Summer on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #6)(50)

As promised, Tim was back within minutes, carrying three icecream bars. Ellen placed Baxter on the ground as he doled them out. “Thank you,” she said, polite as always. Unwrapping the bar, Ellen looked at Tim, her head slightly tilted. “Mom says you’re her boyfriend.”

Tim’s eyes met hers.

“Sort-of boyfriend,” Anne Marie corrected.

“Would you like that?” Tim asked Ellen, then took the f irst bite of his ice cream.

Ellen nodded. “You’re okay.”

“Just okay? ” he said, pretending to be insulted. He grinned at Anne Marie, who smiled back stiff ly.

Ellen laughed. “Baxter thinks you are, too.”

“A dog with inf inite good sense.” Tim continued to eat his ice cream and had it half-consumed before Anne Marie had even removed her wrapper.

“Is there anything you want to ask me?” Tim directed the question to Ellen. “Since I might be dating your mother,” he added. She nodded again. “Do you have a job?”

“I do,” he told her. “I work at an insurance agency with my father. Dad’s retiring next year and I’ll be taking over the business once he does.”

Ellen looked at Anne Marie for clarif ication. “He’s got a good job,” she explained simply. “He works in an off ice.”

Ellen’s attention returned to Tim. “Do you drink?”

Anne Marie was shocked by that question. Surely Ellen couldn’t recall her own mother’s drinking—could she? She’d never indicated that in any way.

“I used to a long time ago but I don’t anymore,” he said in a solemn voice.

Ellen licked her ice cream while she thought about his response. “That’s good.”

“It is for me,” he agreed.

“Do you love Jesus?”

“Ellen,” Anne Marie whispered, worried that the questions were getting too personal.

“I do,” Tim answered. “But I don’t always go to church like I should.”

Ellen accepted that. “Do you like animals?” she asked without a pause.

Tim nodded. “I had a dog as a kid.”

“Like Baxter?”

“Not exactly. He was a big black Lab named Caesar.”

“Do you have any pets now?”

Tim took her rapid-fire questions in stride. “A cat named Bozo.”

Ellen giggled delightedly. “That’s a funny name for a cat.”

“Bozo’s a funny cat.” Tim crossed his legs at the ankles. He seemed relaxed, at ease, comfortable with the girl’s interrogation. Thankfully, Ellen’s questions had distracted him—and Ellen herself—from the fact that Anne Marie had hardly said a word. She couldn’t. If either of them so much as looked at her, Anne Marie was afraid she might just grab her daughter and take off running.

“Do you like kids?” Ellen asked next, studying Tim intently.

“I like them a lot.”

“Little girls, too?”

“Little girls, too, especially pretty ones like you.”

His answer made her smile, revealing front teeth that were still a bit too big for her mouth. Anne Marie couldn’t help noticing that Ellen’s dark hair and eyes were nearly a ref lection of Tim’s.

“Have you ever thought about having a father in your life, Ellen?” he asked.

Anne Marie shot him a warning frown.

“That’s on my list!” She set the stick from her ice-cream bar carefully on the fountain’s edge. “Mom and I have a list of twenty wishes,” she said. “Do you know about it?”

Tim shook his head. “Do you want to tell me?”

“Okay.” Ellen was always eager to talk about her wishes, almost as though she was trying to convert everyone she met. “Mom and her friends made these lists of twenty wishes. I made my own list and a bunch of my wishes already came true. I wanted to learn to knit and I did. Mom showed me how and I made a lap robe for my Grandma Dolores. She died.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“She’s up in heaven with Jesus now. She loved Him, too. Just like us.”

“I bet she’s watching over you from up there,” Tim said sympathetically.

“That’s what Mom said.”

“Anything else on your list?”

“Lots! We went to Paris. We were supposed to go last Christmas, but then there was a problem with our airline, remember?

It was on the TV news and everything, so we had to wait until this summer, but that was even better. I have a new wish now.”

Anne Marie couldn’t remember her daughter ever being this open with someone who was virtually a stranger.

“What’s your new wish?” Tim asked her.

“To learn French. I say a new word every day. Baxter knows that Viens ici means come here. ” The dog raised his head and she laughed. “See? The chien understands.”

“Good for you. Both of you.”

“I’ve signed her up with a French tutor,” Anne Marie said. She’d found one through Teresa, who seemed acquainted with just about every teacher in the school district. “I’m going to be taking lessons, too.”

Tim’s eyes softened as he glanced at Anne Marie. “You’re a terrif ic mother,” he said in a low voice.