Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best summer books .TXT) 📗

imagination as any message Georgia was trying to relay, but whatever. It was fun to play the game of pretend that she might know what Georgia was thinking. Reva would be proud. After all the years she’d spent encouraging Abby to at least consider the possibility that she could communicate telepathically with animals, she might finally be getting the hang of it. “Just play with it,” Reva had said. “Don’t make everything so bloody serious.”

Even as a child, Abby hadn’t really known how to play, when everything in her life at home was bloody serious. No wonder she’d always been plagued by anxiety. Like a cloud, it had always hovered just above her head, and even when it drifted away a bit, it remained close enough for her to see in her peripheral vision. When she left Blair, it became debilitating, paralyzing. She second-guessed everything she did, every decision she made.

Yesterday evening, when she was with Quinn, the cloud had disappeared completely the moment his lips met hers. But she had no business using a man as self-medication for a disorder she should learn to manage for herself. Her mother had done that and lost her identity.

Abby had vowed not to make the same mistake. She had pinned her hopes on Blair and the ready-made family he promised, but he turned out to be as self-centered, self-involved, and self-indulgent as Abby’s father. She had felt like such a loser, asking her parents to take her in when her entire world imploded, demolished by her own hand in a weak moment of wine-fueled anger.

Drinking box wine while scrubbing lipstick stains from her live-in lover’s boxer shorts had proven to be as effective for burning bridges as a lit torch. Forgetting for the moment that she had no legal claim on Blair’s daughter, she had thrown the damp, stain-treated shorts in her lover’s face. And with that one, satisfying splat, she had literally thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Because Blair had never let her see Emily after that.

Abby knew she’d made the right decision in leaving, but her heart twisted at the thought of Emily going through rounds and rounds and rounds of well-meaning stepmothers who always left in the end.

“Animals are better than people.” They didn’t lie or obfuscate or use their children as bait to attract the next unwary victim. “I’ll stick with animals from now on.” Abby tossed the flattened newspaper into the recycle bin and took the phone out onto the patio to call the vet’s office and make an afternoon appointment for the new kitten. The kitten hadn’t suffered from a few days’ wait. In fact, she had become more settled and trusting, so the upcoming ordeal would be less stressful.

Then, Abby prepared for her own upcoming ordeal—the group of fifth graders set to arrive at 10:00 a.m.—by rushing through the morning’s chores in order to make time to swim a few laps before her tour-guide helpers were set to arrive.

She swam hard enough to banish her regrets, at least for now. Then she turned to her back and floated, letting her mind drift back to Quinn’s kiss…

Could she let herself imagine a future with him?

Her phone’s alarm shrilled at the poolside; time to get ready for the next challenge. She had just stepped into the shower when the sounds of Georgia barking, horns honking, and kids shrieking filled her heart with terror. The buses were here a half hour early, before any of Abby’s helpers had arrived. She pulled clothes on over still-damp skin, then grabbed the key to the gate’s padlock and ran outside, untied shoelaces flapping. She unlocked the gate and picked up Georgia while the buses barreled past. Kids hung out of the buses’ open windows, whooping and hollering.

Thank God she’d seen Quinn leave early for a carpentry job in New Orleans, and he wouldn’t be back till dark. The noise of this unruly crowd would certainly have made his head explode.

Abby ran to catch up with the buses, holding Georgia close until all four of the buses stopped moving. Then she put Georgia down, and the smart little dog ran under the farmhouse’s front porch and hid.

Abby wished she could hide, too.

Freddy, denied his usual job of sitting on someone’s shoulder and greeting new arrivals, screamed from his aviary.

The bus doors opened and the Hordes of Hell burst free, screaming into the parking lot and beyond. Teachers and chaperones trickled out more slowly, already defeated by the prospect of corralling this bunch of hellions.

“Welcome to Bayside Barn,” Abby said to the first adult who made eye contact. “Aren’t all you Bayside Barn Buddies a tad early?”

The tired-looking woman with frazzled blond hair and an already sweat-stained school T-shirt shook her head. “I know. I’m sorry. The kids on the lead teacher’s bus were acting up, so she decided they didn’t deserve the pit stop we had planned to make on the way.” The woman shrugged. “Sorry. Where are your bathrooms?”

Abby pointed toward the pavilion’s bathrooms while her skin prickled with adrenaline. Every one of these kids was an accident waiting to happen, and they were running in all directions while the adults stood around helplessly, though a few of them had begun to corral the better-behaved kids who weren’t running fast enough to get away.

A bunch of gangly boys chased the chickens around the chicken yard. The pig squealed hysterically from inside the barn; God only knew what some kid was doing in there. Abby patted her jeans pocket, but she hadn’t picked up her whistle in the rush outside. She clapped her hands and yelled instead. “Everybody! Everybody, please listen!”

Nobody did.

Freddy clung to his aviary wire and screamed, then shouted. “Welcome, welcome! Shut up! Bad bird! Bad bird!” A tall boy had found a stick and was poking it through the wire, laughing when Freddy tried to bite the stick. “Bad bird,” Freddy yelled. “No bites! No bites!”

Abby ran into the house, snagged the whistle off the key rack, and