Janet Evanovich - The Grand Finale

“Well, she isn’t in love with an old goat like Criswald. She’s in love with Jake Sawyer.”

Berry slammed her coffee mug down on the counter, slopping hot coffee over her hand. “Ow! Dammit. I’m not in love with Jake Sawyer.”

Mrs. Dugan and Mrs. Fitz exchanged glances and smiled slyly.

“I find him attractive, and I like him… usually,” Berry said.

“She’s in love with him, all right,” Mrs. Fitz whispered to Mrs. Dugan.

Berry took a cautious sip of coffee and gathered her books together. “I can’t be in love with someone I’ve only known for twenty-four hours.”

“What about love at first sight?”

“It’s a load of baloney. And besides, I refuse to be in love. I have other priorities, like taking an economics test that I’m totally unprepared for.” She glanced at her watch and winced. She had no car, and she was late. “I have to run. I want to go to the library and try to get some studying in before my exam. Send the lunch contracts out by taxi again. I’ll be back at three-thirty. Can you guys handle things?”

“Piece of cake.”

Berry bolted down the stairs, only to be called back by Mrs. Fitz.

“Lingonberry,” Mrs. Fitz shouted, “you’re gonna look awful silly going to class in them raccoon slippers and your nightgown.”

Berry crossed her fingers as she bounded down the stairs ten minutes later. Please God, no more disasters. She closed the door behind her and took a deep breath of cold crisp air. The rain had stopped during the night, and the neighborhood looked freshly washed and waiting for spring. Berry’s mood was starting to improve with the promise of the new day.

She walked quickly, and two blocks later she found herself approaching the Willard Street Elementary School. Jake’s school. She smiled at the old two-story, redbrick building. It brought back memories of her own school days in McMinneville, when each morning she would set off along quiet, tree-lined streets with her little sister, Katie.

It was a childhood of few surprises. Tuna fish or peanut butter and jelly in her lunch box. Hot oatmeal in the morning, homemade butterscotch pudding in the afternoon, and piano lessons every Thursday. The Knudsen household was middle-of-the-road and casually practical. Berry and Katie had worn sneakers and jeans and hand-embroidered shirts and hand-knit sweaters to school. They had a dress for church and they wore the dress with sturdy buckle shoes. No sneakers on Sunday.

Berry realized she’d been trying to reconstruct the stability of her childhood, with little success. Her mother had been a master of order and routine. Each mitten had its proper place, dinner was served promptly at five-thirty, the bathroom was always miraculously stocked with freshly laundered towels. It hadn’t been a household of strict routine and unbending discipline. It had been a household of dull predictability and comfortable emotions.

My life is chaos, Berry groaned to herself. The harder I try, the worse it gets. I wash the towels, but I never get around to folding them. I lose mittens before I can find a proper place for them, and dinner consists of staring into the refrigerator at six-thirty and wondering what the devil I can eat in a hurry. Now I have three old ladies living with me and my refrigerator is filled with prune juice and blood pressure medicine. Berry shook her finger at the Willard School. And if that isn’t bad enough I’ve got Jake Sawyer complicating things. Now not only are all my efforts at organization a total loss, but that rotten Jake Sawyer is destroying whatever emotional comfort I’ve managed to reinstate into my life.

“Why? Why me?” Berry pleaded out loud.

She quickly glanced around to make sure no one had noticed her talking to a school, glanced at her watch, and hurriedly moved on. She couldn’t blame Jake and the school too much. Part of her problem was that days were too short. Twenty-four hours is simply not enough, she thought. If I had twenty-six I might have a chance to make butterscotch pudding once in a while.

Berry saw the strange little puff of black smoke two and a half blocks away but her mind was on other things-like her recent economics test and Jake Sawyer’s smile. It wasn’t until she turned the corner and saw the fire trucks that her mind contemplated disaster. Her heart skipped a beat and then felt as if it had stopped altogether. The trucks were in front of the Pizza Place. Fire hoses snaked across the sidewalk. Soot blackened the second-floor windows.

Berry clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Lord, no!”

Mrs. Dugan, Mrs. Fitz, and Miss Gaspich were supposed to be safely housed in that building. At this time of the afternoon they would be taking naps and making tea. Please, please, please, Berry pleaded, let them be okay. Please don’t let them be behind those four fire-blackened windows.

Berry stumbled into the street and broke into a run. Her chest was tight with fear, her vision blurred by the pounding of her heart. How could you grow to love three little old ladies so quickly? she wondered. She’d known them less than a week, but they’d become a precious part of her life.

She slowed to a jog when she caught sight of the women standing behind a fire truck. They were safe!

And then wonk! Instant black.

Minutes later Berry struggled through the murk of semiconsciousness. She opened her eyes and smiled. “Thanks for the pudding, Mom.”

Jake tightened his grip on her. “What?”

“The pudding. It was great.”

“Honey, I’m not your mom. Look at me.”

Berry blinked and concentrated, shaking the last of the cobwebs away. Did she just call Jake Sawyer Mom? He felt like Mom. Strong and reassuring, pressing kisses against her temple, into her hair. She could get used to this. This could be habit-forming. Jake Sawyer was going to make some woman a wonderful mother… except he looked awful. Grime streaked his face, emphasizing the grim set to his mouth and the cold terror in his red-rimmed eyes. Berry touched her fingertip to a sweat-soaked ringlet that had fallen across his forehead. “You look terrible.”

Jake broke into a grin, his teeth seeming extraordinarily white in the soot-darkened face. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

“You got smacked in the head with a fire extinguisher that fell off the truck. It knocked you out.”

“That’s what happens to you when you don’t make time for breakfast. You get wimpy. My mother warned me this would happen.”

The stricken look left Jake’s face and was replaced with an only moderately successful attempt at anger. “Don’t ever skip breakfast again. It’s enough to scare the daylights out of someone.”

How great is this, Berry thought. No one was hurt, and Jake Sawyer was worried about me. Okay, so my apartment is trashed, and that’s a bummer, but I’ve got a man hovering over me who seems to genuinely care if I live or die.

Jake looked at her carefully. “You sure you’re okay? Your apartment just burned to a crisp, and you’re grinning from ear to ear.”

“I know. I can’t help it.” Berry pushed her mouth together with her fingers, trying to wipe away the smile. “I’ll try to look more serious.”

Mrs. Fitz dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “Lingonberry, I’m so sorry. It was all my fault. I got a nice big tip for delivering those pizzas, and I spent it on some newfangled electric curlers, and the dang things burned the apartment up.”

Berry looked to Jake. “Is that true? Is that how the fire started?”

Jake nodded. “Mrs. Fitz plugged the curlers in to heat up, and then she set the case on the couch. Somehow, the curlers overheated and started to spark. The couch caught fire, then the curtain went up.”

“How bad is it?”

“Could be worse. The fire was confined to the couch area. Mostly what you’ve got is smoke damage. The downstairs wasn’t affected at all.”

“Can I go in?”

“Yeah. I just went through with the fire marshal. They’re packing up to leave. You’ll have to go down to the fire station later to fill out some forms.”

Berry nodded and led the little parade of three ladies and Jake Sawyer up the stairs to her apartment. She walked into the middle of the living room, her feet squishing across the wet carpet, and blinked into the darkness. Everything was charcoal-gray. The walls, the ceilings, the rugs, the windows. The couch looked like it had been burned to cinders by the fire, stomped into oblivion by overzealous firefighters, and drowned.

“Yikes,” Berry said.

“It makes a body want to cry to see it like this,” Mrs. Fitz said. “It was so cozy.”

“It’ll never be the same,” Mrs. Dugan said. “Everything in here smells like smoke. All our clothes, all the linens, all the tea bags.”

Berry agreed. “It is pretty smoky. Tomorrow morning we’ll open the windows and try to air it out.”

“Maybe we should go back to the train station for a while,” Mildred said. “You could come with us, Lingonberry.”

Jake gave a long-suffering, earth-rocking sigh. “Nobody’s going to the train station. I have an empty house with plenty of space. You can all stay with me for a few days while we get the apartment cleaned.”

Berry looked at him sidewise. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

He wanted Berry in his house, big time. Mrs. Fitz, Mrs. Dugan, and Miss Gaspich, no. They were nice ladies, but he had no desire to live with them. Problem was, he had even less desire to see them living at the train station.

“I’m sure,” Jake said.

“A house!” Mrs. Fitz elbowed Mrs. Dugan. “Hear that? We’re gonna live in a house.”

Miss Gaspich carefully squished across the room. “I’ll get my toothbrush and my nightie.” She stopped at the bathroom door and gasped. She plucked a dingy gray object off the sink and held it up for inspection. “Is this my toothbrush?” Tears filled her round eyes and made streaks down her sooty, wrinkled cheeks. “That’s the last straw. Even my toothbrush.”