“It’s Tara. Tara Frasier. I …”
“Spell it please.”
“F-r-a-s-i-e-r,” she responded. “Mrs. Calloway—”
“It’s Miss, but you can call me Carla,” she said without looking up. “Experience?”
“I don’t have any, but I really like animals, and I know I could do the work.”
“How do you know?” Carla demanded. She knew she sounded hard—angry even. But it was the memory, that memory that had nagged her for all those years. Why did it come back to slap her in the face just because a young woman happened to look like her? Thinking quickly of her own life, Carla wondered what she had hoped to accomplish by coming back here? “If you have no experience you have no idea whether you can do the job or not!”
The girl seemed stunned. Then with a little lift of her chin, she said, “You could at least let me try.” The brown eyes darkened. The girl was angry too, or determined. A lot like … Suddenly Carla was sixteen again, and she was with Corky. They were sunning on the beach at Butler Point, the boom box turned up high while they swayed dreamily in their bikinis.
“You can call me Corky if you want to. And you’ll be Carlotta,” Corky had said. “Wasn’t she some hoity-toity princess or something?”
“I’m not a hoity-toity princess. Take that back!” Carla had retorted.
Then the memory shifted, and they were walking to the wharf, hoping to be noticed by the lobstermen on the dock who hauled in their catch with brown, muscled arms. Climbing up to the top of the point, they pretended they could fly. Later they would stop by Mrs. Holden’s house on the hill for lemonade and homemade cookies. But the summer would end, and knowing it, the pair linked arms fiercely, trying to squeeze the last ounce of adventure before they went back to their boring lives.
“We’ll be going home tomorrow. They never go to the same resort twice! What if we never see each other again?” Carla had asked.
Now Carla could almost feel the hot sun on her face, the smooth young arm linked in hers as they walked past Butler’s Lighthouse.
“I won’t forget,” Corky had mumbled.
“Give me one of your curls,” Carla had begged.
Corky had allowed her to snip one of her kinky curls with the tiny manicure scissors from her beach bag.
“I’ll keep it always!” she had told her friend.
At first, Corky had rolled her eyes, and said, “You’re crazy, Carlotta!” But then her dark eyes had misted over, and she had kicked hard at a stone in their path.
“I mean it. I’ll never forget …”
Tara’s repeated plea jerked Carla back to the present. “Won’t you at least let me try?”
Carla dropped her pencil onto the blank page and regained her composure.
“Look, it’s more than taking care of animals. What I really need is someone to help with all this paperwork.” She swept her arms over the sea of white in front of her. “And I need someone who can operate this blamed computer, to get word out about animals that need homes. Unless you can …”
“I can,” Tara said, interrupting. “I can do that, and I know a lot about advertising. I used to work for a sign company.”
Carla faced the young woman across from her, and took in the wild mass of curls and the eyes filled with determination or hope or something else. Her finely etched lips tightened as their gaze held. Whoever she was she had touched some deep place inside Carla, a place that hurt more than her wounded arm.
“Pay is ten dollars an hour, but I can only afford half days.”
“That’s OK. I’ll—”
“I expect you to earn every dime.” Carla stood abruptly. “Just because you’re friends with that society needlewoman …” she paused, not knowing how to phrase her thoughts. “I’ll accept their charity for the animals’ sake, but I don’t kowtow to anybody.”
She sounded like a shrew even to herself. What must this girl be thinking? Perhaps she would simply bolt out the door and never come back.
“We’ll be best friends forever and ever, won’t we?” Carla—or Carlotta as Corky called her—slipped the expensive gold ring she’d been given on her fourteenth birthday onto the thin, tanned finger of her friend. Best friends forever! Her heart was big enough to explode. In a few days she would have to go back—back to the endless parties and socials, the stiff regimen of private tutoring, the emptiness of her heart. And her best friend would go back home too. They’d be separated by so many miles—it might as well be oceans.
“Best friends forever!” she whispered as she twirled the handmade bead ring Corky had given her in exchange around her finger.