Kisses in the Rain (24 page)

"Bear will go away someday, too," she told Davey. "He will grow up and want to be with other sea otters."

"Not today," Davey said with a worried look.

"No, not today. After a lot of tomorrows, though. Bear will want to go play with his friends in the ocean, like you go to play with your friends at Wanda's," Martha said.

"Oh," Davey said. He patted the picture on the page of the book. "This looks like Bear."

"Maybe Nick would take pictures of you and Bear together so that you'll always have a picture of him. We could hang the picture in your room."

Davey grinned at that.

"Why don't you go ask Nick to take a picture of Bear while he eats tonight? And of Bear sitting in your lap while you rub his stomach?"

"Okay," Davey said, and he ran away to find Nick.

Martha closed the book, hoping she'd said all the right things. It was so hard to know with Davey. Communication was so new to him and he was so much in the habit of concealing his feelings that she wasn't always sure if she was getting her point across.

Nick took several pictures of Bear alone and of Bear and Davey together. Martha bought frames for the pictures, and they hung the best ones on the wall of Davey's room. One night while Bear was napping, Davey, under Martha's direction, sat at the kitchen table and pasted the other pictures of Bear in a big scrapbook.

"How do you know how to do all the things you do with Davey?" Nick asked.

Martha shrugged. "Having a mother who taught kindergarten probably helped. Mother was always thinking up ways to teach her students. I helped her sometimes with the preparations, like mixing paints and binding construction paper into scrapbooks for the kids."

"You're a natural-born mother," he said, thinking that when he'd first observed her on the dock in Ketchikan looking so glossy and sophisticated and assembling bagels so efficiently he never would have guessed it.

"My only connection with children so far is that I'm an honorary aunt to my former roommate's daughter," insisted Martha, but nevertheless, Nick's admiration for her ability to handle Davey couldn't help but grow.

As for Martha, Davey was rapidly becoming one of her enthusiasms. She could hardly wait to see him running down the steps at Wanda's house when she and Nick picked him up every evening.

"He adores you," Hallie insisted when she accompanied Davey out to the car one time.

"Oh, I like him a lot, too," Martha said, understating the facts. To tell the truth, she had fallen in love with Davey's pudgy little cheeks, his almond-shaped eyes, which were so often brightened by a smile these days, and with the attention she got from him.

Martha knew now why people wanted kids. The unquestioning adoration in their eyes when they gazed up at you, the funny little things they said and did, and what she had begun to think of as their
cuddability
when they snuggled against you to be read to at bedtime—all these things brought a new maturity and understanding to Martha that she had never experienced before.

She explained to Nick that she had coined the word
cuddable
to be applied to Davey, but Nick only laughed and said that if anyone was cuddable it was Martha. She was glad he felt that way, but a child was infinitely more cuddable than she was, she was sure.

All the while she was forging this incredible new bond with Davey, Martha continued to run the Bagel Barn. The running of the business continued to be a challenge, and she enjoyed dealing with her customers. She had become friends with Randy, who never ceased to amaze her with his versatility and originality.

For example, one morning Martha walked up the dock after arriving on the
Tabor
with Nick and Davey to find a new sign posted on the side of the Bagel Barn. The sign said Free Cookies Tomorrow.

She confronted a grinning Randy with an incredulous look on her face.

"What in the world are you doing, Randy, promising free cookies tomorrow?"

"Oh, it's just a way to get customers to stop. They're going to be curious, right? And the sign says Free Cookies Tomorrow, right?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"So if the sign always says Free Cookies Tomorrow we don't give away free cookies today. Tomorrow is always tomorrow. The sign always
says
it'll be tomorrow. And they'll have to buy the cookies today to find out if they want to come back for free cookies tomorrow. Most of our passengers come off cruise ships, anyway. They won't be back the next day."

Martha stifled a laugh. This was one case in which she couldn't allow Randy's spirit of enterprise to prevail.

"Take the sign down, Randy," she directed. "I'm much more interested in the cookies we'll sell today rather than the free ones we're giving away tomorrow, even if tomorrow never comes."

Chagrined, Randy took down the sign and replaced it with one that said Chocolate-Chip Cookie Special. That day they sold more cookies than on any other day.

"I'll have to double the recipe again tonight," Martha said. "It seems as if I just can't bake them fast enough."

"Your cookies outsold the bagels today," observed Randy as he thumbed through a stack of five-dollar bills.

"They've caught on with the townspeople, too," Martha said. "I used to think that the locals bought them just to get a look at the woman Nick Novak is seeing, but they keep coming back for more, so I guess that's not it."

"You should be proud of yourself for developing the recipe."

"I'm getting tired of baking cookies. It used to be more fun when I lived alone in my apartment. Baking the cookies was something to fill the lonely hours. But now that I'm at Williwaw Lodge with Nick and Davey, it's all I can do to bake enough."

Martha enlisted Nick and Davey in her cookie-baking efforts. Davey, who still loved chocolate better than anything except perhaps Bear, was a help in fetching spoons and utensils. Nick could mix the recipe and do almost everything that Martha could do, although it took him longer. Together they spent every night in Hallie's little kitchen baking batch after batch of chocolate-chip cookies. The aroma of cookies filled the air at Williwaw Lodge. Nick loved it.

"This old lodge finally smells like I've always thought a home ought to smell," he told Martha.

"I guess it's better than the smell of fish," she said with a little laugh, because that was how the cannery smelled. Nick could only agree.

All in all, Martha's presence had made a big difference at Williwaw Lodge. Whereas before Nick had had to force himself to visit with Hallie after Davey had gone to bed, he now looked forward to that quiet period as a time when he could be alone with Martha. The atmosphere at the lodge since Martha had arrived was cheerful. It was never tense. If a problem arose—for instance, when Davey once refused to take his bath and lapsed into a temper tantrum—Martha handled it with characteristic understanding and efficiency.

"He's only communicating," Martha said afterward. "It's not as though Davey has tantrums often. He's learning how to let his feelings out. He's using a tantrum to tell us what he thinks of something. If we keep encouraging him to communicate verbally, he won't have temper tantrums anymore."

Martha's instincts were astonishing. Upon reflection, Nick agreed that she was probably right. Even a temper tantrum was more reassuring than Davey's former stony silence.

Hallie showed no signs of returning to Williwaw Lodge. Wanda's healing went slowly, and without the use of one hand, Wanda couldn't very well keep up with the care of her five grandchildren. Hallie told Nick that if he was smart he'd keep Martha at the lodge forever.

Nick had begun to think the same thing himself. He just didn't know how he was going to bring it about, that was all.

* * *

Weather-wise, the last Monday in July was one of the worst days since Martha had arrived in Ketchikan. A smoky fog settled over the town, and air traffic was restricted. The wind whistled through cracks in the Bagel Barn and tore around the buildings of the town, driving sodden refuse ahead of it. To top it all off, Martha felt the beginnings oí a sore throat.

"We might as well go home," Randy said in discouragement as he stared unhappily at the boats heaving against the dock. "We won't get too many customers anyway."

"A couple of cruise ships are going to arrive today, not to mention the ferry," Martha replied stubbornly. "There's no point in missing out on any customers." She hated to give up before the day even started.

"All I can say is that I hope our customers like soggy bagels," Randy said.

Martha was dispiritedly counting out change to a customer when she saw a familiar dapper figure walking rapidly up the ramp from a ferry that had just docked. The man was particularly noticeable because he seemed to be in a hurry while the other passengers meandered listlessly through the rain, huddling under dripping umbrellas as they unfolded their new street maps.

"That's Sidney!" exclaimed Martha as a feeling of dread clamped down on her. She'd had no idea that the busy Sidney ever indulged in surprise visits.

Sidney approached the Bagel Barn like a man with a mission. "Martha! How're things? Not so busy today, right? I thought I'd drop by, see how things are going! I was looking over the town of Sitka for a new Bagel Barn, I couldn't catch my flight out of there because of the weather, and I had to take the ferry instead. The ferry stops here, so I thought to myself, 'Sidney, you'd better say hello to Martha.' Say, is there anywhere nearby where we can talk business?" He noticed Randy inside the Bagel Barn for the first time. "Hey, who are you?"

"I'm Randy," Randy said, sticking his hand out the front of the Bagel Barn. Sidney's eyebrows flew up, and for one awful moment Martha was afraid that Sidney wasn't going to shake Randy's hand. He did, though, just in time.

"I suppose I have some explaining to do," Martha said. She was prepared to back up Randy one hundred percent. If it weren't for Randy, sales wouldn't be as good as they were.

"Well, let's find a place out of the rain," Sidney said with the first hint of grumpiness she'd ever detected in him.

Martha took Sidney to the café where she and Nick so often went for chili. She realized as soon as they sat down that it had been a mistake. Sidney couldn't find anything on the menu he wanted to order, and he proclaimed that chili interfered with his digestion. He looked exhausted, and for the first time Martha noticed that skin drooped from his jowls. Finally they both ordered a cup of coffee, and Sidney said abruptly, "All right. What's with Randy?"

"He helped me put up the Bagel Barn when I first got here, and I hired him because I needed someone. I had a hunch he'd be a terrific worker. And he is. Why, he's—"

"Never mind, never mind. You know I want pretty girls working in my Bagel Barns. Fire him."

Surely he didn't mean it.

"I can't do that," Martha said. "I could never find another employee as helpful, as enterprising, or as loyal as Randy."

"Randy. Do you know that I thought he was a female? I thought it was spelled R-A-N-D-I or something cute like that."

"Sidney, I need Randy."

"Never mind that. Get rid of him and find a girl. A pretty girl like you. Which brings up another thing. Why aren't you wearing a dress and the checkered apron like you're supposed to?"

"Everybody wears jeans in Ketchikan. It's a casual place. Anyway, jeans are fine to wear in what is supposed to be a representation of a barn. And the apron looks silly with jeans. In this weather I needed my windbreaker, so that's what I'm wearing."

"Martha, Martha. Girls—women, I mean—who work in my Bagel Barns wear dresses and aprons, and that's that."

"It seems to me you should be more flexible and let the conditions at each Bagel Barn dictate the correct way of dressing." Martha regarded Sidney coolly; he might be her boss, but he had promised her a certain autonomy in running this Bagel Barn, and she was using good judgment in making her decisions.

"You let me decide what my employees wear. Stick to business, Martha."

"I
am
sticking to business."

"Your sales figures look good, Martha. I'll say that for you." Sidney whipped a laptop out of his briefcase, powered it up, and pulled up a spreadsheet.

"You should be proud of how well you've done these first few weeks," he continued. He bent closer to look at the figures. "I notice your order for lox is way down. Any explanation for that?"

"I'm selling Alaskan salmon on the bagels. It's smoked with alder wood by a local firm, and the customers love it." She sat back, ready to accept the praise she was sure would come her way.

"Alaskan salmon, huh? What's wrong with plain old lox?" He narrowed his eyes and waited.

Martha quickly explained how tourists loved Alaskan salmon and how lox wasn't really salmon but trout. All the selling points that had worked on her didn't make any difference to Sidney.

"I don't know about this, Martha. It sounds like a good way to ruin a perfectly good bagel." He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. "Tastes like turpentine. I should've ordered something else."

"Sidney, I'm proud of my business decisions. For instance, the chocolate-chip cookies. I was going to wait to tell you about this, but since you're here I'll tell you now."