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  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “A teacher?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “A foreign correspondent.”

  “A foreign… Oh, Peter, that’s ridiculous. They’re gone all the time. You read about their lifestyles. How can that possibly work?”

  “Not quite sure.” Especially since she’s now declined two invitations, he thought as he hung up on Sophia.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, Mrs. Black…Patricia’s academic progress would be enhanced considerably if she attended school more than two days a week. Let’s talk a little about what we can do to ensure she gets up in time to catch the school bus in the mornings. An alarm clock would be an obvious first step…”

  Sophia’s second call came just as he was leaving his office to head across campus. “Please forget about the foreign correspondent,” she said. “It would be an enormous mistake. As soon as the girls begin to trust her, she’ll be whisked off to Timbuktu, or somewhere, only to be shot at and God knows what else. Please tell me you weren’t serious.”

  EDIE HAD ENVISIONED somewhere a little more celebratory for her getting-reacquainted lunch with Maude, but her mother had insisted on Mrs. Brown’s Burger Bar: pumpkin-colored vinyl booths and anthropomorphic dancing pies painted on the windows. Maude liked Mrs. Brown’s early-bird dinners. Edie glanced at the menu. A little insert offered a free slice of apple, chocolate or cherry pie with any order over six dollars.

  “I don’t want anything spicy,” Maude was saying. “What are you having?”

  “Salad.” Edie set the menu down and looked at Maude. So far today things had gone quite smoothly. She hadn’t slapped her forehead in exasperation, or sworn or wanted to shake Maude silly. I am becoming a better person, she decided. If not a paragon of saintly virtue, more patient and understanding. Compassionate, even. Earlier, as they had been getting into the car, she’d taken a second look at her mother’s headgear and refrained from asking why Maude had chosen to go out wearing a tea cozy.

  And last night, after her mother returned from the visit with Dixie Mueller, Edie had listened with a degree of patience she had no idea she possessed to Maude explain that she only ate eggs on Tuesdays except if it rained and then sometimes she’d have a banana, not because she was hungry, mind you, but because of the potassium, but if you stopped to think about it, she’d lived this long so if she wanted to eat eggs on Wednesdays, too, how could it hurt?

  “This was nice, Edie,” Maude had said when just before midnight she’d announced she was ready for bed. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a talk like this.” And actually, Edie thought as she’d drifted off to sleep, it had been kind of nice. Not exactly the heart-to-heart, mother-daughter chat she’d once dreamed about, but peculiarly contenting, anyway. Of course, she’d had a couple of glasses of wine.

  “What can I get you ladies?” The waiter, a tall gawky kid who appeared to be about twelve, thirteen max, looked from Edie to Maude, then reeled off a list of specials.

  “I didn’t get that,” Maude told him. “Can you read them again?”

  “Mom, what difference does it make?” Edie asked. Vivian had already warned her that Maude, when dining out, would eat nothing but fish and chips. “You’re going to have fish and chips, anyway.”

  “Where’s the chicken potpie?” Maude had picked up the menu again. “How much is it?”

  “We don’t have chicken potpie,” the kid said.

  “Chicken potpie,” Maude said. “And a cup of coffee.”

  “They don’t have chicken potpie,” Edie told Maude. “Why don’t you just have fish and chips like you always do?”

  Maude eyed Edie, a tad suspiciously. “What are you having?”

  Edie felt her hand move almost involuntarily to her head. She restrained it. “I’m having salad, Mom. I already told you.”

  Maude screwed up her face as if she’d just learned that her daughter was going to dine on stewed yak. “Salad?”

  “Salad.”

  “I don’t want salad. I’ll have chicken potpie.”

  Edie slapped her head. “Mom! Look at me. They don’t have chicken potpie.”

  “Don’t shout at me.” Maude raised her eyes to the waiter. “See how my daughter talks to me?”

  “Want me to come back in a few minutes?” he said.

  “No,” Edie said. “She’ll have fish and chips.”

  “I don’t know though.” Maude was browsing the menu again. “The last time I had chicken potpie here it had bits of green pepper in it. I think I’ll just have the fish and chips. Edie, that man across the street keeps looking at you.”

  Edie looked beyond the dancing pies to see Peter Darling leaving the hardware shop, smiling broadly. She realized with irritation, now back and in plentiful supply, that her hair was lank and unwashed, she had on no makeup and that she was wearing tatty elephant-colored sweats. She drank some water and slouched down in the booth as Peter approached. The life of the foreign correspondent wasn’t always glamorous and exotic.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS HE APPROACHED the booth where Edie sat opposite an elderly woman in a natty white knitted hat, Peter acknowledged, reluctantly, that Edie did not appear overjoyed to see him. By contrast, her companion was all smiles as she patted the booth beside her.

  “Didn’t recognize you from across the road,” she said. “You’re that assistant principal at my son-in-law’s school. Saw you when my other daughter took me there so she could drop off Ray’s lunch. He’s on a low-sodium diet. You met Edie? She’s a foreign correspondent, got shot at last year. I’m having the fish and chips. Edie’s having the chicken potpie.”

  “Mmm.” He met Edie’s eyes across the table. As he remembered, they were amber, only slightly lighter than her hair. “I wasn’t really hungry, but I quite like chicken potpie.”

  “They don’t have chicken potpie.” Edie looked as if she might have a headache. “I’m having a salad.”

  “If you don’t mind the green peppers, the chicken potpie is good,” Maude said.

  “I think I’m going to sit here and go quietly insane,” Edie said. “Hi, Peter. This is my mother, Maude Robinson, in case you weren’t previously introduced. Mom—” she leaned across the table to Maude “—you remember Peter Darling?” She looked at Peter again. “School day over already?”

  “No,” he said. “I just came for the chicken potpie.”

  “Don’t do this,” she said.

  “You ever seen Edith slap her head?” Maude asked. “That’s what she did just before you got here. I said I wanted fish and chips and she slaps her head. She shouted at me, too.”

  “I should be locked away,” Edie said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I placed two students at the hardware shop across the street,” he said. “It’s a great arrangement. The school district partially subsidizes the shop owner. He gets a couple of assistants and the students get some real work experience while earning credits toward graduation.”

  She eyed him for a moment. “That must be gratifying.”

  He looked straight back at her. “It is. Very.”

  “I meant it sincerely,” she said. “I wasn’t being facetious.”

  “I didn’t suspect for a moment that you were,” he lied. Edie disquieted him. It was nothing overt; an enigmatic smile, the faint whiff of cynicism about her. He imagined that she saw him as painfully earnest, which he supposed he was. Well, earnest—not painfully, he hoped. Perhaps he should cultivate a new persona. Cavalier and brutish. Take that insolent smirk off your face, wench, and get thee to the bedchamber.

  “My daughters both think I’m a senile old woman who doesn’t have a clue in the world what’s going on right in front of her eyes,” Maude said. “They’re trying to put me in a home.”

  Edie set down her water glass. The air went still. Peter tried to think of something to say. At his side, the old woman was sipping water, seemingly unaware that she’d just sparked a matc
h to the conversational tinderbox.

  “Edith hasn’t been back here for donkey’s years,” the elderly woman said. “Too busy with her high-powered job. Now she decides it’s time for poor old mom to be put away, so she comes out here to drag me around to these fancy high-priced places that are nothing more than storage rooms where you sit around and wait to die.”

  “Are you living in your own home at the moment?” Peter asked, trying only to defuse the tension. He didn’t look at Edie, but he could feel her presence, glowering across the table. Beside him, Maude fiddled with her ear.

  “Sorry. It’s not that I’m deaf. I only wear my hearing aid when there’s something I want to hear. Do I rent? No, I own my home. My husband and I bought it when our oldest daughter, Vivian, was born. Both the girls were raised in that house and now they’re trying to make me move out—”

  “Mom, that’s absolutely not true,” Edie said. “That’s what we’ve been talking about. That’s why I’m back. Viv said you want to move—”

  “I didn’t until she started showing me all these fancy brochures and then you come back and…” She looked at Peter. “Now they’re both on at me. I never said stick me in a warehouse though, did I?” She glared at Edie. “I didn’t say come out here and turn my life upside down—”

  “Ah, food,” Edie announced as the kid waiter approached. “Too bad I’m suddenly not hungry.”

  HALF AN HOUR, still shaking with anger, Edie helped Maude back into the car. As she walked around to the driver’s side, Peter caught her arm. He’d gamely sat through the meal, engaging Maude in small talk about roses and gardening and preventing an incendiary situation from erupting into a wildfire. As they were leaving the restaurant, Maude had invited him and his daughters to dinner. Edie had been too furious to even listen for his reply. She looked at him for a moment, not trusting herself to speak.

  “So.” She forced a bright smile. “Here you have the real truth. Heartless daughters evict poor old mother…no, daughter. Singular. As Maude would have told you if you’d waited a little longer, Viv would never be so cruel. But then Viv didn’t kill her father. Funny how Mom’s never quite forgiven me for that.” She stopped, appalled at what she’d just said. She could see confusion in Peter’s face and something else, something tender and soft that made her want to run. “Sorry for that little outburst,” she said. “Could we please rewind the tape?”

  “Consider it done.” His hand was on the top of the car now. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face. “It would be an understatement to say you’ve got a tricky situation, and I don’t want to interfere in a family matter. But, if you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean that.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a card and scribbled something on the back. “That’s my number at home.” He handed the card to Edie. “You’re likely to get one of my daughters, and if it’s Delphina, she’ll want very much to read you a poem. She’s quite talented. Of course, she’ll be too shy to tell you that…but with a little coaching, you can draw her out.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. She would never call, she knew that, but it was a sweet gesture. “I appreciate it.”

  “I mean it sincerely. The offer. I’m a very good listener. I also used to have an elderly mother…”

  She smiled.

  “I don’t know why Ray doesn’t like him,” Maude said as they drove away. “Seems very nice to me. ’Course, you can never tell.”

  PETER HAD FELT some misgivings as he watched Edie drive away with Maude in the car. Perhaps he should have done more to calm her down. He could imagine the headlines in tomorrow’s Little Hills Union. Noted Foreign Correspondent Throttles Elderly Mother. He’d felt the tension radiating off her.

  He stood in the quad now, almost an hour later, watching a troupe of young actors, all dressed in black, perform for the assembled students. Perhaps he would ring her this evening, just to make sure everything was all right. He remembered that he’d meant to tell her how inspired the students had been by her talk. She’d like to hear that, he was sure.

  Sophia might be right about the unsuitability of a foreign correspondent as a wife, but it would be very agreeable to get to know Edie as a friend. That said, how could it hurt to call? He did wonder, though, at the remark about killing her father. What was that all about? Bit of melodrama, maybe. One would hope.

  On a stage across the quad, an antidrug message was being conveyed through mime, dance and ear-splittingly loud rap. His temples throbbing, he snaked a hand down over the shoulder of a boy in the back row and plucked a bag of sunflower seeds, forbidden on campus because of the mess they created, from the surprised boy’s grasp. He wondered if, at forty-one, he was too old for this sort of thing.

  And then Beth Herman tapped him on the arm. He shot her a quick sideways glance and did a double take. Normally, he didn’t pay a great deal of attention to women’s clothes—a shortcoming of which Amelia had frequently complained—but Beth’s blouse was really quite extraordinary, patterned with brilliant butterflies that danced over her entire upper body. Another surreptitious glance revealed small black script identifying the various species. By then, mercifully, the music had stopped and he turned to take an even closer look, realizing as he did so that he was ogling her left breast.

  “Sorry,” he said, although Beth did not seem at all offended. “Very nice blouse.” The students were now ambling off to their classrooms and Beth was smiling and it seemed necessary somehow to say something else. Would you like to be a mother to my children? seemed a bit peremptory. “Very nice cupcakes, too,” he said instead.

  “Cupcakes?”

  “The cakes you brought in this morning with the little silver balls. Quite delicious.”

  “Oh,” she said. “They weren’t mine. One of my aides brought them in. I’ll thank her on your behalf,” she said. “Actually though, I do love to cook.”

  “And I’m sure you do it very well,” he said, trying to imagine Amelia’s response if he were to suggest she bake cakes. Probably about the same as if he were to suggest they marry and raise a dozen children together. Edie would react similarly, he suspected. But he must stop thinking about unsuitable women. Which reminded him of Edie again—or, rather, her mother. “I have a proposal,” he said.

  “A proposal?” Beth’s face reddened and the pile of papers she’d been carrying like a baby slipped from her arms and fell to the ground. “Sorry.”

  Peter joined Beth on the grass to help retrieve some papers that had been scattered by a sudden breeze. For a moment or so they were both on their hands and knees, and he glanced up to find Beth’s nose inches from his own.

  “A proposal?” she said again.

  “A proposal.” Peter held out his hand to help her up. “You seem a little…flustered.”

  “Flustered?” She raked her brown curls. “Oh no, no. I’m fine. I mean, this is the way I always am. Sorry. Um, what can I do for you?” She laughed. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right—”

  “Beth, you’ve just apologized for the third time in as many minutes,” Peter said. “Stop it. You’re making me feel like an ogre.”

  “An ogre? Oh no, I’m sorry I…”

  Peter shook his head. She’d caught her lapse and was looking at him with such dismay that he couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry…” He grinned. “God, you’ve got me doing it. Look, all I wanted to suggest—”

  “Would you like some tea? I could make some if you’d like to walk back to the center. Peppermint? Apple? Chamomile?”

  “Oh no, thank you.” He loathed tea, particularly the herbal variety, but people were always offering him cups of it. “About my proposal, though. You do know Edie Robinson? I met her mother today and I rather had the sense that time hangs heavy on occasion and she becomes depressed. I know you’re always short of volunteers and—”

  “Perfect.” Beth beamed. “The girls would love having a surrogate grandmother to help with the babie
s, and if Mrs. Robinson is anything like my mother, there’s nothing she’d enjoy more than being surrounded by babies and young people.”

  “Good. I’ll ring Edie today,” he said, quick to grasp at any excuse. Perhaps he could determine whether there really was a safari-suited boyfriend, or if that was just a polite excuse, in which case… He realized that Beth was watching him as though she had something more to say. He smiled and she glanced down at her feet, then up at him.

  “By the way, Peter…” She hesitated. “There’s a butterfly exhibit at the Arboretum coming up soon. I have two tickets. I bought one for a friend who…uh, he can’t make it. I wondered if you’d like to go.”

  “WHAT DID YOU GET?” Maude peered at the ice cream cone in Edie’s hand. “Mine tastes like coffee. I wanted chocolate. I think they switched them and you’ve got the chocolate one.”

  “They’re both chocolate, Mom. That’s what we ordered.” She bit into the ice cream, disposing of it quickly before it melted in the hot afternoon sun. They had driven downtown so that Maude could buy a knitting pattern and were sitting on a bench in the cobbled and historic Riverfront section, watching a troupe of street performers cartwheel and careen and toss what looked like bowling pins at one another. Red and yellow flowers bloomed in wooden tubs all along the street, more bouquets hung in moss-covered baskets from Victorian-era lampposts and a mild breeze blew off the river. It was all very pleasant, Edie thought, and if she weren’t sitting there thinking about Maude’s remarks to Peter, she might have enjoyed her surroundings.

  “Let me taste yours,” Maude said. “I know I’ve got the wrong one.”

  Edie took a breath. “They’re both chocolate, Mom.” Maude said nothing, but her disgruntled expression showed she was unconvinced. She sat there on the bench, a tiny, white-haired presence absolutely unshaken in her belief that she’d been cheated out of the flavor she really wanted. Exasperated, Edie wanted to grab the damn cone, throw it to the cobbled street, and stamp up and down on it. It was her mother’s quality of implacable certainty that drove her nuts. Maude was right and that was that. You’re never wrong, are you, Edie? she heard Ben saying. She glared at her own dripping cone and then thrust it at Maude. “Here. Take mine. We’ll swap.”