The Mommy Quest Read online

  “Maybe.”

  Grampa went silent for a long time; he was thinkin’ serious thoughts. “You did say you wanted a pig.”

  Tim squinted doubtfully. Gramma had said someone would die if that happened. Of course, she said stuff like that all the time and, so far, not a single death.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t get you anything for your birthday.”

  “You got me a Lego train.”

  Grampa rolled his eyes. “I didn’t get that.”

  Tim grinned. “I know.”

  John thrust the pig at him. “Go nuts, kid.”

  DEAN AWOKE at 4:00 a.m. as he always did, but realizing it was Sunday, he’d rolled over and slept until 6:00 a.m.

  He couldn’t believe he’d slept until noon and beyond when he was a teenager. He’d missed the best time of the day that way.

  Sunrise over the cornfield. The air fresh and new. If it had rained, the droplets would rest on blades of grass, heavy and quivering in the breeze.

  Dean got up and leaned out the open window of his bedroom. A cow lowed from the pasture, the sound familiar and soothing. A dog barked and was answered by far too many others.

  Now that he thought about it, Dean had forgotten to bring Bear and the doodles back to his place for the night. He was lucky his mother hadn’t deposited them on his bed before sunrise.

  He hadn’t slept as well as he usually did, tormented with images of what might have happened to Stella in L.A. How long was she going to keep her secret? How long would he let her?

  “As long as it takes,” he said under his breath.

  She was so twitchy he didn’t dare raise his voice or make any fast moves. Not that such behavior would gain her confidence, anyway.

  No, what he had to do was be her friend, as she’d asked. When she trusted him enough, she’d tell him, and who knows, maybe in being her friend, he might actually get over her.

  “And pigs will fly.”

  Dean headed for the bathroom. Glancing into Tim’s room on the way, he smiled. His son would be helping his father with the chores. Tim was so much like him sometimes it was uncanny. They didn’t share blood, but they shared a love of the farm and the animals that would bond them when other things pulled them apart.

  Even when Dean and his father had fought, argued, disagreed, they’d still had the farm to bring them together. He hoped the same would be said for him and Tim. Although what he really hoped was that Tim never slid into the awkward and snotty teen years and began to talk back to Dean the way that Dean had talked back to his dad. But he figured that was a vain hope, especially since he recalled quite vividly his dad wishing Dean would have “a son just like you.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Dean muttered, but he was smiling.

  Now that he was past the miserable days of his youth, Dean remembered a lot of great things about having John Luchetti as a dad. He had always allowed Dean to follow him around, John’s big hands over Dean’s smaller ones as he’d shown him how to attach a milking apparatus to an udder. His father’s strong arms wrapped around him as he’d let Dean sit on his lap and steer the tractor, his calm voice explaining the intricacies of machinery, of planting, of farm animals. Dean had lived a charmed childhood on this farm, and he intended to give Tim the same.

  A half an hour later Dean was showered, dressed and walking into his parents’ kitchen. Sunday morning meant breakfast by Eleanor.

  His dad and Tim were already sitting at the table. Dean caught sight of the dogs through the window, lazing in a patch of sunlight. Except for Cubby. He appeared to be chasing something small and not very furry.

  Dean craned his head. What was that?

  “Hey, Dad?”

  Tim bounced so high Dean had to reach out and grab him before he tumbled off the chair.

  “Shh,” John whispered, and glanced at Ellie while Tim grinned.

  Dean frowned. What were they up to?

  “You forgot the dogs again,” his mother said, not bothering to look away from the stove.

  “Sorry.”

  Ellie flipped a pancake, stirred the scrambled eggs and slid some bacon onto a stack of paper towels. His dad used to eat like this all the time. But since his heart attack, Sunday was the only day of eggs and bacon.

  Dean’s mom turned, and her eyes widened. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  For an instant Dean worried that she was having a heart attack, then he saw her gaze was fixed on the screen door that led to the porch.

  Posed on the other side of the screen, heads tilted exactly the same way, were Tim’s new puppy and, if Dean wasn’t mistaken, considering his dad’s “shh” and his son’s grin, Tim’s new pig.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “GRAMPA SAID—”

  “Hold it right there.” Dean’s mom reached for her spatula.

  Tim’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head, refusing to say any more.

  “Put down the kitchen utensil,” John said. “I told the boy he could have a pig.”

  “Have, as in fatten for the freezer?”

  “Not Wilbur!” Tim exclaimed.

  “Oh, no. No!” His mother pointed the spatula at the table, including all three males in her demand. “There will be no naming of the barnyard animals. Once you name them, they just don’t make good dinner.”

  “I think that’s the idea, Ellie. I also think it’s too late to stop it.”

  “You did this,” she accused.

  His dad shrugged, and Dean stifled a grin. All of his life his mother had blustered and shouted and bossed everyone around, including her husband. John had pretended to let her—then gone along and done whatever he pleased. He rarely raised his voice; he rarely got mad—except at Dean—and his laconic personality was the perfect foil to his wife’s borderline hysteria.

  “Wilbur’s a runt, Gramma. He needs me to feed him or he’ll die.” Tim grabbed his chest and collapsed in his chair with dramatic effect.

  Ellie’s lips twitched. “I suppose we can’t have that.” Tim bounced up. “I’ll take care of him. You won’t have to.”

  “You got that right.” She glared at John, Dean and Tim in turn. “Let’s lay a few ground rules. The pig stays in the pen with all the other pigs. There will be no petlike behavior. No walking on a leash, no sleeping on the porch. Got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tim said solemnly.

  “This is not Green Acres,” Ellie muttered as she turned back to the stove.

  “Could have fooled me,” Dean said, but she ignored him.

  “It’s green here,” Tim said. “And there are lots of acres. Is she bein’ sarcastic again?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tim tilted his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Dean wasn’t in the mood to explain the old Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor show, which had been one of his childhood favorites. He’d started to call his niece Zsa-Zsa because of it. So what if he couldn’t tell the difference between the two Gabor sisters? Sue him. Glory looked more like a Zsa-Zsa, anyway, and what was funny about the name Eva?

  “Eat,” Dean ordered in an attempt to distract Tim.

  A plateful of food did the trick. If Tim ever caught up to his appetite and his feet, there was no telling how much he might grow.

  “We’re off to Bloomington,” Dean said when the table had been cleared.

  “Football cleats!” Tim’s chair tumbled over, a victim of his enthusiasm, hitting the floor with a sharp crack.

  Ellie didn’t even flinch. She just reached down and picked it up. “Put that pig back in the pen before you go.”

  Tim, who’d been halfway to the kitchen door, froze. He hung his head and his hair covered his face. “I can’t go, Dad.”

  Confused, Dean glanced at his mother, who shrugged.

  “Wilbur’s gotta be fed.”

  “What are you going to do about him when you’re in school?”

  Tim lifted his gaze. “Maybe they’ll let me come home and feed him.”

  “Nice try,” Dean said.
“No.”

  Tim’s chin dipped toward his chest, and his sigh was the saddest thing in three counties. Dean glanced at his dad just as his dad glanced at him. They both opened their mouths, but Ellie spoke first. “I’ll feed him when you’re gone.”

  “You will?” Tim asked.

  “You will?” Dean said at the same time.

  His dad just snorted and walked out the door.

  “It’s not like I have anything else to do.” She lifted her brows.

  “But you do, Gramma. You do a lot. You cook and clean and wash and—” Tim stopped, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Oh. Sarcasm. I get it.”

  “Go on.” Ellie made a shooing motion with her hands. “The sooner you go the sooner you’re back and I’m off pig-sitting duty.”

  Tim banged through the screen door. Dean’s gaze met his mother’s. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Definitely a pod person,” he mumbled as he followed his son outside.

  “I heard that!” his mother shouted after him.

  “You always do.”

  STELLA AWOKE EARLY. Despite her lack of sleep she wasn’t tired. She felt as if she’d come out of a fog. Today she’d take the first step to reclaiming her life. She snatched the paper from the front porch and drove into town, parking in front of the coffee shop.

  When she’d left Gainsville, no one would have dared open a place where all they sold was coffee, tea and an occasional muffin. What use could there be for an establishment where people lazed away a morning doing nothing more than reading or talking on their cell phones as they sipped from hand-thrown ceramic mugs.

  Obviously someone had found a use, since the homey dining room, complete with a stone fireplace and matching north-woods decor, was nearly full of patrons.

  Stella ordered a latte and a bran muffin, marveling that she could do so in the hometown she’d always considered one step short of prehistoric. The information age seemed to have pushed progress everywhere—if you called a coffee shop progress.

  Stella took a sip of her latte. She definitely did. However, the opportunities for short-term rental were dismal. Guess progress hadn’t invaded every aspect of the town, although really, what purpose could there be for apartments to rent by the month in a place where folks stayed for generations?

  Stella used to find that quirk beyond annoying. She and her friends often referred to Gainsville as “the town that life forgot.” But as time passed, she had discovered that, for most, having your parents, your grandparents, sometimes even your great-grandparents, still living nearby wasn’t such a bad thing. It created a sense of continuity, of loyalty to the community, which was reflected in everything around them.

  In big cities, the opposite was true. People moved around so much, they had no ties, neighbors didn’t form bonds, no one lived near their relatives. In some places, the process of busing inner-city kids to the suburbs ensured that there was no allegiance to local schools or the town.

  The residents of Gainsville loved the land and one another. No one went hungry here. No one lived on the street. No one went unemployed for long. They took care of their own, and the idea of “their own” went beyond those of their blood to include anyone within the city limits. So, it wasn’t long before Stella had an offer of the perfect place to live—one that hadn’t been advertised.

  “There’s an apartment upstairs,” the owner of the coffee shop said after Stella confided the reason for her litany of sighs.

  Linda Diangelo was the former vice president of a trucking company in Chicago. After a nasty divorce from her husband, who’d been arrested for selling pot to his buddies and their buddies and their buddies, too, Linda had packed up her only son and relocated to Gainsville.

  Linda and Stella had met when Linda marched into school the second day and demanded to meet the woman in charge. Linda had shaken Stella’s hand and said, “Do your job and I’ll do mine. We’ll get along great.”

  Stella liked that in a parent. She also liked Linda’s son, Kane, who hadn’t been in the principal’s office once.

  “You’ll just rent me the place like that?” Stella snapped her fingers.

  “You’re good enough to rule the school, but not to rent an apartment over my coffee shop?”

  “Well, when you put it like that…” Stella grinned. “Lead the way.”

  The two women tramped up the outside staircase. Linda was a bottle blonde, with a pretty face and a lot of curves. What single men there were in Gainsville—around here, they didn’t last long— had no doubt been knocking at Linda’s door since she’d arrived.

  Stella wondered if Dean had been one of them.

  None of her business, she reminded herself. She and Dean were “just friends.”

  “You know the Luchettis?” Stella blurted as Linda opened the door.

  Not locked. What else was new? Still, she was glad to see the door had a lock. Now, if Linda only remembered where she’d put the key.

  “Everyone knows the Luchettis.” Linda stepped inside. “They’re like the first family of Gainsville.”

  Stella glanced around. The rental was spacious, extending from the coffee shop in the front, over an empty store in the back.

  “You own the entire building?” Stella asked.

  “Uh-huh. I might put something in that other store, if I can ever figure out what else Gainsville might need.”

  “You seem to have fit in here.”

  Linda smiled. “It’s weird. I left to get away from psycho husband. I figured I’d be bored but safe. But I like it in Gainsville. This place is home in a way Chicago never was.”

  Stella nodded. She hadn’t wanted to stay. However, nowhere else had ever been quite the same.

  “Take a look around,” Linda offered. “There’s a bedroom, kitchen, living, bath. Comes furnished, obviously.”

  The place had been redone not long ago and was plain, but clean. The furniture wasn’t to Stella’s taste, leaning toward wall samplers, wicker end tables and plaid sofas, but she could live with it.

  “Why were you asking about the Luchettis?” Linda asked. “You must have known them.”

  “I did. But I was wondering about Tim. Dean’s son?”

  “Not yet,” Linda said.

  Stella frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Hey—” Linda held up her hands “—don’t growl at me. I was just repeating what I heard.”

  “Which is?”

  “Kid’s a problem. ADHD. Fighting. A lot of folks in town don’t like it.”

  “They need to get over it. Compared to some places I’ve been, and some kids I’ve seen, Tim Luchetti is easy street.”

  “I hear you. I remember a few of the nut cakes in Kane’s school. And they didn’t even have a disorder. They were just screwed up by their families. Too much money, not enough time. The ailment of guilty parents everywhere.”

  “Is that why you came here?”

  “In addition to escaping crazy husband, yes. I wanted to be around for Kane more than I had been.” A flicker of sadness passed over her face. “Once, when I was Ms.VP, he got hurt at school and told his teacher to call his dad, because his mom was busy being important.” Linda shook her head. “Of course, his dad was busy being an asshole, but what can you do?”

  Stella stifled any comment. She’d learned long ago not to react when parents played the finger-pointing game. “You like owning a coffee shop?”

  “I didn’t at first. I missed my job in Chicago.”

  Stella could understand that.

  “But it would have killed me eventually. All that pressure. I felt like a mouse on a wheel. Once I got used to the pace here, I started to see that everything’s important. Even a little coffee shop in Gainsville, Illinois.”

  A month ago, Stella wouldn’t have agreed. A month ago she wouldn’t have understood what Linda was talking about.

  How could a coffee shop be as important as a VP position? How could a tiny elementary school in t
he middle of a great big empty be as stimulating as a huge high school in L.A.?

  But a lot of Stella’s ideas were changing.

  She took a stroll around the apartment. The place would be perfect for her. Walking distance from the school. The coffee shop closed at five, long before she usually got home. There’d be no loud music at night, and Linda didn’t open until seven on the weekends. Stella was wide-awake way before that— always had been.

  “I think I’d like to live here,” Stella said.

  “I think I’d like you to.”

  “Today okay?”

  Linda lifted an eyebrow, but she didn’t ask what the hurry was. If she’d ever met George O’Connell, she knew.

  Linda held out her hand. “Today would be great.”

  As Stella shook on the deal, she knew it would be.

  TIM CLUTCHED HIS BRAND-NEW football cleats to his chest. Shiny and black with a white swoosh sign on the side they were the coolest shoes ever.

  Back when he’d been living in alleys and eating out of garbage cans he hadn’t had a prayer of playing football. He hadn’t even known what football was.

  Then he’d come to Gainsville, and he’d found out what he’d been missing. Every Sunday they watched the Bears. Gramma made snacks. Tim got to drink soda. Everyone yelled at the TV. His dad let Tim sit on his lap, and he explained every play. When it wasn’t football season, life just wasn’t the same.

  His dad slowed the truck and wheeled into a small parking lot between two buildings on Main Street.

  “What’s this place?” Tim asked.

  “Pet store. Cubby needs a collar.”

  Tim followed Dean inside. While his dad peered at dog collars, putting choice after choice back on the shelf muttering, “Too small. Too big. Too poodley.” Tim wandered off. He went up one aisle, then down another. He saw every kind of flea and tick shampoo there was in the world.

  And then he saw her. His new mom.

  He’d kind of forgotten about the mommy quest with all the excitement from his birthday, the dog and the pig. But when he saw the lady behind the counter, Tim remembered.

  She was perfect.