Daddy's Little Matchmakers. Kathleen Y'Barbo
up the basket and strolled toward the back door. Just inside the kitchen, after leaving her gloves and shoes outside, an idea occurred, and Amy reached for her phone to call her grandmother. Why have porch salad alone?
“Sweetie, much as I would love a good porch salad, you know it’s my bingo day and we always have lunch together after,” Nana said once the pleasantries were exchanged and Amy’s purpose for calling divulged.
“Is it?” she asked as she retrieved the colander and sat it in the sink to begin rinsing the vegetables.
After a long pause, Nana said, “Amy girl, are you all right?”
She turned her back to the sink and leaned against the counter, one arm around her waist. On the opposite wall, the old regulator clock ticked a comforting, even rhythm.
“I’m fine, Nana,” she said as brightly as she could manage.
“How’s that job going down at the paper? Goodness but today’s headline about those darling little girls was something.”
“The job ended yesterday, actually, and the headline…” She paused to reach behind her and turn off the water. “It certainly was something.”
“I know Susan Wilson must be tickled pink that Eric’s finally going to get over his loss. I need to call her. Yes, I’ll do that right after bingo.”
She froze. “You know Mrs. Wilson?”
“Of course I do,” Nana said. “Known her for years. I believe we first met at the Garden Club meetings. Or maybe it was volunteering over at the old folks’ home. Before we were both old folks, of course. Anyway, she’s got an absolutely green thumb when it comes to roses. No one grows them as thick and pretty as Susie.” A pause while she chuckled. “Except me, of course. But then, I taught her everything she knows.”
While Nana rambled on about soil enhancements and the benefits of deadheading roses earlier rather than later in the season, Amy moved to the tiny kitchen table and sat down. From her vantage point, she could see the climbing rose on the trellis that Grandpa had built so long ago. In another month, the sturdy vine would be covered in a profusion of pink blooms.
A pity she wouldn’t be here. She would have to arrange with someone at the assisted-living facility to bring Nana out to see them.
“Sweetheart,” her grandmother said, “you’re a dear for letting me go on about roses and such, but I am afraid I’m going to have to hang up. It’s just about bingo time and I haven’t done a thing with my hair yet.”
“Of course. Have a great time with the ladies, Nana,” she said.
“I will, sweetie,” she said. “Oh, wait. Listen to me going on about flowers and bingo when I didn’t even think to ask what you’re going to do next.”
“Next?”
“Yes, you said you were finished with your job at the paper. What will you do next?”
Amy leaned back in the chair and thought of yesterday’s call from the temp agency. “I don’t know, Nana. I had thought once I was finished at the Gazette, I might…”
“You might what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I just never thought that I was supposed to live in Vine Beach permanently.”
There. She’d said it. Aloud. Amy held her breath and waited for Nana’s response.
“Well, of course you didn’t,” her grandmother said lightly. “You came for me and now that I’m on the mend, you’ve got to decide what the Lord’s asking of you next.”
“Yes,” she said on an exhale of breath. “That’s it exactly.”
“So what’s He telling you, sweetie?”
“That’s the problem,” Amy admitted as she rose and moved down the hall toward the front door. “I keep asking, and I even sent out a few job inquiries, but so far He hasn’t responded and neither have the employers.”
“Yes, He has,” Nana said. “Surely you understand that no response is also an answer.”
Amy stood at the front door looking through its beveled glass to the beach and the shimmering water beyond. “I suppose,” she said. “But what I don’t understand is what I do about it.”
“It?”
“Staying in Vine Beach,” she said. “What’s God telling me about that?”
“In my experience when God isn’t telling you to do something new, He means for you to keep doing the last thing He told you to do.”
“Nana, I don’t even remember what that was,” she said as she saw a familiar truck pull into the driveway and stop.
“Sure you do, sweetie,” Nana said. “He told you to come to Vine Beach. Well, here you are and I suppose it’s here you stay until He says otherwise.”
“Yes, well, enjoy your day,” Amy said as she watched Eric Wilson climb out of the truck.
Eric slammed the truck door then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Coming here was a bad idea. But then so had going to the church support group for widowers. He’d managed to get all the way into the parking lot before good sense prevailed and he drove back home.
Back home, he’d found the quiet—brought on by his mother’s insistence on having a girls’ day with his daughters— impossible to bear. So he’d gone to work.
Another mistake, for the moment he drove into the parking lot, he was set upon by a woman who had hoped he kept office hours on Saturday. Suspiciously, she carried not a pet but a copy of yesterday’s Gazette.
That had sent Eric hurrying back to his truck. And somehow between Main Street and Vine Street, he’d decided to speak to Amy Spencer personally about the current state of his life. At least the part that was her fault.
He’d circled the block three times. Finding out where Amy Spencer lived had been easy, given the size of Vine Beach and his mother’s propensity to talk about who was related to whom.
Before he could change his mind again, Eric bounded toward the front steps of the picturesque home then stopped short of his destination when the door opened and Amy Spencer stepped out onto the porch. His gaze collided with blue eyes the color of the afternoon sky, and the speech he prepared—where he told her exactly how he felt about her part in everything from the humiliating headline to the near mutiny his office staff staged yesterday afternoon—completely evaporated.
Unlike her professional appearance yesterday, the classifieds girl’s curls had been captured in a somewhat messy knot at the nape of her neck, leaving her shoulders bare beneath the pale pink floral sundress. As the screen door slammed behind her, Amy’s eyes narrowed.
He hadn’t thought of it until just now, but Christy’s eyes had also been blue. Eric saw them every day in his daughter’s faces. But unlike the color of soft denim that his late wife had handed down to the girls, Amy Spencer’s eyes were the startling pale shade of robin’s eggs.
Eric expected she might speak first, and truly she appeared to consider it. When the silence stretched too long, he said, “I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”
She worried with a small heart-shaped locket, strung on a thin gold chain at her neck. “If it’s about the job…”
Leaning against the rail, Eric felt the worn wood sway slightly. A quick look told him it could use a coat of paint, as well. Signs of a lack of attention that could easily be remedied. He forced his attention back on Miss Spencer. “The agency told me you turned my job offer down.”
“I did.”
Eric waited for an explanation, one that was obviously not forthcoming. “Any reason?” he finally asked. “I thought the salary was generous, and I can guarantee there will