Mom Over Miami Part 22

She leaned over the white wooden railing to peer down the narrow shady sidewalk. Left. Right. All clear.

"Better get this over with," she whispered. One last scan of the lifeless street and she made her move.

"Hey, neighbor!" The front door of the house across the street thumped shut and a woman in a pale pink jogging suit shot down into her yard, heading straight for Hannah.

"Oh, hi, Lol..." She stopped herself just short of shouting out what Payt called the woman-Lollie, as in Lollie Mulldoon, Wileyville's biggest gossip. The nickname didn't even fit, really. Their bright, energetic neighbor fell more under the heading of aggressively helpful busybody than gossip. Hannah had pointed that out to Payt, who quickly pointed out right back that the only body their Lollie-wannabe continually tried to keep busy was Hannah's-by feeling compelled to give her suggestions for the column.

Grrr. She really hated it when he made a point she couldn't refute with logic or joke her way out of.

But he was right. The woman considered herself Hannah's own Nacho Mama muse, and Hannah felt helpless to do anything about it. She had to see the lady every day, after all.

In fact, she was seeing her right now-only, instead of looking at her, she was staring like a deer in the headlights!

Wave, she commanded her arm.

Smile. Her lips obliged her request.

And, feet? First chance you get-run for it.

"Hi!" For the life of her, she suddenly couldn't recall the woman's real name.

"Nice day." Her pristine athletic shoes. .h.i.t the street and didn't stop until they'd carried the woman so close, she propped her arm up on Hannah's mailbox.

"Uh-huh." She couldn't stop grinning. Not when she popped open her mailbox, not when she lunged blindly with one hand in to try to retrieve her mail. Not even when she realized that the mailman had wedged something in there so tight that it wasn't going anywhere without a fight.

"How's the writing coming along?"

Hannah tried not to sound panicked as she tugged on a large padded envelope. "Oh, you know, like all work, good days and bad."

"Work? That's so sweet that you call it work."

Hannah froze, elbow-deep in the mailbox. "It is work."

"Oh, I didn't mean that as an insult. I just meant..." She looked away a moment.

Hannah considered propping her foot against the post and using the leverage to extricate the envelope-and herself.

Too late. The woman whipped her head around like one of those defense attorneys in old movies who lulled witnesses into a false sense of security just before they homed in for the kill. "Well, an itty-bitty newspaper column in your hometown newspaper-it's more like writing a letter home than creating literature, isn't it?"

"Well..." Hannah straightened the robe's lapels but didn't argue.

"And I think that's just wonderful!"

She relaxed a bit. "Me, too."

"So cozy and homey." Lollie-lite slipped her hands into the pockets of her jogging jacket. "And so easy."

Yeah, you try it. "I'm sure it seems that way."

"Practically writes itself, doesn't it?" She didn't give Hannah time to answer. Just pulled her hand from her pocket with a flourish and produced a piece of paper. "My sister just told me the cutest story about my nephew. I wrote it down for you. I'm sure she wouldn't mind you sharing it with your readers if you need some inspiration."

"Oh, if I ever get stuck." That was not a lie. She didn't promise anything. In fact she hadn't actually formed a proper sentence.

The neighbor tucked the story into Payt's robe pocket. She must not have made contact with the baby-drool dog toy, because she never flinched, just enthused, "Fabulous."

Backtrack. Confess. She was never, ever going to want to hear, much less use, the precious story about her neighbor's nephew.

"But if you don't need it, don't worry."

Reprieve.

"I have plenty more stories where that one came from."

"Oh. You...uh...you never have read my column, have you?"

"Oh, no, dear. But I know all about those silly women columns. Look at me, I'm so nutty, my family's so nutty." She lifted her hands and waved them around as she spoke.

"I've never called my family nutty." At least not in the newspaper.

"Oh, honey, it's all right. I know you make most of that stuff up. It's good publicity."

"I certainly don't write to draw attention to myself." She tugged her husband's robe closed over her clothes. "I write to communicate real problems of modern motherhood-silliness is not a part of it."

"Hannah, please don't misunderstand. Everyone needs a little silliness from time to time. I'm sure your stories make other mothers your age feel so much better about their lives."

Compared to the mess mine's in? Hannah kept her mouth shut and went in after the envelope. She yanked hard once and out it came, flinging the water and electric bills to the sidewalk along the way. Hannah kept her mouth shut and went in after the envelope. She yanked hard once and out it came, flinging the water and electric bills to the sidewalk along the way.

"If you'll excuse me, I have work to do. Serious work." She shook her hair back, smiled stiffly, then bent to pick up the scattered bills. Silly work? Silly, indeed! I'd like to show her my work so she could understand that I have things to say, like- Silly work? Silly, indeed! I'd like to show her my work so she could understand that I have things to say, like- Squawk! The sound from her pocket virtually echoed through the entire neighborhood. The sound from her pocket virtually echoed through the entire neighborhood.

Hannah went bolt upright. "Dog's squeak toy...in my pocket...forgot."

The lady nodded, slowly, her mouth set in a thin line.

Hannah took one backward step, waved with the envelopes then ran for the house.

She jabbed the doorbell and Sam came to her rescue as she stood there mocking her own pridefulness. "I don't think that's one bit silly. Oh, no, modern motherhood is serious business."

"What?" Sam slid to the floor and picked up his picture-book Bible. He pulled it into his lap even as he poked his leg out to jiggle the laundry basket where Tessa lay worrying the teething ring.

"It's not important, Sam."

He turned to the page about the visitors who followed the star to the stable.

"But this is." She raised the bulky padded packet. "Look, I got paid!"

"Wow, you must make a ton of money!"

She laughed, her humiliation forgotten. "It's not all money, kiddo. They save up the reader mail and send it with any other information they want me to have and my check."

"You get fan mail?"

"Oh, no." Fan mail? Her? The very thought of having fans felt far too self-important. "Reader mail. People write to ask me questions or just to say h.e.l.lo."

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Remember, my column just runs in my hometown newspaper."

"'Cause you grew up all in the same place and everybody knows you."

Such a simple statement but the wistful longing in his tone went straight through her. Despite the progress they had made, Sam still carried a vulnerability that she readily recognized.

She brushed his cheek with her hand. "Why don't you call one of your soccer buds and see if he wants to go out for pizza with us tonight?"

"Really?"

"Sure. The team directory is on my desk. I was entering some e-mail addresses into my computer. You can use the phone in there."

She hadn't finished the last sentence before he'd shot off toward her tiny home office s.p.a.ce.

"Okay, Tessa." She pulled the baby up into her lap. The child nuzzled close and exhaled, and Hannah could feel some of the tension leave her tiny body. She kissed the bright red hair. "If only all the problems you kids will ever have could be solved by pizza and hugs, sweetie. Now, let's you and me read these letters."

She tore into the package and dumped the contents beside her on the couch.

"Check." She held it up. "Hmm, maybe your daddy will pitch in on the pizza."

Tessa grabbed for the computer-generated payment.

Hannah whisked it away, sending a note sailing into her lap. Another reminder from her editor that she really should set up a Nacho Mama Web page.

"Yeah right. Open myself up to a whole World Wide Web of people happy to point out my failings? No thank you."

She stifled a s.h.i.+ver and set the note on the coffee table, then fixed her attention on the envelopes in the pile.

Five. Not bad. Her first week she'd gotten ten, the record. But some of those were e-mails the paper had kindly printed out for her. Four were old friends catching up. One had been a scolding from her seventh-grade English teacher for playing fast and loose with good old-fas.h.i.+oned grammar. After that it had fallen off to two or three a week, mostly kind comments on this or that, the occasional correction and questions that ranged from wanting information on adopting an ex-racing greyhound like Squirrelly Girl to requests to know "Where do you get those really big cans of cheese?"

Reader mail day was often the highlight of Hannah's week. She snuggled down deeper into the cozy cus.h.i.+ons of the still-new couch and opened the first letter and then the next and the next. Two notes of encouragement and a high school student doing a project who wondered if Hannah might answer some questions on how she got started.

"I don't think her teacher will like my answer to that much, will she, Tessa? How did you get started in journalism? Answer-against my will." Hannah tucked the pages back inside the proper envelopes and set them aside to answer later.

"This one looks official." She held up the only legal-size envelope in the bunch and tried to remember where she had seen the logo before.

"'The Faith-Filled Home,'" she read from the letterhead inside. "Oh, yeah. I've seen their magazine in the church office."

A subscription sales pitch probably. She read on. "Not that I have time to read for pleasure these-"

Not an offer to read, an offer to write write. "We have read the columns in your local paper with interest, and would be open to future submissions of new material for possible use in our magazine."

Hannah showed the paper to her daughter, careful to keep it just out of reach of those sticky fingers. "My editor at the paper is a friend of the editor of the magazine and sent some of my stuff over, and looks like they are 'open' to me submitting to them. I wonder what that means in editor-ese?"

Tessa rolled off Hannah's lap and onto the couch, crawled to the back and started to pull herself up.

"Open? As in 'We get so much of this stuff, another few won't matter'? Or 'open,' as in 'I saw something of worth in this stuff and wouldn't mind seeing what more you can do'?"

The baby bounced at the knees a few times, clutching the back of the couch, like a rock climber about to make her ascent.

"The second. Definitely the second. I mean, if I have to choose...I choose the second option. Your daddy says for me to listen to the way I talk about myself, and he's right. I am saying here and now that I can do this. I can produce something worthy of national publication."

Her heart rate did a dance. Her throat went dry. "Listen to me! Did you hear that? I actually admitted I could do this."

If...

Her eye fell on the single, pulse-stopping word on the page in her hand.

She drew a deep breath and made herself go silently over the proviso. "Needs polish...writing lacks focus...humor not enough to interest our readers...used as teaching tool...draw some pertinent spiritual lessons from your essays on daily life for our readers."

Tessa sank slowly to sit on the couch. She grabbed the teething ring from Hannah's lap and her mouth worked furiously on it for a few seconds before she batted the thing away.

Hannah held her breath, willing the child not to yowl out her frustration. "I won't if you won't."

Tessa stretched, poked one tiny fist into the air, found a comfy position and relaxed into a chubby little ball in the crevice of couch cus.h.i.+ons.

Hannah could not let go of her discomfort so easily. Probably, she reasoned, because it sprang from the deep, dark truth she knew about herself.

As a writer, she stank.

Or was that stunk stunk? See? She didn't even know the right word for sure.

The paper crackled in her hand.

"Still." She chewed her lower lip. If she wanted to become a better writer, she needed experience and guidance. If she did accept the offer to try her hand at freelancing for a national magazine, she'd get both.

"Imagine that, sweetie." She kissed her baby's forehead. "Mommy has a chance to not stink. Do you suppose that's possible?"

She kissed the child again, took a tiny sniff to make sure Tessa could make that same bold "not stinking" claim, then paper-clipped the offer to her check so she could consider it in depth later.

"Okay, one last reader letter, then I have to get with it. I still have to try to get a hold of your daddy and make plans for pizza tonight."

She lifted the final envelope. It was pale blue and squarish, like it might contain one of those artsy cards with a postage-stamp-size black-and-white photo in the center. The kind of thing someone would go to a card shop and comb through the displays to find just the right one.

Hannah smiled at the thought of anyone going to such trouble for her. In fact, she still marveled that people took the time and effort to write her at all. She found it sweet and humbling and a little bit exhilarating all at once.

Letters-in a day and age when people just didn't take the time and trouble. She flipped the blue envelope over to see if she recognized the name on the return address, but there was none.

"Hmm." She slid her finger under the flap. "Ouch!"

Instinctively she shook her hand until the tiny sting subsided. She glanced at the inside of her knuckle, then heavenward with a smile. "Is this is your way of making sure I stay humble while reading fan mail, Lord?"

She laughed, not because she found any great wit in herself but because she felt a great contentment. Her children were healthy. Her son was making important strides in his spiritual growth. By her work and talent she had brought in enough money to provide her family with a special treat, and somebody thought she had the potential to be a decent writer.