“Great! About things going well, that is, not the pain. Are you still at the hospital?”
“I came home a few minutes ago. I’d brought Andi and Katherine here while Gram was in surgery, then had to go to the office for an hour or two, to take care of a rush matter. But I was there when they brought her back.”
There were unfamiliar sounds in the background. “Am I hearing your little one?”
He chuckled. “Up until we started talking, Katherine was quiet as could be.”
“I understand that happens when there’s a child in the family, but didn’t know they started this young.”
“See? We knew she’d be precocious!”
Vanessa was only half joking when she suggested, “How could she help but be with you as her father?”
“Much more so with her one-in-a-million mother!”
There was a softness in the way he said that, and Vanessa thought that might be the whisper of a kiss she heard, and then an even softer sigh. She was almost jealous of such a love as theirs, which she was half-afraid to hope for…to one day experience….
Vanessa pulled in behind the big black sedan parked in front of Gram’s house, wondering who was supplying dinner this time. She’d never been good at identifying vehicles and, besides, didn’t know what cars her grandmother’s friends drove. She seldom attended church except when she couldn’t get out of a special invitation by Gram to an occasional Easter or Christmas service.
She heard laughter as she entered the hallway, and Rob’s unmistakable deep voice. Gin Redding’s higher-pitched one then said, “She’d have called if she was going to be real late, so you’d better wait to dish up till she gets here.”
Vanessa was by now at the end of the hall, in the kitchen doorway. “It sounds as though I arrived just in time!”
They were all talking at once, then let Rob explain, “Mrs. Seaforth must have spent all day cooking and baking. She said she would prepare food if someone could deliver it, and I was the lucky one.”
“Aggie Seaforth sent all this?” The table was covered with homemade cinnamon rolls and two pies in addition to numerous bowls and containers. To the girls she added, “I thought she was old when I was a child.” Then she turned to ask Gin, “What is she now? In her mideighties?”
The neighbor was near the back door, apparently ready to leave. “Upper-eighties, at least—but I’ll bet she’s had one great day of it! She had seven kids, you know, then all those grandchildren. It probably seemed like old times for her to cook for the six of you. Or more…”
“Stay and eat with us, Gin.” Vanessa had walked over and was lifting lids. “There’s so much here, and you know what an excellent cook our dear Agatha is.”
“I don’t want to butt in….”
“You can’t butt in when you’re invited, and the more the merrier, as Gram would say. You certainly deserve it, after coming over twice today.
“And you stay, too, Rob. After all, you brought all this.”
Both protested only mildly before sitting down at the table. Gin gave thanks to God for the meal, and there was lively conversation as they ate. Everyone was relieved at the report of successful surgery, and optimistic about Gram’s recovery.
Only once did anyone mention Rob’s profession this time. He glanced toward Jana before replying, “I should get used to people wondering what kind of person chooses to become a mortician instead of a doctor or lawyer or automobile salesman or short-order cook. Y’know what happened when I first told Vanessa I’d decided to do this?”
She felt heat rising in her face and knew they must see her heightened coloring as he announced, “She laughed at me, that’s what!”
He had never referred to that before, and she’d hoped he had forgotten. “That was incredibly rude of me,” she admitted, looking at everyone except him, “but it was such a surprise. He’d talked for years of becoming a family practitioner or a physician’s assistant, or perhaps a physical therapist. And for a while he even considered becoming a minister.
“Any of those would have meant intense involvement with living people, and then there he was, speaking of working with…” she stammered, unsure how to finish the thought without mentioning corpses or bodies “…with people after they’ve died.” She forced herself to look at him and was relieved to see him smiling.
“It’s okay, Van.” His right hand seemed to be reaching toward her, but came to rest on the table’s edge. “I shouldn’t have teased about it.”
Vanessa didn’t know if Gin was deliberately maneuvering the conversation away from that topic when she told of two late-afternoon calls from people asking about Gram, but Vanessa was glad for the change of subject!
Rob soon explained that he had to leave, and she walked out with him and down the steps. “Thanks again for bringing Miz Aggie’s wonderful meal.”
His little nod was probably in place of saying You’re welcome, but his words were, “Do you always call her that?”
She chuckled. “She was my Sunday School teacher when I was maybe five or six. Gram and other ladies her age called her by her first name, so I did, too, until Gram corrected me. But Mrs. Seaforth said I could call her Miz Aggie—well, that’s what I understood, though she probably said, Mrs. Anyway, she’s been that to me and many others ever since.”
He stopped on the sidewalk. “She speaks very highly of you, Van, and is impressed with your moving right in here—taking care of the girls and everything.”
“Gram’s very concerned for them, and so am I. What’s remarkable is that other people are doing so much.”
He looked back toward the house. “I told Mrs. Redding that I could stay this afternoon until you got here, but she insisted she wanted to.”
Her shoe scuffed against the leaf-strewn flagstones. “In order to get this facility up and running, a number of conditions had to be met, one being that at no time can there be unsupervised visiting by a male.”
“I hadn’t thought of myself as a ‘visiting male.’” His mouth twisted into a smile. “But I can see that my motives could be suspect.”
“Several times men or boys have called, wanting to visit or to go out with one of the girls, so it is a necessary rule.” She grinned up at this man a good six inches taller than her height of five-eight. “There was no way of foreseeing that a nice, good-looking young mortician just might want to be helpful.” Is he wincing a little? It seems as though there’s a flicker of—what?
“I was already a man, Vanessa, even before becoming a funeral director—I was an individual before a professional.” His words seemed more subdued than usual, and there was something like pain in his eyes. “I still am.”
She glanced down at her shoe again, scraping back and forth in telltale discomfort. Transferring her weight to the offending foot, she looked back up into his deep-brown eyes, so near she could see herself in them. “I know.”
Rob hoped she really did think of him as a man; his regard for her had nothing to do with her efficiency as manager and executive secretary of the plant started several years before by Andi and her electronics-genius father. He wanted to continue the conversation with some casual remark, but before he could do so she returned to the previous subject. “Miz Aggie must have been relieved at your willingness to bring the meal she fixed.”
“It was my privilege. And I thank you for the invitation to stay for dinner.”
“It was the least we could do. For both you and Gin.”
Was she aware of his feelings and deliberately