What they needed was a prince.
Natalie would never say such a thing to Brianna; the sentiment would probably give her a heart attack. But she could think it secretly.
“Hey!”
Natalie turned at the sound of the voice. Not a prince answering her wishful summons but a young man about her age who was pushing a mower off a flatbed trailer at Mrs. Bauer’s house next door. Mrs. Bauer hired a lawn care service, which Brianna always pretended she didn’t envy. (“Running the lawn mower is a great workout.”) Natalie saw the logo on the side of the pickup that was pulling the trailer. Carl’s Lawn and Garden. Carl’s was new. It had been something else before. She couldn’t remember what exactly, but that logo had had more red and yellow in it. The trailer had a riding lawn mower on it but Mrs. Bauer’s lawn was so small it was probably easier to use the push mower the man had picked.
He left the mower in Mrs. Bauer’s driveway, wrestled the plywood ramp he’d been using back onto the trailer, and shut the gate. Then he jogged over to the sidewalk and said, “Hey! I didn’t know you lived around here.”
Jasmine barked sharply and looked at her, alerting her to the presence of a stranger, and Natalie thanked her. Jasmine quit barking, snuggled into Natalie’s hip, and watched the young man warily, reminding Natalie of Brianna.
What would happen if you just believed, Brianna?
Natalie had asked her once and Brianna had said,
So how’s that working for you, Nat?
Which, really. It was working
fine. Perfectly
.
Natalie wasn’t good with names but up close she recognized the young man from one of her classes … accounting. She had the book open in her lap right now.
“Hi,” she said, and he grinned and said, “You don’t remember me.”
“Oh, I do,” she said and tapped the book. “Professor Dryasdust, Tax Accounting 545.”
He laughed. “I think he pronounces it Professor Dreyfus.”
“Could be,” she said and smiled and he just stood there for a minute, looking at her. She’d had that kind of thing happen before and she took it in stride. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“I’m Joe,” he said, and he was so totally a Joe that she smiled again. He wore his dark hair short and had a plain average face and a plain average build. Nice brown eyes. Like Jasmine, only with a lot more energy. “Joe Lombardi.”
“Joe,” she said and held out her hand but he didn’t seem to understand why because he just stood there some more. “I’m — ”
“Natalie Johnson,” he said in a rush. “I know.”
She let her hand drop and felt her smile falter. She hated when people knew who she was.
Oh, you’re that miracle kid.
Or
Yeah, we donated money to that fundraiser for your medical bills.
Or
I read about you in the paper.
“I paid attention when Professor Dreyfus called the roll,” he said, which meant maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he thought she was just another college student. Then he added, “Not that I’m a stalker or anything.”
We’ll see,
Brianna would have told him, but Natalie supposed he probably wasn’t a stalker, and anyway you couldn’t live life as if you were just waiting for the next disaster to show up.
“I’m glad,” she said, and that made him give her a sheepish smile.
“That’s a nice dog,” he said diplomatically, and Natalie looked down at the mutt and laughed. “She
is
a nice dog. She can’t help how ridiculous she looks. Her name is Jasmine.”
Joe let Jasmine sniff his hand, then rubbed her head, which Jasmine let him do, still giving him the wary look. She was that way around anyone who wasn’t Natalie. She didn’t bark, because she’d already used up her energy for the day.
Then Joe seemed to remember he had a job to do and said, “Hey, I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” She looked at Joe and then at the ragged patch of lawn in front of her and she put the book down, gave Jasmine a reassuring pat, and said, “Do you think you could teach me how to mow this lawn?”
• • •
Matthias Gustafson looked at the Yuan dynasty plate on the pedestal in the corner of his home office. He hadn’t put it there. It was an artifact of his father’s life, and not something he had any qualms about getting rid of. And not just because there was a tax deduction, as Brianna had so cheerfully suggested. He talked to Brianna several times a week and he wondered what she would say if he told her how much he loathed the plate. He thought it was possible she would understand. He didn’t know anyone else who might.
The unhappiness, the sense of not-rightness, had been growing for a long time. He didn’t know what to do about it. The plate which he now loathed had come to symbolize his discontent: it wasn’t something he had chosen, it wasn’t something he liked, and yet it was his, a burden and an obligation.
He moved restlessly from his office to the living room and from there to the kitchen, where he stood, irresolute. The kitchen was pristine; it was more than pristine, it sparkled. His housekeeper made sure of that. His team of housekeepers, he supposed was more accurate.
The house was too big for one person, much too big; it was an estate. It had been too big for the three people who had lived here as a family when his parents were still alive. It needed lots of people to fill its echoing empty spaces. It needed — but it was not the kind of house you filled with children. The Yuan plate was evidence of that. He wasn’t sure what you filled it with. He had never known.
He opened the Miele refrigerator, built-in, only the best, and stared blankly at the interior before closing the door. Sometimes he thought about baking cookies in here. Beverly — the head housekeeper — would be shocked if he made the attempt. He suspected he could strip naked and bay at a full moon and she wouldn’t break stride, but his making cookies in his own kitchen would be beyond her capacity to understand. Beverly would tell him she would do it, or she would phone the pastry chef at Le Parisien if he’d prefer.
But Matthias could picture it so clearly, the woman who would make cookies with him, blonde and beautiful because he was after all Matthias Gustafson, laughing up at him as they measured and stirred. Chocolate chip cookies, he thought. When there were children they would make cut-out cookies, the little ones wielding the cutters and adding sprinkles.
He hoped he would find her soon, the woman who liked to make cookies. No one had ever baked a cookie in this kitchen. Together, they would change that.
Brianna glanced at the clock. She had made progress on the pile of invitations but not enough. She was supposed to meet Missy Ryerson for drinks at six, to discuss Missy’s upcoming wedding. Missy showed every sign of being a bridezilla, but she would be a coup for Brianna’s fledgling event-planning business. Missy would have many weddings, Brianna guessed, thereby belying the Once in a Lifetime concept, but Brianna knew she would absolutely intend for each of them to be her last.
Missy had friends, friends with money, and that was what a woman with a fledgling event-planning company needed — referrals to people who needed events planned and who could afford to hire someone to plan them. Which meant Brianna needed to pick up the pace and get these invitations finished and in the mail if she had any hope of getting to her meeting on time.
She pulled the next envelope toward her, then remembered she hadn’t told Natalie about the after-work drink with Missy. She grabbed her cell and hit the icon for Nat. The phone rang but went to voicemail. What would Natalie be doing this time of day where she couldn’t hear her cell? If she’d turned it off, why? Her classes were over for the day, and she should be studying.
The familiar tension knotted at Brianna’s stomach. She pictured her little sister passed out on the floor and her heart clutched. She could visualize ambulance lights flashing in the street. She could —
She closed her eyes. Worst-case scenario thinking wasn’t helpful but when the worst case had come too many times, it was a hard habit to break. She tried to keep her voice steady as she left her message.
Brianna really really loved her little sister. But sometimes she thought she could hardly wait for someone else to be in charge of her.
• • •
Natalie sat on the front step and tried to catch her breath. Mowing lawns was a lot harder than it looked. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Joe was finishing up for her. (“It just takes practice!”) She watched him push the mower, moving at a trot. He had a nice butt. If Brianna were here, Natalie would say, “Don’t you think Joe has a great ass?” and then Brianna would be shocked,
shocked
, that Natalie would think such a thing.
Brianna didn’t realize that Natalie was a grown woman, and Natalie understood why. Brianna hadn’t noticed. Brianna didn’t have time to notice anything, not the unmowed lawn, not the peeling paint, not men’s butts — or women’s butts, either, although Natalie didn’t think Brianna went that way. Sometimes she thought the not-noticing was connected to Brianna’s almost-perfect squelching of anything resembling a personal life. She never expressed the desire for anything other than what she already had. Except to pay the damned bills and to make a go of Once in a Lifetime.
What Natalie guessed was if Brianna started noticing the peeling porch rails, then she would notice she hadn’t had a date in one thousand years, too, and that would be more depressing than she wanted to contemplate. So she just refused to notice anything.
“Hey!” Joe called out, cutting off the mower. “All done!”
“Hey,” she responded. “It looks great.”
He came over and flopped on the front step, smelling like sweat and new-mown grass. Now came the awkward part. She came out with it: “Do I owe you — ” and hoped he said no because she didn’t have a damned dime.
“Water would be great,” he said. “That’s all I need.”
He gave her a grin that said he knew about not having a damned dime, but it wasn’t a judgmental, superior grin. It was conspiratorial.
Been there
, the grin said. Or maybe
we’re all in this together.
She went into the house for the water, thinking he reminded her of someone. Then she had it. Mr. Pendleton’s black Labrador, a very sweet and not terribly bright dog. She giggled. Joe was not a man of great depth. He did not have layers to peel back. He was just open, honest, and cheerful. Brianna would be highly suspicious, but she was highly suspicious about everyone. Brianna was a human Jasmine, right down to the barking at strangers.
Natalie put some chocolate chip cookies on a plate, made fresh today after class, and brought them out to Joe.
• • •
“You should have been done half an hour ago,” said Carl, Joe’s oldest brother and the eponymous owner of Carl’s Lawn and Garden, when Joe checked in on his cell phone.
“Got hung up at Mrs. Bauer’s,” Joe said briefly and almost truthfully.
“Uh huh,” said Carl, like he seriously doubted it, but Carl had never been young, so what did he know about pretty girls.
Natalie had remembered Joe from class, which he hadn’t expected her to do, not in a million years. From the first, he had seen how pretty she was — like an angel. He was going to start reading poetry or something so he could come up with a better analogy. Everyone she knew probably said she reminded them of an angel.
Now that he had met her, really met her, with a conversation and everything, and discovered how nice she was, and how much he wanted to see her smile, he wanted to be different from everyone else. He wanted to be the one who compared her to a summer’s day instead of an angel. Or maybe not that. Something that would make her smile.
Oh boy. He was in trouble if he was already thinking about how he might make her smile the next time he saw her.
“I’m off to do the Selkirks,” Joe said to his brother. “Unless you’ve got something else for me?”
“That’s fine. Ma wants to know if you’ll pick up some extra parmesan on your way home.”
Ma had obviously asked Carl to perform this task or she would have called Joe’s cell but Carl was good at delegating.
“You bet,” Joe said, and hung up. He put the truck in gear and looked in the rearview mirror at the girl sitting on the porch steps with her dog until he was too far away to see her anymore.
• • •
Brianna felt like her smile had been superglued to her face. She’d been sitting here with Missy for — she snuck a glance at her watch — forty-five minutes and so far all she’d heard was Missy bitching about the other wedding planners she’d dealt with. There’d been no
You’re hired
or even
Let me see your contract.
Just a lot of moaning and complaining. Which, Brianna reminded herself, she was going to have to learn to love if she wanted to make a go of this business.
Her phone was on vibrate, but it hadn’t vibrated, which meant Natalie hadn’t called or texted her back. The anxiety was giving her the familiar queasy feeling in her stomach.
She’s fine,
Brianna tried to tell herself.
I didn’t tell her to call me when she got the message. It’s nothing, she’s fine …
“I think I see what your problem is, Missy,” Brianna cut in finally, having suffered enough. “You’re dealing with wedding planners. I’m an
event
planner. And we’re talking about planning an event for you, a Once in a Lifetime event.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the folder she’d been up all night last night preparing and opened it.
Missy stopped bitching and leaned forward and Brianna thought,
I’m good at this
and relaxed into the sale.
• • •
Natalie kept her nose in the textbook as Brianna pulled her little Ford into the driveway and got out. Brianna gave a theatrical start, which meant she’d noticed the lawn, but Natalie just turned a page and gave Jasmine a pat.
Jasmine lifted her head, saw who it was, forbore to bark, and put her head back on her paws. Brianna slung her bag over her shoulder and marched up the walk.
“Did you get my message?” she said, probably thinking she sounded calm.
“Yes,” Natalie said. She realized by Brianna’s gritted teeth that she would have liked Natalie to call back but Natalie refused to feel guilty about failing to do so. It would do Brianna good to lighten up a little.