Goose in the Pond by Earlene Fowler Page A

of expertise and was something that, like it or not, Gabe was going to have to deal with. I gestured down the hallway. “The guest room is on the right. You can put your stuff in there. Feel free to eat whatever you like. I’ll pick up some groceries after my meeting. Like I said, I don’t know when Gabe’s going to be home, and he won’t be in the best mood when he does.”
    “Worry not, madrastra . I can handle my dad.” He flopped down on Gabe’s new cordovan leather recliner, pushed himself all the way back, and crossed his feet. He wore faded blue Vans with no socks. “Don’t forget, I’ve had a lot more practice than you.” He grinned up at me.
    I smiled back. Madrastra —stepmom. Elvia’s youngest brother, Ramon, called her that whenever she tried to mother him. A term of endearment if said in the right way. It didn’t take long for this kid to winnow his way into a person’s heart. I could only hope his irrepressible charm and the love I knew Gabe felt for him would outweigh his transgressions.
    “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, then,” I said.
    “I’ll hold down the fort,” he called back, his voice as confident and easy as if he’d known me forever.
    Five vehicles were in the museum’s gravel parking lot when I arrived. That meant almost everyone was there. I sat in my truck for a moment and swept my eyes over the museum’s buildings. They looked spit and polished and ready for a party. The terra-cotta roof of the two-story Spanish hacienda looked especially nice since we’d cleaned all the tiles and replaced the broken ones. The bougainvillea bush hugging the top of the long wooden porch bloomed in a fiery spray of red-and-orange leaves. Thanks to a group cleanup day, there wasn’t a shrub or bush untrimmed or a wilted petal in any of the oak-barrel planters filled with wildflowers. I reminded myself to buy film for the museum’s camera and take a picture of the buildings while they were looking so great. These days, I was feeling pretty smug because I’d finally found an assistant who could keep the museum grounds looking this perfect even if acquiring him had been none of my doing. He had been recommended to me by one of our quilters, Evangeline Boudreaux.
    “D-Daddy might well be seventy, but he can outwork you and me, yes, ma’am,” she’d told me about her father in her French-tinged south-Louisiana accent. “And he sure could use someplace to go every day.”
    “D-Daddy?” I said, laughing. “Is that his real name?”
    “Oh, his given name is Michel, but everyone’s called him D-Daddy for as long as I can remember. He’s one tough old rooster and a real hard worker. He’ll be fixing stuff before you even knew you wanted it fixed.”
    So three months ago, her father, D-Daddy Boudreaux, started his second career as my new assistant, and the museum and I were both the winners. No equipment ever stayed broken longer than a day, and except for the heavy lifting, which the men in the co-op took over, D-Daddy ran the museum with the no-nonsense vigor of someone who’ d commanded a commercial fishing boat for thirty-nine years. I always teased him that he was after my job.
    “Now, now,” he’d say, shaking his favorite Sears Craftsman hammer at me. “Don’t nobody can take your place, no. You just go on now and take care them artists. Let D-Daddy do what he do best.”
    As I stepped up on the porch D-Daddy came out of the museum’s double Spanish doors. He ran his palm carefully over his thick white wavy hair. That hair, according to Evangeline, was his one area of pure vanity.
    “He spends more money on hair products than Dolly Parton,” she said, poking absently at her own wavy black hair.
    D-Daddy’s dark eyes widened with pleasure when he saw me. “ Ange! ” he said. “ Comment ça va? A tragedy, no? Nora was such a sweet girl.”
    “I’m fine, D-Daddy,” I said, smiling at the nickname he gave me the first time we met—angel. He’d said my hazel eyes