High Plains Hearts (30 page)

“Again, no one would see it except those involved with the operation of the day care, and even then, not the actual providers, aside from basic necessary information, such as contact phones, medical data, and so on.”

“What about here?”

“Here?” Clearly Victoria was searching for something specific, but Lily wasn’t sure what it was.

“Here. In the church. Who would see it here?”

“Oh!” Suddenly light dawned. She was checking on how secure the financial and personal data was being kept here.

“Again, no one unconnected with the day care would know.”

“What about Marnie? And Ric? Would they have access to my application?”

“I don’t see why they would. The only reason they might be able to see it would be if, say, I were ill and one of them had to review it. Other than that, no, I can’t say that they would. But nevertheless, even if they saw the application, they would not share the information on it with anyone else.”

“Would not or could not?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t see where this is going.” This conversation was getting way out of hand. “If you want to have Edgar come to the day care, you have to fill out one of these applications. That’s the bottom line.”

Victoria’s eyes became hooded. “I can’t do that. I need this to be off the record.”

A flash of anger rose in Lily’s chest. She would not compromise her standards. Especially not after what she had been through in Chicago.

“No application, no day care,” was Lily’s blunt answer. “No ifs, ands, or buts. That’s it. I don’t care if you’re the empress of China, you don’t get day care here unless you fill out the application.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” Victoria snatched up the application. “I’ll fill the stupid thing out. Anything to get Edgar in a day care.”

“Well, we have a second problem,” Lily said. “The day care is full. I’m hoping—”

Victoria slammed the pen down on the desk so hard it rolled across the surface and onto the wooden floor and kept rolling until it came to rest under a baseboard heater. “They got to you, didn’t they?”

“Who got to me?”

“Marnie. And Ric. I don’t trust either one of them. They told you the whole story, didn’t they? Well, it’s
not
the whole story. Not by a long shot. But I’m not going to tell you any of the story because I’m sick of it.”

She stood up and walked to the door, but not before Lily stopped her.

“Wait a minute. I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that you own the wedding place in town, and that’s it. Even if there were some kind of history between you and Marnie and Ric, that’s between the three of you. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, and unless it has something to do with the day care, I don’t give a rip about what happened in the past.”

Victoria Campbell stood there, motionless, as if pondering something important. For a moment, neither woman spoke. And then Victoria turned and looked at Lily with tears pooled in her eyes. “I wish I could believe that. I want to believe that. But—”

And with those enigmatic words, she spun around and walked out the door.

Lily stared at the now-vacant doorway. What on earth had that been all about?

She recovered the pen that had disappeared under the heater and sat back down at the desk. Obviously Victoria had something on her mind, something of major importance to her. But Lily had no idea what that might be.

Ric knocked on the jamb of her open door. Although he looked at her curiously, he didn’t pursue the situation with Victoria. Instead, he handed her a pile of envelopes. “Mail call.”

She leafed through them. One of them bore her name, and she opened it.

Her stomach tightened as she read it.

“Bad news?” Ric asked, his forehead wrinkling with concern.

How could she explain it? How could she tell him why this single letter renewed her anxiety without telling him the whole tawdry story about the Nanny Group?

“It’s a letter from the state licensing board. They want a copy of my résumé, plus this application filled out and returned. And I need three references, too.” She stared at the paper. The black letters swam in and out of focus.

“So?” Ric shrugged. “That should be a no-brainer for you. Is it a deadline problem? Mail’s been a bit erratic since the flood, but it hasn’t been too wildly slow. Is that the problem?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s nothing, really.” She looked up at him and tried to smile. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Good.” Ric stood up. “Want to join me for dinner again tonight?”

Her smile trembled and almost refused to stay put. “I think we’ll pass. Todd and I need to get settled in tonight, so I think we’ll eat at home.”

Home
. It had such a comforting ring to it. Even if her home was a little mobile home parked outside a church in a flood-ravaged community.

But she knew that all she had to have was her son and her Lord with her, and wherever she was, she was home.

That’s what her heart told her. If only her brain could believe it.

Ric stood at the stove in his apartment, mindlessly stirring the chili he’d taken from the refrigerator.

Victoria Campbell’s appearance had put a crimp in his day, that was for sure. In a town the size of Wildwood, it was nearly impossible to stay invisible, so he’d certainly seen her in the past year.

The woman had caused more dissatisfaction among the congregation than anyone he’d ever known. He wasn’t totally sure what had happened, or why, although he’d heard variations on a single theme: She had, in some way, created problems within the church. Whatever it was had come before his arrival in Wildwood.

Marnie knew the story, and he was sure that if he ever had to hear a straightforward version of it, he could ask her. But the situation seemed to have resolved itself—or at least subsided into ancient history—until today when it had reappeared.

Lily hadn’t told him what had happened, but she seemed to have dealt with it. Should he have said something to her? What would he have said?

Besides, Victoria Campbell seemed to come with her own variation of a flashing red light on her head, signaling
warning
. Some people simply had the ability to make others not like them—and aggressively so.

Victoria was one of those women.

She had quit coming to Resurrection shortly after he’d arrived. As the youth minister, he’d tried to contact her about her son, Edgar, and to ask her to keep Edgar at Resurrection if she chose not to have another church home, but she had refused his calls.

Now she was back.

Lily seemed up to the task of dealing with Victoria, but he needed to be ready to support her if necessary. He didn’t know Victoria well, just enough to be aware that she had a strong personality.

Well, if Lily needed him, he would definitely be at her side.

He stood over the pan, spoon in hand, lost in that thought, until the sound of the chili furiously simmering interrupted his reverie.

He frowned at the bubbling concoction on the stove, and he turned off the burner. If he planned to eat the chili soon, he’d better not have it boiling.

Pay attention, Jensen, or you’ll have the place on fire
.

The last thing he needed was to burn down his apartment.

He took the pan off the heat and ladled steaming chili into a green and white bowl. Yes, he had to focus on the other issues at hand. And there were many.

After dinner Todd settled down with a handheld game, and she sat at the kitchen table and studied what the agency was asking of her.

A résumé. She could do that. And, she supposed, she’d have to include the Nanny Group on it. It was, after all, what had enabled her to get this position in Wildwood and start a new life.

How could anything be such a bane and a blessing at the same time? It was through the Nanny Group that she had discovered how she wanted to proceed through her life.

Her parents had raised her with the strong principle that she should live her life as a form of service. This, they had taught her, was the highest form of praise, returning to the Maker what He had given you with more.

God had given her an intense love of caring for children. It was, she had known from her own childhood, what she was meant to do in life.

With a sigh, she turned back to the materials she needed to fill out.

The employment history was going to be the most difficult.
Reason for leaving
. What would she say?

“Discovered massive wrongdoing”? “Identified top-level illegal activities”? “Ran for my life”?

Lily frowned at the form. She opted for a noncommittal “Career realignment.” That was the truth. It was vague and very true, and she hoped it would satisfy whoever examined the applications.

If asked, she could explain that Chicago was not the environment she wanted to raise her son in. That was true. She’d already seen him blossoming under the care Resurrection offered, and tonight at dinner he’d chattered happily about his new friends.

Plus the advantage of having him in the same building where she worked was a blessing. Ric and Marnie had managed to save a place for him when one child’s family moved away from Wildwood, so the transition to his new home was smooth and seamless.

The next question brought her up hard against the cold reality of what she’d left in Chicago.
May we contact this employer?

Was Douglas Newton aware of her knowledge of the situation at the Nanny Group? That was a big unknown. She hadn’t said anything to him about it. And, on the record, she’d simply left to return to North Dakota to be near her mother.

But he’d suspected something. She could tell by the way he studied her when he thought she wasn’t watching. And she knew he’d rifled through her papers one evening after she’d gone because the next day her “to-do” pile was mixed with her “to-file” pile. She was meticulous about those things, the result of not having her own secretary, and it was obvious he’d been looking for something.

She’d been foolish in not duplicating or saving incriminating documents on a jump drive, but she’d been so anxious to get out of there that she had simply given her two weeks’ notice and tried to work ahead far enough that the agency was not impaired by her loss.

He’d watched her like a hawk at work, and even at home she didn’t feel safe. Sometimes in her home, the faintest waft of cigarette smoke would materialize and vanish just as quickly, as if someone who smoked heavily had been there.

Only now did she piece together that part of the puzzle.

Newton always smelled like cigarettes, the victim of his habit. He’d never be so foolish as to smoke in her house, but the smell was there, perhaps the residue of old smoke from his clothes.

Had he been in her condo in Chicago? The thought made her skin creep.

She was safe here in Wildwood, she told herself. For one thing, she lived in the shadow of a church. What could be safer? A bed in the police station?

Ric’s image floated in front of her tired eyes. She could feel herself being drawn to him. Was this part of God’s plan for her, too? A part of her almost begged for the answer to be yes. He was a good man, she could tell that.

But she had to resist the urge to let that relationship develop. She had to work through the problems left by her encounter with the Nanny Group. At the very least, she owed it to whomever she might begin a lifetime relationship with. It wasn’t fair to go into a new life together with the specter of that hanging over her head.

The Nanny Group had to be put into the past, where it belonged. And maybe, just maybe, this was her opportunity to do something about taking care of it. Maybe this application that was giving her fits was a way of taking her through the trauma and into the light.

Nevertheless, before she turned off the lights for the evening, the application still lying unfinished on the table, she tiptoed into Todd’s room.

He sprawled across the bed, one arm thrown across his bear. His mouth was open slightly, and as she leaned closer, she could hear the steady rhythm of a faint, even snore.

Lily smoothed back his hair and smiled. Whatever else had happened in her life, this was the one immutable fact of God’s existence, right here before her.