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“Apparently not,” she said, a touch wryly.
“Beg pardon?”
She shrugged. “Well, I was here to apply for a job, but apparently I’m not properly qualified.” She resisted the childish urge to say, That mean, spiteful Luke Stewart wouldn’t give it to me.
Mr. Bailey’s brow lowered. “What job? I didn’t think there were any teaching positions open.”
Grace cleared her throat lightly. “It wasn’t a teaching job.”
“Not teaching?” He wasn’t going to let this go. “Was it administrative?”
“It was driving. The bus. Driving the school bus.” There. She’d said it. She’d admitted out loud that she’d been turned down as a bus driver.
It felt even worse now.
“Driving the school bus?” the older man repeated, with the same incredulity he might have shown if she’d said she wanted to become a trapeze artist. “That’s no job for a Perigon. Let’s go talk to Luke Stewart and see if we can’t find something reasonable for you here.” He took her arm and started leading her to the building she’d just left.
“No. Please.” Her reaction was too strong. He dropped her arm, startled. She smiled. “I mean, the driving position really was the one I wanted. It had flexible hours and would allow me to be with Jimmy when there was no school.” She tried to imagine Luke’s reaction if she reappeared with a big gun like Fred Bailey, demanding that a new position of some kind be created for her. “But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t think I’ll be able to get the license on time.” She didn’t know why she felt like she had to defend Luke’s decision suddenly.
“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I must confess I don’t know much about that.”
“It’s okay. I appreciate your concern, but I’ll find something else.”
“I’m sure you will.” Mr. Bailey looked at his watch. “I must go. I’ve gotten so caught up in talking to you, I forgot I had a board meeting. I want to see more of you now. Welcome back, Gracie.”
The endearment took the edge off her anger toward Luke. Nobody had called her Gracie since her father had died.
“Thanks, Mr. Bailey.” The lump in her throat expanded like a sponge. It was silly to feel a melancholy nostalgia for her childhood, but she did. She watched Fred Bailey walk away, noticing his gait was now that of an old man, a little creaky, stiff in the knees. It was then that she really realized that home hadn’t just waited for her, unchanging, while she went off and started a new life up north. Things had moved on here, too. People had died, grown older; some had moved away years ago, never to be seen again.
Thomas Wolfe was right, Grace thought, you can’t go home again.
But sometimes you have to.
“You’ll find something,” Grace’s mother, Dot Perigon, said, patting her daughter’s shoulder sympathetically. “If you like, I could speak to some of your father’s old friends and colleagues. They all loved Daddy so much, I’m sure at least one of them could find something for you to do.”
Grace shook her head and fiddled with a sweating glass of iced tea her mother had put on the table in front of her. There was a twist of lemon and a mint leaf in it, just the way she had always made it. “I’m desperate, but not so desperate that I’m willing to take a job at someone else’s expense. It’s one thing when there’s a job that needs to be filled—” she thought angrily of Luke “—but quite another when someone just creates a position as a favor to an old friend, then has to pay for it.”
“But anyone would be lucky to have you around, helping out.”
“Only if they needed the help, Mom. And I think most of Daddy’s friends have got highly qualified personnel working in their offices already.”
Dot sighed and topped Grace’s glass off with tea from a pitcher. “All right, dear, but I’d be glad to speak with Fred Bailey. Or anyone else,” she hastened to add. “If you change your mind.”
Grace smiled. “Actually, I spoke with Mr. Bailey today.”
Dot looked surprised. “You did?”
“Yes, he was on his way to the school when I was leaving.”
“What did he say?” Dot asked sharply.
Grace was afraid she heard, in her mother’s voice, a determination to speak with her old friend on Grace’s behalf. And Grace definitely didn’t want that. “As a matter of fact, he did offer to twist some arms for me,” she said, deflecting the idea she hoped, before it could take root. “But I told him no thanks.”
“You did?”
“I had to,” Grace stressed. “I don’t want charity.”
“I understand. Still, it was very nice of him to offer.” Dot looked quite pleased. “Very nice.”
“Yes, it was.” Grace took a long draw of the cold tea. “You know, it was almost like having Daddy around for a moment. When I saw him, it brought all of that back to me.”
“I know what you mean,” Dot mused, with a small smile.
“So you’ve known him since high school, right? Mr. Bailey, I mean.”
“Yes, why?”
Grace stirred her tea thoughtfully. “I was just wondering why he never got married.” But she was really thinking, again, of Luke. How come he hadn’t gotten married? Was he going to end up like Mr. Bailey, a lifelong bachelor in Blue Moon Bay?
“I couldn’t say,” Dot answered, looking out the window. “Looks like Jimmy’s having a good time with the Bonds’ old spaniel out there.”
Grace took a cookie off the plate her mother had set out. “He loves dogs.”
“Maybe you should get him one.”
“Mom! I can barely take care of the two of us as it is, despite Michael’s meager monthly payments.” It was then that it truly hit her. She had to take care of herself and her son, and if things continued the way they were, she wasn’t going to be able to. She’d have to…she didn’t even know what she’d have to do. Go on welfare? She shuddered at the thought. “What if I could find a job as a cocktail waitress or something over in Ocean City? Do you think you could keep Jimmy at night?”
Dot frowned. “I don’t want to say no to you, honey, but…well, I sometimes have things to do in the evenings. I just can’t commit to staying home according to your schedule.” She assumed a pleasant expression and added, “But, as I told you, he’s welcome to stay with me any time during the day.”
Grace swallowed her shock. Though she wouldn’t say she’d ever been spoiled, exactly, and she’d always been careful not to take advantage of her mother, at the same time she never thought her mother would say no to her. Especially on something as important as this.
But Grace was well aware that Dot had already been very generous in letting her daughter and grandson move in with her. Grace wasn’t going to argue for more. “Do we still have today’s newspaper?” she asked, trying to sound upbeat, although she felt anything but. “Maybe there’s something there that I overlooked before.”
Right. Like a classified ad offering a miracle to the most desperate candidate. Now there, Grace thought wryly, was a position she definitely was qualified for. High qualified.
“So what’s she doing at night that she can’t reschedule?” Jenna Perkins asked Grace a few nights later. After an unproductive week of job-hunting, Grace had reached the end of her rope. She had to get out. Now she and Jenna were in a crowded downtown bar called Harley’s, shouting to each other over the throbbing beat of a terrible band. Jenna was Grace’s oldest friend and had once shared Grace’s dream of leaving Blue Moon Bay, but she had stayed when the time came to decide. In reflection, it seemed like the better choice. She’d married a carpenter and had twins two years after Grace had Jimmy.
“Think she’s got a secret life you don’t know about?” Jenna went on, then raised an eyebrow. “Maybe a boyfriend?”
Grace laughed. “I don’t think so. Can you imagine it? Mom dating? Good lord!” She shook her head and reached for the peanuts. “Like life hasn’t gotten weird enough as it is.”
“Ten years is a long time to be alone,” Jenna said lightly. “And your mom’s a very attractive woman.”
“Come off it, Jenna. She’s known everyone in this town for sixty-three years. I don’t think anyone new has come in to sweep her off her feet.”
Jenna shrugged. “You never know.”
“You said you had a great job idea,” Grace reminded her, steering the conversation away from her mother. “What is it?”
“Well, you know how I was working in my dad’s shop last month when he and Mom went on that cruise?”
“Sure, I remember.” Jenna’s father was the only jeweler in Blue Moon Bay, and his shop had been there since his own father had established it in the forties. “What do you have in mind? Knocking off a jewelry shop and pawning the stuff at your dad’s?” Grace laughed.
Jenna laughed with her. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no, there was a woman who came in like three times while I was working, and she must have spent at least three grand just on big tacky rings and things. Know what she does for a living?”
“What?”
“She reads tarot cards.”
Grace groaned. “Oh, no, you want to be a fortune teller?”
“Wait a minute, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I think I could make a mint off the summer tourists. Probably even enough to keep us going the rest of the year, if that woman is any indication. Although she did say she works in Atlantic City, which, granted, has a bit more tourist traffic. But still, I might be able to make a living off it.”
“Right. You, Bob and the twins, all living off the telling of nineteen people’s fortunes.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“There are more tourists in Blue Moon Bay than that and you know it. The town’s going to be mobbed in a couple of weeks, just you wait.”
“Mobbed by Blue Moon Bay standards, anyway.” Since leaving town, Grace had seen “mobbed” on a grand scale. Atlantic City in summer. Walt Disney World in summer. Blue Moon Bay did get a fair amount of tourists and beach-goers, but its reputation as a family-beach town kept the wild singles and college kids away. They went to Ocean City, forty miles from here, for their fun, leaving Blue Moon Bay comparatively quiet. “But it’s not like it’s going to be mobbed with the kind of people who go to fortune tellers.”
“Everyone likes fortune tellers. You should do it too,” Jenna went on, unperturbed. “Say thirty bucks a reading, two readings an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week, that’s…” She paused, thinking.
“Unlikely?” Grace supplied.
She shot Grace a look. “Thirty-six hundred bucks a week, right? With virtually no overhead. I could live with that.” She shifted on her barstool, nearly slipping off. The bartender approached and she shouted an order to him, then turned back to Grace and said, “Now where was I?”
“Dreaming.”
“No.” Jenna speared an olive from the bartender’s supply with a toothpick, then popped it into her mouth. “Tarot cards. Seriously, think about it.”
“How about if you try it and let me know how it works out. In the meantime, I’m going to find a real job.”
“Well, you haven’t so far. I would think you’d be willing to at least consider some untraditional alternative possibilities.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.
Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.
“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”
Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”
“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”
Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”
“But you are back home.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.
She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.
As if testing her resolve on that cue, the band started playing “Stand By Your Man.”
Jenna clucked her tongue against her teeth. “They’ve got to be joking.”
“No, God is.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the glass door to Harley’s opened and Luke Stewart strolled in. “Uh-oh. Time to leave.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the barstool.
“What?” Jenna asked, looking in the area of the door. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s wrong.” Grace said in a low voice, pointing to Luke.
“Oh, my God, it’s Luke Stewart,” Jenna gasped. “You haven’t talked to him since high school, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, I talked to him a few days ago. I had to beg him for a job driving a bus at Connor School, and he turned me down.”
Jenna looked at her, surprised. “You had to ask Luke? Why? Is he in charge of the buses?”
“He’s in charge of everything,” Grace said, popping an olive into her mouth. “Headmaster.”
“Oh, my. That must have been hard. How come you didn’t tell me earlier?”
Grace chewed and kept narrowed eyes on Luke. The sight of him brought a warm flush to her cheeks. Residual humiliation and anger, no doubt. “If you’d been turned down as a bus driver, you probably wouldn’t be talking about it much either.”
“Wow. I guess he’s still mad about you picking Michael over him.”
“I didn’t pick Michael over him. I stayed with Michael rather than throw the relationship away over a small, brief, untested crush on someone else.”
“On Luke, you mean.” Jenna pulled the bowl of peanuts across the bar and took a handful.
Grace kept her eyes on Luke. “It doesn’t matter who it was, it would have been stupid for me to throw away a secure relationship because of some silly infatuation.”
“I don’t know. It might have spared you a lot of trouble.”
“And bought me a whole new brand of trouble.”
Jenna nodded her agreement. “Probably so. And you wouldn’t have Jimmy.”
“That’s right. He’s worth it all.” Grace sighed. “Too bad he’s going to have to live on bread and water because his mother can’t get a job, even as a bus driver.”
“Well, why would you want to drive a bus anyway? And why there? Wouldn’t it be weird to go back to your alma mater that way?”
Of course it would be weird. It felt weird even before she knew Luke was part of the deal. “There’s no other work in this town,” Grace said dully.
“Oh, come on, I’m sure someone would hire you. One of your dad’s old friends? You know, as a favor to him?”
Grace winced inwardly. “I’d sooner die than shame Daddy by taking charity from one of his friends. They’d feel obligated, I’d feel pathetic…it would be the same as asking for a handout.”
Jenna shook her head. “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
