Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,28
but you’ll be surprised what a receptionist-slash-bookkeeper does around here.”
Carla’s wry grin worried Daria a little, but she chose not to ask her coworker to elaborate. She supposed she’d find out soon enough.
“You haven’t met Travis yet, have you?”
Daria shook her head.
“You’ll like him, too. He’s very patient, like Cole. They never try to pull the ‘we’re the big bad doctors and you’re the lowly peons who work for us’ routine. Even though we are the lowly peons who work for them.” She laughed.
While Daria finished her sandwich, Carla filled her in on the office politics and small-town gossip. Their lunch was interrupted several times by customers calling to make appointments or coming in to buy supplies.
The day flew by and then the week, and before she knew it, she had settled into a comfortable routine. Because her off-duty hours were taken up with caring for her daughter, the clinic was really Daria’s only social life. She and Natalie attended worship services with her parents each Sunday morning, but she’d felt so uncomfortable the one time she’d attended the singles’ class there that she’d never gone back. Yet she couldn’t have chosen better friends than her coworkers at the clinic. She genuinely liked everyone she worked with, and there was an easy rapport among the staff. Day by day, she was feeling more confident in performing her duties—even when they sometimes included very un-receptionist-like tasks.
Natalie was growing like a Kansas sunflower and seemed to be thriving under her Grandmother Haydon’s care. Daria’s parents had adjusted to her and Natalie moving out. She even thought they were secretly happy to have their house back to themselves. Her mother helped her sew new curtains for the apartment—no small feat since there were fourteen large windows to cover. Together they also sewed slipcovers and plump pillows for an old sofa her brother had found at a garage sale. Between her family’s generosity, flea-market finds, and several castoffs on loan from the Janeks’ attic, she managed to assemble a cozy mishmash of furniture and dishes. In no time, the apartment had become a warm haven to come home to each evening. The ache of loneliness was abating and, though Nate still seemed very real to her in many ways, Bristol was slowly becoming her world, her reality. There were times when it seemed as though her life with Nathan in Colombia had been nothing more than a pleasant dream.
Seven
As Daria pulled into the driveway one sweltering June evening after an especially exhausting day at the clinic, she spotted her elderly landlady waving from the garden behind the house.
“Yoo-hoo! Daria!”
Daria cut the engine and removed the keys from the Toyota her father had found for her at auction. Going around to the passenger door, she released Natalie’s seat belt. Then scooping the little girl up from the car seat with one arm, she returned Dorothy Janek’s greeting.
“Can you smile for Dorothy?” she asked Natalie. “Come on, give us a smile.” Smiling was a recently learned social skill, but one that she didn’t always perform on demand.
Dorothy brushed the garden dirt from her hands and bustled over to the car. “Why don’t you have supper with us tonight, sweetheart? I’ve made a pot roast that is more than Kirk and I can ever eat ourselves.”
Supper had become a frequent invitation and one that Daria usually accepted with deep gratitude and more than a little guilt.
“Are you sure, Dorothy? You just fed us Monday night—”
“Oh, nonsense,” Dorothy argued. “You work all day. You don’t want to come home and cook every night too, now do you?”
“You’ve got a point there,” Daria told her, smiling. “Thank you, Dorothy. We’d love to. Wouldn’t we, Natalie?”
The little girl rewarded them with a wide, toothless grin and a vigorous kicking of her pudgy feet.
Dorothy laughed and clapped her hands together, delighted.
With Kirk and Dorothy Janek living right below her, Daria felt completely safe in her little apartment. The elderly couple had adopted her and Natalie as family, and they were as proud of Natalie’s latest accomplishment as any grandparents would be.
“Come down around six and help me set the table,” Dorothy’s voice brought her out of her reverie.
Daria gave her landlady a quick hug, sandwiching Natalie between them. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Ah, you’d get along just fine and dandy! But since you do have me, you may as well take advantage of me,” the old woman added with a twinkle in her eye.