Lori J Mitchell
I can’t bring back the dead now, can I? Lillian Andrews stood in the grocery store’s parking lot in Mountain Vista, California, contemplating her life, her move to this obscure town, while staring at the twin little girls.
The woman with the little girls headed her way, with the twins bouncing along beside her. “Excuse me. I don’t think I thanked you enough for helping Jilli find us. I couldn’t help but notice you are new around here. It’s a small town and everybody knows everybody else, and well, you’re new. I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.”
Lillian held out her hand. “Lillian Andrews.”
“Dee Dee. Nice to meet you.” She gave Lillian’s hand a firm shake. “Thank you again for helping Jilli find us. She tends to wander off when we’re shopping. So what brings you to our little town?”
I’m going to reopen the Trap and Skeet Club down the road a bit.”
“A gun club huh? That’s an unusual proposition for a woman to take on, besides the fact that that place has been abandoned for years.”
Lillian laughed. “You’re telling me. I’ve already chopped enough weeds to feed a small nation.”
“The girls and I would like to thank you. Would you mind if we baked you some cookies and brought them by?”
Lillian noted how the friendly woman’s smile was genuinely open. “I’m pretty much there all the time, unless I’m out running errands that is.”
“Are you staying out there?”
“Yes, I’m using the space above the club house for an apartment. It already had a bathroom and kitchenette in it. I plan to live up there and run the club on my own.”
“Are you sure that’s safe? I mean a woman all the way out there by herself?”
“I’ve been living alone in the city and traveling around the world all alone for so many years, that I am used to taking care of myself, and am actually looking forward to the solitude of living so far off the beaten path.
“Well then, when we finish some baking we’ll swing by.”
“Thank you. I’ll look forward to it.”
Not to mention she yearned for new friends. These past few years had left a relentless emptiness in her life, and she couldn’t wait to fill it.
*****
Lillian spent the rest of the morning weed whacking around the old trap and skeet houses. While working she kept her mind occupied making mental lists of all of the supplies she was going to need, and trying to postpone thinking about how much those supplies were going to cost her. After finishing a row of skeet houses she stopped and fixed herself a grilled peanut butter sandwich. Sitting on the porch enjoying her sandwich, she spotted a trail of dust coming up the road.
Stepping out from under the shade of the sagging porch and shading her eyes from the glare of the early afternoon sun, she watched an older model SUV come up the driveway. The car pulled to a stop. Dee Dee got out, opened the back door and pulled out a covered tray.
“That was fast.” Lillian smiled happily at the woman.
Dee Dee shrugged her shoulders. “It doesn’t take long to bake. It helps to have activities to keep these little bundles of energy occupied.”
Dee Dee handed her a tray and bent down to retrieve some more. They walked into the large kitchen area of the club house together and sat the trays down.
“I haven’t been here in years,” Dee Dee said as she looked around the dusty room. “I remember coming here with my daddy when I was a kid.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Even though I was just a little girl I enjoyed tagging along and watching my dad and his friends shoot a few rounds and then he’d buy me a pop and they would sit around puffing on their cigars and debating the merits of 7 ½’s or 8’s and swapping reloading recipes. In more recent years my brother used to bring the girls out here and they would play with stray kittens, or watch the old TV in the clubhouse while he was shooting. Everybody used to come out here as much for the socializing as for the shooting.”
“That’s one of the things on my list of supplies,” Lillian said. I want to get a giant flat screen TV to put up in the fireplace room. I want it to be more than just a trap and skeet club, I picture it as a place where families can come and spend time together. Along with the TV I’m thinking about putting in a horseshoes game and picnic tables. I want to put a stage out in the meadow so we can hold functions out here too. Everybody gets so busy with their own lives that sometimes quality family time suffers…and I’ve gotten carried away. Haven’t I?”
“It’s hard to picture this place up and running again.”
“I admit it’s got a long way to go. I want to set up a snack bar and grill so people can buy food if they don’t want to bring their own picnic.” They sat the basket down on the table in the club house, “I was just eating lunch. Would you like to join me?”
“I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble I have plenty to share and you’ve came all this way to bring the cookies to me.”
“Oh, it’s not too far. I only live a mile or so up the road. We’re practically neighbors.”
Dee Dee regaled Lillian with tales of the people in town. She caught her up on all of the local gossip, and told her all of the history of the area that only a long time resident would know. Like the time Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocked over a lantern and burned down the barn. “I thought that was how the Great Chicago fire was started,” Lillian asked remembering this from her high school history class. “Could have been,” Dee Dee replied without batting an eye, “but ours was first.”
She made Lillian laugh several times with the tales of some of the shenanigans of the local youth, some of whom thought it would be funny to flash a “full moon” down Main Street but forgot the passenger side window was rolled down. Thank goodness, the car was traveling at cruising speed. Or the time it snowed an unusual amount for this low in the foothills and a group of kids decided to build a snowman to direct traffic at the one intersection in town with a stop light.
Lillian couldn’t help but flash images of “American Graffiti” and “Happy Days.” But, she asked herself, isn’t that why I moved here in the first place? If there was such a thing as time travel, Lillian wanted to be the first to step into the capsule, set the clock back a few years to the day before her life changed forever.
“Auntie Dee Dee! Auntie Dee Dee! Come quick. Jilli is stuck and the baby kitties are crying!” Jackie came running to her Aunt Dee Dee.
Dee Dee rose to her feet in a relaxed fashion that attested to the fact that she was used to Jilli being stuck and Jackie coming to the rescue. She smiled ruefully in Lillian’s direction and said apologetically, “Jillian tends to be too curious for her own good. She manages to get herself into trouble. Thankfully Jackie takes her role as older sister, if only by a two minutes, seriously and rescues Jilli from whatever scrapes she manages to end up in.”
Lillian and Dee Dee followed Jacqueline back toward a skeet house with the door broken off, where they found Jilli wedged upside down between the wall and the machine that throws the clay targets out the window for the sportsmen to shoot.
Lillian reached the little girl first and pulled her upright and away from the machine. In her little hands she had two tiny orange kittens mewing their little hearts out.
“We heard the kitties crying and we came to find them. They don’t have a mama and I think they’re hungry. Can we keep them Auntie Dee? Can we please? Me and Jackie will take care of them all by ourselves. Please?”
Dee Dee reached across to stroke her niece’s hair coming loose from its ponytail and down to touch the tiny kittens being cradled so lovingly in the little girl’s hands. “Oh baby, I wish I could let you keep them, but you know your Daddy is allergic to cats. The last time you two brought a cat home he had to go to the hospital and get a shot. Remember?”
Jackie’s little lip trembled with the effort to hold back tears. “But we love them and they need us. Who is going to take care of them?”
Lillian felt a tug on her heartstrings as she looked at the two little faces pleading so sweetly. “How about if we take them up to the club house and they can live there? You can come out here and take care of them whenever your Aunt Dee Dee has time to bring you out and I’ll take good care of them for you when you aren’t here?”
“Oh Lillian! Can we really? You mean we can have them? And then we can come out and visit you all the time. Thank you Lillian.” They exclaimed in unison, and then suddenly remembering their Aunt, “Can we Auntie Dee? Please?”
“Lillian are you sure that won’t be too much trouble? These two can make real pests of themselves.” Dee Dee threw her hands up in resignation as she capitulated to the little con artists who were her nieces. “Oh okay, it’s fine with me if Lillian is sure.”
“Yea. Let’s go make them some beds and find them some milk. I think they’re hungry. What should we name them?” Jilli asked her twin.
“They’re all orange and squirmy just like Mac and Cheese. They are macaroni and cheese kitties. I’ll name mine Mac and you can name yours Cheese.”
“Mac and Cheese it is.” Auntie Dee Dee said as they walked up the steps into the club house.
A smile crossed Lillian’s face as she watched the girls go into the clubhouse to find a home for Mac and Cheese. “Those two are so sweet. You guys are lucky to have each other.”
“The girls are very sweet,” Dee Dee said. “I don’t understand how a mother could walk away from her babies. I know my brother tries to make sure they want for nothing, but sometimes he works such long hours and then he feels guilty for leaving them with me. I’m spending the summer here with them while the girls are out of school. Drew is away on business this week, so it just the girls and me as it so often is these days. He works so hard to make a good life for the girls, but I know he also works hard so he doesn’t have to think too much about his life. The girls miss him terribly, but he’ll be home for a couple of weeks when he gets back from his trip this time.”
“What happened between Drew and their mother?” Lillian blurted without thinking and felt the heat of the blush that crept up her cheeks as she realized the words she was thinking were spoken aloud.
“That is a long, sad story,” Dee Dee said. “But I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. Victoria was an actress. You have probably seen her in a few minor TV roles and in laundry soap commercials. Anyway, she met Drew on a sound set when he was doing some advising for a reality show, and well, she completely turned his head. One thing led to another and…”
Lillian cocked one eyebrow and grinned. “I’m assuming there was no happy-ever-after ending to this story.”
“Well, this story doesn’t have a Hollywood ending,” Dee Dee said. “Victoria convinced Drew she was not happy with the Hollywood scene and wanted to run away to a quiet little town, settle down and start a family complete with white picket fence, puppies and cookies baking in the oven.”
“I guess Drew fell for her hook, line and head over hills,” Lillian said.
Dee Dee sighed. “Within a year, they were married, had the twins and moved to Mountain Vista to live the small-town life. Clearly she was bored to death with the lack of social activity so when out of the blue, Victoria got a call from her old agent who said he had a part in a new mini-series for her, suddenly Mountain Vista, Drew and her six-month old baby girls weren’t very important. She packed her bags, filed for divorce and moved back to Hollywood all in the same week. Drew was devastated. Thankfully, the girls weren’t old enough to feel the heartache. All they know of their mommy is that she sends them money and toys and she is on TV. But she isn’t real to them. She’s just another TV character.”
Lillian decided she had pried enough and let the conversation drop. She didn’t move to Mountain Vista to get involved in any small-town drama. And she sure wasn’t looking for a man in her life. Especially one with this kind of emotional baggage.
“I’d better get back to work. This place still needs a lot of fixing up,” she told Dee. “I’ll take good care of Mac and Cheese and the girls are welcome here anytime to visit.”
“That’s nice of you,” Dee Dee said. “I think this club and you are both a great addition to Mountain Vista.”
Lillian watched as Dee Dee’s Blazer crunched down the gravel driveway then she turned back toward the clubhouse. “Well Mac and Cheese,” she said to the crying kittens, “it’s time for one of us to get to work.”
The next several days settled into a comfortable routine. Dee Dee and girls were a constant fixture at the club. The girls were adorable playing mommy to Mac and Cheese while Dee Dee and Lillian became fast friends. Lillian couldn’t imagine life getting much better than this peaceful little town and such kind friends.