Someone Like Her. Janice Kay Johnson

Lucy hadn’t been able to tell. Since she’d handed him the driver’s license and photo in his office, he’d seemed more stunned than anything. She’d almost had the sense he was sleepwalking, that he hadn’t yet figured out how to react. At least, she hoped that’s what he was doing, and that he wasn’t always so unemotional. Because if he was, she hated to think of the hat lady consigned to his care.

      Lucy made sure the lights of his car were right behind her until she reached Sam’s B and B. His headlights swept the sign, and his turn signal went on. She accelerated and left him behind, wondering if she’d arrive at the hospital tomorrow and find he had already made plans to have his mother moved to Seattle.

      She shuddered to think of the gentle, confused hat lady waking to the stern face of this son she didn’t remember, her bewildered gaze searching for other, familiar faces.

      Unhappily she wondered if finding him had been the right thing to do after all.

       CHAPTER THREE

      STRANGELY, WHEN Adrian lay in bed that night, he kept thinking about Lucy Peterson instead of his mother. Maybe he was practicing avoidance. He didn’t know, but he was bothered by the fact that he didn’t understand her. He prided himself on being able to read people. The ability to anticipate reactions made him good at his job.

      He’d long since learned that self-interest was paramount in most people. But if a single thing Lucy had done for his mother—and now for him—helped her in any way, he couldn’t see it. So what motivated her? Why had she noticed his mother in the first place? Downtown Seattle was rife with homeless people, sleeping in doorways, curled on park benches, begging on corners, huddling from the rain in bus shelters. To most people, they fell somewhere between annoying and invisible. When had Lucy first stopped to talk to his mother? Offered her a meal?

      Why had she cared so much that she’d been determined to find the confused old lady’s family?

      He kept puzzling it out and not arriving at any answers. That bugged him. Yeah, she might just be the nurturing kind. But even people like that didn’t usually nurture a homeless person. Anyway, she wasn’t a completely soft touch, ready to expect the best of everyone. She’d certainly made a judgment about him before she even met him. She was doing her best for him because of his mother, but she didn’t like having to do it.

      That stung, which bothered him, too. Why in hell would he care what a small-town café owner thought of him?

      He shifted restlessly in bed, picturing the way she looked at him, her eyes seeming to dissect him.

      Adrian fell asleep eventually, but his dreams were uneasy and he jerked awake several times. The damn bed was too soft. The down pillows kept wadding into lumps beneath his head. Even the scent of potpourri in the room was unfamiliar and too sweet, slipping into his dreams.

      He got up in the morning feeling jittery yet exhausted. The room was nice enough if you liked such things, he’d noted last night, and was decorated with obligatory old-fashioned floral wallpaper and antiques. He didn’t much care, but was relieved to have his own bathroom. This morning, though, he walked into it and stopped dead, staring at the enormous, claw-footed tub.

      “What the hell…?” His incredulous gaze searched the wall above, and returned to the faucet that didn’t even have a handheld showerhead. He hated taking baths. All he wanted was a hard spray of hot water to bring him to his senses.

      Given no choice, however, he took a hasty bath, got dressed and went downstairs to sample the breakfast.

      If he had to sit at a common table, he’d head to town instead. Chatting over breakfast with complete strangers held no appeal. He’d find a diner if he had to drive to Sequim. Fortunately, the dining room held several tables. A family sat at one, a couple at another. He took a place as far from the others as he could get.

      He hadn’t paid much attention to his hostess last night, but this morning he studied her in search of a resemblance to her sister. They did both have blue eyes. Samantha Peterson was less striking but prettier. She wore her curly blond hair cut short and had a curvy figure. She didn’t look at him as if he’d crawled out from a sewer drain. Instead, she chatted in a sunny way as she served thick slabs of French toast covered with huckleberries and powdered sugar, oatmeal and bacon that made his mouth water. It was the best breakfast he’d had in years; creativity in the kitchen obviously ran in the family.

      Funny thing was, he knew he wouldn’t remember her face two days from now. Her sister’s would stick in his mind.

      When Samantha paused to refill his coffee after everyone else had left the dining room, he asked, “Did you know my mother?”

      “The hat lady? Sure, but not as well as Lucy. I’m not on her route, you know.”

      Puzzled, he asked, “Her route?”

      “Um.” As casually as if he’d invited her, she filled a second cup with coffee for herself and sat across from him. “Your mom had a routine. On a given day, you knew she’d have certain stops. The library on Mondays—they let her check out books even though she didn’t have an address—the thrift shop Tuesdays, because they’re closed Sunday and Monday and they always had new stuff then—”

      “But she didn’t have money.”

      She shrugged, the gesture both careless and generous. “It’s run by the Faith Lutheran Church. They let her take whatever she wanted.”

      “Like hats,” he reflected.

      “Right. Another of her stops was Yvonne’s Needle and Thread. Yvonne let her pick out trims, silk flowers, whatever, that she used to decorate the hats. The senior center has a pancake breakfast on Wednesday and a spaghetti dinner on Friday, and she was always at those. Lucy’s twice a week, the Pancake Haus once a week, and so on.”

      What was with this town? Was every single citizen willing to give away whatever she’d wanted? Would any needy soul qualify, or just his mother? As a child he’d loved his mother, but he couldn’t imagine that one vague old lady was that special.

      “She loved garage sales,” Samantha continued. “Oh, and rummage sales, like at one of the churches. During the season, she’d deviate from her usual route to take in any sales. She was always the first one there.”

      “She must have picked up the newspaper then, to read the classifieds.”

      “Probably,” she said cheerfully.

      Had his mother read the front page news? What did a woman who believed she was a nineteenth-century poet make of the presidential election or Mideast politics? Or did she skip anything that perplexed her?

      Frowning, he asked, “Where did she sleep?”

      “We’re not quite sure. I offered her a room over the winter, but she wouldn’t accept. I’m a little too far out from the center of town for her, I think. Father Joseph at Saint Mary’s left a basement door unlocked for her when the weather was cold, and he says she did sleep there on a cot sometimes. And Marie at Olympic Motel says she’d occasionally stay there, too.”

      Adrian continued to grapple with the concept of an entire town full of do-gooders. “In other words, everybody knew her.”

      “Oh, sure.” She smiled at him. “We did our best.”

      “I’m…grateful.” The words were hard to say for a man who’d never in his life taken charity. Depending entirely on the kindness of strangers…he couldn’t imagine.

      No—maybe not strangers. She’d stayed here in Middleton long enough that she’d been theirs, in a sense. Lucy Peterson clearly felt proprietary.

      Adrian discovered he didn’t like the idea that every shopkeeper in this miserable town knew his mother, and he didn’t.

      Samantha waved off his gratitude. “Oh, heavens! We loved her.”

      There it was again,