Shakespeare's Christmas (Lily Bard #3)

Looking at Dill now, I wondered why he'd dragged his feet. I didn't think he'd been beating other women off with a stick. Dill was perfectly nice and perfectly pleasant, but you wouldn't turn to look at him twice on the street. My sister's fiancé had thinning sandy hair, attractive brown eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and a happy smile. His daughter, Anna, was another skinny little eight-year-old, with thick, shoulder-length brown hair that was lighter than her father's. Anna had her dad's eyes and smile. Anna's mother had died when Anna was about eighteen months old, Dill had told us, in a car accident.

I watched while Anna hugged Varena. She was about to run to play with Eve when Dill stopped her. "Say hi to your aunt Lily," he said firmly.

"Hey, Aunt Lily," Anna said and gave me a casual wave of the hand, which I returned. "Can I play with Eve now, Daddy?"

"OK, sweetie," Dill said, and the two girls clattered outside while Dill turned to me to give me a hug. I had to endure it, so I did, but I'm not a casual toucher. And I hadn't quite adjusted to being "Aunt Lily."

Dill asked me the usual questions you ask of someone you haven't seen in while, and I managed to answer civilly. I was tensing up already, and nothing had happened to make me so. What was wrong with me? I stared out the front window while Dill and my sister talked over the plans for the evening. Tonight, I gathered, Dill was attending his bachelor dinner, while Varena and I and Mother were going to a wedding shower.

As I watched the two little girls playing on the front lawn, heaving the beach ball back and forth between them and running a lot, I tried to recall playing with Varena like that. Surely we had? But I couldn't dredge up a single recollection.

Without asking me, Dill told Varena he'd run me home so she could start getting ready. I looked at my watch. If Varena needed three hours to get ready for a party, she needed help, in my opinion. But Varena seemed pleased with Dill's offer, so I went outside to stand by Dill's Bronco. A tiny, thin woman had come outside of the bigger house to call to Eve.

"Hey," she said when she noticed me.

"Hello," I said.

Eve came running up, Anna in tow.

"This is Varena's sister, Mama," she said. "She came for the wedding. Miss Varena showed me her dress, and Miss Lily picked me up so I could see the veil. You wouldn't believe how strong Miss Lily is! I bet she can lift a horse!"

"Oh, my goodness," said Eve's mama, her thin face transformed by a sweet smile. "I better say hello, then. I'm Eve's mother, as I'm sure you figured. Meredith Osborn."

"Hello again," I said. "Lily Bard." This woman had just had a baby, according to Varena, but she looked no larger than a child herself. Losing "baby weight" was not going to be a problem for Meredith Osborn. I didn't think Meredith Osborn was over thirty-one, my age, and she might be even younger.

"Can you pick us both up, Miss Lily?" Eve asked, and my niece-to-be suddenly looked much more interested in me.

"I think so," I said and bent my knees. "One on either side, now!"

The girls each picked a side, and I hooked my arms around them and stood, making sure I was steady. The girls were squealing with excitement. "Hold still," I reminded them, and they stopped the thrashing that I had worried would topple us all over onto the driveway.

"We're queens of the world," Anna shouted extravagantly, sweeping her arm to indicate her turf. "Look at how high up we are!"

Dill had been talking to Varena in the doorway, but now he glanced over to find out what Anna was doing. His face looked almost comical with surprise when he saw the girls.

With the anxious smile of someone who is trying not to panic, he strode over. "Better get down, sweetie! You're a big load for Miss Lily."

"They're both small," I said mildly and surrendered Anna to her dad. I swung Eve in front of me and set her down gently. She grinned up at me. Her mother was looking at her with that smile of love women get when they look at their kids. A little mewling sound came from the house. "I hear your sister crying," Meredith Osborn said wearily. "We better go in and see. Good-bye, Miss Bard, nice to meet you."

I nodded at Meredith and gave Eve a little smile. Her brown eyes, peering up at me, looked enormous. She grinned at me, a smile stretching from one ear to another, and dashed in after her mother.

Anna and her father were already in the Bronco, so I climbed in, too. Dill chatted all the way back to my parents' home, but I half tuned him out. I had already talked to more people today than I normally spoke to in three or four days in Shakespeare. I was out of the habit of chitchat.

I got out at my folks' with a nod to Dill and Anna and strode into the house. My mother was fluttering around the kitchen, trying to get something ready for us to eat before we went to the shower. My dad was in the bathroom getting ready for the bachelor dinner.

My mother was worried that some of Dill's friends might get carried away and have a stripper perform at the party. I shrugged. My father wouldn't be mortally offended.

"It's your dad's blood pressure I'm really worried about," Mom said with a half smile. "If a naked woman popped out of a cake, no telling what might happen!"

I poured iced tea and set the glasses on the table. "It doesn't seem too likely that anyone will do that," I said, because she was looking for reassurance. "Dill's not a kid, and it's not his first marriage. I don't think any of his local friends are likely to get that carried away." I sat down at my place.

"You're right," Mom said with some relief. "You always have such good sense, Lily."

Not always.

"Are you... seeing anyone... now, honey?" Mom asked gently.

I stared up at her as she hovered over the table, plates in her hands. I almost said no automatically.

"Yes."

The fleeting look of sheer relief and pleasure that flashed across my mother's pale, narrow face was so intense I felt like taking back my yes. I was feeling my way with Jack every hour we were together, and to have our relationship classified as a standard dating situation made me horribly anxious.

"Can you tell me a little about him?" Mom's voice was calm, her hands steady as she set the plates down at our places. She sat down across from me and began to stir sugar into her tea.

I had no idea what to say.

"Oh, that's all right, I don't want to intrude on your privacy," she said after a moment, flustered.

"No," I said just as quickly. It seemed awful to me that we were so leery of each other's every word and silence. "No, that's ... no, it's OK. He..." I pictured Jack, and a tide of longing swept over me, so intense and painful that it took my breath away. After it ebbed, I said, "He's a private detective. He lives in Little Rock. He's thirty-five."

My mother put her sandwich down on her plate and began smiling. "That's wonderful, honey. What's his name? Has he been married before?"

"Yes. His name is Jack Leeds."

"Any kids?"

"No."

"That's easier."

"Yes."

"Though I know little Anna so well now, at first when Dill and Varena began dating ... Anna was so little, not even toilet trained, and Dill's mother didn't seem to want to come to take care of Anna, though she was a cute little toddler...."

"That worried you?"

"Yes," she admitted, nodding her faded blond head. "Yes, it did. I didn't know if Varena could handle it. She never enjoyed baby-sitting very much, and she never talked about having babies, like most girls do. But she and Anna seemed to take to each other just fine. Sometimes she gets fed up with Anna's little tricks, and sometimes Anna reminds Varena that she isn't her real mother, but for the most part they get along great."

"Dill wasn't in the car wreck that killed his wife?"

"No, it was a one-car accident. Evidently, Judy, his wife, had just dropped off Anna at a sitter's."

"That was before Dill moved here?"

"Yes, just a few months before. He'd been living up northwest of Little Rock. He says he felt he just couldn't bear to raise Anna there, every day having to pass the spot where his wife died."

"So he moves to a town where he doesn't know a soul, where he doesn't have any family to help him raise Anna." I spoke before I thought.

My mother gave me a sharp look. "And we're mighty glad he did," she said firmly. "The pharmacy here was up for sale, and it's been wonderful to have it open, so we have a choice." There was a chain pharmacy in Bartley, too.

"Of course," I said, to keep the peace.

We finished our meal in silence. My father stomped through on his way out the kitchen door to his car, grousing the whole time about not fitting in at a bachelor dinner. We could tell he was really gleeful about being invited. He had a wrapped present tucked under his arm, and when I asked what it was, his face turned even redder. He pulled on his topcoat and slammed the back door behind him without answering.

"I suspect he bought one of those nasty gag gifts," Mom said with a little smile as she listened to Father back out of the driveway.

I loved getting surprised by my mother. "I'll do the dishes while you get ready," I said.

"You need to try on your bridesmaid dress!" she said abruptly as she was rising to leave the kitchen.

"Right now?"

"What if we need to take it up?"

"Oh... all right." This was not a moment I'd anticipated with any pleasure. Bridesmaids' dresses are notorious for being unusable, and I'd paid for this one as a good bridesmaid should. But I hadn't seen it yet. I had a horrible, wincing moment of picturing the dress as red velvet with fake fur trim to suit the Christmas motif.

I should have had more trust in Varena. The dress, which was hanging in my bedroom closet swathed in plastic like Varena's own dress, was deep burgundy velvet, with a band of matching satin ribbon sewed under the breasts. In back, where the edges of the ribbon came together, there was a matching bow - but it was detachable. The dress had a high neckline but was cut low in the back. My sister didn't want her bridesmaids demure, that was for sure.

"Try it on," Mother urged. I could tell she wouldn't be happy until I did. With my back to her, I pulled off my shirt and wriggled out of my shoes and jeans. But I had to turn to face her to get the dress, which she'd been divesting of its plastic bag.

Every time, the impact of my scars hit her in the heart. She took a deep, ragged breath and handed me the dress, and I got it over my head as quickly as possible. I turned so she could zip me, and together we looked at it in the mirror. Both our pairs of eyes went immediately to the neckline. Perfect. Nothing showed. Thank you, Varena.

"It looks beautiful," Mother said stoutly. "Stand up straight, now." (As if I slouched.) The dress did fit well, and who doesn't love the feel of velvet?

"What kind of flowers are we carrying?"

"The bridesmaids' bouquets are going to be long sprays of glads and some other stuff," Mother said, who strictly left the gardening to my father. "You're the maid of honor, you know."

Varena hadn't seen me in three years.

This wasn't just a wedding, then. This was a full-scale family reconciliation.

I was willing, but I didn't know if I was able. Plus, I hadn't been to a wedding in a long time.

"Do I have to do anything special?"

"You have to carry the ring Varena's giving Dill. You have to take her bouquet while she's saying her vows." Mom smiled at me, and her washed-blue eyes crinkled around the corners of her eyelids. When my mother smiled, her whole face smiled with her. "You're lucky she didn't pick a dress with a ten-foot train, because you'd have to turn it around for her before she leaves the church."

I thought I could remember the ring and the bouquet.

"I'll have to thank her for the honor," I said, and Mom's face sagged for just a minute. She thought I was being sarcastic.

"I mean it," I told her, and I could almost feel her relax.

Had I been so frightening, so unpredictable, so rude?

When I'd worked my way carefully out of the dress, and pulled my T-shirt back on, I patted my mother gently on the shoulder as she made sure the dress was absolutely even on its padded hanger.

She smiled fleetingly at me, and then we went back to the kitchen to clean up.

Chapter Two

I wore the off-white blouse, gold vest, and black pants to the shower. I buttoned the blouse all the way up to the neck. My makeup was light and perfect, and my hair fluffed out in the right way. I looked fine, I decided, appropriate. I worked on relaxing, buckled into the backseat of my mother's car.

We picked up Varena on the way. This was at least her second shower, but she was as excited and pleased as though celebrating her forthcoming marriage was an original idea.

We drove across town to the home of the shower hostess, Margie Lipscom. Margie was another nurse at the little Bartley hospital, which was always threatened with closing or being closed. Margie was married to one of the more prominent lawyers in Bartley, which was actually not saying much. Bartley is a Delta town, and in this phase of its existence, that means poor.

It meant that at least seventy percent of the town's population was on welfare.

When I'd been growing up, it had just meant that Bartley was flat. You don't know what flat is until you've lived in the Delta.

I missed the low, rolling hills around Shakespeare. I missed the ratty Christmas decorations. I missed my house. I missed my gym.