Cedar Creek Seasons (34 page)

“Petite. Like you.”

Beth must have noticed his intentional avoidance of words with an S.

“Beautiful fur. Blond and caramel and brown thugar.” Oopth.

“She’s a cute dog. I’m … honored you see a resemblance between us.”

Derrick rested his elbows on the table and let his head drop into his hands. Big mistake. The odd-shaped goose egg on his forehead burned.

“Here.” Beth offered her glass of ice water again. He held the glass lightly against the abrasion. The coolness soothed almost as much as the gracefulness of her action compared to the clumsiness of his words.

“I’ve been called a dog before.” Her fingers traced the pattern in the wrought iron scrollwork of the outdoor table.

She glanced over the quiet water of Cedar Creek.

An artist stood on the far bank, the legs of his easel driven into the leaf-strewn lawn in front of the Ozaukee County Arts building. The artist’s high-collared sweater swallowed his neck when he reached to add another stroke to the canvas.

Derrick noted that the artist held up his brush handle against a distant view to gain perspective, just like in the movies. He watched the artist work, fascinated by his
stroke-stroke-stroke-gain perspective-stroke-stroke-stroke-gain perspective
rhythm.

Could Derrick keep a grip on the big picture that way? Here he was, sitting across the table from a woman he found increasingly difficult to deceive.

“I may have a
thcalded
tongue,” he said, exaggerating the lisp no longer necessary, “but my ears work.”

“What?” Beth kept her gaze on a trio of leaves chasing each other on the surface of Cedar Creek, riding an unseen current toward the sudden drop a few feet from where they sat. The rush of water over the spillway competed with the light jazz coming from speakers hidden in potted mums.

“Your dog story?”

She fiddled with a corner of her napkin then snapped it open and laid it across her lap. “Oh, you know. Everyone has a sappy story about falling for the wrong person in high school.”

“You fell for a dog?”

She flinched. “No. I fell for a jock. He called me a dog to his friends. Behind my back. To the whole school.”

“Ouch.”

“I was the joke that never failed to get a laugh, the story that came up at every party.”

She said it as if it didn’t matter anymore. But her eyes reflected something as surely as Cedar Creek reflected the golds and greens along its banks.

“What a cute little dog!” the cover girl waitress said when she delivered their meals. She picked up Derrick’s phone. “Do you mind?”

Beth watched Derrick nod that the girl was welcome to admire the photo.

“I love that fringe of bangs over its eyes.”

“Her.
Her
eyes.” His apple cider scald must have diminished.

Sleek-and-slim smiled. “What’s her name?”

Derrick grew an instant sunburn.

An opportunity too good to pass up. Beth prodded. “You never did say. Her name?”

Whatever he uttered in response started and faded so quickly it seemed a sound only canines could hear.

“What is it?” both women asked in unison.

“Her name’s Cuddles.”

The two women shared an unexpected moment of connection. Beth wasn’t alone in wondering how a guy that tall and that much a guy would purchase a palm-sized puppy and then have the courage to name it Cuddles.

“Well,” Sleek said, “that’s a pretty successful conversation starter, I’d say. Hey!” She glanced at the phone in her hand and then at Beth. “You two … um …”

“Yeah. I know. We look a lot alike.”
What’s a 15 percent tip minus 15 percent?

The waitress left them to their meals—Derrick’s three-cheese burger and Beth’s Greek salad. She took the onions he didn’t want and he took half her feta, making his a four-cheese burger.

“So,” he said, “my dog’s name is Cuddles and I miss her.”

“Oh. She’s … departed?”

“Yesterday about nine.”

“Your dog died yesterday?”

“Died? No! She departed. On the plane out of General Mitchell. I thought I could run the business and do what else I need to do here while still taking care of her. But, my landlady has a no pet policy, thus no Cuddles. So that sweet dog had to go live with Crazy Aunt Alice in St. Thomas for a while.”

Beth set her fork on the edge of her plate. He sent his homeless dog to live with a crazy woman? And the dog flew there? “St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands?” How many connecting flights must that have taken?

“St. Thomas as in the St. Thomas Home for the Perpetually Perplexed. My cousin Tom takes in lovable logic-challenged strays like my great-aunt Alice. Animals, too, sometimes. He comes by the saint nickname honestly, if not papally.”

Right there on the banks of Cedar Creek, with too much to do and too much owed, with Oompa’s exhales speaking more of heaven every day, with promises unfulfilled and dreams all but abandoned, Beth knew she was blessed. The L on Derrick’s forehead stood for laughter.

H
istory oozed up through the century-and-a-half-smoothed floorboards of the Woolen Mill shops. Pottery stores, gift shops, quirky businesses he wouldn’t have noticed if Beth hadn’t pointed them out. Others he didn’t dare tell her he’d seen before. They lingered for a few extra minutes in a gift shop that played a mutually favorite Chris Tomlin song as background music. They climbed creaky stairs to each level, Beth noting with delight a new business already buzzing with preholiday shoppers in a once empty storefront. She paused at the shop’s display of child-sized but sophisticated furniture with high class artwork on the chair backs and headboards.

“Aren’t these beautiful?” Her voice had a dreamy quality to it, like pictures drawn in latte foam.

“Did you see the price tag?”

“Can’t you picture a table like this with a set of chairs, in lime and plum—oh yes!—as the centerpiece of a shop that sells—?”

She broke off the conversation, halting it with the startle of reverse thrusters on a jet.

“That sells …?”

“I’ll come back here sometime when we’re not on such a tight schedule.”

Derrick, my boy, you have some good qualities. Why is buffoon your dominant trait? If I press her for a direct answer, she may reveal something useful. On the other hand, the question itself might close her down again. We’ll be back to talking about pumpkins and bittersweet vines. Bittersweet. There’s a connection there, Lord. Isn’t there? Something bittersweet holds her from living full-out
.

“We have a lot of ground to cover, Derrick. You can keep staring at the ‘fur’ on my head or we can cross the street to the mural montage on the corner. The heart of Cedarburg captured in one painting. Most of it, anyway.”

Derrick followed her down the steps, into the breathtakingly fine autumn air, and across the street to the massive mural that, although stunning, surely missed at least a part of Cedarburg’s heart, the one that beat in the woman he trailed.

Beth did her best to retrace the path of the official historic buildings walking tour, pointing out facts she thought might interest someone like Derrick Hofferman. He seemed charmed by everything, taking notes as they walked, which added an occasional point of interest as he discovered the rare uneven spot in the sidewalks.

When a cool breeze kicked up, she undid one of the loops in the robin’s egg moebius, let it hang to her waist, and tucked her hands into the soft wool’s self-formed pocket.

“That’s amazing,” he said.

“What?” She glanced around at the vine-covered historic log home on their left, the stone cottage across the street, the flaming maples and muted oaks arching overhead.

“That.” He pointed to the moebius.

“The concept has been around for centuries.”

“It seems so simple but has so many hidden reasons for being. Like a lot of us, I guess.”

Derrick, who are you? And how did a brownie connoisseur from—where’s he from?—end up practically next door to mess with my cholesterol and other things related to heart function?

He bent to focus on jotting something in his notebook.

“Can I see what you just wrote?”

His eyes widened like hers must have when she first stood with her nose pressed against the front window of Life by Chocolate. “It’s nothing significant.”

She took the journal from him. One question filled the page:
She’s not a knitter???

With three question marks at the end.

She flipped to the next clean page, held out her hand for Derrick’s pen—
ooh, nice pen
—and wrote a response. She closed the notebook and handed it and the pen to him then resumed her tour guide speech about the wrought iron and picket fences that hemmed so many of the Cedarburg properties. She smiled as she walked and talked, imagining Derrick flipping pages a step or two behind her, looking for the spot where she’d written,
No. And I imagine you don’t intend to bake brownies for the rest of your life, do you? No offense to their magnificence
.

He caught up with her two houses later. In one quick move, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “None taken.”

Rooflines and cornerstones, the General Store Museum and the museums-within-the-museum tributes to bygone eras, a quick walk through the latest Cultural Center exhibit—stunning watercolors by an artist Beth said she didn’t know but felt she did, a glance through innumerable shop windows, through the narrow panes of the stories-to-tell Stagecoach Inn, an anecdote or two about the Rivoli Theatre and its community effort restoration, some of which he already knew from Mr. Schurmer, and they were back at their starting point.

With one minor difference.

A note on the door of the Yarn Shop read:

Beth’s eyes darted. She pointed to him. “You. Can you drive me there? Wait. No. Then you’d be stuck at the hospital, too.” She shivered. “I’ll call—”

“Where’s your car?”

“At Herman’s Repair. It spends a lot of time at Herman’s. Could we stick with the current crisis?”

“My car’s around the corner. I’ll drive. You navigate.”

“But—”

“Nothing matters more than getting there. We’ll worry about the next step later.”

She headed toward where he pointed and said, “How about if I just keep my worry file open for frequent updates?”

When a woman could maintain a fingerhold on humor even in the midst of raging panic, that was a good sign. The two bolted around the corner as if training for a Lake Michigan marathon. She sprinted past his lime-green Escalade—a reminder that some bargains just plain aren’t.

He waved her back. “Here. Let me get the door for you.”

Beth climbed into the passenger seat. “The Realtor lets you park in the driveway of my dream cottage?”

Derrick didn’t have to answer. The way she winced, she must have seen the dog dish on the front porch, the one with
Cuddles
written in white enamel.

While Derrick clicked his seat belt and turned the key in the ignition, she held her arms toward the admittedly storybook cottage with its hand-chiseled stonework and sweet little porch.