“What if Gordon decides to be an actual, step-up father, now that he’s married?”
“Julie, he is Calvin’s father—”
Julie made a throat-slashing motion with one hand, and Calvin struggled through the front door, might have been squashed by it if he hadn’t been wearing the miniature inner tube with the goggle-eyed frog-head on the front.
“Here,” he said, holding the bag out to his mother. “Where’s my nickel?”
Julie paid up, casting a warning glance in Libby’s direction as she did so. There was to be no more talk of Gordon Pruett’s impending visit while Calvin was around.
“I’m bored,” Calvin soon announced. “I want to go to playschool over at the community center.”
“You should have thought of that when you insisted on wearing swimming trunks and the floaty thing with the frog-head,” Julie responded lightly, heading back toward the kitchen with the unnecessary bag of sugar. “You’re not dressed for playschool, kiddo.”
“There’s a dress code?” Libby asked. She generally took Calvin’s side when there was a difference of opinion.
“No,” Julie conceded brightly, “but I’d be willing to bet nobody else is wearing a bathing suit.”
Two secretaries came in then, for their double nonfat lattes, following by Jubal Tabor, a lineman for the power company. In his midforties, with a receding hairline and a needy personality, Jubal always ordered the Rocket, a high-caffeine concoction with ginseng and a lot of sugar. Said it got him through the morning.
“Expectin’ a flood, kid?” he asked Calvin, who was back on his stool, shoulders hunched, frog-head slightly askew.
Calvin rolled his eyes.
Hiding a smile, Libby served the secretaries’ drinks, took their money and thanked them.
Meanwhile, Julie made sure she stayed in the kitchen. Jubal asked her to the movies nearly every time their paths crossed, and even now he was standing on tiptoe trying to catch a glimpse of her while the espresso for his Rocket steamed out of the steel spigot.
“He’s not so bad,” Libby had said once, when Julie had sent Jubal away with another carefully worded rejection.
“Julie and Jubal?” her sister had said, her eyes green that day because she was wearing a mint-colored blouse. “Our names alone are reason enough to steer clear—we’d sound like second cousins to the Bobbsey twins. Besides, he’s too old for me, he wears white socks and he always calls Calvin ‘kid.’”
The admittedly comical ring of their names, Jubal’s age and the white socks might have been overlooked, in Libby’s opinion, but the gruff way he said “kid” whenever he spoke to Calvin bugged her, too. So she’d stopped reminding her sister that there was a shortage of marriageable men in Blue River.
“Scones aren’t ready yet?” Jubal asked, casting a disapproving eye toward the virtually empty plastic bakery display case beside the cash register. “Out at Starbucks, they’ve always got scones.”
Libby refrained from pointing out to Jubal that he never bought scones anyway, no matter how good the selection was, and set his drink on the counter. “You been cheating on me, Jubal?” she teased. “Buying your jet fuel from the competition?”
Jubal looked at her and blinked once, hard, as though he’d never seen her before. “You want to go to the movies with me tonight?” he asked.
Calvin made a rude sound, which Jubal either missed or pretended not to hear.
“I’m sorry,” Libby said, with a note of kind regret in her voice. “I promised Tate McKettrick I’d have dinner with him.”
Julie dropped something in the kitchen, causing a great clatter, and out of the corner of her eye, Libby saw Calvin watching her with renewed interest. Since he’d been born long after the breakup, he couldn’t have registered the implications of his aunt’s statement, but that well-known surname had a cachet all its own.
Even among four-year-olds, it seemed.
“Well,” Jubal groused, “far be it from me to compete with a McKettrick.”
Libby merely smiled. “Thanks for the business, Jubal,” she told him. “You have yourself a good day, now.”
Jubal paid up, took his Rocket and left.
The instant his utility van pulled away from the curb, Julie peeked out of the kitchen. “Did I hear you say you’re going to dinner with Tate?” she asked.
Libby tried to act casual. “He asked me last night. I said maybe.”
“That isn’t what you told Mr. Tabor,” Calvin piped up. “You lied.”
“I didn’t lie,” Libby lied. First, she’d driven her car without the emissions repair, single-handedly destroying the environment, to hear her conscience tell it, and now this. She was setting a really bad example for her nephew.
“Yes, you did,” Calvin insisted.
“Sometimes,” Julie said carefully, resting a hand on Calvin’s small, bare shoulder, “we say things that aren’t precisely true so we don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”
Calvin held his ground. “If it’s not the truth, then it’s a lie. That’s what you always tell me, Mom.”
Libby sighed. “If Tate asks me out again,” she told Calvin, “I’ll say yes. That way, I won’t have fibbed to anybody.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t say ‘yes’ in the first place,” Julie marveled. “Elisabeth Remington, are you crazy?”
Libby cleared her throat, slanted a glance in Calvin’s direction to remind her sister that the conversation would have to wait.
“Can I go to playschool if I put on clothes?” Calvin asked, looking so woeful that Julie mussed his hair and ducked out of her floury apron.
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s run home so you can change.” She turned to Libby. “I put the first batch of scones in the oven a couple of minutes ago,” she added. “When you hear the timer ding, take them out.”
“Are you coming back?” Libby asked, as equally invested in a “no” as she was in a “yes.” Once she and her sister were alone again, between customers, Julie would grill her about Tate. If Julie didn’t return, the first batch of scones would sell out in a heartbeat, as always, and there wouldn’t be any more for the rest of the day, because Libby always burned everything she baked, no matter how careful she was.
“Only if you promise to take my turn babysitting Marva so I can—” Julie paused, cleared her throat “—leave town for a few days.”
“We’re going somewhere?” Calvin asked, immediately excited. On a teacher’s salary, with the child support going into a college account, he and Julie didn’t take vacations.
“Yes,” Julie answered, passing Libby an arch look. “If your aunt Libby will agree to look after Gramma while we’re gone, that is.”
Calvin sagged with disappointment. “Nobody,” he said, “wants to spend any more time with Gramma than they have to.”
“Calvin Remington,” Julie replied, without much sternness to her tone, “that was a terrible thing to say.”
“You say it all the time.”
“It’s still terrible, all right?” Julie turned to Libby. “Deal or no deal?”
Agreeing would mean two weeks in a row on Marva-watch. But Libby needed those scones, if she didn’t want all her customers heading for Starbucks. “Deal,” she said, in dismal resignation.
Julie grinned. “Great. See you in twenty minutes.”
“Crap,”