Mackinnon 03 - The Bonus Mom Read online

  Her stomach growled. She ignored it. She was pretty sure she’d ignored it a couple times before this.

  It had taken quite a while to completely fill the corkboard on the coffee table. She’d pinned photos of local orchids—and their names and location—until the entire space was filled. Some of the names were so fun. Little lady’s Tresses. Small whorled pogonia. Yellow fringed orchid. Crested coralroot. Downy rattlesnake plantain.

  Absently, she picked up her coffee mug. It was cold, and since it was also the last in the pot, it was thicker than mud. She still swallowed a slug.

  She’d never planned on turning into an egghead. It was all sort of a mistake. When she’d cancelled the wedding, escaped from George (as she thought of it now) the two-year grant from Duke had struck her as a godsend. She could make a living—or enough of a living—and seclude herself up here.

  The goal hadn’t been to get a Ph.D. She’d never wanted a Ph.D. She just wanted to work so hard she could forget about everything else for a while. Until she put her head back together. Until she figured out what to do with her life. Until she could analyze exactly what had gone so bad, so wrong, with George.

  Mostly she had to figure out how she could have been so stupid.

  She leaned forward, studying the photo of the small whorled pogonia. A white lip hung above the five green leaves. The species was teensy. It was hard to find, hard to notice. And it was probably the rarest orchid near the eastern coastline—which made it one of her treasures.

  That was the thing. It wasn’t about academics. Or getting a Ph.D. It was about...survival. Why did some species fail and others thrive? How could a fragile, vulnerable orchid like this conceivably survive in such a hostile environment?

  Not that she thought of herself as vulnerable. Or that she feared she couldn’t survive the mess she was in.

  It was just that everybody believed the old adage that only the strong survived. Because it always seemed to be true. Except with these fragile orchids.

  There had to be a reason. A logical explanation. Something in delicate orchids that enabled them to survive, when far tougher species died out.

  A sudden knock on the door almost made her jump sky-high. A spit of coffee landed on her sweatshirt; she set the mug down, went to the door.

  The twins huddled together like bookends, a platter in their hands covered with tin foil. “Hi, Rosemary. We can’t stay. We can’t bother you.”

  “But we made some brownies to thank you for saving our lives yesterday.”

  Clearly their opening lines had been prepared.

  “The brownies,” Pepper added, “have some mints and some cherries on the inside. We didn’t sample any of these, but we’ve made them this way before. Honest, they’re really good. Although we usually put in marshmallows, only this time, we didn’t have any marshmallows so we couldn’t.”

  Lilly’s turn. “We were trying to make it red and green on the inside. You know. Like to be Christmasy.” She took a breath. “Dad said we absolutely can’t bother you. So we’re leaving right now, this very instant.”

  She noticed the golf cart behind them. Saw the hope on their faces, no matter what they said. “You can’t even come in to sample a brownie? That’s an awful lot for just me to eat by myself.”

  “I don’t think we can. No matter how much we want to.” Pepper let out a massive sigh.

  “Hmm. What if I call your dad and asked him myself if you could stay awhile?”

  “Oh.” Both girls lit up like sparklers. “Yeah. If you call him, it’ll be okay.”

  There ended her bubble of solitude. She called Whit first, so he knew the girls were safely with her, said they wanted to share a brownie with her, and she’d have the girls call when they were headed home. It wouldn’t be long.

  Just that short conversation invoked symptoms she’d suffered when she met him yesterday. It was as if she’d been exposed to a virus. She felt oddly achy and restless, hot—when there was no excuse in the universe to react like a dimwit toward a perfect stranger.

  But the girls distracted her from thinking any more about their father. The first priority was testing the brownies—which were fabulous. Both girls could somehow eat and talk nonstop at the same time.

  Pepper went first. “Our dad thought we couldn’t handle Christmas at home. But we both know he’s the one who can’t. He hasn’t been out one single time since mom died. You know what that means?”

  Rosemary was afraid to answer. “How about if you tell me what you think it means.”

  “It means that he’s trying to be there for us 24/7. Rosemary, he’s driving us nuts. He wants us to do things together all the time.”

  “And that’s bad?” She might not have a chance to think about Whit in connection with herself, but if the conversation was going to be all about him...well there’s not much she can do about it. She reached for a second brownie, feeling self-righteous as the devil herself.

  “It’s not bad. Because we love him. But can you picture a pajama party with seven girls and my dad trying to fit in?”

  “Um...no.”

  “Everybody in our class at school likes going to the movies. It’s like a couple miles, though, so if the weather’s good, we walk. Otherwise one of the moms drive. But Dad, when it was his turn, he wanted to go inside with us. He sat in the back. Like the kids wouldn’t know he was there?”

  “Um...” Rosemary eyed a third brownie.

  “We know he’s lonely. He really loved our mom. He just can’t seem to get over it. But it’s been a year. I mean, we miss her, too.”

  Lilly said softly, “I think about her every day.”

  “I do, too!” Pepper said defensively.

  “But really, we would have been fine just being home for Christmas. Then we could have had friends over. Or gone to their houses. See the Christmas movies and all that. So...” Lilly looked at her sister.

  “So...” Pepper picked up the refrain.

  “So...we were wondering if you would do some things with us. I don’t mean every second, like when you have to work and stuff. But we’re going to do a tree. And make some ornaments. Bake some cookies. It’s stuff we’re already doing, so we’re not asking you to work. We’d just like you to be, well, another person.”

  “She is another person, stupid.” Pepper, naturally.

  “I know that, numbskull.” Lilly turned to her again. “I meant, so Dad could see he didn’t have to be hovering over us all the time. That it’s okay. We’re eleven. Practically adults. We don’t need a parent in the same room with us every single minute.”

  “Besides, we want you there for ourselves. Because I’m sick of this hairstyle. And we’ve been arguing about how it’d look best. Lilly thinks we should both grow it way long. I think we should go short, and like, with spikes. You could help us with an opinion.”

  Lilly took her plate to the counter. “We wanted to bring you a tree. We’re cutting down our tree tomorrow, so we told Dad, why don’t we get one for Rosemary, too? But he said we had no way to know if you even wanted one. Don’t you want a Christmas tree?”

  Every direction she turned, she seemed to face the gruesome problem of taking sides. And all their dad conversation was prickly—they kept relaying things that were private and none of her business. Even their enthusiasm at being around her was touchy—they were fun; she really wouldn’t mind visits from them now and then. It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice to spend the holiday alone. But Whit might not appreciate a stranger in the middle of their private holiday, no matter what the girls thought they wanted.

  “Where did you get the golf cart?” she asked, hoping for a diversion.

  “It was in the shed with the Gator. It came with the property. It’ll go a few miles, like four or something, and then you just plug it back in. Dad won’t let us drive the Gator, but he said we
could use the cart to carry the brownies to your house and then come back.”

  “You weren’t scared you’d run into your bear again?”

  “A little. But we can go pretty fast in the cart. And we brought cookie sheets to make noise. We read a bunch about bears last night. Mostly it’s like the stuff you told us. If a person doesn’t do something that upsets him, the bear’s really not interested in humans anyway.” Pepper was about to jump up from the table, when her sister gave her a finger point. She rolled her eyes, but grabbed her dish and took it to the counter. “Anyhow, I know we’re supposed to go home, like now, but could you just show us your darkroom really quick? Show us how you make pictures?”

  That sounded like a fine idea to Rosemary.

  And the kids had a blast. The three were crowded in the small space, and the girls seemed entranced with everything.

  “The thing I’m confused about,” Pepper said, “is why you’re making your own photographs. I mean, couldn’t you just get a digital camera? Or a phone where you could take pictures?”

  “I could do both those things—and sometimes do,” Rosemary explained. “But when I do these myself, then I own those photos. It’s a legal thing. I’m responsible for the research and the work, so I wouldn’t want anyone using my photos without my permission. It’s like a protection.”

  “I get it.” Lilly then had questions about the house—why it was so big and interesting, and was it really old, and how did she make the darkroom?

  “The lodge has been in the MacKinnon family for generations—so lots of family members used it for summer getaways and vacations and holidays and just family gatherings. It was always kept pretty rustic, but when I knew I was going to be staying here for quite a while, I put in electricity and ran cable wires and all that.” She motioned. “This used to be a utility room. It already had a sink and rough shelves. But when I set it up as a darkroom—well, one problem is that everything has to be put away perfectly—because once you’ve turned out the lights, you have to find what you need in the dark.”

  “So we can turn out the lights?” Lilly asked.

  “Sure. But first let me show you what certain things are used for.” The blackout shades had the obvious purpose. The extractor fan sucked out the chemical odors. She pointed out the safelight. And next to the old sink was a long “wet bench” made of something similar to Formica. “That’s where the developing trays go—where you’re developing the photos...and at the far end, there’s a squeegee to remove excess water from the prints.”

  “This so beyond awesome,” Lilly said.

  “What’s this stuff?” Pepper said as she pointed.

  “All large bottles of solution are stored on the floor. Every single thing that’s used in here has a place. And no matter how tired or busy I am, it all has to be put back in that place before I leave—or I’d never find it in the dark the next time.”

  “Well, that’d probably be too hard for me,” Pepper admitted. “Dad says I shed stuff every place I walk, like a dog sheds fur.”

  “So what’s that?” Lilly didn’t want to listen to her sister. She wanted to hear Rosemary.

  “Okay...on the other side of the room—and I know it’s hard for the three of us to operate in this narrow space, but when I’m by myself, it’s not so bad. So this is an enlarger. It does just what it sounds like. Makes the prints larger. It might make them blurrier, too—so you can’t just ask it to enlarge something and then go take a nap. You have to watch the process.”

  “Rosemary?” Lilly again. “Could we do this with you sometime? If we didn’t move and didn’t get in your way and didn’t do anything wrong? If we just watched?”

  “Sure. If it’s okay with your dad. And you guys are only going to be here for a week, aren’t you?”

  “We’re not sure exactly. We think we’re going home a day or two after Christmas, but Dad only promised that we’d be home by New Year’s Eve, because we’re sleeping over with a bunch of girls from school.”

  “We’re going to stay up all night and have popcorn and stuff.”

  “Sounds like great fun.” She heard a vague sound, turned her head, and abruptly realized that someone was knocking on the front door.

  She hustled out, glanced out the peephole and felt her stomach jump five feet. She yanked open the door at the same time she looked at her watch.

  “My God, Whit. I’m so sorry. I swear I didn’t realize how much time had gone by.”

  “It’s not a problem, except that when you gave me your cell number—”

  She nodded. “I never heard it ring. I’m sorry. I think I left it on the fireplace mantel. And we were in the back of the house, the darkroom.”

  “Like I said, it’s okay. But I did figure by now you’d need rescuing.”

  She did. Not from his girls. From him.

  The minute he walked in the room, she suffered from a cavorting heartbeat and instant noodle knees, annoying her to no end. So he was a hunk. So he was so brawny he made her feel like a sweet little Southern belle. So he had the sexiest eyes this side of the Mississippi.

  It was just attraction.

  Last she knew, that problem was embarrassing but not fatal.

  The kids leaped on him as if he’d been missing for six months. “Dad! Rosemary took us in the darkroom, and showed us all about the enlarger and the paper safe and the squeegee panels—”

  “And where you keep the chemicals and the big extractor fan and solution and stuff—”

  Since Whit was getting pulled inside, Rosemary interrupted with the obvious. “Would you like some tea or coffee? I’ve got both.”

  “Coffee, definitely, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  By the time she brought two mugs back in, the girls had yelled for permission to play games on her iPad, and they’d taken root on the floor with couch pillows behind them. Whit, hands in his back pockets, was circling the corkboard display on the coffee table.

  He smiled when she walked toward him, cocked his head toward the girls. “They’ve made themselves at home.”

  “It’s the iPad. Not me.”

  “I don’t think so. You keep gaining goddess status.”

  She laughed. “I’m not doing anything, honest.”

  “Maybe not, but we’ll have to brainstorm some way to take you down a peg in their eyes. Otherwise, they’re going to pester you nonstop.”

  He’d lowered his voice so the girls wouldn’t hear. His whisper was just as evocative as his normal tenor.

  “Well, if you think up something evil I could do, give a shout, would you?”

  He chuckled. They shared a smile that made her feel like a lit sparkler in a dark room. But then he motioned toward her corkboard.

  “The girls said you were doing a project with orchids.”

  She nodded. “The wild orchids in South Carolina—especially rare and endangered ones. Duke gave me a two-year grant, but I think I can finish the project sooner than that. When I came up here in June, that’s all I did, traipse around the mountains, taking photographs and collecting specimens. So most of the gut research is done. I just have to put it all together, which is going to take a serious block of time.” She knew she was babbling, but he honestly looked interested.

  “Landscaping’s my work.”

  “The twins said you owned a business.”

  He nodded. “I’m the family disgrace. I have three siblings, two lawyers and my sister is a CPA. I’m the only dirt bum. Love working with my hands. Love taking a piece of land—don’t care whether it’s small or big—and analyzing the soil, the shapes and contours, figuring out which plants and trees will thrive there, what will show it off. I have no idea where I picked up the addiction, but I sure have it hard-core.”

  “My parents are both surgeons, and they expected the three of us kids to follow in
their footsteps...but at least I could share disgrace with one of my brothers. I went for botany, and Tucker has a retreat camp on Whisper Mountain here. Ike was the only brother who turned into a doctor, like we were all supposed to.”

  “Being a disgrace is tough.”

  “Well, I was a disgrace for more than one reason,” she admitted, and then wanted to shoot herself. That wasn’t information she meant to share with Whit—or anyone else, for that matter.

  He didn’t ask. He looked at her, as if waiting to hear the “other reason” she was a disgrace. But when she didn’t say anything more, he turned his attention back to the corkboard of photographs.

  “Are you only photographing them when they’re in flower?” he asked.

  “Good question. No. I marked the spot where I found each orchid—the location, the environment, the plants growing near them, tested the soil for acidity and all that. Then I went back every month to record that information all over again. Different predators showed up in different months. Different plants became dormant in different months. There were different insects, different temperatures, different rainfall.”

  “Man. I’d love to have done this kind of study. I don’t know anything about orchids. But the how, why, when and where certain plants or grasses grow is of enormous interest to me.”

  “You didn’t go for a botany degree...?”

  “No, I went after a landscape architecture degree from Michigan State. It was a long way from home to go to college, but they had a great program for what I wanted. Never regretted it. But the study you’re doing crosses paths with so much I’m interested in.”

  But he looked at her as if he were far more fascinated in her than her study. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone wanted to hear what she thought, what she felt.

  “Hey, Dad!” Pepper leaped up from the tablet and hurtled toward them at her usual speed—a full gallop. “Can we all stay and watch a movie if Rosemary says yes? There’s one that starts in just a few minutes. We’ll miss the beginning if we have to go home.”

  “I think our family’s imposed on Rosemary enough for today.”