.”

  “This is a vacation community. Not a lot of jobs this time of year.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of much except run, run, run.

  She tossed more silverware in the sink, the sound clanking and loud, and forced a bright smile. “I’ll find something.”

  “What kind of work are you looking for?”

  “Anything right now. Just—”

  “And what will Red do while you’re at work?”

  If only she could hide until Jack went away. Because he was asking all the right questions, and she had no answers.

  Run, run, run.

  That was all she knew.

  Her smile felt as fragile as thin glass. “It’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out. We have enough to get by.”

  He didn’t speak, and she couldn’t hold eye contact. She finished with the flatware, gathered the empty plastic bags, shoved them all in one, and stowed the bundle beneath the kitchen sink.

  “Look,” Jack said. “I have no idea what’s going on with you or why you’re here, but—”

  “You don’t have to worry about Gramps and me. We’ll be fine. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  His eyebrows lifted, and he rocked back a shade before he recovered. “Right. Well, I’m sure that’s true. There’s a great little food pantry—”

  “We don’t need—”

  “If you’d let me finish.”

  She tossed out a go-ahead wave, all the while thinking, food pantry. A food pantry. As much as she’d been about to argue with Jack, because, hey, the guy didn’t need to know his renters were destitute, the words food pantry felt like a lifeline. Maybe they wouldn’t starve this month.

  Maybe.

  “It’s only open one day a week to customers, but they’ve just built a room on where a lot of older folks hang out. It’s a recreation center for old people, and it’s open Monday through Friday. They help with the pantry when they can. They like to be involved, but most of the time, they just watch TV, play cards, and talk. I was going to suggest that you see if Red likes hanging out with them. Maybe that’d be an option for when you’re working.”

  “That sounds…” But words failed her, because, maybe, here was a solution. Maybe, here was a way out of the hole she’d dug for herself.

  “Anyway,” Jack said, “the pantry’s open tomorrow at ten, if you want to go. You’ll want to talk to the lady who runs it, Vanessa Baker. In fact, she might be able to hook you up with a job, too.”

  “Oh.” Harper turned away, this time to hide the tears that seemed so close to the surface these days. She swallowed, sniffed, tried to rein in the emotions. Waited for Jack to say something.

  When he didn’t, she peeked back toward the door, but he wasn’t there.

  She wiped her eyes and saw Jack beside the couch watching the soap opera Gramps was missing thanks to his nap.

  She took a deep breath and stood beside him. “You’ve been very kind to us. Thank you.”

  He turned to her, lowered his chin. “Happy to help.” He headed for the door. “I’m going to get some supplies. I’ll start building a ramp this afternoon. God willing, I’ll have it finished by the time you guys need to leave tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows and nodded toward Gramps.

  “He can handle stairs,” she said. “He was just tired.”

  Gramps’s gruff voice cut off whatever Jack had been about to say. “Don’t you guys talk about me as if I’m not in the room.”

  Harper turned and smiled at the old man. “I was just telling him how good you usually are on stairs. Right?”

  His bushy gray eyebrows lowered over his tired eyes. “Most of the time.”

  Jack’s smirk told her what he thought of that answer. “‘Most of the time’ doesn’t cut it.” Harper started to speak, but he cut her off. “And I don’t want to hear how I don’t have to, okay? I’m not having one of my tenants fall and break a bone because I was too cheap or lazy to offer a solution.”

  “But, it’s—”

  “I’ll be back and forth, so if you see me outside, just ignore me. I’ll have to take some measurements.”

  He was gone before she could argue.

  Chapter Eight

  It had been an exhausting day by the time Jack stepped into his house that night. Exhausting, but productive. It had taken until sundown, but he’d completed the ramp so Red could get in and out of the house without risk.

  Now all he wanted to do was heat up some leftover chili and collapse into bed.

  But the ramp wasn�
��t all his new neighbors needed.

  Not that any of it was his business, as he kept reminding himself. Harper and Red had issues, but they’d had issues long before he happened along. They’d brought those issues with them to Nutfield, and it was not Jack’s job to fix them.

  He shouldn’t get involved. He had plenty to keep him busy, and he didn’t need additional drama in his life. If he wanted to get his real estate business up and running this winter, he needed to stay focused.

  But no matter how many times he told himself that, no matter how many times he berated himself for worrying about them, he couldn’t get his neighbors off his mind.

  So, fine. He’d do what he could. Then maybe he’d be able to drag his focus back to his own problems.

  He grabbed his keys and headed to the food bank in town. He knocked on the back door. A moment later, Vanessa Baker pulled it open.

  “I figured you’d still be here,” he said.

  Behind the woman, a little girl yelled, “Who is it, Mommy?”

  Vanessa opened the door wider and stepped into the storage area. “Come on in.” Even with those three words, her accent was discernible. She spoke English well, but no one would mistake her for a native. Where she was from, Jack had no idea. Vanessa wasn’t one to talk about her past and didn’t seem open to questions.

  As reticent as Vanessa was, her daughter was an open book—probably a fairy tale featuring wood nymphs and magic spells. The little girl had certainly cast a spell on him.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack.” Five-year-old Katarina barreled into him and wrapped her arms around his legs.

  He lifted his hand to high-five her, feeling her mother’s watchful eyes as he did. Had this been one of his nieces, he’d have lifted her up and hugged her, but Vanessa had rules about her daughter. No man was allowed to hug the girl. Even the old men who hung out in the rec center had to be careful.

  More than once Jack had wondered what lay in Vanessa’s past that caused her to be so cautious. Right now, he had another woman’s problems to deal with.

  He focused on the girl. “And how are you this fine evening, little kitten.”

  “I’m not a kitten.” The girl’s smile told him she liked his game.

  “You’re Kat, and little cats are kittens, right?”

  She giggled. “I wanna show you something.” And with that, she bolted through the doorway into the rec center.

  He looked around the warehouse. It looked well-stocked for the clients who’d come the following day. In the morning, more groceries would be delivered, perishables picked up from nearby grocery stores. He didn’t know how all that worked, but he’d been here often enough to marvel at the operation when the pickup trucks came in.

  “You need something?” Vanessa asked.

  “A favor.”

  She shifted to her back foot, narrowed her eyes.

  Another defensive woman, as if he hadn’t dealt with enough of that the last couple of days. “My new tenants,” he said. “The old man looks like he needs some looking after, and his granddaughter needs to get a job. I wondered if it would be okay if the man hung out here.”

  “You know our policy. If he can’t volunteer, then she has to if she wants to bring him.”

  “What if I volunteer in her stead?”

  Vanessa flashed a rare smile. “You already volunteer many hours. Without your work, there wouldn’t be a rec center.”

  He started to answer but stopped when Kat ran back into the room. “Look, look!” She waved a piece of paper up toward him.

  He took it and gazed at the drawing. A cat and a kitten. He met Vanessa’s eyes and lifted his brows before focusing on the girl. “You didn’t draw this all by yourself, did you?”

  “Mommy got me a book to teach me how to draw animals, and I copied it.”

  “Wow. This is really good. And all the fur, you did that, too?”

  “Uh-huh. And the eyes. They were the hardest. In the book, I was just supposed to color them all in one color, but cats’ eyes are pretty, so I wanted to make them look like real eyes.”

  They weren’t perfect, but they had slit pupils and a little variation in the color. “You did a great job.” He handed the paper back to the little girl and focused on Vanessa. “She’s very talented.”

  “Yes.” Vanessa looked at her daughter with affection before focusing on him again. “You think your tenant needs our services, food, anything else?”

  “She claimed they were fine, but…” He thought of the sparse groceries, the state of her car, and the few items they’d brought with them. “If you tell her she has to be a client to leave Red here, then she’ll be forced to get some groceries, which I think she needs.”

  Vanessa studied him, eyes narrowed and lips pursed, before she nodded once. “Da. Yes, bring her tomorrow, and we will work it out.”

  “Thank you. Her name is Harper Cloud.” He turned to Kat. “And thank you for showing me your beautiful picture. You’re a very talented young lady.”

  “I’m only five.”

  He chuckled. “You sure? You seem so much more mature than that.”

  “I am.” She looked at her mother. “Right, Mommy?”

  “Yes, ceri.”

  Jack focused on the little girl. “What is ‘ceri’?”

  Vanessa answered. “It means daughter in Serbian.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Da.” She grabbed the doorknob. “You need anything else?”

  Jack took the hint. “Nope. Thanks so much for your help. I’ll send them over tomorrow. I’ll be here, too, to install the crown molding.”

  Vanessa nodded. “Thank you. I will help your new tenants if I can.”

  Chapter Nine

  Harper parked in the lot at the address Jack had given her. The food bank was a block off Crystal Avenue, Nutfield’s main drag, and located in a small warehouse-type building. Though the tan metal sides weren’t attractive, the area around the glass doors had been landscaped with evergreen shrubs so that even in November it looked inviting. Other vehicles were parked in the small lot, many clunkers like hers. Beyond a chain-link fence, she saw newer, fancier cars, pickups, and SUVs. Maybe that was where the workers parked.

  “What are we doing here?” Gramps asked.

  She couldn’t very well tell him she was looking for elderly day care. “I’m going to see somebody about a job.”

  “You got a job. Taking care of me is your job.”

  “A little extra money never hurt.”

  “Let me call Roger and have him wire us some cash. You don’t need to be working.”

  If only. But Roger Canfield, Gramps’s attorney, would demand to know where they were and why they’d left. Could he be trusted? Were the police looking for her? The thought left her hands trembling as she stared at the doors. She couldn’t go in there. They’d ask for ID, and what would happen then? Would her name be put in some online system? Would it trigger an alert? Would the local cops realize they had a fugitive, an ex-con, in their sleepy little town?

  They’d call Derrick. Derrick, who’d been poisoning his own grandfather.

  She couldn’t risk it.

  She’d reached for the gear shift to reverse out of the spot when a knock startled her. She turned to see Jack leaning beside Gramps’s window, smiling. She slid the gear back into park, stepped out of the car, and spoke to him over the top. “What are you doing here?”

  “Working inside. Saw your car and thought I’d see if you two need help.”

  “We’re okay. I was just thinking…”

  But he’d quit listening. He opened Gramps’s door, and the two greeted each other like old friends.

  It seemed Harper didn’t have a choice. And really, had she ever? She couldn’t let Gramps starve to death, and without a job—or at least this food bank—that was likely. So, whatever. If she got arrested, she got arrested. She’d survived prison once.

  And Gramps? She’d have to trust God to manage him, to manage all of this, because she wa
s out of options.

  She pushed the fear aside and grabbed Gramps’s walker from the trunk. By the time she had it unfolded, Gramps was standing beside the car. She set the walker in front of him, and they shuffled across the parking lot.

  Jack opened the glass door, and she and Gramps stepped onto linoleum floors. There was a reception desk to her right. Beyond that stood fabric-sided cubicles. In one, two people were holding hands across a desk, heads bowed.

  In front of her, people of all sorts sat in chairs set in neat rows. Some of the men and women were wrinkled and worn. Others were young and had children in tow. Some were dressed nicely, while others looked as if they’d shopped at Goodwill on a bad day. There was an older couple taking turns with a toddler, who kept crawling from one lap to the other.

  “I’ll get Red settled,” Jack said. “You go check in.”

  Harper watched while Jack walked with Gramps to one of the few free chairs before she turned to the desk. Behind it, a woman with long blond hair was typing and staring at a screen. She looked up and regarded Harper with the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. The woman looked young, mid-twenties at most. She was beautiful, but she had a don’t-mess-with-me look Harper wished she could perfect. Would that she could be that strong.

  “Hi,” Harper said. “I heard you have some kind of elderly recreation center.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “You are Jack’s renter?”

  The question surprised her. “Uh…”

  “He told me to expect you.” The woman spoke with a slight accent as she handed Harper a clipboard with paperwork. “After you fill this out, bring it back, and I will get you in the system.”