Love Shadows. Catherine Lanigan

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      Can’t say that I blame the guy for being angry. But why would he be up late at night doing laundry?

      Sarah stopped at the light on Willow Lane and tapped her fingernail against the steering wheel. Then she smacked her forehead. He’s a single dad! Divorced. That’s it.

      The light changed.

      His wife probably left him because he clearly doesn’t like dogs, not to mention that he’s a snarling grouch. What kind of person doesn’t like dogs? Sarah chewed her lip and watched the light turn green. She depressed the gas pedal. Certainly not any kind of person I would want to know.

      As she made her way through town, she looked up at the flowering white almond trees lining both sides of Main Street and thought of her mother.

      It was impossible for any of the townsfolk not to think of Ann Marie Jensen when they looked at the beautification projects around Indian Lake. In the past twenty-five years, Ann Marie had been almost solely responsible for the changes that gave Indian Lake its charming, nearly enchanting present look. She’d spent twenty years as a member of the Zoning and Planning Commission, during which time she’d instituted the Downtown Beautification Committee. In the early 1980s, the nostalgia for the forties and fifties that had accompanied the soda fountains, drive-in root beer stands, bike shops, record stores where customers listened to their 45s before they bought them, knitting shops and ladies’ glove shops had died. Factory jobs moved overseas, and Indian Lake manufacturing companies shut down. Younger people moved away. Neglect and disuse settled in. The town looked sad, lonely and unwanted, which it was.

      Then Ann Marie moved to town, the new bride of Paul Jensen. She was more than a spark of creativity and new life. She was the firestorm Indian Lake needed to ignite the enthusiasm the town fathers had lost and nearly forgotten. She prodded, cajoled and reasoned with politicians and officials until she got the green light she wanted on whichever beautification project she felt the town could not last another day without. “No” was a concept she did not understand. Rarely did Ann Marie reject anyone or any request made of her. She worked long hours—too long, in many cases—for her town and her church. She loved both with all her being.

      Ultimately, Sarah believed, her mother’s passion for Indian Lake led to her death.

      Ann Marie was so used to working hard and sustaining her energy over long periods of time that she seldom slept. The doctors said her lack of rest led to a suppressed immune system. It was Sarah’s belief that the decades of putting her family and community ahead of her own health contributed to the cancer that took her life.

      Sarah glanced over at the new bay window on Bechinski’s Pharmacy, another of her mother’s creative suggestions to one of the town retailers. The storefront, with its new, red, wooden door, floated in front of her on a sea of tears.

      Exhaling the lump in her throat, she wiped her cheeks.

      “Looks great,” she said aloud and gave a little wave.

      Everything along Main Street looked amazing, thanks to Ann Marie.

      One of the reasons tourists flooded to the area in summer and on warm, golden autumn weekends was that time seemed to stand still in Indian Lake. Down Maple Avenue, where Sarah lived, people still sat in wicker rocking chairs on the front porches of their elegant Victorian and Edwardian-style homes in the summer and waved to people as they drove or walked past. They took time to speak to their neighbors as they went in and out of their homes in the winter. They shoveled each other’s walks, and they brought a fresh-baked pie when someone died. They cut flowers out of their gardens for each other when news of an illness traveled through the neighborhood grapevine—which was usually perpetuated by Helen Knowland or, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Beabots. Indian Lake was a place where people cared about each other. Sometimes, that caring morphed into being a busybody, but such extravagances of eccentricity were forgiven by the locals. Outsiders or those new to the area didn’t understand. They never would, either. That was why they remained outsiders. It took heart to be a part of Indian Lake, and a great deal of courage, determination and persistence. Sarah knew her mother was Indian Lake at its best.

      * * *

      SARAH PARKED HER car in her assigned space, gathered her portfolio and purse and exited the car. She went around to the front of the building and entered through the double glass doors.

      Just walking into the reception area of Environ-Tech Design still gave her chills of pride after almost two years. Charmaine Chalmers had carefully laid out the space with the expertise of one of the most illustrious Black Hat Feng Shui Masters in Chicago. The serenity and peace that clients felt walking in the doors was planned, purposeful and dramatic. It was a breath of urban class in a small town, and Sarah loved it. The walls were painted a burned taupe with glistening white crown molding and trim. The floor was bamboo hardwood covered with ancient Persian rugs in muted browns, reds and golds that looked as if they had been dragged through the Sahara to gain their patina. Tall African jars held white bird-of-paradise stalks that Sarah knew attracted aphids like crazy, but Charmaine spritzed the leaves with soapy water and wiped them down one by one on Saturday nights when she had nowhere else to go.

      The conversation area was centered with an ink-black mahogany coffee table that glistened like glass and had never once been allowed to display the first fingerprint or speck of dust. The front-desk receptionist, Lou Ann Hamilton, made certain that Charmaine’s specially manufactured and painstakingly imported Samoan table was pristine at all times.

      The Asian-inspired seating was actually Italian in design and constructed south of Milan, but no one in the office was allowed to give out the name of Charmaine’s highly talented, grossly underpaid furniture designer. Charles Vesa was fifty years old, divorced, and other than when he wandered into the Environ-Tech offices unannounced with rolls of design paper under his arm, few people ever saw the man. When Charles showed up, Charmaine always dropped everything she was doing, sat in her conference room and studied his drawings as if they were bits of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

      Sarah went into her cubby-hole-size office, which was only slightly larger than the other offices up and down the hallway. The building, built before the First World War, still had interior doors with walnut bottoms and frosted, “pebbled” glass on the upper half of the door. No one could see in or out. It seemed rather odd to Sarah that, despite Charmaine’s intense desire to create a Feng Shui atmosphere in the front of the office and the conference room, the rest of the building felt like the back rooms of an old county recorder’s office. The offices were certainly not conducive to creative thought.

      Sarah went to her frosted, double-hung window and lifted the sash. A warm, fresh breeze with a hint of lilacs drifted past the sill. She inhaled deeply and sighed.

      Just then, her phone rang. She looked at the blinking light. It was Lou Ann at the front desk.

      “This is Sarah.”

      “Charmaine wants to see you in the conference room. Do you want some coffee?” Lou Ann asked sweetly, with a hint of the Southern accent she’d brought with her when she and her husband moved here from Tennessee.

      “Sounds lovely,” Sarah replied. “I’ll be there.”

      Sarah hung up, looked down at her portfolio and crossed her fingers for luck. Mom, I know you’re up there pulling for me. You, too, Daddy. If this goes right today, I could finally get a promotion.

      She looked around her office and grimaced. Okay. That’s not likely. But, she thought, sticking her finger in the air with a bit of anticipation, landing the client myself would be a huge feather in my cap.

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