Return To Little Hills

Zowee! Edie thought as she walked back across the campus to her mother’s car. Zowee! Zowee! Zowee!

In the car she pulled off her jacket, tossed it onto the back seat, kicked off her heels, which had elevated her exactly to the level of Peter Darling’s gray-green eyes, threw them into the back, too, and sat grinning idiotically at the cracked green vinyl-covered dashboard.

Zowee!

Shaking her head, she pulled down the driving mirror to look at her face: flushed scarlet. The car, she noted belatedly, was a furnace. She rolled down the driver’s window, still seeing Peter Darling’s face.

Zowee!

If every female in the place wasn’t having indecent dreams about him, she’d…eat her press pass.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes I think that writing fiction is a little like making a patchwork quilt—you take a little of this, a piece of that and, oh yes, got to find a place for that little scrap. I felt that way as I wrote Return to Little Hills. While the characters, the situations and the locales are all fiction, I frequently found myself digging into the ragbag of my own life.

Okay, this is the time to say—I should probably underline this part—that my own elderly mother, while hard of hearing, is much more kind, understanding and all-around wonderful than Edie’s mother. Are you reading this, Mum? And my sister, Kathleen, is—thankfully—nothing at all like Viv. Okay, Kaff?

That said, though, I really enjoy writing about the dynamics of family relationships. Families are a source of incredible joy and comfort and, let’s face it, have the unique capacity to get under our skin in no time flat, as my heroine, Edie, discovers when she returns to her hometown of Little Hills, Missouri.

I hope you enjoy Return to Little Hills. Please write to me at Janice Macdonald, P.O. Box 101, 136 East 8th Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362, or visit my Web site at www.janicemacdonald.net.

Oh, one more thing. If, like Edie (and myself), you’re a gooey-butter-cake aficionado, send me your recipes! I’ll try to publish a few on my Web site.

Best wishes,

Janice

Return to Little Hills

Janice Macdonald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Kaff, with much love

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

“DON’T SNAP AT ME,” Edie Robinson’s mother said as Edie maneuvered Maude’s elderly Chevrolet Nova into the parking lot of the Little Hills IGA. “No one asked you to come back. You’re busy, we all know that. You’ve got an important job. Nobody expects anything from you. All I said was I needed toilet paper—”

“You told me four times, Mom.”

“Why would I have said limes?” Maude’s voice was indignant. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a lime if it bit me on the nose. I need toilet paper and…denture cleaner,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “But if you’re going to snap at me, forget it. Viv will take me. Viv can always make time, not that she isn’t busy, too, but all I have to do is pick up the phone and—”

“Viv walks on water, Mom. I don’t.” “Sarcastic,” Maude would have shot back if she’d heard anything more than a muffled jumble of words. “You’ve always been sarcastic, Edith.” With her right hand, Edie massaged the knot of tension in the back of her neck that usually only hit her when she procrastinated on a deadline, and cruised the lot for a parking space close to the market entrance. She watched a woman in pink tights and a maternity top load groceries and three small kids into a minivan. God. Three kids and the woman had to be at least fifteen years younger than she was. Edie glanced in the rearview mirror, frowned at the vertical lines around her mouth and thought to hell with it. When the van finally pulled away, Edie slid into the spot, switched off the ignition and turned in the seat to look directly at her mother.

Maude was eighty and, despite the late-summer Missouri heat, wore a black woolen cardigan over a cotton housedress blooming with improbably vivid peonies. On her feet, little pink ballerina-style slippers and knee-high support hose. For some reason, the sight of Maude’s tiny slipper-clad feet and swollen ankles made Edie want to weep. She reached over and scooped up Maude’s left hand in her own. Maude’s felt soft and almost boneless, fingers clutched around a wad of tissue. “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Edie said. “I’m sorry.”

Her chin trembling, Maude scrabbled for the door handle. “You’ve always had a short temper, Edith. I said to Viv just the other day, I never know what’s going to set Edith off. You’ll have to come and open this door for me, it sticks. You’re just like your father in that way.” She pushed ineffectively at the door. “Viv said she’d have Ray look at it—”

“Mom, leave the door alone. I’ll open it for you. You need to get rid of this damn car. Unless,” she muttered facetiously, “you’re going to start driving again.”

“Ham.” Maude clutched her purse close to her chest. “They’ve got that sliced ham on sale. I like a slice of ham for dinner. Can’t eat anything too heavy before I go to bed, or I’m up all night with heartburn. Viv tell you about the new principal at Ray’s school?”

“She mentioned him.” An understatement. From the moment Viv picked her up at the airport the night before, her sister had talked about little else. Peter Darling: English, wife died of cancer, four small children, collects butterflies, Ray says he won’t last. Too pie-in-the sky. Twenty years of journalism had trained her to isolate and retain the salient facts of any information she was given. She’d retained these particular snippets because the idea of raising four small children with or without a spouse appalled her and because she’d probably meet Peter Darling tomorrow when she gave a talk to students at the school. Her brother-in-law, the assistant principal, had hit her with the request late last night and she’d agreed before she realized she didn’t particularly want to do it.

Too late now. She grabbed the keys, got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. Waves of heat rose up from the parking lot. A line of sweat trickled down her back, pasting her cotton shirt to her skin. It had been nearly midnight when she’d stepped out of the airport and the warm, moist temperature had hit her like a slap in the face. This morning, the relentlessly cheerful weatherman on Maude’s ancient Magnavox had announced that the day promised to be another scorcher, even hotter than yesterday. She’d snapped off the set as he’d been yammering on about the misery index.

No one expects anything from you. She pulled open the heavy door and leaned inside to unfasten her mother’s seat belt. Maude’s hair, soft and fine as cobwebs, brushed against her cheek. Edie caught a whiff of mothballs and peppermint candy. But you’re glad I’m here, aren’t you, Mom? You miss me sometimes. Don’t you?

“Okay, there you go.” She stood back and extended her hand; Maude ignored it. “Going to be another hot day,” she said as Maude slowly swung her legs around. “You’re going to bake in that sweater. Want me to help you off with it?”

“Don’t rush me.” Maude’s little pink slippers were gingerly touching down on the asphalt. “I know you’re in a hurry, you’re always in a hurry, but it takes me a while these days.”

“Take your time, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.” Her mother’s face was flushed with heat and exertion and, as she helped her out of the car, Edie slid her palm under the shoulder of Maude’s black sweater and felt damp warmth. “Let me help you take it off, Mom. You’ll be more comfortable.”

Maude shook off Edie’s hand. “The store’s air-conditioned. I’ll need my sweater.”

“You got it.” Her arm linked in Maude’s, they made their way slowly across the parking lot. “Okay, toilet paper, denture cleaner and ham. Is that it?”

“Yams?” Maude shook her head. “Get some for yourself if you want, I won’t eat any.” She turned her pale blue eyes on Edie. “You probably ate that sort of thing in…where was it you were last? I can’t keep up with all the places you’re off to. I said to Vivian, no wonder Edith never married. What man would want to go traipsing around the world after her?”

“I’ll get you a basket.” At the entrance to the store, Edie separated a cart from the line and wheeled it over to Maude. “There you go. Want me to push it for you?”

“I need it to lean on.” Maude elbowed Edie aside. “Now, I’ll be as quick as I can,” she said as they progressed sedately along the dairy aisle. “Just don’t lose your temper with me. There’s no call for it. Vivian doesn’t snap at me the way you do, she knows it takes me longer these days. She said to me when we knew you were coming, she said, ‘Mom. Edith’s just going to upset you the way she always does.’ Viv thinks about these things.”

Edie bit the inside of her lower lip very hard and sent a prayer aloft. Please, please give me patience. Half of my sister’s saintliness would help, too. And please, please, I know it’s too late to expect much in the way of mother-daughter bonding. I know we’re not going to snuggle up in bed for heart-to-heart talks over mugs of cocoa, but please, please, let this be a…pleasant visit. And please, please, don’t let me snap at her. Even though I didn’t snap at her in the first place.

“EDIE ROBINSON!” the cashier shrieked some forty-five minutes later when Edie followed Maude with her brimming basket to the checkout line. “My God, I don’t believe it. When did you get back?”

“Last night.” A package of toilet paper in one hand, Edie grinned at the woman she’d last seen at their twenty-year high-school reunion which—she did a quick mental calculation—was nearly three years ago. Honey Jones, she immediately observed, was probably fifteen pounds heavier than she’d been back then and her blond hair was gray at the roots. God, you’re shallow, Edie scolded herself as she began piling stuff on the conveyor belt. Yeah, but when you’re barreling along the road to middle age, she justified, you notice these things. “So, Honey,” she said. “What’s going on with you these days?”

Honey grinned broadly. “Same old, same old. Get up, go to work, come home, get dinner for Jim and the kids. Go to bed. Do it all over again the next day. But what about you?” She glanced at Maude, who had dug a fistful of coupons from her purse and now held them close to her face as she slowly inspected each one. “The last I heard, your mom said you were in…”

“Afghanistan,” Edie said when it became clear the answer wasn’t on the tip of Honey’s tongue “Before that, Bosnia.” Chechnya, Somalia, Rwanda. She’d covered them all. Dangerous, difficult, complex, frustrating. But a piece of cake compared to Little Hills, Missouri. “Doing okay, Mom? Want me to help you sort through those coupons?”

“Frozen peas,” Maude said. “Too much sodium in the canned ones.”

“So you’re just back for a visit?” Honey asked.

“A month. Mom’s decided the house is too much for her, living alone and everything. My sister thinks Mom would be happier in a…more structured environment, so I’m back to help her find something.”

“Viv’s such a doll,” Honey said. “So patient. Always a smile. I don’t know how she does it.”

“Yeah.” Edie forced a smile of her own. “Mom’s lucky to have her living close by.”

“Edie’s giving a talk at Ray’s school tomorrow,” Maude said. “Ray’s the principal. He’s married to my daughter Vivian.”

“I know, Mrs. Robinson,” Honey said, kindly as though to a child. “I was a bridesmaid at their wedding.” She looked at Edie. “Assistant principal, right? My kid’s a junior there. I guess you’ve heard all about the new principal, huh?”

“Yeah. Viv filled me in. Everyone seems all agog.”

“That’s small-town life for you,” Honey said and shook her head. “I can’t even imagine your life. The farthest I’ve ever been is New Jersey. Do you get scared? I mean, all that shooting and everything.”

Edie shrugged and thought about the bullet in Sarajevo. She’d left her room for five minutes to talk to a photographer about the story they were working on. She returned to a cloud of dust and a .50-caliber slug embedded in the wall behind the desk she’d been using. If she’d been there, the bullet would have gone right through her forehead. She’d kept the bullet. “You take your chances,” she said. “It’s part of the deal.”

“I’ve got coupons,” Maude announced. “Here, Edith, you sort them out. Don’t know why they make the writing so small. Did Edith tell you about her big award?” she asked Honey. “Twenty-five cents off the coffee, the coupon is here somewhere. And the canned salmon is two for three dollars. Edith, look at these coupons. I know you can’t be bothered with that sort of thing, but it’s a savings, let me tell you. My daughter thinks money grows on trees,” she said with a glance at the cashier. “Always been that way. I remember Vivian used to save her allowance until she could get something she really wanted, but not Edith. As soon as she got it, she spent it. Still that way.”

Edie exchanged glances with the cashier, who smiled sympathetically.

“In your mother’s eyes you never grow up.” Honey scanned a roll of paper towels. “Doesn’t matter if you’re fifteen or fifty, you’re always this kid who doesn’t have sense enough to cross the road.” She reached for a can of pineapple chunks. “So. Tell me about your award.”

“Oh…” Edie started sorting Maude’s coupons into little piles. “I got a Pulitzer for a series on the rebels in El Salvador.” She picked up a ten-cents off coupon for grape jelly and checked the contents of the basket to see if she’d actually picked up the jelly as Maude had asked her to. “It was a team effort though, three other reporters and myself. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

“Wow.” Honey’s eyes were shining. “I am so proud of you, Edie. But, hey, we always knew you were smart. So…no husband on the horizon?”

“You got grape jelly.” Maude shoved the jar under Edie’s nose.

“I know, Mom.” She looked at Maude, whose eyes, brimming and clouded by cataracts, could look frighteningly hostile. “You said that’s what you wanted.”

“I said strawberry.”

“You said grape.”

“Strawberry,” Maude said. “That’s my daughter for you,” she said with a sigh. “Never listens. Never has. Snaps at me too.”

Edie held her breath. I won’t snap again if it kills me. And it might.

Honey winked at Edie. “So, no handsome man in your life?” she asked, rephrasing the question this time.

“No man, handsome or otherwise.” Edie took the grape jelly from Maude. “Wait right there, Mom. I’ll go back and get the strawberry. Anything else while I’m at it?” Maude didn’t answer, but as Edie walked away, she could hear Maude’s voice telling Honey, “Edie’ll never marry. Too darn independent and set in her ways.”

LUTHER HIGH SCHOOL principal Peter Darling stood in the sweltering heat at the side of the quad watching the faces of the assembled students for signs that they were actually listening to the tall woman up at the podium. To his vast relief, he saw no signs of the pushing and snickering and not-so-muffled yawns that had turned last week’s spotlight-on-careers program into an embarrassing fiasco. The assistant principal, openly skeptical about a weekly spotlight on careers, had smirked afterward that maybe they should line up hookers and pimps to discuss their work, with possibly a spotlight on auto theft and strong-arm robbery—the lines of work for which most Luther High kids were destined. Then to Peter’s surprise, Ray had done an apparent about-face and suggested that his sister-in-law would be willing to speak.

Peter watched the kids who, from their intent expressions, all appeared to be contemplating a career in journalism. Of course, Edie Robinson—with her sleek toffee-colored hair and photogenic smile—was no doubt part of the appeal.

“What do I like best about my job?” she’d just asked in response to a question thrown out by a girl in the front row. “Everything. The excitement, the variety. I think people often become unhappy because they’re just dissatisfied with the way things are in the place where they live. That doesn’t happen to me. I’m always going somewhere else. If I don’t like my current circumstance…oh well, tomorrow I’ll get on a plane and be on the other side of the world. New situation, new country, new experiences. I live in hotels. I eat in restaurants. I leave my laundry in a plastic bag in the hall outside my door. Almost all my friends are other journalists. My life is exclusively travel and work. And that’s exactly the way I like it.”

“Or to put it another way,” Ray Jenkins muttered in Peter’s ear, “Edith never has to think about anyone but herself. Which she never did anyway, even before she got to be a hotshot journalist. Kind of explains why she’s forty and never been married. You wanna hear about the stuff she’s not telling you, ask me. I used to go with her before I came to my senses and married her sister.”

Apart from mild surprise that the assistant principal might have anything at all in common with the woman at the podium, Peter had no interest in Ray Jenkins’s personal life, so he ignored the remark and made his way over to the stage just as Edie, having wrapped up her talk, was stepping down. He motioned for her to stay put and addressed the students himself, inviting them to show their appreciation for the interesting and informative talk. They complied with great enthusiasm, punctuating their applause with a few whoops and whistles.

He followed Edie off the stage, where she was now regarding him with very faint amusement in her light, amber-colored eyes. Her face and throat were lightly tanned and she wore an off-white trouser suit in a thin material that draped gracefully on her tall, angular figure. There was a cool confidence about her that made it quite easy for him to imagine her calmly reading in a bathtub as mortar shells flew around. The image intrigued him.

“Riveting talk. The students were captivated and, trust me, they’re a tough audience.”

She eyed him for a moment. “North of London, but not as far north as, say, Birmingham. Lived in the States for…oh, ten years or so. Long enough to have lost a little of the accent.”

He laughed, taken aback. “Very good. Malvern, actually. And I’ve been here twelve years. You’ve spent time in England, have you?”

“Five years in the London bureau, some time ago, though. I used to be a whiz at identifying regional accents. I thought I might have lost my touch.”

“Clearly, you haven’t.”

“I’m sure there’s an interesting story about how a man from Malvern, England, came to be a high-school principal in Little Hills, Missouri, but—” she glanced around “—I see a line forming to talk to you, so I’ll just…invent my own version of the facts.”

“Or you could call me,” he said, surprising himself. “And we could exchange life stories over dinner.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’ll stick with my invented version.”

“Pity,” he said. And then as he was about to let her go, he said, “I’ve noticed that your brother-in-law calls you Edith. Is it Edith, or Edie?” he asked.

“Edie,” she said. “Only my family calls me Edith…and I tolerate that very poorly.” A moment passed. “I’ve noticed that my brother-in-law calls you Pete. Is it Peter, or Pete?”

“Peter.” He grimaced slightly. “I suppose it sounds terribly formal, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds fine,” she said.

ZOWEE, Edie thought as she walked back across the campus to Maude’s car. Zowee. Zowee. Zowee. In the car, she pulled off her jacket, tossed it in the back seat, kicked off her heels, which had elevated her exactly to the level of Peter Darling’s gray-green eyes, threw them in the back, too, and sat grinning idiotically at the cracked, green vinyl–covered dashboard. Zowee. Shaking her head, she pulled down the driving mirror to look at her face: flushed scarlet. The car, she noted belatedly, was a furnace. She rolled down the driver’s window, still seeing Peter Darling’s face. Zowee. If every female in that school wasn’t having indecent dreams about him, she’d…eat her press pass.

THE OLD BLACK DIAL PHONE in the hallway was ringing when Edie let herself into Maude’s house some thirty minutes later. Her mother, Edie thought as she picked up the heavy receiver, should at least have a portable that she could carry around the house, but Maude wasn’t about to go easy into the digital age. The old one suited her just fine, thank you very much. Edie dragged the phone to the stairs and sat on the bottom step, listening to Vivian describe the pot roast she’d just put in the oven for dinner that night. Edie should bring Maude over at about six, Viv said.

Edie leaned back against the stairs and stifled a groan. Family gatherings ranked low on her list of ways to spend a pleasant evening. Viv would outdo herself with the food, then complain of being exhausted. Ray would be smarmy and insinuating. She’d lost touch completely with her nephews. And Maude would spend the whole time telling everyone that she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve the way her youngest daughter was always snapping at her.

Home sweet home. Thank God it was only for a month. Looking on the bright side, Viv would probably continue her rant about Peter Darling. Funny how much more interesting that prospect was, now that she’d met him.

“Mom doesn’t feed herself properly,” Viv was saying now. “And I’m sure you’ve probably forgotten all you never learned about cooking. I’ll do the roast and then I’ll wrap up what’s left and you can take it back to Mom’s. That way, you’ll both have something decent to eat.”

From the stairs, where she remained after hanging up the phone, Edie could see Maude at her chair by the window. “She spends hours there,” Viv had complained on the ride from the airport. “Just staring out at the street. That’s why she needs to get out of that house and into a place where she can be with other people her own age.”

Elbows on her knees, Edie sat for a while watching her mother from the dim and musty hallway. Maude, at her lace-curtained window post, in a fusty room crammed with knickknacks, crocheted mats, knitted cushions, cuckoo clocks and all the detritus accumulated over a lifetime, seemed so organic to the house that Edie found herself wondering whether uprooting her might cause Maude to just wither and die sooner than she might if she were left to live out her life at home.

But when she mentioned the thought to Vivian that night, her sister looked impatient.

“Edie, trust me, I spend a lot more time with Mom than you do. She needs to get rid of that house.”

Edie, sprawled on the massive off-white leather couch in Viv and Ray’s cavernous family room, channel surfing on their massive TV because Vivian had laughed incredulously at her offer to help out, conceded that Viv was probably right. Still, she would sound Maude out anyway, just to be certain in her own mind. “Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?” she called to Viv, who hadn’t left the kitchen for the past hour.

Vivian laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks, Eed. I can manage better without your help. Trust me. Just relax.”

So she tried. She channel surfed some more, but found herself critiquing the correspondent’s performance on every new station. It was hard to forget her vocation, even when she wasn’t working. Finally, she let her thoughts drift. She thought for a bit about her sister in the kitchen, whom she normally thought very little about. Coming home always brought the old memories flooding back. Viv. Poor Viv, the pretty but asthmatic child. She could still hear Maude scolding, “Oh Edith, don’t be so selfish. Let Viv have the doll.” Or the candy, or the book or whatever else it was that Viv might want. “You’re such a lucky girl, you have your health. Look at poor Viv.” And Edie would look at Viv and feel not sympathy but envy because Viv had Maude’s attention and she didn’t.