Chapter Seventeen
April was surprised to see Stella and Maudie having a cup of coffee together when she arrived at the vet’s office that Wednesday afternoon. “Hey, it’s good to see you again. Is this the day you volunteer every week?”
“Yep,” Stella answered. “I volunteer a day a week, most of the time on Wednesday. Usually my sister, Vivien, and I come together, but the two of us went on a vacation last week up to Branson, Missouri, and she’s plumb worn out. But I’m here to help you today. We tried our best to get Lucy to go with us on our little short trips, but she always made an excuse.”
Maudie pointed toward the coffeepot. “Help yourself. I was wondering if maybe you could start coming in at eleven next week. Stella’s been telling me about the quilt you kids have to finish. When you get that done, would you like to turn this into a full-time job and come in at nine every day?”
April wondered if she’d heard Maudie right. “Are you serious? I would love that.”
“I’m very serious. You are a godsend, April. Bending to clean out those bottom cages has gotten to be a real chore for me. Plus, I’ll be able to take a whole hour for lunch next week, and when you start coming in at nine, you can help me in the vet side of this place. Know anything about computers?” Maudie asked. “They’re a cross for me to bear. I hate inputting the invoices and the animal information.”
“I can do that for you. We had plenty to input at the garden center.” April’s heart thumped in her chest so hard that she wondered if Stella and Maudie could hear it.
“Good, then when you get here next Monday, you can work on that after you get the shelter taken care of. I’m at least three months behind,” Maudie said. “Now, Stella, tell me more about Branson before you get back there with the kittens and forget the good parts.”
“I’ll just get to work.” April poured herself a cup of coffee and felt like she was floating on air as she carried it over to the shelter side of the business. She could hear the two elderly ladies talking about the music shows Stella and Vivien had attended and the little nickel-and-dime store in town where they had tried on hats and taken each other’s pictures.
“Hello, my pretty babies.” She greeted the animals. “How has no one adopted a single one of you since I left yesterday? Taking care of you is so much fun, I’d do this for free,” she said as she took a sip of her coffee. Then she set it down on a nearby table and opened the first cage. “Someone is going to come along and take you home one of these days. I’ll miss you, but when that happens, you won’t have to stay in a cage all day.”
“Vivien and I talk to them, too,” Stella said as she came into the shelter room. “I’ll start cleaning this end of the cat cages, and we’ll meet in the middle, if that’s all right with you.”
April must have had a quizzical look on her face, because Stella grinned and said, “You’re the boss, honey.”
“No, Maudie is the boss,” April argued.
“Not beyond that door over there.” Stella pointed. “Maudie says that you’re in charge of this place.”
“Oh, my!” April gasped. “This is just my second week.” She felt like a little girl on Christmas morning.
“I got to tell you, girl, this is the cleanest I’ve ever seen this place.” Stella took a small yellow kitten from a cage and set it on the floor. “You’re doing an amazing job.”
“Thanks,” April beamed. “And I love doing it.”
Stella took the water and food dishes out of the cage first, cleaned them well, and refilled them. Then she put in a clean kitty pad. “I expect when Vivien feels up to coming with me that Maudie will want you to spend those days working on the computer stuff. She really hates that. Lucy would be proud of you.”
“I don’t know about that.” A shadow passed over her happiness when she thought of her grandmother.
“Honey, don’t judge Lucy too badly. She had a rough row to hoe.” Stella stopped long enough to hold and pet the little yellow kitten before she put it back in the cage.
“I know,” April said. “I got in on doing some of that hoeing.”
Stella clucked like an old mother hen gathering in her chicks. “Me and Vivien tried to help her, but she was bitter toward Everett by the time your mama was born, and even worse when you came along. He wasn’t a good man,” Stella whispered as if she was sharing something that would bar her chances of ever getting into heaven.
“We found her diary in the hall closet.” April wondered if she should have shared that without asking Nessa and Flynn about it first.
“Then you know that he cheated on her all their married life. We were surprised when she got pregnant with Rachel,” Stella said. “I guess it was a last-ditch effort to make things work with him. We started the quilting club earlier with hopes that it would help her depression problems, and it did. Pretty soon she was selling quilts and kits and making as much money as Everett did. We tried to talk her into divorcing him, but she said she couldn’t because it would bring shame on her boys. In those days, society didn’t look on divorce like it does now. Then she got pregnant and he died.”
“Rachel didn’t belong to Everett,” April said. “Did you know that?”
Stella cocked her head to one side and then began to giggle. “Good for Lucy! She finally gave Everett a dose of his own medicine.”
“But it cost her dearly. She had a daughter to raise that she didn’t want, and then she had to raise me when my mother died. I’ve lived under that shadow my whole life, Stella.” April sighed.
Stella started on her second cage. “No wonder she always said that you were a little lost soul. She wished she had been in a better frame of mind when she was raising you.”
“She said that?” April was stunned.
“Yes, honey, she did. Now I know what she was talking about. I can’t imagine the guilt that she must’ve felt. Everett died before you were even born. There she was, a widow with teenage boys and a baby on the way. She should have been grieving, but she probably only felt relief. I know I would have, and then I would have been covered up with guilt for feeling that way.” Stella worked as she talked.
“Then she had to deal with my mother as a baby she didn’t want, who didn’t even belong to her dead husband.” April felt a wave of sympathy for her grandmother. “And she couldn’t even tell anyone because she thought it was a horrible sin.”
“Hello, are we in the right place?” A masculine voice followed the sound of the bell when someone opened the front door to the business.
Stella was closest to the door, so she took a couple of steps and asked, “Are you looking for the vet or the animal shelter?”
“Kittens!” a little girl yelled. “It’s my birthday!”
“Then come on back here,” Stella said.
The little girl skipped into the shelter, sending her long blonde ponytail flipping back and forth. She stopped in the middle of the room, her big brown eyes wide, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Look at all of them, Daddy!”
“Hello, I’m Kent Wallace,” her father introduced himself, “and this ball of energy is Callie. We’re here to adopt a kitten.” His green eyes glittered when he looked at the child. He was over six feet tall, had thinning light-brown hair with a sprinkling of gray in the temples, and wore black-rimmed glasses.