He forgot about his toe as his face lit up. “Really?”
“I know. Disgusting. Let’s watch
“No way!”
He grinned at her—a real grin—and one more loop in the snarl of negative feelings that resided inside her loosened its grip. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—he smiled at her the same way he did at Lucy.
“Don’t take any crap from him,” Lucy had advised. “At the same time, look for chances to touch him. He’ll pull away. Do it, anyway.”
Bree had tried resting her hand on his shoulder when he was sitting at the kitchen table, but it felt forced, and as Lucy had predicted, he wiggled away, so she’d stopped. She wasn’t giving up the rest, however. An uncharacteristic stubbornness had taken hold of her. He was going to learn about the heritage he’d received from his father whether he wanted to or not.
He dropped his feet to the floor and scratched his ankle with his toe. “You don’t have to watch the movie with me. You can go work on your painting or something.”
Right now, that “something” included waiting for a dozen nonreturnable glass bumblebee Christmas ornaments to arrive. Every time she thought about the Internet order she’d placed over the library computer she felt sick. She was getting more customers every day, but who knew if any of them would want to buy Christmas ornaments in the summer?
“We always watch movies together,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess you should probably watch. Being white and everything, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
She did her best to imitate Lucy’s sarcastic looks. “Like you know so much, Mr. Brown Man.”
He liked being called a man, and he grinned. She smiled back at him, and he kept smiling until he realized what he was doing and exchanged the smile for a scowl. “Me and Big Mike are going horseback riding tomorrow.”
She still couldn’t believe Mike had befriended Toby out of the goodness of his heart. On the other hand, he’d kept his word, and the only times he’d spoken to her since they’d all gone to church two weeks earlier had been during a few brief telephone exchanges when he’d made arrangements to pick Toby up.
Toby scowled at her. “If you weren’t so mean to him, he’d let you go with us.”
“I can’t get away from the farm stand.”
“You could get away if you wanted to. Lucy would watch it for you.”
Toby had been calling Lucy by her real name ever since he’d overheard Bree call her that, but since daughters of past presidents weren’t on his twelve-year-old radar screen, he’d only commented that he’d known all along Viper couldn’t be her real name.
Bree’s growing friendship with Lucy meant even more to her than the help Lucy offered. She watched the farm stand so Bree could have a break. Together, they’d figured out how to reattach the big wooden doors on the storage shed that jutted off the back of the farm stand. Now she could lock up at night instead of having to haul her goods back and forth from the house. Bree also appreciated Lucy’s lack of judgment as she watched Bree try to deal with Toby.
Toby slouched farther into the wicker chair. “Mike told me to see if it was okay for him to take me to church again this week, but I don’t want to go. Church is boring.”
Bree had loved the service at the Episcopal church and yearned to go back, but she didn’t want to run into Mike. She toyed with the cover of the Sojourner Truth book. “Maybe we need to find a church that’s not boring.”
“All church is boring.”
“You don’t know that for sure. I’ve been thinking we should try a new church.”
“I don’t want to try a new church. I’ll go to the old one with Big Mike.”
“Not this week.” Bree had been dubious when Lucy introduced the idea, but now she made up her mind. “On Sunday, we’re going to Heart of Charity.”
His eyes widened in outrage. “We can’t do that. That’s the black people’s church!”
So much for all the books they’d been reading. And, really, what was the point? If claiming his father’s heritage wasn’t important to Toby, why should it matter to her?
Because it did.
LUCY SMELLED OF THE ALMOND oil she’d used to help Bree make hand cream. It masked the scent of the fresh loaf of bread in the sack dangling from her handlebars. She visited the cottage daily to spell Bree at the farm stand and take another stab at perfecting honey-based caramels. Once she was satisfied with the results, she’d try dipping them in chocolate and topping them with sea salt. So far, her efforts weren’t going well, but she had hopes. She also baked bread in Bree’s kitchen, using the excuse that the stove at the house wouldn’t keep true temperature. She was willing to trust Bree with her own secrets, but Temple’s weren’t hers to share.
What she hadn’t been doing was writing. She couldn’t seem to figure out where to start. Nealy was one of the most fascinating women in the world, but Lucy ended up throwing out whatever she wrote about her after a few sentences. Her father wanted a personal account, not a Wikipedia entry. Something was very wrong, but she had no idea what.
