Thistle Down

Three

CHASE MOPPED THE SWEAT from his brow on his shirtsleeve. He wished he could start work on the cold pitcher of beer right now. He had a lot of explaining to do to the captain.

He should have kept the naked woman in lockup and processed all the paperwork on about fifteen counts, from drunk and disorderly to public nudity to… laughing at him. But lockup, with air-conditioning, had become a shelter from the heat for the elderly, poor, and homeless. Since he had a place to dump Thistle Down, or whatever her real name was, he’d grabbed it.

The captain could chew his hide. But part of Chase’s promotion to sergeant included the authority to step slightly outside the box when necessary. Today was necessary.

Besides, dumping Thistle Down on Dusty had given him a chance to talk to her, to elicit more than just a few mumbled words from her. She hadn’t graced him with a complete conversation since… since he broke her music box, the pink one with the twirling ballerina inside, fifteen years ago.

He shook his head. He thought he’d given up trying to attract her attention. Dating his best friend’s sister would complicate his life too much.

But that Thistle woman. Wow! Gorgeous. If she weren’t so much trouble, he’d love to escort her to the fund-raiser Masque Ball next week.

One more short-term flirtation in a long list of them.

Dusty probably wouldn’t even notice that he’d come, alone or with someone.

One of these days he’d forget Dusty’s pert little turnedup nose and the endearing smudge of dirt on her cheek.

His gaze drifted toward The Ten Acre Wood, imagining it lit with Faery lights on the night of the Ball. He sighed. Not this year. He planned on skipping the Ball, unless he had to run security. No sense in spending the evening longing to hold Dusty in his arms while they danced when he knew that would never happen.

“Hey!” he yelled at a couple of kids running around the picnic tables in the museum grounds. “Stop throwing rocks!” The clatter of broken glass from the vicinity of the restrooms followed by a yelp of surprise punctuated his command.

He took off after the kids as they dispersed into the bushes and down the steps to Main Street. He had ’em cornered. The only way off the stairs was over the cliff and a roll through poison oak.

Thankfully, they hadn’t disappeared into The Ten Acre Wood. He’d never find them in that tangled overgrowth.

“What happened, Thistle?” Dusty asked over her shoulder as she fished for a cola in the employee fridge. She wiped the can top with a sanitized wipe and handed the cold drink to her charge. Then she washed her private glass and poured another iced tea for herself.

Dick had hastened away to his sales calls. He’d left today in a bigger hurry than usual, as if something, or someone, in the museum bothered him.

Dusty laid blame for that squarely on Thistle’s shoulders-one of which was showing too much skin as the neckline of her oversized T-shirt slipped, and then slipped some more.

Thistle stared at the pull ring on her cola as if it was a bit of alien technology. All the years Thistle had kept Dusty company during her recovery from leukemia with the chemo and bone marrow transplant, and then homeschooling, Dusty had never had a soft drink to show her how to use the pull ring. Mom hadn’t allowed any junk food in the house, not even organic soft drinks. None of the other kids, including Dick, appreciated snacks of whole wheat crackers and organic goat cheese with home-pressed fruit juice or soy milk to wash it down. Thistle had been her only company.

Dusty pulled the ring on the can, showing Thistle how to do it.

Mom would love to dress Thistle up in sixteenth century clothing and teach her the part of Arial in The Tempest. With her light bones and long limbs, she looked the part.

“Why are you here?” Dusty prodded.

“Because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go but to you.” She opened those fabulous purple eyes wide in innocence. Feigned?

“Back up. Why do you need a place to go? You could just go home.” Dusty took a long drink, never taking her eyes off of Thistle. She watched carefully for any tic, or telltale flicker of expression that might give her clues.

“I can’t go home.” Thistle looked longingly over her shoulder. Where her wings should be. “At least not for a while. Alder will come to his senses in a few days. Then I’ll be away from here as fast as I can fly.”

“Who’s Alder?”

“The new king of my tribe.”

“And what did you do to him to deserve trimming your wings and exiling you?” Dusty turned toward the whiteboard with its lists of reservations and Chamber of Commerce notes of things to promote during tours. And the schedule for setting up and tearing down the parade tomorrow. She had too much to do to babysit a Pixie in exile.

But Thistle had been her only friend for too many years for Dusty to desert her now.

“I didn’t do much. Just a prank. Alder has a short temper and more magic now that he’s king. What are we going to do this afternoon?” She took a sip of her cola and spat it out. Sticky drops sprayed far and wide, clinging to the fridge, the walls, the chairs, the papers on the table. “What kind of poison have you given me?”

“It’s not poison. It’s a diet cola. People practically live on them.”

“There is nothing natural or clean or even interesting in it.” She held the can up, reading the ingredients. Dusty had taught her to read during those long hours of lonely homeschooling.

A clatter of bright voices interrupted Dusty’s thoughts. “Suzie!” she cried in delight. “Sharon!”

Dusty dashed to the entry hall and knelt to give big hugs to her two favorite children in the world.

“Auntie Dusty, we got lollipops.” Three-year-old Suzie held up a sticky red blob on top of a paper stick. It listed sideways at an alarming angle.

Dusty grabbed a tissue from her apron pocket and held it under the candy just as it decided to plop off the stick.

“I didn’t get to finish it,” Suzie wailed. A fat tear appeared at the corner of her eye.

“It’s too hot for lollies, my girl. How about a nice cold drink instead,” Dusty offered, using a second tissue to mop up tears before they grew too plentiful. “I’ve got lemonade in the fridge. Homemade, just for you.”

“Daddy promised us ice cream after dinner,” six-year-old Sharon confided. Her lollipop disappeared into her mouth before it collapsed. “Will you cook dinner for us, Auntie Dusty. You cook better than Daddy.”

“And where is your daddy?” Dusty asked, searching the walkway through the open door.

“Parking the car,” Sharon replied, obviously bored with adult chores.

“Well, come on back to the lounge. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” That ought to fix the problem of babysitting Thistle. Suzie and Sharon could entertain her while Dusty talked to their father, Joe Newberry: her boss, her mentor, and a good friend.

“Go wash your hands, girls, and I’ll be with you in a minute,” Joe said as he entered the museum. He nodded to Dusty, looking weary and worried. He headed straight for his office, a tiny cubicle off the pantry that served as curator’s office and document storage. He barely had room for an antique writing desk and straight chair. Fortunately, the room borrowed air-conditioning from the adjacent lounge.

Last year they’d considered giving him an office in the attic rooms of the gift shop-another historic house, but newer and smaller than the museum. Joe had lasted less than a week before he moved back. He didn’t like being away from the core of the exhibits. And the gift shop didn’t have air-conditioning. Only a couple of fans in the front parlor.

“You look tired, Joe,” Dusty said, following him in and closing the door behind her. Deep lines radiated from his eyes. His naturally pale skin had an almost gray tinge beneath the high color on his cheeks from the heat.

“That’s only half of it,” he muttered, flopping into his chair and letting his legs sprawl. He ran his hands through his thinning brown hair. Then he loosened his tie with a frustrated yank. He wore a suit today, his good navy one, instead of his usual khakis and polo shirt.

“What’s wrong? Trouble with our grant from the state?”

“I wish it were that trivial.” He choked out a laugh.

Dusty held her breath. Keeping the museum in good repair had occupied most of Joe’s life since… since Dusty couldn’t remember how long ago. He’d befriended her during her junior year in high school when she started hanging around asking too many questions about history and how the house was built and who built it. Soon after that, he’d given her a job cataloging the books and documents the Historical Society kept in storage without knowing what was there. By the time she’d finished her BA, she was running the place behind the scenes and he was her best friend.

“Don’t look so scared, Dusty. The grant’s in good shape, though the state’s going to ask for a bigger chunk of matching funds. We just have to pass the inspection tomorrow morning, before the parade starts. The committee could have chosen a better time.”

He straightened a little and began fussing with the piles of reference books, papers, fat folders, bits of cloth, and other detritus of museum work that overflowed every flat surface available. “The parade participants are supposed to show up around nine and start marching at ten. So if we meet the committee at seven, we should be in good shape. I just wish they’d postpone the inspection until after Festival,” he continued, filling the silence with banal words rather than coming to the heart of the matter.

“The Ball? Are the plans falling apart without Mom overseeing them?” The annual Masque Ball held in the park at the end of Festival provided a large portion of operating funds for the museum. Townsfolk, and a growing number of patrons from nearby Portland, paid good money for tickets, then dressed in outlandish or elegant costumes and danced the night away to live music in the gazebo. Dusty loved stringing tiny Faery lights through the trees to add a magical flavor to the evening.

“Actually, the plans are going better than usual without your mother’s interference.” He looked down sheepishly.

This time Dusty laughed. “Yeah, Mom does get carried away sometimes.”

“Like the year she tried requiring costumes of Shakespearean characters that all had to pass her scrutiny for authenticity?”

They both laughed at that fiasco.

“You’re doing a good job, Dusty. You’ve managed to keep all the committees on track and out of each other’s hair.”

“The magic of email,” she explained. “Mom prefers face-to-face confrontations… er meetings. I don’t think I’ve even met any of the committee chairs.”

“Your mom is a force of nature, not necessarily a good leader and organizer.”

Joe stopped laughing abruptly and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“So spill it. What happened that you’re in your best suit and have the girls with you?”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me?”

“Joe, the only time you propose to me is when your ex starts playing nasty games about custody and you think marrying again will look good to the courts. What’s she done this time?”

“Monica has left her lover, the Italian count turned chef, finished her fancy cooking school in Florence, and gotten herself a very good job in Seattle at a four-star hotel restaurant. She has followed her bliss. Now she wants the girls back.”

Dusty didn’t need to see his deadpan expression to know how much hurt he hid behind the mask. She’d held his hand more than once while he worked through the grief of Monica’s desertion after reading some damn self-help book. The break she “deserved” grew from a three-week vacation to two years of finding herself.

One of these days Dusty might accept one of Joe’s offhanded proposals just to have his children full-time. She babysat them three nights a week while Joe taught a high school equivalency class at the community college. But she knew Joe didn’t love her. Part of him still pined for Monica.

“I guess she found herself, ’cause now she’s suing for full custody, claiming I can’t support her precious children on my salary and that I’m neglecting them.”

“If her children are so precious to her, why’d she walk out without so much as a good-bye, leaving you with two toddlers and a mountain of her debts?” Dusty couldn’t understand how anyone could leave those girls.

“She said I was undervaluing myself and my education by settling for the museum job instead of teaching at a university. I know she never understood the total lack of glamour in faculty politics.”

Monica didn’t deserve him or Sharon and Suzie.

Dusty wished she had a place to sit. The office didn’t have a second chair.

“Will you accept the full-time teaching job at the community college? It pays better than the museum.” Dusty knew to the penny how much it paid. She’d turned down the position when the college offered it to her based upon her academic work and the application her parents had filled out in her name-without telling her because they knew she’d never do it herself.

Her stomached roiled at the thought of facing classrooms full of students every day.

But Joe would thrive there.

“I may have to. That would leave you in charge here. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to love this museum as much as I do.” He grinned at her. “Think how much fun you’ll have working with the county commissioners, the tourists, all the grant committees, designing field trips for school children, teaching special classes for teacher in-service days…”

Dusty ran out of the tiny room, bile burning in the back of her throat. Her hands grew clammy. The moment she cleared the doorway to the basement, her breathing eased. Two steps down into the cool dimness, her stomach settled. She hastened back to her dirty potsherds.

She barely noticed Thistle playing jacks with the girls in the lounge. They hummed an almost familiar tune that followed Dusty all the way to the bottom of the stairs.

Dum dee dee do dum dum.

It reminded her of her favorite music box, broken for fifteen years now. But not quite.