Ask Mariah (2 page)

"We had to, or else Mrs. Polking wouldn't have left."

"He's just going to get someone else to watch us."

"Not if Mama comes back."

"I don't think she is coming back," she said with a sigh. "It's been so long."

"Yes, she is. She promised. Maybe we should look for her."

"We don't know where to look."

"We could go down by the boats, where Mama took us that day. Maybe she's there."

Rose shook her head, feeling her stomach turn over at the thought. She hadn't liked their trip to see the boats. She didn't even want to think about it. "We can't cross the street by ourselves, and we don't even know where the boats are."

"I bet I could find them," Lily said confidently.

"We're not going. Mama said she'd come back. We just have to wait for her."

Lily's eyes sparkled with a new idea. "Maybe Mariah can help us." She took the crystal ball off the dresser and set it on the bed between them. They'd gotten it a week ago for their sixth birthday, a present from their grandmother, Sophia. Inside the glazed blue glass were the head and shoulders of a beautiful lady with long blond hair, a glittery face, and a bright pink wizard's hat. Their grandmother said she had found the wizard in an antiques shop. She told them it had belonged to a little girl who swore it could make magic -- but only for people who believed in it.

Lily rubbed her hand over the top of the ball.

A spark of light surprised her.  "What was that?" she asked, her eyes widening with alarm. She felt butterflies in her stomach, the kind that came whenever a new nanny arrived.

"I don't know. It didn't do that when I touched it yesterday," Lily said.

"Well, ask the question."

Lily rubbed her hand over the ball again, drawing another flash of light. "Mariah, we want to find our mother. Do you know where she is? Do you know where we should go to look for her?"

The lady's mouth began to move. Lily looked over at Rose in awe, "Did you see that?" she whispered.

Rose swallowed hard. She felt scared, but she wanted to hear the answer.

Mariah's voice came across, sounding as lovely as a melody. "For children who believe in me, school is just the place to be."

"What?" Lily asked in confusion.

"Go to school?" Rose repeated in doubt. She didn't want to go to school. It was summer, and they'd already done kindergarten.

"I'm going to ask her again. I don't think she heard me right." No matter how many times Lily asked the question, the crystal ball remained dark and Mariah remained silent. "Maybe the batteries are dead," Lily said as she turned the ball upside down.

"Where do the batteries go?" she asked.

"I don't know. I can't find anything."

"Maybe we should ask Daddy."

Lily rolled her eyes. "I don't think so."

"I didn't mean out loud," she said, although it was getting more difficult not to talk to him, especially when he was being nice or when he kissed her good night. But they'd promised their mother they could keep a secret, that they wouldn't speak to their dad again until she came home. She couldn't give up now. If she did, Mama might never come back.

"We'll try Mariah later," Lily said. "Maybe she needs to rest."

* * *

Michael stared at his waterlogged, smoke-filled kitchen in disgust. The cookbooks on the counter had been doused with water. The edges of the yellow-trimmed curtains that his mother-in-law had hung for them just after they moved into the house were charred around the edges. There were puddles on the floor with ashes floating like little boats in a murky river. What a mess -- just like his life.

He wished he had a magic wand that he could wave and everything would be all right again.  He didn't know why he kept hoping for a miracle. He'd said enough unanswered prayers to know that magic and miracles did not exist.

He took off his suit coat and tossed it over the chair at the breakfast room table. Loosening the knot in his tie, he rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. Wading through a couple of inches of dirty water, he made his way to the refrigerator and opened the door. The inside was dark. Apparently the firemen had turned off the electricity, but the beers were still cold. Thank God!

He pulled out a can and opened it. One draught went a long way toward easing some of his frustration. As he took another sip he walked into the dining room, eager to get away from the kitchen disaster. That's when he saw the list of summer schools Mrs. Polking had left on the credenza. He reached for the paper, but his foot caught on the carpet and he stumbled, spilling beer all over everything.

"Damn." He shook the beer off the top of the paper, but the ink smeared and only one of the school names remained legible. "Happy Hollow School -- summer school programs, kindergarten through second grade," he read aloud. The school was in North Beach, just a mile away. Maybe he could convince the twins' grandmother to take the girls after school until he could find another baby-sitter.

Of course, he didn't have much credit left with the family. The girls had terrorized their aunt, uncle, and grandparents long before they'd started in on the nannies. And he hated to ask Sophia to baby-sit. She usually spent her afternoons at De Luca's, helping her husband, Vincent, and her son, Frank, run the family restaurant.

School was the best answer, at least until he could find another nanny. With any luck the teachers at Happy Hollow would be tough enough to take anything his girls could dish out.

"You've got to be strong, you've got to be bold ..."

"I've got to be stupid," Joanna Wingate muttered, adding her own lyrics to the music that blasted through the aerobics class at the San Francisco Health Club. Sweat dripped down her neck and between her shoulder blades as she tried to keep up with the class.

She glared at the mirror, not just at the sight of herself in leggings and a tank top, but at the image of her sixty-two-year-old mother beside her. Caroline Wingate, decked out in white yoga pants and a hot pink top was kicking her thin legs almost as high as their instructor, a twenty- something blond goddess named Elise.

Sandwiched in between their sleek figures, Joanna felt like a clumsy elephant. Although she wasn't fat by anyone's standards, she was not a lean, mean fighting machine. No, she was a  twenty-nine-year-old teaching assistant at Stanford University working on her Ph.D. in American history -- and she was tired.

She had spent nine months supporting her father during a futile struggle with lung cancer that he'd lost two months earlier. She'd given up her apartment, her job, and her boyfriend -- actually, he'd given her up -- to help her mother take care of her father. She'd lost just about everything in her life during the past year except the extra ten pounds she'd gained sitting by her father's bedside.

Her mother, of course, had not gained an ounce. Caroline's stress had led to days of wanting nothing more than a bowl of soup and a cup of tea. Her mother found comfort in classical music and long walks on the treadmill. Joanna found comfort in chocolate-covered strawberries -- make that chocolate-covered anything.

"Let's go now, ladies. Follow me." Elise pranced around the room, leading something akin to a conga line. Joanna reluctantly joined in behind her mother, who didn't even appear to be sweating.

But then Caroline Wingate never perspired. A petite ash blonde, with a hairstyle that never went limp, Caroline was the exact opposite of her daughter. Joanna had long, curly brown hair that drifted past her shoulders and always looked a bit wild, full breasts, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

As the conga line neared the doorway, she dashed out and collapsed against the wall outside, rubbing the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. A minute later she was joined by her longtime friend, Nora Garvey, a plump redhead who was working off the lingering weight of her second pregnancy,

"Are you okay?" Nora asked.

"I need oxygen." She bent over, placing her hands on her knees.

Nora laughed and patted Joanna on the back. "Shall I call 911?"

"Just shoot me and put me out of my misery."

"You've got to be strong, you've got to be tough," Nora teased.

"I've got to be crazy for letting my mother talk me into this."

Nora leaned against the wall. "Your mother is amazing. She doesn't look a day over forty. She's in great shape."

"Tell me about it." Straightening, she walked over to the water fountain and took a drink. Then she stepped aside so Nora could take a turn.

The fitness club, which was popular with the downtown San Francisco work crowd, was filling up, although Friday nights tended to be slower than the rest of the week. Most people probably had dates, she thought with sigh. She picked up a complimentary towel and wiped the sweat off her face.

She was not only out of shape, she was also out of sorts. Bored, restless, frustrated were only a few of the words that came to mind whenever someone asked her how she felt. Of course, she didn't express those words aloud. She simply said she was fine and kept her private anguish to herself, a trait she had learned early on from her mother. Caroline didn't confide in anyone, and to a certain extent Joanna didn't either. The only one who had even an inkling of the misery she had been in since her boyfriend dumped her and her father died was Nora.

As Nora turned away from the drinking fountain, Joanna tossed her a towel, Nora missed, and the towel landed at the feet of an incredibly tall and muscular man. He picked up the towel and handed it back to Joanna as she stared at him in amazement.

Good Lord, the man's muscles were huge. His round, bulging pecs glistened with sweat or some kind of body oil. He wore a tight tank top and a pair of small shorts that emphasized his other bulges. He was the most incredible specimen of a male she had ever seen. Pure brawn.

Nora cleared her throat, and Joanna realized she was staring.

"Uh, thanks," Joanna said.

His eyes drifted over her body. She hadn't had a man look at her that way in quite some time. She wondered what she would do if he asked her out.

Nora would say go for it. A new man was just what she needed to take her mind off her problems. But this man was not her type. She dated intellectuals, thin men with glasses and faraway looks and hair that needed cutting and clothes that needed fitting. This man didn't need clothes, period. Maybe she ought to expand her horizons.

"Why don't you give me a call?" he said.

"Maybe," Joanna prevaricated.

The man reached into a tiny pocket in the back of his shorts and pulled out a card. "I could whip you into shape in no time," he said with a smile as he continued down the hall with an arrogant swagger.

She looked at the card. "Hawk Cunningham, personal trainer. I guess he didn't want my body after all."

"He wanted your body all right."

"Yeah, as a before picture. Now I'm thoroughly depressed."

"Don't be," Nora said. "Personally I've never liked a man who has bigger breasts than I do."

She laughed. "True.  But I'm not sure what my type is anymore.  I thought it was David, but that obviously didn't work out." In the past five years she'd dated a variety of men. One had been too short, the other too tall; one too studious, another too boring; one talked incessantly about global warming and another had spent one very long dinner hour describing the different types of bacteria she was putting into her mouth with each bite of food. She'd thought she'd hit the jackpot when she'd met David Richardson, a professor of English literature at Stanford. Unfortunately he'd turned out to be as big a jerk as the rest of them.

"David was an idiot.  And he wasn't for you."

"I thought he was."

"No, you picked him because he was safe, just like the others. You knew exactly what you would get. It was a no-risk situation.  You're not very adventurous when it comes to men."

"What do you want me to do -- date an ax murderer?"

"I want you to date an interesting, exciting man, not some scrawny professor who cares more about his research than his girlfriend, and thinks having a good time is spending the evening at the library."

"I like the library," Joanna protested.

"You might like a few other things, too, if you ever gave them a chance."

"Like what?"

"Like sex."

"I've had sex.  And it's nice but not exactly earth-shattering."

Nora laughed. "Then you haven't had good sex."

"Oh, please, are you going to tell me you see fireworks, that the room spin arounds in dizzying delight, and you think you'll die from the passion?"

Nora smiled somewhat smugly. "I'm not going to tell you anything, except this. If you find yourself the right man, I guarantee all those things will happen."

"Yeah, and I believe in magic, too," Joanna said.

Actually she wanted to believe in love and magic. Unfortunately reality kept slapping her in the face. "I think it's time to go back into the torture chamber." She motioned toward the aerobics room.