Finders Keepers Read online

  “Because I need one.” Nick nodded. “That’s the reason. I need a daddy.”

  “I have a daddy,” the little redhead piped in. She seemed to be regaining control of herself. “His name is Luke Easton. My daddy loves me.”

  “And so, because you have a daddy, Magunnery, that means Nick wants a daddy.”

  “No,” the boy said. “I want a daddy because I need one. You would be a good daddy for me.”

  “Well, that’s very interesting.” Zachary stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to think of a way out of this. “Why don’t you two sit down on that box there while I think about it. I’ll, uh, get you some paper to draw on. You could draw me a picture, how about that?”

  “I didn’t come to drawl.”

  “Drawl?”

  “Drawl pictures. I came to ask you to be my daddy.”

  The boy was as persistent as his mother. “Why did you pick me?” Zachary asked.

  “I like you.”

  “I like you too, Nick, but being a dad is a big job. For one thing, I’m not married to your mom.”

  “You could get married to her.”

  He’d walked right into that one. “I don’t think your mom wants to marry me.”

  “You could ask her.” The solemn green eyes gazed at him. “She would be a nice wife for you. She cooks really good food, and she hardly ever yells. I think you would like her a lot.”

  “She’s pretty, too,” the little girl piped in.

  “That’s very true,” Zachary said, his heart softening at the child’s earnest request. “I’ll tell you what. This is clearly a serious mission you two have come on, and I’m going to give it a lot of thought. In fact, I’d like you both to sit down here and draw me a picture of Nick’s mom so I can put it on my desk while I think about it. And in the meantime, I’ll give her a phone call, so she can come over and walk you guys safely home.”

  The two stared at one another, stricken. “If my mom finds out we came here,” Nick said, “she’ll get really mad.”

  “But you said she hardly ever yells.”

  “This would make her yell.”

  “Mmm. We wouldn’t want that.” He was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “Looks like I’m going to have to walk you two home myself.”

  The boy’s face lit up. “Really? Maybe you could ask my mom on a date and then you could kiss her and get married.”

  “I think we’ll need to take our time on that plan—”

  A sharp knocking drew the attention of everyone in the room. Well, it appeared they were going to get to see Elizabeth Hayes yell. Not that Zachary hadn’t seen her mad before. In fact, he was beginning to think he had a knack for bringing out her worst.

  “Come on in,” he called.

  The door opened, and in stepped Phil Fox, the town’s barber, bus station attendant, and city councilman rolled into one stocky little package. He was all grins. “Looks like you already got company here!”

  “I’m pretty busy,” Zachary said.

  “This won’t take but a minute. I’ve got something real important to discuss with you.”

  “They were headed thataway,” Pearlene Fox told Elizabeth, gesturing toward the Corner Market. “I tell you what, if they were mine, I’d tan their hides for running off like that.”

  Her heart in her throat, Elizabeth raced down the side- walk and across River Street without waiting for the light to change. Boompah met her on the sidewalk as he was rolling up his awnings for the day. “That way,” he said, pointing toward the hardware store.

  Why hadn’t he stopped Nick and Montgomery? Elizabeth could have wrung these people’s necks. Didn’t they know that two children shouldn’t be roaming the streets alone? OK, so Ambleside wasn’t exactly a mecca for crime, but anything could happen.

  “That way,” Ez pointed as he was removing pies from the window of the Nifty Cafe.

  Elizabeth increased her pace. How could Montgomery’s mother have taken her eyes off the children? She’d been resting! So, who didn’t need a rest? You never turn your back on children at play.

  “Next door,” Cleo Mueller said. The pharmacist at Redee-Quick Drugs was locking up for the evening. “I saw the two of them run by when I was leaving to make a delivery to Mrs. McCann at the library. Her arthritis is acting up awful bad. I think the kids were headed upstairs,” he added, nodding toward the attorney’s office.

  Upstairs? Oh, dear God! Elizabeth breathed a prayer for help as she entered the building, climbed the stairs, and negotiated the dimly lit maze of hallways. If Nick and Montgomery went to see Zachary Chalmers, that could mean only one thing. Nick was on a mission to get himself a father. Lord, help me to be calm. Help me to be nice. Please direct my words—

  “Nikolai Andrew Hayes!” she shouted as she burst through the door. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “She’s yelling now,” Nick observed.

  “I can see that.”

  “Montgomery, your mother is—” Elizabeth spotted Phil Fox in the extra chair beside the drafting table. He held a pen with which he’d been sketching. The two children appeared to be drawing something, too. Elizabeth set her hand on the door frame and drew in a deep breath.

  “Mr. Chalmers,” she said calmly, “I have been searching for these two children for the last half hour.”

  “They’ve been right here, safe and sound.”

  “Did it never occur to you to call me and let me know where I might find my son?”

  “Her cheeks always get red when she’s mad,” Nick informed Zachary. “But they turn pink again after she calms down.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “Nick, you and Montgomery are in big trouble.” She reached for her son’s hand. “What are you doing here anyway? No, never mind—”

  “I came to ask if he would be my daddy. He’s going to think about it. He might take you on a date and kiss you.”

  “Nick!” Wishing she could sink into her shoes, Elizabeth pulled her son upright, knelt on the floor, and took his shoulders. “Nick, your behavior is inappropriate. And as for you, Miss Montgomery Easton, you know you don’t have permission to cross the street. Your mommy is very upset.”

  The little girl’s blue eyes filled with tears. “I was just trying to help Nick.”

  “Don’t be too hard on ’em,” Phil Fox put in. “They haven’t been a bit of trouble the whole time I’ve been here. Fact is, Zachary was just about to walk the two of them home when I showed up with some business.”

  “Mr. Fox is going to change the whole town,” Nick said. “And Zachary is going to help him.”

  “Change the town?” She looked at Phil. “How do you plan to do that?”

  “Oh, just some rough ideas. You know for a fact we need more parking spaces, Liz. You and Pearlene can hardly handle all the customers you get. Some of the ladies have been parking over at Al Huff’s gas station so they can walk to Pearlene’s to shop for their dresses. Al’s not real happy about it, I’m telling you. He’s thinking of taking up the matter with the city council.”

  Phil swelled his chest and stuck his thumbs under his suspenders. Elizabeth believed the man had Ambleside’s best interests at heart, but she didn’t trust Phil Fox. And if Zachary Chalmers went to work designing a new look for the town, there was no telling how things would end up. The architect clearly had no respect for the past—which, in her opinion, was Ambleside’s greatest attribute.

  “You’re working with Phil?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Phil clarified. “He’s thinking about it.”

  “And he’s thinking about being my daddy, too.” Nick gave his mother a wet kiss. “Look at this. It’s a picture of you, because Zachary wants to put it on his desk so he can think about you.”

  He held up a drawing of a round face punctuated by a pair of small black eyes, a bulbous nose, and a grin that revealed approximately fifty teeth in two neat rows. This would certainly inspire Mr. Chalmers’s affe
ctions, she thought, examining the portrait.

  “Very pretty, isn’t it?” Zachary said, his eyes warm. “Although I’ve noticed you have a little more hair than the lady in the picture.”

  “I didn’t get to drawl your hair yet,” Nick said. “But did you see that Zachary has black hair and green eyes, Mom?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes, I did, and I also see two naughty children who are going home now.” With that, she took each child by the hand and marched them out the door.

  “How about dinner sometime, Elizabeth?” Zachary called after her. “We really ought to discuss this marriage scenario.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes and kept the children walking. They turned the corner toward the staircase. The late afternoon sun cast deep purple shadows in the narrow hallway.

  She could hear the two men chuckling behind her. Very funny. As if she would go out to dinner with Zachary Chalmers! The architect would be in Phil Fox’s back pocket in no time, and the whole town of Ambleside would turn into some kind of neon jungle with glass-walled office buildings and metal modern-art sculptures that looked like flying french fries.

  Now which way? Arriving at a fork, she glanced down the halls that led off on either side. This didn’t look like the way she’d come in. On the other hand, it was awfully dark. Gripping the youngsters’ small, damp hands, she turned left. “I hope you know you’re going to have consequences, Nick,” she blurted out. “For one thing, you and Montgomery will not be allowed to play together this weekend.”

  “Not Saturday or Sunday?” her son cried.

  “Neither day.”

  “What about Friday? What about Sunday night?” His voice grew louder and more anguished. “But can I play with Magunnery at church? What about just sliding on the slide? Or the swing? We would be good, I promise.”

  Elizabeth paused at the darkened end of another long hallway. Nick was doing his orphanage cry, sort of a strangled wail that always sent chills down her spine. She wanted to scream. I’m lost in this stupid maze of a building with two crying children, and I’m hungry and tired, and I need help! Lord, just get me out of here!

  “Hey now,” a deep voice said nearby. “What’s all this ruckus?”

  Zachary Chalmers’s hand touched the small of her back, and Elizabeth felt her shoulders relax. “I turned the wrong way,” she said. “I got us lost.”

  “You’re not lost.” He paused. “You know the trouble with you, Elizabeth? You try too hard to do everything all by yourself. You know, once in a while it’s OK to let someone else take over.”

  “It’s Zachary,” Nick said. “You rescued us from the black hallways.”

  “That’s me—your basic knight in shining armor.” As he led them forward, he flicked on a switch that lit a bare bulb over the staircase. “There you go. The yellow brick road home. May I walk you there?”

  Elizabeth looked into his green eyes, and it occurred to her how comforting it would be to let someone else take responsibility for looking both ways, for walking the children across the street, for warning of cracks in the sidewalk … for everything she’d always done because she believed God had given her the job. Her alone.

  “Yes,” she said to Zachary, “you may walk us home. We’d like that very much.”

  FOUR

  “Sit on the swing,” Nick commanded as the group stepped up onto the porch of the apartment behind Finders Keepers. “I will make the tea.”

  “You will not make tea, Nikolai Hayes.” Elizabeth crossed her arms and stared down at her son. “You don’t have permission to use the stove, and you’re already in big enough trouble, buster. Now, head straight up to your room and put on your jammies. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “But aren’t you going to kiss Zachary?”

  “Nick!”

  Elizabeth started after her son, who made a beeline for the door that led into their living room. In moments, Zachary could hear the child’s small feet pounding up the stairs. A door inside the house slammed shut, and a window overhead slid open.

  “Nikolai.” Elizabeth spoke the name in a tone of dire warning as she looked up. The window slid shut. “One of these days, that child is going to drive me nuts.”

  Zachary laughed. “It looks to me like you’re one step ahead of his every move.”

  “One step behind, you mean.” She sat down on the swing and dropped her head back, letting out a deep breath. “He scared me to death this afternoon.”

  Zachary decided to take the place beside her. It hadn’t been offered, but it hadn’t been denied, either. Maybe he was making progress with the prickly Miss Hayes. As he sat on the swing, the old wood creaked, and the cicadas silenced their song for a moment.

  “Magunnery’s mom was pretty sick,” he remarked, recalling their brief visit at the little girl’s house. “You can’t really blame Mrs. Easton for taking a nap. She looked like death warmed over.”

  “It’s Montgomery,” she corrected him, “and I realize Ellie was sick. Still, she should have been more careful. If anything ever happened to Nick …”

  “You can’t protect a kid twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I can’t lose my son. I just can’t.”

  “That’s not a very realistic outlook, is it? I mean, things happen. Accidents, illnesses. We don’t own life.”

  “Oh, what do you know about a mother’s love?”

  He thought that one over. “Not much, really. My mom was busy a lot.”

  “Umm, I’m sorry.” She fiddled with the links of the chain that held the swing. “I didn’t mean to get personal.”

  “It’s OK. I had a lot of little brothers and sisters. I’m not sure Mom really knew I was around.”

  “Of course she did. I’m sure she loved you deeply. Maybe she felt uncomfortable showing it. Nick is all I have. I had to go through so much to get him that I always feel he’s a miracle.”

  “And you’re afraid he’ll slip through your fingers?”

  “I’m very protective. I won’t apologize for that.” She hesitated hardly a moment before embarking on her favorite topic. “Now, about Chalmers House—”

  “I didn’t come to talk about the mansion.”

  “But as long as you’re here—”

  “The spider toying with her prey?”

  “Am I that bad?”

  “Almost.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Look, Elizabeth, I like you a lot. I’d like to spend more time with you. But I don’t want to spend it talking about Chalmers House.”

  “How can you say you like me? The only thing you know about me is my passion to save Grace’s home—and you abhor that.”

  “I don’t abhor it. I admire it. But your passion is not going to change my mind.” He stuck his thumb in the direction of the ramshackle property next door. “That place is coming down as soon as I get it through probate. I’ve already drawn the blueprints and lined up a contractor.”

  When he stopped speaking, he could tell right away he’d said the wrong thing. Elizabeth’s walls were up higher than the roofline of Chalmers House—and a lot stronger than the mansion’s ivy-eaten bricks. Maybe he should just give up trying to woo the woman. Why did she attract him? And what did he really know about her anyway?

  “So, tell me about yourself,” he said finally.

  She glanced his way, her blue eyes sparking. “I don’t hate you, Zachary. I just don’t appreciate your attitude. You want to have everything your own way.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Crossing her arms, she pursed her lips. “You accuse me of trying to control everything, but you’re wrong. I’m doing my best to surrender my life. I’m a Christian, OK? The last thing I want to do is run my own world. In fighting for Chalmers House, I’m trying to respect the wishes of a wonderful old woman. In adopting Nick, I hope I’m following God’s will to care for orphans and the homeless. I believe God gave Nick to me to raise—it was a divine commission. In running Finders Keepers, I’m preserving the best of the past, and I’m helping p
eople create warm, cozy homes for their families. I’m just doing my best to live a clean life that mirrors Jesus Christ.”

  “Whoa.” He leaned back and weighed her words. “You’ve got me beat.”

  Zachary studied the view from Elizabeth’s porch swing, an expanse of lawn leading to the limestone bluffs over the Missouri River. In the gathering darkness, fireflies sparkled like glinting diamonds. The cicadas had quieted, and the moths were beginning to drift toward the porch light. All seemed at rest—outwardly, at least. In truth, Zachary’s heart felt as tight as a knot.

  He’d never really considered his activities in the context of faith. They had always seemed like two separate things. There was church, where a person did all the things that were required by his religion. And then there was the rest of life, where a man took himself by his own bootstraps and climbed as high as he could go.

  But Elizabeth Hayes seemed to filter everything—every choice, every decision, every action—through the screen of her faith. Was this God’s will? Did this please Christ? Would this reflect Christianity? It was a new concept, and one that made him more than a little uncomfortable.

  “So, you ask God before you make every move?” he inquired. “You prayed about coming to find Nick this evening?”

  “I went looking for Nick like a mother tiger in search of a lost cub. I couldn’t even think. But as I ran and searched and scoured the neighborhood, I prayed.” With her toe, she gave the swing a little push that sent them swaying slightly back and forth. “I’m not perfect, OK? I probably need to stop trying to control things so much. But at least I do my best to act in God’s will. Don’t you?”

  “No. I never think about God’s will. I think about Zachary Chalmers’s will.”

  “Well, you should give God a try sometime. Walking in his will helps an awful lot during the rough spots. And you might even begin to see the right way to act on things. Take Chalmers House, for instance—”

  “Hold it. You’re telling me that God wants that pile of bricks left standing?”