Age Before Beauty Read online

  Actually, Allie didn’t see a problem with dropping by to check on your kids during the day, but in the face of Joan’s sardonic expression, she didn’t dare mention it. Instead she lifted a chin. “I will not be a hovering mother.”

  A snort blasted from her sister’s nose. “I know my big sister. You’ll hover like a helicopter.”

  Her head held high, Allie marched past Joan toward the driveway. “I thought you didn’t want to be late.”

  She rubbed her hands on her arms. It was a chilly fifty degrees, and the orange October sun was rapidly dropping toward the horizon. They’d shoved her out the door without a jacket, but she didn’t dare go back inside now or she’d never hear the end of it. Serve them both right if she caught pneumonia and died.

  2

  Joan pointed her remote control at the car and a soft click came from inside. Allie slid into the passenger seat, relishing the warmth left over from Joan’s drive across town. An air freshener stick, tucked discreetly into the heater vent, filled the interior with the scent of freshly sliced lemons. She breathed deeply, willing the sharp citrusy odor to banish the tears that hovered behind her eyes as Joan rounded the front of the car. If her sister caught her sniffling with separation anxiety, she’d harp on it all night.

  “How did you get roped into this thing tonight, anyway?” Allie asked when Joan slid into the driver’s seat.

  Joan started the engine and turned to look through the back window as the car rolled down the driveway. “A friend from church invited me. She said she was sort of pressured into having this party, and since Eve is part of our mission trip group, I didn’t feel like I could refuse.”

  Joan was totally into the whole church thing ever since she started dating Ken Fletcher. Her church group was planning a trip to Mexico in January to build houses for poor people, and it seemed like every weekend they had some sort of fund-raiser going on.

  “Well, don’t expect me to buy anything,” Allie warned. “I hate pushy makeup saleswomen.”

  Joan turned a corner and the sun, a fiery orange sphere half concealed by the horizon ahead of them, stung Allie’s eyes. She put a hand up to block the rays.

  “Apparently it’s more than makeup,” Joan told her, squinting to see through the glare. “Eve said they sell all sorts of stuff.”

  “What’s it called, anyway?”

  “Uh, Varie Cose, or something like that.”

  “Very cozy? Is it some kind of treatment for varicose veins?” Allie slapped her thigh, whooping at her own joke.

  “You’re a riot.” Joan lifted a shoulder, eyes fixed on the road. “I think it’s Italian.”

  Still chuckling, Allie adjusted the heater vent to direct warm air toward her arms. “I hope your friend is serving snacks. If I’m going to suffer through a sales pitch, the least she can do is feed me.”

  Joan executed a few turns, the volume on the radio tuned so low Allie could barely make out the strains of an unfamiliar song. Joan hummed along, though, as they turned into an apartment complex and parked. As Allie opened the car door, she glanced at her watch. 7:04. Joanie wouldn’t be ready to eat for another—

  Jerking upright in the seat, she realized that she hadn’t thought of her baby in a whole five minutes! She started to brag to Joan, but then decided she’d probably be accused of obsessing.

  Joan bounded up a set of stairs, and Allie followed. Eight steps, turn a corner, eight more steps. She lost sight of her sister, who had trotted on ahead of her and disappeared around the next corner, but she followed Joan’s progress through the sound of her footsteps as she skipped upward. Going up and down these stairs every day would kill her.

  By the time Allie reached the third floor, she was hauling herself up on the handrail, huffing with effort. “For cryin’ out loud, why don’t they put elevators in these buildings?”

  Joan waited for her on the top landing. “Stairs are good for you. They’ll get your heart pounding and your blood circulating.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s pounding alright.” She collapsed against the wall to pant. “I think I’m going to have a stroke.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  No sympathy from her little sister, not that Allie expected any. Miss Fitness Freak turned her nose up at french fries and ran a gazillion miles every morning before work.

  At Joan’s knock, the door opened. A cute young woman with dark, curly hair and deep dimples in her cheeks said, “Hey! Come in,” and threw the door wide.

  Joan hugged her briefly on her way into the apartment, waving a hand in Allie’s direction. “Eve, I don’t think you’ve met my sister, have you?”

  Allie stepped forward and shook the girl’s hand. “Allie Harrod. Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m so glad you could come. And congratulations on your new baby. Joan has told us all about her at church. Her pictures are adorable.”

  Allie instantly warmed to the girl. “I have some new ones.” She patted her purse, which contained photos she’d printed on her inkjet just that morning.

  “I can’t wait to see them.”

  As she stepped into the room, Allie whiffed a sweet vanilla-scented aroma, the promise of freshly baked snacks later. She glanced around as Eve closed the door. A half-dozen women crowded a living room smaller than hers at home, three on a blue floral print sofa, one in the matching chair, and another on a wooden dining room chair in front of a sliding glass door. Joan was shaking the hand of a sixth woman who stood in front of a small television stand. The woman’s face wore the wide, unmistakable smile of one who is accustomed to being the center of attention. Ah, the saleswoman. Her dark lipstick and perfectly penciled eyebrows marked her instantly. As did the heavy scent of perfume that cloyed at Allie’s nose as the woman approached.

  She extended a slim hand with manicured nails the exact shade of her lips. “I’m Sally Jo Campbell, the Varie Cose consultant.”

  She pronounced it VAH-ree-yah CO-see, but any European glamour she might have hoped to portray with her assumed Italian accent was destroyed by a heavy southern drawl that doubled the regular number of syllables in her name. Allie glanced at Joan, then quickly away when she saw her sister’s lips twitch.

  Allie shook the hand, wondering why in the world people bleached their teeth. Didn’t they know that blazing white looked unnatural? “Nice to meet you. I’m Allie Harrod.”

  “If you’ll just take a seat, honey, I think it’s about time to start.”

  Joan sat in a wooden chair and patted the empty one beside her. Allie settled there as Eve dragged the last chair from the dinette set to the opposite end of the semicircle. In the corner nearest Allie, a white sheet covered a pile of something-or-other on top of a spindly legged card table. Ah. The stuff they were going to be pressured into buying.

  Sally Jo’s dazzling smile swept the room. “First off, I want to thank y’all for coming tonight. And special thanks to Eve, our hostess for the evening.” She inclined her head toward Eve, whose dimples deepened.

  Sally Jo continued. “To start out, I’d like to ask y’all a question. Have any of you ever heard of Varie Cose before?”

  Allie glanced at the others as she shook her head. A thin woman on the sofa raised a tentative hand. “I have.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Tankersley.” Sally Jo nodded, and then announced to everyone else, “Eve’s mama hosted a party last month. She earned a lovely gift when her guests bought more than four hundred dollars of Varie Cose products!”

  Her lacquered lips formed an O of astonishment, and her slim fingers tapped gently against the palm of her other hand as she nodded around the room for everyone to join in the applause. Allie clapped her hands a few times without enthusiasm. That’s how these people suckered you in. They made you feel like a heel if you didn’t spend enough money for your hostess to win a “lovely gift.”

  “Varie Cose got its start in Italy two decades ago when an orphaned woman named Fiorenza Hyppolito fell in love. Her beloved was from an old Italian family that put a lot of
store in tradition. She learned that her beau’s mother was gossiping about her around the small town where they lived. She didn’t want her son to marry Fiorenza because she was poor and didn’t even have a proper dowry.” She shook her head sadly, tsking over the travesty of an inadequate dowry.

  Allie leaned toward Joan and whispered, “That’s what bridal showers are for.”

  Sally Jo flashed an irritated look in her direction before continuing. “So Fiorenza decided to create her own dowry. She scoured the Italian countryside for bargains. Within a year she had assembled everything she needed to set up a proper Italian household.” A pained expression flooded Sally Jo’s features, and she placed a hand lightly at her collarbone. “But alas, Fiorenza was so exhausted by her efforts that she fell ill. While she was recovering, her beau visited her in the sanitarium and fell in love with her nurse.”

  Gasps around the room drew Allie’s attention from the story. A vaguely familiar blonde in jeans and a lime green blouse wore an outraged expression. “That’s terrible! The poor girl.”

  Oh, come on. Surely they weren’t falling for this story. No doubt it had a few grains of truth, but it had to have been embellished. Allie caught Joan’s gaze and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. Joan nudged her foot and stared pointedly at the saleswoman.

  “I know.” Sally Jo nodded toward the blonde. “But actually, it turned out for the best. Fiorenza couldn’t stand the sight of the dowry she’d gathered, so she sold it piece by piece.” A flash of white teeth blinded them. “And she made money, lots of it. Many people wanted to buy the items she’d found, but nobody wanted to roam the countryside to seek them out. When she’d sold everything, she started over. Before she knew it, word had spread, and she had customers calling from other towns, and then other countries. Varie Cose was born.”

  “What does Varie Cose mean?” asked a heavy brunette with gigantic hoops dangling from her ears.

  “It means various things.” Sally Jo’s ready smile burst forth again. “Which is just perfect, of course, since that’s what the product line includes. Everything you’ll ever need to run your household. It’s all delivered right to your door by your Varie Cose consultant. Once you become a Varie Cose customer, the only time you’ll ever need to shop in a store again is for groceries.”

  “Boy, Tori would hate that,” Allie mumbled.

  Joan’s lips twitched. Their baby sister was an enthusiastic shopaholic.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Eve jumped up to answer it. Sally Jo paused as the room’s attention was diverted toward the new arrival.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” a girl’s voice said from outside. “I started packing up the car an hour ago, but then he woke up and I had to feed him, and then he messed up his outfit so I had to change him. Here.”

  An arm with a diaper bag hanging from it thrust through the door, followed quickly by a young woman whose other hand clutched the handle of a blue bundle. As Eve took the bag, Allie sucked in an outraged breath. That girl was carrying a baby seat! A blue receiving blanket formed a tent over the handle to cover it completely, presumably protecting a baby inside.

  She whirled in her chair to glare at Joan. “I didn’t know we could bring our babies.”

  Sally Jo coughed politely. “Of course we welcome babies, but we hope a Varie Cose party will be a relaxing time away from the responsibilities of motherhood. You know,” she tilted her head toward the new arrival, “a girl’s night out.”

  Allie would have bristled at the insinuation in her tone, but the young mom didn’t take offense. She laughed as she set the baby carrier beside the chair Eve had vacated. “I haven’t had one of those in so long I wouldn’t know what to do.” Her smile swept the room. “Hi, everybody. I’m Darcy.”

  A chorus of greetings welcomed Darcy as she sat. She peeled the blue blanket back with exaggerated care to peer inside. Allie wanted to jump up and see the baby, but Sally Jo took control once again.

  “You’re just in time for the fun part. The demonstration!”

  She turned toward the corner and removed the white sheet from the card table with a flourish. Allie craned her neck to see the array of products piled on the table’s surface. There sure was a bunch of stuff.

  Sally Jo pulled a stack of catalogs out of a bulging leather satchel and handed them to Allie. “Take one and pass them around, honey.” She spoke to the group. “When you get your catalog, turn to page four and you can read all about the first fun product I’m gonna demonstrate.” She snatched an item from among the jumble on the table and, beaming, held it aloft like a precious jewel. “The laundry pen!”

  As she handed the stack to Joan, Allie whispered, “Oh, joy. A laundry pen.”

  Eric jiggled the bottle up and down in the kitchen sink, hot water showering over its side from the faucet. Clutched in the curve of his left arm, Joanie cut off her shriek long enough to draw a quick breath and start again.

  He bounced the baby in rhythm with the bottle bobbing up and down in the hot water. “Just a minute. I’m warming it as fast as I can.”

  When he shook the bottle to test the temperature, the milk still felt cold. This was taking way too long. He glanced toward the microwave. Surely a few seconds wouldn’t hurt.

  No. If Allie found out—and she would, because she had a sixth sense that surfaced whenever he tried to keep something from her—she would do him bodily harm. He wasn’t sure he bought her argument that the microwave changed the chemical makeup of the milk, but she certainly did. He thrust the bottle beneath the water and continued jiggling, wincing as Joanie roared her impatience.

  “Shhh, shhh, it’s coming. I promise. Food is minutes away.”

  Her face a deep purple, the baby gasped another lungful of air and then launched into a series of short shrieks, her body rigid. Just like his nerves. Allie had told him about the occasional fit Joanie threw if her demand for milk wasn’t instantly satisfied, but he’d only half believed her. How could such a tiny set of lungs produce such volume?

  There. Surely that was warm enough. It was still a little cool, but at least he’d knocked the chill off. He shoved the nipple into the gaping mouth, and the noise cut off mid-screech as Joanie latched on and sucked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Better not tell Allie how easily she accepted the bottle.

  Eric headed for the living room and settled onto a couch cushion. Feet propped on the coffee table, he tucked the bottle into his neck, held it in place with his chin, and punched the remote control On button. As he surfed through the channels, his taut nerves began to relax. They’d enjoyed some quality daddy-daughter time for the first thirty minutes after Allie left. Then Joanie lost interest in the toys dangling from her baby gym and started to fuss. She couldn’t be hungry, he’d reasoned. She’d nursed at five o’clock and wasn’t due for another meal until eight. Besides, it would be good for her to fuss a bit, build up an appetite. Learn to wait for the things she wanted. That’s how character developed.

  His resolve lasted a whole five minutes—until the shrieking started.

  He gazed down into her red face. “You really are a little fiend when you’re hungry, aren’t you? Your mama said you could be, but I had no idea.” Eyes scrunched tight, her greedy sucking filled the room with piggy noises. “I guess I’ve lucked out so far, since she has a ready supply of milk.”

  A sitcom rerun caught his attention as he flipped through the channels. When the show first aired, he’d thought it ridiculous, another of those kid shows starring a cherub-faced blonde with a too-cute-to-be-believed lisp. But the little girl’s dimpled grin and bouncy curls as she grinned up at her on-screen daddy snagged his eye, and he let his finger hover over the channel button for a moment. In a few years, Joanie might look like that kid. Already her downy blonde hair pressed against her skull in damp waves when she finished her bath. Maybe when it was longer, it would curl like that. And her eyes, though still infant dark blue, would probably get lighter as she grew, maybe greenish like Allie’s.

  He p
ressed a finger into his daughter’s fist. “You’re gonna be a knockout like your mom, kid,” he told her.

  At the rate she was growing, she’d be crawling before they knew it, and then walking, and then skipping on a jump rope or whatever little girls did.

  An image flashed into his mind, the picture of a pretty four-year-old who’d gone missing from her babysitter’s yard over in Lexington a few years back. Dozens of those photos decorated the bulletin boards in the hallways at Eastern Kentucky University where he’d attended the dispatcher training program. Kids who got snatched came in all shapes and sizes, but cute little blonde girls seemed to be special targets for the sickos of the world.

  He gripped Joanie tighter to combat the fear that accompanied the thought. “Not you, though,” he vowed, his voice a whisper. “Not on my watch.”

  Surprising how quickly he fell into the role of Protector of the Family. The depth of his protective instincts for his kid still astonished him because they’d come on so quickly. Allie, of course, changed personalities like the wind changed directions. He’d watched her go from sexy college student to eager wife to expectant mama to a maternal force to be reckoned with, all in the space of a few years. The way she threw herself into each part, embracing it with gusto, was nothing short of amazing to him. He, on the other hand, remained basically the same guy as the one who flirted with the gorgeous blonde at the campus pizza restaurant a few years back.

  Until the baby came along. He set the remote control on the cushion and traced a finger lightly over the soft skin of Joanie’s cheek. From the moment that squalling bundle drew her first breath, something like awe settled on him, and it hadn’t left yet.

  The doorbell chimed, followed by an impatient rap, rap, rap on the metal frame of the storm door.

  He wasn’t expecting anyone. Probably Carla, Allie’s mom, stopping by to see how he was doing with his first babysitting job. Good thing he liked his in-laws. He saw a lot of them lately. He heaved himself to his feet as carefully as he could, trying not to jostle Joanie as she ate. Not that it mattered. The little piggie sucked with vigor, gulping loudly.