We Find What Is Lost: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Rachel, Spring, 1979

The gazebo may have been a pleasant place to have tea in the summer, when the roof provided welcome shade and cross breezes gave relief from the heat, but in the spring it was less so. The temperature hadn't risen enough to make sitting outside bearable for long.

"The tea will warm us up," Mrs. Anderson always insisted, but she always wore an overcoat, while Rachel had to make do with whatever jacket hadn't fallen apart over the winter, with sweaters layered underneath. She felt wet wood beneath her bum.

Rachel didn't know why Mrs. Anderson always insisted on tea in the gazebo as soon as the snow had melted. They could just as well have had it inside. They didn't even have to have tea, although Mrs. Anderson would never serve her pop as she preferred. "Rots your teeth and ruins your complexion," she always said. Rachel rarely had pop, but her complexion wasn't benefiting from her enforced healthy lifestyle. She'd gotten her first pimple in January, and they'd made their home ever since.

"Do you scrub your face morning and night with a wet washcloth?" Mrs. Anderson asked.

"Sometimes," she muttered.

"That's how you clean the pores out so they don't get clogged and cause acne."

This, along with the hair brushing (it had grown back and gotten tangly again) was a constant refrain in their song and dance around womanhood. It wasn't that she didn't want to do these things, it was just that she got distracted by more important things, like school work, the paper route, and club business (regrettably, not much of that.)

Mr. DiTomaso was helping in the garden today. Rachel suspected this was the reason Mrs. Anderson wanted to be in the gazebo, to supervise his work.

He was a big man with a luxuriant moustache, wearing a flat cap over his wavy brown hair, and green coveralls that he probably wore at the mill, as she could see bits of sawdust clinging here and there on a sleeve or a pant leg. He was trimming hedges on the west side of the property, and Mrs. Anderson watched him when he wasn't looking. 

Rachel wondered if the older woman had more than a horticultural interest in watching the younger Mr. DiTomaso work. Rachel had become adept in detecting interest between two people, feeling it like a crackling in the air, an electricity that raised the little hairs just now growing on her arms. When Lauren had first confessed her interest in Joe to her, Rachel had begun observing how Lauren behaved around him and, using that as a control, started looking for the same behaviour in other men and women.

"So, how is your paper route going?" Mrs. Anderson asked.

"Okay. The going was a bit rough in the winter. Lauren and I had some trouble pushing our cart through the snow. Sometimes my dad or Mr. or Mrs. Hasegawa had to help out."

Mrs. Anderson took a sip of her tea, eyeing her over her cup. "Do you think it worth your time?"

Rachel blinked in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"It would be rude of me to ask you how much money you make delivering papers," she explained, although Rachel would have had no problem telling her, "but when you consider how many hours you put in, and how hard you work, and compare that to how much you make, would you say it's good recompense for your efforts?"

Rachel didn't know what she was getting at. How did you calculate the proper worth of a child's time when their days were filled with nothing but time? She shrugged. "I like it. I make some pocket money that I don't have to ask my dad for, and I'm getting too old to just play all the time."

Mrs. Anderson nodded sadly. "And Lauren? She likes it too?"

"Yes. And Al and Sunny like their route too. Since we all work at the same time, we're not missing out on any leisure time together."