Page 29 of His Best Friend's Baby

“You shouldn’t break into people’s houses. Now, you can either go or you can give me a hand out back.” He hit the aluminum door and stepped out into the bright sunlight.

Just go, he thought. Just head on back to Mac and Rachel and leave me alone.

But the girl was right behind him, talking about slave labor and minimum wage. He couldn’t deny it—part of him was more than a little happy.

ADMITTEDLY, Julia’s plan to find work had not been carefully thought out. It was day three of her job search. The first day she’d walked down Main Street looking for Help Wanted signs in the business windows. There weren’t any so she’d grabbed New Springs’ weekly newspaper and yesterday she’d filled out applications at the hair salon and movie theater.

But today she had a new idea. Instead of getting whatever job was available she was going to find the job she wanted.

She had an idea of what that job was. She’d carried the fledgling dream around from base to base since she was a little girl. But how to take that idea and turn it into a career—well, she was more than a little clueless.

“Hi,” she murmured aloud. “I’d like a job planting flowers. Oh, and can you pay me lots of money for that? Oh, and did I mention I don’t have a college degree and I barely passed the GED?”

“Mama?” Ben tried to turn around in his stroller, no doubt trying to see whom his crazy mother was talking to.

“Boo!” she said with a big smile and that started him on a long laughing, babbling monologue.

First, she would try the grocery store, to see if they had a horticulture department. If that didn’t work, she could expand her search.

The sun warmed the top of her head, and her legs stretched and ate up the concrete. It felt good to move, to be going somewhere with, if not a plan, at least an idea.

And the yards in this neighborhood were fantastic, like works of art! These people had some cash and didn’t mind spending it on plants and flowers. Purple and gold and pink lupine was everywhere, as was the ubiquitous eucalyptus. She stopped and stroked the silvery leaf of a plant she didn’t know and accidentally kicked over a small lawn sign. She righted it, sticking its metal poles back beside the hosta and the mystery plant.

Holmes Landscaping, it read.

Julia had that breathless, shaky feeling that accompanied her belief in anything Mitch said was too good to be true.

Don’t count your chickens, she warned herself.

But she picked up the pace to the grocery store. Once there she skipped the bulletin board and went right to the white pages attached to the pay phone out front.

Holmes Landscaping was located on the highway, close to the Motel 6 where she’d stayed in for all of five hours.

She bought her son some grapes and a bottle of water and thanked her lucky stars that she’d put on her walking shoes this morning.

She headed out toward the highway with her hopes high. She’d love to work with plants all day. Maybe once she’d brushed up on her knowledge she could help customers design their flowerbeds. She had a little artistic flair and getting to use it in her job seemed like a dream.

But her hopes and dreams were smashed under the heavy work boots of Virginia Holmes.

“We’re not hiring,” Virginia, the sixty-year-old owner who sported glasses and spinach in her teeth, growled at her. The faded green shirt stretched across her broad back and shoulders as she picked up a bag of topsoil from the skid as if it were a bag of feathers and added it to the stack under the sale sign.

Julia shaded her eyes from the bright sun.

“I understand, but—”

“Well, clearly you don’t—” Virginia turned, the sun hitting the edge of her glasses giving her glum expression a wicked glare “—or else you’d be leaving me alone, so I could get my work done.”

“I understand you’re not hiring for a cashier position, but I don’t want a cashier position.”

“Well, you look too white and too small for anything else.”

Julia had no idea what to say. Was that a racist comment? Did the woman hire only Mexicans? Virginia Holmes was not the kindly, benevolent job-giver Julia had been expecting on the long walk out here.

“You’re white,” she ended up saying.

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