A Little Romance: Stories for Hopeful Hearts Read online

  In that tower room were guest quarters too, but those were made before bathroom plumbing days, and so no one stayed there now. It had electricity strung out there though, and that’s where you had to go to turn on the pumps for the lily pad pond.

  Others in the boarding house called the garden house tower the Little Tower. And they referred to where she lived in the main house as the Big Tower.

  She was glad they didn’t call her Rapunzel or something.

  Lucy only knew all this because of some of the chatting by the other tenants in the sitting room after dinner. It was a sort of ritual—that gabbing—and sometimes she stuck around for that but usually didn’t say anything. Most times, she made her own dinner in her kitchenette or bought take-out on her way home from work, but other times, she got a little . . . lonely.

  The reflection of the garden house would be lovely in the lily pad pond in the moonlight, she figured, but there were too many lily pads now and too much pond scum as well. Clear a few of those out, and then when those lily pads bloomed . . .

  She sighed again. Someone should do something about it. She hadn’t been here long enough

  Around the statuary the grass and weeds had been clipped, so a person could actually see the bases now. Some had verses carved in them, and some had the names and dates of the beloved dead—pets, she assumed . . . she hoped.

  She was thinking of what they might have been—a dog, a cat, a long-lived bird perhaps like a favored parrot.

  But there—movement came again!

  No, it wasn’t an animal or a bird, and yes, this time she was sure. But it was too large for any of those small things; too small to be just a statue either. Thank goodness there weren’t any bears or wolves or even deer in town that she knew about. The forest had verged on the edges of some of the surrounding farms, but she doubted if wild animals would come out here so far.

  Besides, that movement was too deliberately sneaky too—animals pause and crouch, or stalk or even amble about unconcerned—this was not like that.

  She stepped back from the window, just in case someone was observing her too. Lucy dropped to the floor on her knees and peered above the windowsill. She felt like a little girl.

  Yes, there it was . . . one, two . . . no, three.

  Not wild animals or real intruders—well, not to be scared of anyway.

  She smiled—they were children, creeping.

  What in the world?

  She looked to the clock—it was almost one in the morning. She’d be tired at the office tomorrow, and there were meetings too. Oh well, it can’t be helped. Lucy chuckled as she continued to observe the conspiracy down below.

  The dull sheen of glass was unmistakable. The smallest child—a girl with long red and curly hair as bright as a new penny in the moonlight—was holding two huge jars, one in each arm. She held them against her little body, as they were quite large for her and seemed to be as much as she could manage.

  The boys—the two oldest—were trying to capture frogs with a net. They were not very successful as yet.

  Ah, hunters then.

  Lucy wondered if kids still had show and tell at school.

  They weren’t planning on hurting those frogs, were they?

  Why would they? Boys and frogs are like . . . well, boys and frogs, that said it all, no matter where she had been in the world.

  Lucy shook her head and went back to bed to sleep . . . or so she thought.

  ~~~

  When she came down to get some coffee already made instead of waiting to brew her own, Mrs. Robbins, the cook, gave her a wink and then slipped away.

  The housekeeper wasn’t as easily swayed. It wasn’t the first time Mrs. Willett complained. But given the woman was paid to clean up the place—that was her job, after all—Lucy didn’t pay her any attention now. Besides, the woman was always complaining about something. There was always that constant in the world, no matter where Lucy had been.

  Some person was always complaining more than others . . .

  Lucy rented the rooms in the boarding house because she was new to both the town and the job and didn’t want to just move into a place with a lease, only to find she didn’t like it or the neighborhood or the people or even the job. This place rented by the week or the month, and besides, it looked like something from a storybook.

  Most people didn’t have the option to change their lives whenever they felt the need or for whatever reason, she knew. Luckily, she was marketable enough to move just about anyplace she wanted.

  She had computer skills, which after college had only been useful in Africa to electronically keep track of their projects and people, the supply shipments and money going out, schedules and vehicles and anything else that came up. Her work in tracking those things was so thorough that the church mission sold the software she had developed to other such organizations and that helped with their funding too. She got no compensation or any part of the profits—she didn’t ask for any either.

  But even so, she should be proud . . . she was proud. But that was then, and this was now, when she had to make a living like everyone else. Her work back then had been enough to be impressive to her current employers, and work . . . well, that was about all she had in this world now.

  Lucy had no family left—her parents, an uncle and his wife and their daughter (her only cousin) had all been killed in a car accident. Her grandmother, whom they had all gone to visit for her birthday, died not two days after—before Lucy even got home from Africa after hearing the first dreadful news. She arrived in time to bury them all, and vowed to never go to another funeral except her own . . . maybe.

  By that time too, she had lost touch with all her friends, having spent years after college in Africa doing volunteer work. It was fulfilling, but people came and went there, and she traveled between villages to get things set up and running smoothly, then she’d move on—she had planted plenty of crops, but no roots.

  And given the primitive lands where she had lived before, she was not sympathetic now to the housekeeper’s woes.

  She mumbled, “Dirt in the back hallway? Imagine that this time of year.”

  It had been raining on and off—that made the air clear of any pollution, and the view to the distant mountains was quite pretty too. In a few days, a haze would grow, but for now, the air was pure so it seemed like you could see forever.

  And there was the garden out back. She must have tracked some in when she came through last, thinking about some problem and not noticing if she had. Lucy rode her bike to work on nice days and kept it out in the garden house. What would she do today?

  She looked out the bay window of the breakfast nook off the kitchen and admired the new day. Funny how she hadn’t noticed any dirt last night, but with the frog noise and then the interlopers, she probably got too distracted and didn’t notice anyway. But as she studied the garden now, Lucy realized that someone seems to have done some additional weeding from what she had noticed before—it was obvious, if you knew where to look.

  Perhaps it was just from this angle, down lower, that she noticed. But good for them, she thought. It wasn’t much, given the total neglect, but it was a start. Now it was obvious too that with a few more days of sun, there would be plenty of daffodil blooms.

  She mentioned it to the others sitting at the table—the two other occupants were long time tenants, she knew. Seems they were regular early-risers too, and so were usually up when she was up and off to work. She passed them as she went out, but usually didn’t stop to say much otherwise, besides, “Good morning.”

  Miss Mildred Fillmore and the elderly man agreed that the garden had been overgrown for sometime.

  She nodded. “That’s what I assumed when I first moved in here. It must have been quite lovely at one time.”

  Neither of them now remembered when it was last attended.

  Miss Fillmore said, “You could ask the housekeeper, my dear, or maybe the cook would know more. It seems a shame.”

  Peopl
e at work who had always lived in this town had told Lucy that Mildred Fillmore was a rich old lady, a spinster who had lived in the neighborhood since she was a little kid. Rumor had it that her family used to own this place, but in 1929, they took a dive in the stock market like everyone else. That’s when her grandfather took a dive out a window of Wall Street too.

  Mr. Stanislavski, the elderly man, said with his Eastern European accent, “The housekeeper wouldn’t know anyway.”

  Glenn Stanislavski taught music at the high school. He spoke with a foreign accent at school, as a rule, but around the boarding house, the accent came and went. That’s why no one here had asked him where he was supposedly from, though they did know that he had come to America during the Cold War.

  What he said was true though—the housekeeper probably didn’t know for sure, or care. Mrs. Willett didn’t stay here herself—she called it a fire hazard. She lived across town—as she so often reminded them all. The town was still small enough not to have regular public transit; that also meant that the traffic through the old part of town wasn’t bad yet.

  Most of the traffic problems were on the outer roads going between the residential areas and the new business districts. Not much had touched the old part of town, except that the new tax revenue had been used to upgrade the sidewalks and some of the old town infrastructure like the power grid and sewers. There were new streetlamps too, but they were vintage, so the town resembled now what it looked like over a hundred years before.

  They had also built a new county library branch in town to bring people back to the local businesses. A few small parks with trees and picnic tables were scattered about. The old storefronts were still there, as well, but the businesses inside now were different than the originals.

  For example, instead of a milliner’s shop, there was now a coffee place—all sorts of roasts, flavors added on request (and cost), various strengths and sizes too. Sometimes the older folks complained that ordering coffee now had a language unto itself.

  Instead of a barbershop (still complete with the barber pole out front), it was an Internet café where many of the young singles mingled. The barber pole was lit and would still turn, but sometimes it wasn’t the regular colors of red, white and blue, but adjusted for the holiday or the season. Lately, it had been the colors of Easter: pastel pink, blue and yellow.

  And what was once a feed and grain store complete with grain silo was now a conglomerate of galleries and shops for artists to sell art and homemade crafts like quilts, handmade jewelry and wood-worked products and paintings (by self-taught artists) like you’d find in motel rooms.

  That’s why the town had also become a magnet for those artsy people and their enablers. That’s what the old timers in the boarding house and the town called them. Lucy listened to the elderly locals sometimes while she waited for coffee. They liked the new revenue; they liked to sit for hours and chat; they just didn’t like the changes or the people that came and went without setting down roots.

  Apparently the old timers did like the new coffee too.

  And Lucy didn’t take their criticism personally. She wasn’t passing through; she was one of those planning on settling in. And she preferred the old part of town too.

  In the old days—which both the cook and housekeeper were fond of saying—the boarding house was one of the grandest mansions in town. The mining or logging executive that built the place eventually also became the mayor. When he ran for the state legislature, he stayed away for long periods of time in the state capitol, and gradually moved his family there as well whenever the state government was in session.

  While the house remained in the family to this day, it had been decades since children had been raised here. The grand house was first converted to a museum for the county for a while, but had been a boarding house now for years. Still, there were odds and ends from those museum days still here.

  It added . . . character.

  It also added clutter, the housekeeper often claimed when she tried to clean all the miscellaneous things: a big stuffed standing bear on the landing of the front stairs, and some smaller animals on the mantles of the dining room and sitting rooms.

  There were some supposedly Native trinkets in glass cases too, some paintings, old photographs and framed news clippings on the walls, and paraphernalia from both the mining and lumber industry scattered in the hallways and sitting rooms and also some of the guest rooms too.

  But the housekeeper attended to it all lovingly, despite what she said. Lucy watched the woman sometimes when the housekeeper was unaware of the scrutiny. Mrs. Willett seemed to also love this place and everything in it, but she didn’t treat the guests with the same devotion.

  ~~~

  Lucy fell in love with this place when she first walked around. The room-for-rent had been on the second floor, front and left, but she had noticed the stairs going up to the tower and couldn’t help herself.

  She had gone up on her own initiative, and had been amazed at how charming it was—and how modern . . . well, by the standards of the rest of the house.

  It was not an ancient manor like in those romance novels that everyone in the dorm had read in college; it was an old house, built in 1895, as was imprinted on one of the foundation corners made of huge rough-hewn stones. It was clearly a home built for a rich man once, but not one of the robber barons—that is, a rich man for this town, which was still small by big city standards now.

  She was part of that growth, with new businesses coming here because the larger cities were too expensive and crowded for young professionals who wanted to start families and send their kids to better schools.

  The new houses here were large, but cheaper than those in the big cities too. They also lacked the usual intricate woodwork or hardwood floors or nooks and crannies that old Victorian places had. But with so many new developments going up, the charming town had grown without much planning. It was an awkward layout now, with traffic problems and weird little strip malls where their used to be small farms or orchards.

  The names for the new developments could only reminisce about what came before, with street names like Orchard Road or Pear Way, and development names like Daniel’s Farm or Quail Hollow.

  But in the old part of town, the streets were laid out neatly. That’s where this house was, but on what used to be the edge of town when it was first built—in fact, the end of what had been the main boulevard back then, which ran perpendicular to the main street. Main Street had also been the main road through before the new highway came through in the 1950s.

  Some thought the house was really the beginning of the street, not the end, but that depended on your historical perspective.

  There was still peace and quiet on this side of town—except for the weeks of planting in the spring and then harvesting in the fall when came the heavy machinery.

  The huge rolling fields on that side of town were still owned by the same old farmers and their families as when the town first started. It was all prime farmland, and even the county council, which had approved everything else in agreement with the town, refused to touch that part of the county’s heritage.

  It was rumored that they were mostly horrified by what they had agreed to before, but couldn’t take it back now. The influx of new people was shocking; the new revenue was first welcomed, but then proved to be as addictive as the strong coffee. Even so, the council had put a moratorium on development on this side of the town because many of the old family homes were the most historical in the county.

  That meant that on the other side of town, the growth had been random and sporadic—a succession based on the heirs selling off huge swaths of farmland when the old timers finally passed. Most of those who did so then got enough money to move away to the cities, and none of them yet had come back.

  Small bits of undeveloped land euphemistically called green zones were now laid out like patchwork amongst the separate developments. Some of it was just land that had been unsuitable because of
drainage or wetlands or toxic waste from the railroad yards that had been there decades or as much as a century before.

  Many of the new developments were strictly residential, but a few were mostly businesses—chain stores and shops, though some included office buildings, and there were a few that were just warehouses and the nearby shipping offices.

  Lucy knew to come to this boarding house because the owner was a friend of a friend of some people she had known from her volunteer work. Otherwise, she doubted if she would have been able to rent those particular rooms. The tower rooms must have been renovated before she came back—it still smelled like plaster and paint and caulk.

  It was like someone knew she was coming, and what she would want.

  Renovating just meant fixing the cracks in the window glass, making the plumbing work with out leaks and installing a new modern mini-kitchen that was right out of a magazine.

  And of course, airing out the bulky old furniture—she noticed that some no longer matched and suspected that the originals must have been replaced with other things that were also secondhand, but acceptable.

  Lucy wrote to tell her friends a heartfelt thank you; she said too that the old place was Nirvana compared to some of the places they had shared. Those friends were in Africa still, working for the non-profit organization that was fixing wells and sanitation so that the village water supplies would no longer be contaminated with overflowing sewage every time it rained.

  Since then, those people had moved to another village, and then another country, and Lucy had lost touch with them.

  Truth was, she’d had enough of dirt and bugs and people who didn’t have enough. While in so many ways it had been depressing, it had also been uplifting to help them. But the people there taught her as much as they could ever learn from her.

  Did they know that?

  It came down to what was really important; to her, it was finding her own place in this world. Every day, Lucy was acutely aware that she no longer had a family, and so no longer had roots. It was spring, a new beginning, but what was she going to do at the end of the year when the holidays came around again?