The Challenge(50)

Her mother called an hour later to see how it had gone, and she told her the same litany of woes.

“First days are always hard, give it a chance. It’s a whole new experience. This is high school, in a rural public school. It’s all new to you. And they can’t all look like freaks.”

“The girls in my classes did.”

“Two weeks from now, you’ll have friends, and it will all seem different.”

“When are you coming out here?”

“In about two weeks. You can help me find a house, or an apartment. I have a couple of meetings and deadlines I have to take care of here first.” Juliet was happy she was coming. Her mother had a way of helping her turn things around.

She wore jeans and a sweatshirt the next day, and Nikes, like Peter and many of the other kids. She signed up for the volleyball team and felt a little better. The girls on the team were nice and looked normal by her standards. By the end of the week, she had met a girl from Tulsa who had just moved to Montana and she liked her. Matt and Noel liked her too, and they had lunch together. Juliet felt better. She hung out with Peter and the others all weekend. She didn’t love the school yet, but she was getting used to it. Her mother was coming out soon, and she had a psych class she loved, with a teacher she thought was terrific. Things were looking up.



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When her mother arrived from New York, the first thing they did was look for a place for Beth to live. There were very few apartments so she rented a small Victorian house on the edge of town near the Wylies. Noel and Justin could walk over anytime. It had been freshly painted and nicely done, with a brand new, cheerful IKEA kitchen.

It was a cozy two-bedroom house, just big enough for the two of them. It had an upstairs playroom where she could entertain her friends, and Beth had an office downstairs. Juliet’s friends could come for meals in the sunny kitchen.

They had dinner at her father’s house on the first night, and after that Beth cooked at home. She didn’t want to encroach on Tom or start with bad habits. It was a small town, and Beth didn’t want to crowd him. He had gotten there first, and she didn’t want to give him the impression that she wanted to hang out with him. She didn’t.

Juliet said he’d been going to the Wylies’ a lot, helping Marlene with repairs. Bob had been sick for so long that nothing had gotten done, so Tom was doing a lot of it for her. She said he did most of it in the daytime, when they were in school.

Tom’s doing repairs at the Wylies’ had started when Marlene had a leak in the kitchen and couldn’t get a plumber to come out. Not knowing what else to do, she called Tom. He came over to fix it and realized how many other things needed to be done. The kids were back in school by then. He wasn’t busy. He spoke to his investment clients by phone in the early morning hours and handled their accounts. And after that, he had ample time to help her. He offered to come over every day and get a few more things done. He estimated that it would take about four weeks to do them all, and he said he enjoyed it. He had a very professional-looking set of tools, and the week the kids started school, he showed up at nine in the morning and got to work. She made him lunch, and he went back to his house in the afternoon to return any calls from his clients.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this for me,” she said. He was fixing things that hadn’t worked in a year, because Bob was too sick to do it.

Tom even wallpapered her bedroom for her, in some English wallpaper that looked like chintz, which she found on the internet. It was by a famous designer and she loved it. He did a beautiful job, and said he loved house projects because you could see the results so quickly, unlike everything else he did. Investments took a long time to bear fruit.

“Working on houses is like magic. Instant gratification,” he said to her. He arrived with his toolbox every day and got to work, and within days, everything in her kitchen was running smoothly. He had fixed shelves. He did carpentry. He was a genius at gluing things back together, brilliant with a glue gun, and was talented with wallpaper and paint. “If my business goes under, I can be a handyman, and I’ll probably make more money,” he said, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it. What he liked most was talking to Marlene while he worked. They never ran out of subjects which interested them both. She was taking a break from her law office for two months while she figured out what she wanted to do. The young lawyer they had taken into the practice when Bob got sick was handling her clients for now.

“I’m a lady of leisure for the first time in fifteen years, since I finished law school. I kind of like it,” she admitted. “I was a litigator in Denver, which I enjoyed, but here we mostly get agricultural cases and they’re not very exciting. Property line disputes, contracts. Bob loved practicing here, with the ranches and the farms. I was never totally convinced, and it doesn’t really use my skills as an attorney. But Bob wanted to be here for the boys.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re moving back to Denver.” He looked crestfallen, and she smiled.

“I’m not moving anywhere. This is home now. I just don’t know if I want to practice law here anymore or sell the practice.” The lawyer filling in for her had already told her that if she decided to sell, he wanted to buy the practice, at a very decent price. Bob had invested their money wisely, and he had left her an enormous life insurance policy, which he never told her about, so she didn’t have to work. “I’m not sure what I make practicing law here is worth it. Bob thought it was fun, but I didn’t. Cases involving water rights and farm animals don’t really thrill me.” She smiled and he laughed.