Читать книгу Return to Pelican Inn - Dana Mentink - Страница 13
ОглавлениеIT WAS BAGGY who succeeded in breaking the silent stalemate as Rosa stared open-mouthed at Manny Franco, who smiled steadily back at her. Baggy, having waited patiently for some word of introduction, stood on his hind legs and pawed at Manny’s knee.
Manny appeared confused for a moment as he considered the beast before him. “Ah, a dog. Thought it was some kind of gigantic mole or something.” He patted Baggy’s head. “One minute, dog-o. My princess gets her hug first.”
And Manny proceeded to wrap Rosa in a hug that smelled of mothballs and bacon. Rosa’s heart coursed with too many emotions to be contained properly in the now sporadically pumping organ. Her mind teemed with memories, both sweet and serrated, starting with her father’s famous bacon-and-cheese omelets, which they ate every night for a straight week when Rosa’s mother endured the first of her many hospitalizations for cirrhosis of the liver. Cy ate his sans bacon. The succulent omelets were always accompanied by a side of sage advice their father doled out with the wave of a spatula.
“Bacon is good for you,” Manny proclaimed to a protesting Rosa who was deeply under the influence of a school nutrition class. “Don’t see many pigs with pacemakers, do you?”
He’d smiled through it all, the omelets, the hospitalizations, the biopsies, the burial. Smiled when he’d kissed the kids the night before he left. She loathed that smile with the part of her that did not leap at the sight of it.
Now she stood, ramrod stiff, as he hugged her and pressed a dry kiss to her temple. “You look fantastic, Rosa, like a flower about to blossom.” He stepped away to hoist the oddball dog into his arms. “All right, dog-o. Your turn. Can’t say you look fantastic, but you’re an original and that deserves a scratch at least.”
Was her father really there, standing in the golden morning light, dropping compliments on daughter and dog? Perhaps it was a dream induced by too many hours spent poring over paint palettes when she should have been sleeping. She wanted to scream “Why are you here?” It was the same way she’d felt when he graced them with his presence for her high school graduation. Only she hadn’t been there. Cy, of course, had attended, being deeply in love with fellow senior Eva Lassiter, blonde president of the Cupcakes for a Cause Club. But Rosa had no use for the ceremony, though Bitsy had pleaded with her to attend.
“Where’s Rosa?” her father had apparently said, when he didn’t see her face amid the sea of caps and gowns.
“Where’s Rosa? I’m not the one who’s been missing!” she’d screamed to her bewildered father later, when they’d caught up with her at the beach. Now she wanted to let him have it once again. In the recent past, she’d seen him only a handful of awkward times. Why are you here, Dad? Why here? Why now?
Instead, she found herself saying, “His name is Baggy.”
“Weird name for a dog. Better suited for a mole. No offense, Baggy.” He took in the front room of the Pelican, breathing so deep his spindly chest widened with the effort. “Still the most beautiful place on the beach.” His expression went suddenly timid. “So, where’s Bitsy?”
Bitsy arrived as if on cue, clutching an armful of pillows, eyes rounding in surprise over the cushioned stack. “I thought I heard...” She stopped. “Manny?”
He put Baggy down and held him steady until the dog synchronized his paws. Then he went to Bitsy and waited while she put the pillows on a chair. A long moment stretched between them, and Rosa tried to read the messages unrolling in that silence. Bitsy’s cheeks pinked, and her hand went to her throat. Manny hooked his thumbs in his pockets. Rosa wondered if Bitsy’s heart pulsed with similar feelings of outrage. As far as Rosa knew, Manny had not bothered to visit Bitsy on more than a handful of occasions since the disastrous high school graduation, not even for Leopold’s funeral. And he’d never, to Rosa’s knowledge, thanked the woman for raising the two children he was incapable of parenting.
“Hello,” she said quietly.
“Hey, Bits,” he said. “You’re looking well.”
“Thank you, and you are also, Manny.” She hugged herself, as if she’d felt a sudden chill. “We weren’t expecting you.”
Rosa found her voice again. “No, we weren’t. Why are you here, Dad?”
He scrunched up his face. “Just found myself in town.”
“Last I heard, you were fossil hunting somewhere.”
The phrase seemed to click something to life inside his head. “That was a blast, but after a while you get tired of digging up stuff more ancient than yourself. Cy wrote me that you had a project here, so I popped in. Where’s my boy, these days?”
“He’s here, too,” Rosa snapped. “But we’re busy. Working on a decorating job.”
“Swell.” Manny heaved in a breath. “Cy?” he bellowed. “Come say hello to your Pops.”
“He’s out for a run,” Rosa said. “We’ll find him on the way to the car.”
“Car?” Manny blinked.
“You drove here, didn’t you?”
“No. Took a cab,” Manny started. “Don’t have a car just at the moment.”
“No matter.” She forged ahead. “I’ll give you a ride back to your trailer.”
Cy had helped their father secure a trailer on one of his in-town jaunts, and somehow Manny managed to pay for the rental space in the Seascape Trailer Park some fifteen miles out of town. Or so she’d heard. Rosa had not visited the place her father called home.
“Don’t think that will work,” he mumbled.
“Of course it will.” Rosa grabbed her purse. Above all things, she wanted to remove her father from the inn before a certain arrogant lawyer arrived. She didn’t need any more distractions to delay the design work. It was bad enough having Pike around as both an obstacle and a painful reminder of her past.
Bitsy shook her head. “You’re still in your pajamas, Rosa. Go put some clothes on, at least.”
“No need,” Rosa chirped. “I won’t even be getting out of the car. Just a quick drive and drop.”
“At least let the man stay for breakfast.” Bitsy began to gather up the pillows in such a hurry they slid from her hands and scattered across the floor. Manny helped her gather them up again.
“He doesn’t need breakfast, and we’re really busy. Only three weeks until this place has to be shipshape, remember? It’s nice that you wanted to visit, but it’s really not a great time. We’ll reschedule for next month.” Rosa touched his shoulder. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go.”
The door slammed open and Rosa’s heart shot to her throat, but it was Cy who barreled in, glistening with sweat from his run, curls tousled wildly by the wind.
“Pops,” he said, a wide grin obliterating the fatigue from his face. “Did you come to root for us in the contest?”
Rosa would have kicked him if he’d been in closer proximity. She didn’t want her father involved with their design endeavors in any way, shape or form. “He was just leaving, Cy.”
“What’s this about a contest?” Manny asked. “I thought it was a regular decorating job.”
“You can tell him all about it over breakfast.” Bitsy moved toward the kitchen. “Cy, I know you can’t handle bacon without upchucking, but would you mind collecting some eggs? Rocky had to go into town to run an errand for me.”
“Sure thing, but last time Esmerelda, the chicken queen, took a dislike to me,” Cy said. “She pecked my, er, nether regions. I tried to explain that I don’t even eat her kind, but she wasn’t in a receptive mood. You can’t reason with fowl.”
“Not a female fowl.” Bitsy laughed. “It was a love peck. That’s the way chickens show affection.”
Cy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need that kind of affection.”
Manny sighed. “We all need a little love, Cy. Even us old-timers.” His gaze wandered over the knotted pine table and came to rest, ever so lightly, on Bitsy.
Rosa watched helplessly as Cy ambled out to the chicken house and Bitsy, always the graceful hostess, put Manny to work setting the table. Rosa tossed like a ship in the storm. Manny could not—must not—be allowed to stay, her roiling nerves shouted, yet she was helpless in the face of Bitsy’s overwhelming graciousness.
Breakfast only. Then he’s gone.
Maybe, if she was lucky, Pike wouldn’t arrive until later in the day.
Cy returned from the chicken house fifteen minutes later with a clean-shaven Pike in tow. “Look who I found in the henhouse. He’s got a way with Esmerelda. Either that or he threatened her with a lawsuit.”
If it weren’t for bad luck, Rosa thought, biting back a groan, I’d have no luck at all.
Pike did a double take when he caught sight of Manny. He shot an irate look at Cy. “You didn’t disclose that your father was here.”
Cy shrugged. “I was busy guarding my nether regions, and my dad is free to come and go as he likes.” He carried the eggs off to the kitchen where Bitsy and Manny were installed at the stove, frying pancakes. Rosa fired off a preemptive round.
“I didn’t know Dad was coming. He just sort of appeared.”
Pike turned to her, brown eyes like liquid chocolate. “He doesn’t belong here.”
“I’m taking him home right after breakfast,” she returned through gritted teeth. “But why don’t you finish your thought? He doesn’t belong here and neither do his children. The contest is a bad idea, and you wish we would all just go away.”
He clenched his fists and placed them on his hips, which fit very well in his expensive jeans. “You know how I feel about the contest. I made no secret of it.”
“That’s not the part that hurts, Pike. It’s....” She broke off in horror. What had she said? Did she just give voice to the deeper issue that rankled inside? Her father’s presence had upset her, loosed her self-control from its moorings, caused a crack in her good sense.
He cocked his head. “Rosa, I never said you weren’t welcome.”
She raised her chin. “Hmm. I wonder how I could have confused the welcome mat with the ‘don’t let the door hit you as you leave’ sign.”
His mouth quirked, and then a smile drifted across his lips like a wave breaking across the shore. He laughed.
“What do you find amusing, exactly?” she said, her heart thumping at his grin.
“You. I always liked that quick wit.”
Rosa’s cheeks warmed. He liked something about her? She took a step back, covering up uncertainty with bravado. “You don’t like anything about me. Let’s not pretend.”
His smile dimmed. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
Bitsy called to them. “Breakfast is served.”
“I’m not staying, Aunt Bitsy,” Pike said, eyeing Manny. “I’ve got some work to do in the office.”
She frowned. “You need breakfast. Come sit.”
He raised a placating hand. “No, really, I have to go.”
“Pike,” Bitsy snapped, her voice sharp. “We’re all going to settle down here around the table and eat like normal people and leave the past behind us for a moment. You can do that—we all can, with a little effort.” She swallowed. “Please.” Her pale skin was stretched taut across her cheekbones. Suddenly, Bitsy closed her eyes and gripped the chair, fingers trembling.
Pike was at her side in a moment. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, waving him away.
“Sit down,” Pike insisted, hovering at her elbow. “Let me get you something. Some water.” Rosa was halfway to the kitchen when Bitsy waved her off, too.
“I’m just fine,” she said, her soft tone back in place. She pressed a kiss on her nephew’s cheek. “Everyone sit, please.”
Rosa watched as Pike pulled out a chair for Bitsy. Manny sat next to her and Cy carried out platters of scrambled eggs and pancakes. What had she just witnessed? Was Bitsy ill? Rosa was still lost in thought when she felt someone touch her. She started, surprised to find Pike’s fingers curled around her forearm. He pulled out the chair for her and gently guided her into it. She breathed in the subtle scent of his cologne.
“Like normal people,” he whispered, a secret smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. His fingertips brushed her wrist and she wondered if he felt the odd uptick in her pulse, which she was at a loss to understand.
Doing her best to impersonate a normal person, Rosa sat.
