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Taking Back Mary Ellen Black

Starring

Mary Ellen Black…in the role of a spunky single mom determined to reclaim her identity after losing it (and everything else) in her recent divorce

Supporting characters

Jenna O’Brien…in the recurring role of brutally honest best friend

Amber Nowicki…as Mary Ellen’s preteen daughter who’s just beginning to understand what it means to have an identity

Shelby Nowicki…as Amber’s pesky, attention-grabbing younger sister

Frank Black…as Daddy, Mary Ellen’s first and most enduring love

Grandma Czerwinski…as a woman, wise despite her years

Mrs. Jacques…as friend, neighbor, cheerleader and benefactor

Nonsupporting characters

Eddie Nowicki…as a man whose broken dreams break him financially and emotionally

Louise Black…as Mary Ellen’s hypercritical mother who is threatened by her daughter’s strength and determination

Special guest star

Ryan “Rye” O’Brien…as the young, studly love interest

Lisa Childs

“Ms. Childs keeps her readers glued to the page with a potent combination of romance, humor and suspense.”

—Escape to Romance

Award-winning author Lisa Childs has been writing since she could first form sentences. She grew up not far from the west side of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was her dress rehearsal for creating Mary Ellen. At eleven she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. Now, with a wonderful husband and two young daughters, she is a veteran player in the trials, tribulations and joys of motherhood and marriage.

Readers can write to Lisa at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435 or visit her at her Web site, www.lisachilds.com.

Taking Back Mary Ellen Black
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With special thanks to my editor, Stacy Boyd,

for your help and support with all my books

but most especially for understanding how important

Mary Ellen is to me!

And for three of the strongest women I know, love

and admire—my sisters, Helen, Phyllis and Jackie.

With extra thanks to Jackie for providing the

mortgage brokerage information.

Contents

CHAPTER D: DAY Divorce

CHAPTER E: Employment

CHAPTER F: Friendship

CHAPTER G: The Girls

CHAPTER H: Happiness

CHAPTER I: Initiation

CHAPTER J: Jackasses (apparently not all men are)

CHAPTER K: Kids

CHAPTER L: Leave it alone

CHAPTER M: Meeting Rye

CHAPTER N: New housing & a New Eddie

CHAPTER O: Occasions

CHAPTER P: Paint Stains & Pestilence

CHAPTER Q: Quitting Time

CHAPTER R: Revelations

CHAPTER S: School

CHAPTER T: Tests & Threes

CHAPTER U: Under the Knife

CHAPTER V: Venting

CHAPTER W: Wedding

CHAPTER D - DAY
Divorce

Usually, the A, B, Cs start it all, the beginning of the alphabet, of words, sounds, books. In this case, the first chapter of my life will start with D, for divorce, which, in some ways, is really when my life began—when I first took back Mary Ellen Black.

My husband, ex-husband as of today, hadn’t wanted her, hadn’t even bothered to turn up at the courthouse to contest my asking the judge for my name back, the name I’d been born with but couldn’t use again until I was told it was legal. Eddie hadn’t contested my full custody of the girls, either; he knew pushover Mary Ellen would let him see them whenever he wanted. But he hadn’t wanted, not since he’d walked out on us for the twenty-year-old waitress at the restaurant he owned—or barely owned. If what he’d convinced the Friend of the Court was true, the restaurant was losing so much money that he couldn’t pay child support.

And so I was stuck where I sat, in my grandmother’s car, in the alley behind my parents’ house in the old West Side Grand Rapids neighborhood where I’d grown up and where I’d had to return after the bank had foreclosed on my gorgeous six-year-old house in Cascade. The repo man had taken my SUV, so I had Grandma’s Bonneville to use since her cataracts prevented her from driving anymore. Of course, she could still keep track of ten bingo cards every Saturday morning at Saint Adalbert’s.

Sitting in the car behind my parents’ house wasn’t going to help me figure out how everything had gone so wrong. I knew that, but still I couldn’t summon the energy necessary to open the car door and crawl out. I’d done enough crawling when I’d begged Eddie to come back, to work things out, and then when I’d lost the house, I’d crawled home to Mom, Daddy and Grandma.

No, Mary Ellen Nowicki had done all the crawling; Mary Ellen Black was stronger than that. I didn’t know much else about her anymore, but I knew that. Yet still I slumped on the bench seat of Grandma’s old Bonneville. No wonder her blue-haired head didn’t show above the steering wheel. This seat was low, really low.

I glanced over the wheel and around the alley. No yard. Just the big, square two-story house where I’d grown up, the alley and the detached garage. Inside the dark shadows of the garage, the tip of a cigarette glowed. Dad had knocked off early from the butcher shop and was checking his oil. That’s what he told Mom he was doing when he was really out getting a smoke. Nobody checked his oil as often as Dad did.

If he wanted to talk to me, he would have stepped out. Despite living in the same house since the foreclosure on mine a few months ago, we’d managed pretty well to avoid each other. I was his little princess, and he had always sworn to protect me from all the bad things in the world. He couldn’t protect me from this. And that hurt him more than it did me. I had grown up; I was responsible for my own happiness or lack thereof.

I pushed away the fleeting thought of turning the key in the ignition and backing out of the alley. Three blocks farther down was a bar, a strip club now. I could get a drink there. The fact that I didn’t drink didn’t erase the temptation. Hell, maybe I could even get a job there. Divorce was the only successful diet I’d ever gone on. My clothes hung on me.

A glance in the rearview mirror revealed lank, brown hair and a washed-out face. Yeah, like I could get a job in a strip club. I probably wouldn’t make as much as I did waiting tables at the VFW, and the biggest tips the vets gave were quarters. That was the only job I’d been able to get since being out of the workforce so long, as a stay-at-home mom. Before dropping out of design school to marry Eddie, the only job I’d ever had was waiting tables. But the job at the VFW was only temporary while the regular waitress was healing from a broken hip.

With a heavy sigh, I threw open the creaky door. Dad couldn’t ignore that sound. Nothing moved in the garage but the glowing tip of the cigarette. “Daddy?”

He eased out of the shadows toward the gravel driveway. “Mary Ellen?” He never lifted his gaze from the tip of his contraband.

“Yeah, Dad.” It’s me. Look at me! But we weren’t that kind of family. We didn’t face our problems. We ignored them until they walked out on us. We both turned our heads, scanning the alley and the little ribbon of grass between the garage and the house. “So, Mom’s gone?” I asked.

“Yeah, she took the girls and her mother to the store. Thought you might want to be alone after…”

But I wasn’t alone, not if he would look at me and talk to me, really talk to me. But that wasn’t happening. And Mom, fearing that I might fall apart in front of my children, had taken them away. I wasn’t allowed to fall apart with anyone. I had to do it in private, crying into the lumpy mattress of the foldout bed of the couch in the den. Maybe I didn’t want to wait until I was alone in the dark to fall apart. Not that I wanted to fall apart. “That was nice of her,” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah, your mother’s really worried about you. So are the girls.”

They’d had to leave their home and their school. Next week they’d start at a new school where they knew only a handful of neighborhood kids they’d met over the summer. Their world had fallen apart, and they were scared that I couldn’t fix it. They weren’t the only ones.

“I’ll be fine, Daddy.” Maybe if I repeated the lie enough, I’d believe it, like I had believed Eddie and I had had the perfect marriage, the perfect life…until debt and infidelity had eaten it away.

“Yeah, you’ve always been a smart girl, Mary Ellen. A real smart girl.”

The laugh slipped out. Daddy was the only one who ever complimented me, but he didn’t have a clue. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I mean it, Mary.” I detected a slight slur and eased closer to him. Beer breath almost covered the scent of blood and garlic that clung to his clothes. So he still had another stash from Mom; I’d thought he’d given up drinking years ago. With his high blood pressure and his high cholesterol, cigarettes and alcohol weren’t just forbidden, they were suicidal. If only I’d had an ounce of my father’s strong, stubborn will…

“Got another one, Dad?”

“Smoke?”

Since my eyes were already tearing up, I doubt I could adopt that vice of his. And I’d die if my girls ever saw me smoking. “A beer.”

“You don’t drink.”

“I just started.”

He hesitated a moment before easing into the shadows of the garage. His beefy hand wrenched open the rusty door of an old refrigerator, and he snagged the last two cans clinging to the plastic rings of a six-pack. “You sure?”

I wasn’t sure about anything. “Is it cold?”

“Damn thing may be old, but this fridge could freeze a man’s—” His round face flushed. “Let’s just say it’s got a lot in common with your grandmother.”

Another laugh slipped out. Grandma Czerwinski was only cold to Daddy. She had never believed he was good enough for her daughter, her precious only child. And Daddy had been a hell-raiser in his day.

The cold can shocked me back to the important issues. I popped the top, breaking a nail. Icy foam fizzed over the rim and across my fingers. I slurped at it, ignoring the sour taste. How low had I sunk if I had to get drunk with my dad? Lower than the bench seat in Grandma’s old Bonneville.

Not an especially outgoing person, I’d only had one really good friend and a few friendly acquaintances when I’d married Eddie eleven years ago. The friend had hated Eddie and vice versa. And then I’d become too busy for the acquaintances and lost touch. I’d been a wife and mother, throwing myself into doing the roles until I performed them to perfection.

“So, did Morty the lawyer get you the money?” Dad asked after we’d slurped some more of our slushy beers.

Another laugh bubbled out, this one edging toward hysteria. “Money? What money?”

“The money, Mary. The child support and mortgage money that jerk owes you!” Getting Daddy worked up was never a good idea. Too much of the scrapper remained despite his gray hair and potbelly.

“There is no money, Daddy, nothing but a mountain of debt. Besides the house and the car, he’s on the verge of losing the restaurant, too.” And that would upset Eddie far more than losing me. He’d had to know his dreams were crashing down around him. Why not turn to his wife instead of some girl?

Dad slammed his fist down on the hood of his pickup truck, which he’d backed into the garage. “Son of a bitch!”

“Daddy—”

“I’ll get you some money, Mary Ellen. We’ll get your house back.”

I shook my head. “I can’t afford it. Not the taxes, not the utilities. It’s too much for me.”

“We got some money saved, your mother and I. I can borrow against this place. We’ll help you!”

I smiled over the oft-repeated offer. I knew he meant it; that he’d mortgage away his life in a minute if he thought he could get mine back for me. But he couldn’t. The house didn’t matter anymore. Sure, losing it hurt, but I’d grabbed a few more things, what I could fit in the trunk of Grandma’s car, and a Volkswagen would fit in that trunk. I had a twinge in my back from getting in an antique chest and a couple of oak end tables. I’d left the wedding portrait hanging on the wall, and the answering machine on the gleaming granite counter, the tape full of threats from creditors for Eddie to pay up.

I gulped a mouthful of frosty foam. “I’m better off without Eddie.” I’d been saying it for the last six months, but I think this was the first time I believed it, that I knew it. I would be better off without the lying, cheating snake. The man who’d left me for the twenty-year-old was not the man I’d married. Something or someone, maybe even me, had changed him over the years.

“I’m sorry, Mary Ellen.” The anger had left Daddy, and he sagged against the truck. His broad shoulders slumped, and his head bowed. “I shouldn’t have made the marriage happen…”

“I could have said no, Daddy. I could have raised Amber alone. I know Mom and Grandma and you were worried about what people would think, about the neighbors…” I glanced toward Mrs. Wieczorek’s house where curtains swished at a back window overlooking the alley.

“You think I care what people think?” He laughed. “I leave your mother and grandma to that craziness. I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to have what you wanted. I thought you wanted Eddie.”

So had I. I’d loved the man he’d been then. “What are you saying, Daddy?”

“He told you. I’m sure he told you. A man like him—he’d like throwing it in your face—”

My stomach pitched more with dread than from the beer. “What?”

“I threatened him. I told him I was going to grind him up for hamburger, if he didn’t marry you.”

A shiver rippled down my spine. “You threatened Eddie into marrying me?”

Daddy glanced up, meeting my eyes for the first time. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No.” Now it made sense that Eddie hadn’t been able to look at raw hamburger without gagging and why he’d never gone to Daddy’s butcher shop. “But when he left, he said he’d never loved me. That’s probably the only time he told me the truth.” Because he certainly hadn’t told me about the growing debt. I set down the beer can on the hood of the pickup truck.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I never meant to hurt you…”

I flung my arms around my father’s protruding stomach, hugging him close. “You were just trying to get me what you thought I wanted, Daddy. And I did love him then.” As much as I’d like to, I couldn’t lie about that.

He patted my head. “I’ll make this right, Mary Ellen. I can get you the money you need.”

I imagined him, wearing his bloodiest apron and waving a meat cleaver, storming into Eddie’s restaurant. Though I enjoyed the look I imagined on Eddie’s face, I couldn’t risk Daddy winding up in jail for a little payback. “No, Daddy, it’s time I figure out what I want now and get it for myself.”

A small smile played across his broad face. I’d like to think it was pride, but I knew it was pity. He didn’t think I could do it—either figure out what I wanted or get it if I did happen to figure it out. But Daddy was the only one who ever complimented me, so I waited for some words of encouragement. And I waited while he swilled down the rest of his beer and then the rest of the one I’d left on the hood of his truck.

When the engine of a car rumbled in the alley, he still hadn’t said anything. He just passed me a piece of jerky from a bag he carried in his pocket. “Your mother’s back. Eat this, Mary, it covers up anything.”

I bit into the spicy, dried meat. Garlic and cayenne pepper exploded on my tongue, warming it. No wonder Daddy always smelled like garlic.

Mom’s minivan crunched over the gravel driveway as she pulled it next to Grandma’s Bonneville. The side door slid open, and my six-year-old Shelby, vaulted out, blond pigtails flying. “Mommy!”

I caught the little bundle of energy in my arms and pulled her tight. “Hi, baby. Did you have fun with your grandmas?”

She nodded. “We got Happy Meals. Grandma Mary likes the nuggets.”

I looked over Shelby’s head and into the interior of the van. Ten-and-a-half-year-old Amber sat in the back seat, hunched over a book, her glasses slipping to the end of her little nose. My oldest was always buried in a book. Better, I thought than the sand where I’d had my head buried lately.

“Did you eat yet?” my mother asked as she slid out from behind the wheel. My mother’s cure for every ailment: feed it. Her expanding waistline proved she took her own advice. But I couldn’t eat her greasy cooking or listen to her well-meaning advice. She’d been doling out a lot of both since I’d come home, the way she had the first nineteen years of my life. She leaned close to me and sniffed. “Oh, you got into the jerky with your father.”

That wasn’t all I’d gotten into with Dad. More than the beer and the secondhand smoke, I’d gotten perspective. I was better off without Eddie, and I could take care of my daughters and myself. I wouldn’t be trapped in this house another nineteen years.

CHAPTER E
Employment

The biggest part of taking care of the girls and myself would be obtaining gainful employment. Waitressing two nights a week at the VFW was hardly gainful, and the woman I was replacing, Florence, was a fast healer. With her new hip, she’d be back to work soon, and I’d be out of a job.

I’d gone on some interviews, but my résumé for the last decade hadn’t impressed anyone enough to hire me, not when the job market was flooded with more qualified individuals than there were positions to fill.

Bleary-eyed, I stumbled down the steep back stairs to the kitchen. The house showed its age in design as much as decor. The main floor had no bathroom, so I had to climb upstairs from the den anytime I wanted to use it. But with Shelby’s tendency to wait until the last minute, it was better that the girls be in the bedroom across the hall from it. In our house in Cascade, we’d each had our own bathroom. That was a luxury I doubted I’d be able to afford again.

Mom was already up, and she’d brewed the coffee. I needed caffeine and the classifieds. Today I was determined to get another job, no matter what it paid or what I had to do.

In her ratty robe and slippers, Mom was watching TV, sitting at the old, metal table; the one at which she’d sat since she’d been a kid. Even after marrying Dad, she’d never left home; her new groom had just moved in. Grandpa Czerwinski had died by that time, and the house had been too big for Grandma alone. Dad had also taken over the butcher shop where he’d worked since coming home from the navy. But neither Mom nor Dad had ever made their mark on the house or the store.

The kitchen counter was still the same worn yellow Formica it had always been. The walls bore the same lime paint and coordinating wallpaper with yellow and lime teapots. My last visit to the store had revealed the same worn vinyl flooring, the same setup; the only change there had been inflation. But Dad hadn’t gone overboard. His meat prices were still the cheapest around.

Hadn’t either of them ever wanted anything else, a life away from the West Side? I’d worked up the nerve to ask my mother once, when Eddie and I had moved to Cascade despite her protests that seventeen miles was too far away to move her grandchildren. She hadn’t cared that I was moving, in fact she’d called me a snob for being ashamed of where I grew up. I wasn’t ashamed; I’d just wanted more. She’d denied ever wanting anything else, had claimed she was happy, even though she never acted like it.

Back in high school, I had known I hadn’t wanted this life. After graduation I’d enrolled at the local art college, and instead of working at the store, I’d waited tables at a restaurant in the city where I’d fallen for Eddie, the night manager. His dream to buy the restaurant had become mine. He’d painted a bright future for us far from the West Side, a future full of wealth and happiness. Whatever dreams I’d had of my own I’d abandoned for him. And now Eddie had abandoned me.

Time to move on. Time to move out again. But I couldn’t manage that on my quarter tips. “Morning, Mom.”

Mom turned from her fascination with the early-morning news. The years had taken their toll on her hearing as well. “I didn’t see you there, Mary Ellen. Up long? Do you want some coffee?”

I’d already grabbed a mug, sloshed some thick brew into it and settled at the table across from her. Instead of turning on the furnace this early in September (in Michigan late summer was fall) she’d turned on the oven and propped the door open a little…just enough to take off the chill. I edged my chair closer to the heat. A glance at the teapot clock above the sink confirmed I had a little while before I had to wake the girls, so they’d get in the habit of waking up early for school. “Where’s the paper, Mom?”

She lifted last night’s edition from the vinyl chair next to her, but she never turned from the TV set. She had a thing for Matt Lauer.

“Thanks.”

She nodded, her tight curls refusing to bounce. She’d overdone the home perm again, frying her dyed-black hair to frizz. Her purple robe was threadbare, but she refused to give it up for all the new ones my brother and I had given her over the years. She was a creature of habit, of routine, from her extra thirty pounds to her frizzed-out perm. Maybe she’d stayed on the West Side, in the same house, all these years, because she was scared of change.

After all the changes in my life the last six months, I could understand her fear. But then during a commercial break, she began the lecture I’d heard repeatedly since moving home. And I knew we’d never really understand each other.

“It’s just too bad you couldn’t have given Eddie a boy. I’m sure he would have stayed then. A man needs to have a boy.”

I nearly dropped my head to the table. “Mom…”

“If only you would have drunk that tea. I did when I was pregnant with your brother, and look how that turned out…”

Despite the times I’d called Bart a retard while we were growing up, I couldn’t slight him. He’d turned out well, but he and Daddy were not close and had never been. “He lives in another state, Mom. He and Dad never talk, never did.”

“Your brother didn’t want anything to do with the store.” She sighed. “Your dad can’t understand that. He took it over from my father, and carried on the legacy.”

Bart had hated the store, hated the smell of blood, hated being called the butcher’s boy, the taunt that had followed him through every year of school. “Bart had other obligations.” To himself.

Mom nodded. “A wife and baby boy now.” Her smug smile told me that once again, in her personal scorebook, Bart had won.

“And I’m happy for him, Mom. He has everything he’s ever wanted. His dream job in the city, and his dream girl.” Who had actually grown up right next door. Neither of them had wanted to stay on the West Side.

Despite not knowing what my dream had become, I knew it wasn’t a fast-food job, which was all that the classifieds contained.

Even though Matt Lauer had lured Mom’s attention back to the television, she made another remark. “I still think a boy would have saved your marriage.”

I crinkled the newspaper in my fist, but couldn’t contain my temper. “Mom, if Eddie had wanted a boy after having Shelby, he wouldn’t have gotten a vasectomy. He didn’t want a boy. That’s not why he left. He left because he didn’t want me anymore.”

Maybe he never had. If Daddy hadn’t threatened to grind him into hamburger, would he have married me? Back then, he’d assured me that he wasn’t proposing just because I’d been pregnant. Back then, he’d told me that he loved me. But that was a lifetime ago.

Mom’s gaze stayed steady on Matt Lauer’s smiling face. “Maybe if you’d kept yourself up more.”

My hand relaxed on the paper. I was too tired and too scared about my future to fight with her. Even though Eddie had gained weight and lost hair, I was expected to maintain the face and figure of a supermodel? I’d never had one to begin with. “Mom…”

“Instead of working at the VFW, you should have gone back to work with Eddie,” she went on. “When you two worked together, you were close.”

That was the one thing she’d said that I couldn’t argue with. Even after Amber had come, I’d still found time to hostess at the restaurant and to help with the menu and redecorating. But after Shelby had come along, I’d wanted to spend more time with my children, and then we’d bought the new house.

“While Jesus is out of town helping his brother on their family farm, I’m going to be working with your dad,” she said. But for Daddy that would be more of a punishment than a privilege. He wouldn’t be able to sneak as many smokes.

Despite how much I’d hated working there as a kid—the blood and garlic seeped into your pores, bled into your hands until it stained. I found myself volunteering, “Mom, let me do it.”

“But Mary Ellen, it’s already been decided…”

I owed my father for putting a roof over our heads. “Come on, Mom, let me. I need to pay you back for everything you’re doing for me and the girls.”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “You’re our daughter. You’ve fallen on hard times…”

Obligation and charity. I fought the urge to cringe and gulped coffee instead. The back stairs creaked, and from the scent of garlic, blood and tobacco, I knew it was my father.

“I’d pay you to work with me, Mary Ellen,” Dad said, not even bothering to hide the fact he’d eavesdropped.

“But—” Mom began her protest.

“Come on, Louie.” My mother’s name was Louise, but Dad always called her Louie. “You could only spare me a few hours a day in between carting your mother around town. And I’m short-staffed right now. Jesus—” Dad pronounced his helper’s name the biblical way instead of the Spanish way “—is gonna be gone at least a couple of weeks. I need the help.”

Mom nodded, accepting what my father said as she always did, as I’d accepted all Eddie’s lies. But Daddy didn’t lie about anything other than beer and cigarettes.

From the earnest, pitying expressions on both their faces, I heard what had been left unsaid. And Mary Ellen needs the money. I couldn’t argue with that even though I really didn’t want to take his money. I’d only intended to help him out. “If you’re sure…”

Dad nodded, his gray, sleep-rumpled hair standing straight up. “I don’t expect anyone to work for free.”

But I wish I could. I hated taking money from my parents, hated relying on their generosity to put a roof over my family’s head. But it was either Grandma’s outdated house with the oven heating the kitchen, or a box on the street.

My first week on the job I thought Dad was running a special. But the business didn’t let up during the couple of weeks following that. Then it occurred to me that all the neighbors weren’t patronizing the store for the kielbasa and kishka. I was the fresh meat, the fodder for their gossip mill. Everybody wanted to know how badly little Mary Ellen Black had failed. Standing behind the meat counter in a bloodstained apron, I didn’t have to say a word. They tsked. They commiserated. They told me how I was better off without the SOB. And most of all, they rubbed it in. Maybe they didn’t mean to. Or maybe they did. Maybe it was just human nature to feel better about oneself when someone else was doing badly.

For instance, after her commiserations, Mrs. Klansky flashed pictures of her grandchildren, who are enrolled in private schools because her son-in-law is such a good provider. She also pointed out that her daughter wouldn’t have to work, but reminded me of how ambitious Natalie, the prominent lawyer, has always been. Now, maybe I should have been happy that Natalie has done so well, that Natalie doesn’t have to move back home with her mother even if her old man was screwing a twenty-year-old cocktail waitress. But my humiliation was still too fresh. And I felt a little bit like Mrs. Klansky had kicked me while I was down. So I wished that Natalie would leave her prestigious job and her perfect family and run off to live in poverty with her pool boy.

But I figured Natalie and her family were pretty safe. None of my wishes had been coming true lately, or Eddie would have been written up in medical journals for a part of his body inexplicably shriveling up and falling off. And that hadn’t happened. Where was the justice? Not that I’d actually seen Eddie lately to know my wish hadn’t come true. Despite his inability to support them, I had agreed that he could see his children. I couldn’t deprive the girls of a father, although he could.

But as Amber had pointed out, in one of her rare moments of openness, Eddie had never been around much, at least not the last few years. The restaurant had been his child much more than his flesh-and-blood daughters. Once, I’d admired his dedication to support us. Like my father, Eddie had called me his princess and had wanted me to live in a castle. That had been his excuse for working so hard to provide his wife and daughters with everything we deserved. The truth was, the restaurant had been his whole existence. Despite his twenty-year-old waitress, it probably still was. The risk of losing it had to be killing him. Like my marriage, this was another thing I had to thank my father for. For our wedding he’d given Eddie the money for the down payment to buy the restaurant from his employers. But I couldn’t be mad at Daddy. Unlike Eddie, he’d been involved in his daughter’s life. Granted, too involved, but he’d had the best of intentions.

As polka music filled the store, vibrating around the scent of raw pork and garlic, I reminded myself of that. “Daddy, when is Jesus coming back?” I pronounced it the correct way.

“Jesus?” Daddy asked, in the biblical way. With a sigh, I swallowed a Spanish lesson. If after years of working with Jesus, Daddy hadn’t learned, I wasn’t going to be able to teach him. Jesus had inspired other additions to the store, though. Chorizo and farmer’s cheese and fresh tortillas. Daddy’s store met the needs of a blending neighborhood, and his business thrived. Probably even when I wasn’t around for the neighborhood to wallow in my humiliation. Too bad my presence hadn’t attracted this kind of business to the VFW. I might have made more than a handful of quarters a night.

“His cousin Enrico just stopped by. I was talking to him out back.” And here I’d thought he’d just been sneaking a smoke. “Jesus should be back in three days.”

Sounded a lot like the homily I’d just heard the Sunday before. Going to mass was a requirement when living at home. To add to my humiliation, the girls had told Mom how rarely we’d gone before, only on Easter and Christmas. But the restaurant had been closed on Sundays, and between sleeping late and watching football, it was the only time that Eddie had actually been with his family. My time would have been better spent lighting candles to secure my future, as Grandma said. Figuring that at her age the end was near, she lit a lot of candles. Good thing Saint Adalbert’s didn’t have a sprinkler system, just a leaky roof.

“Don’t worry, Mary Ellen.”

I pulled myself from my maudlin thoughts. “What?”

“Don’t worry. As you can see, business is good. I’ll have enough work for you and Jesus.” Knowing Jesus worked circles around me, I doubted it. And I didn’t want it. The apron, the false sympathy of neighbors, the polka music, the raw meat and garlic smell of fresh kielbasa. I enjoyed the VFW more. Too bad Florence was coming back this weekend.

“Dad…” I was tempted. A job I disliked was better than no job at all.

“It’s fine, Mary Ellen. You’ll earn enough money here for your girls’ clothes and lessons and stuff. You don’t need any more than that.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a roof over your heads—”

As all the neighbors had chortled, little Mary Ellen Black was living with her parents. Yeah, it was better than a box. But it wasn’t my home. Heck, it wasn’t even Dad’s home, not when he had to smoke and drink in the garage. “I want my own house, Dad.”

“You said you couldn’t afford it, honey.”

“Not that house.” That house had never been mine, either. It had been Eddie’s. I had decorated it. I had filled it with the smells of home cooking and fresh potpourri, but it hadn’t been my dream house. Like the restaurant, that new multilevel house in the suburbs had been Eddie’s dream. I’d always preferred the character of older houses. But would I ever be able to afford one?

“Then what? You want another house?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe I didn’t need a house; a condo, an apartment, anything away from the West Side and my mother.

“Mary Ellen…” The bell dinged above the door, announcing the arrival of another customer. And so my employment from hell continued.

I hadn’t told Dad or Mom yet, but I intended the day before Jesus came back to be my last. I was passing over working at the butcher shop in favor of something, anything else. Not that I’d figured out my dreams…

They say a girl can dream? Not this girl. I can bake cookies, drive daughters to gymnastics and Girl Scouts and decorate a house like nobody else. Now that I had current experience waiting tables and providing customer service in a shop, I’d find another job. I had an interview down at Charlie’s Tavern, and if they didn’t hire me, I could always make Eddie give me back my old job at the restaurant. That was the least support he could provide; I’d certainly make better tips than at the VFW.

Mrs. Klansky returned for more pork chops and to kick me again. She brought photos of Natalie’s six-bedroom contemporary to flaunt in my face. The stark white color scheme inspired nothing in me but a need to grab up a paintbrush.

“So she doesn’t have time to decorate, huh?” I asked as I wrapped the chops, purposely picking out the fattiest ones.

“Well, she’s really busy…” Mrs. Klansky peered at her own photos.

“Can’t afford a decorator then?” What about a pool boy?

Dad snorted beside me, but amusement, not reproach, glittered in his green eyes. He might like the extra sales, but he didn’t like people kicking his little girl.

“All that white is the thing, you know,” she argued, all bluster.

I snorted now. “Ten years ago, maybe.”

“Well, at least she has a—” She stopped herself, not out of sensitivity, but because Dad had lifted his cleaver and sliced neatly through a rack of a lamb. He was the best butcher in town.

“I’m sure she’s much too busy to worry about a house, anyhow,” I said in a sweet tone. The same one she’d used when telling me that I’d surely find another husband, someday… Like I wanted another husband! Not!

I wanted a job, where people didn’t come in for raw meat with a side of gossip. After I rung up her purchase and she’d left, Dad patted my shoulder with a bloodstained hand. Although the health department now required them, Dad hated plastic gloves and refused to wear them. And as I could attest, the blood seemed to seep through them, anyhow.

“Why don’t you knock off early? Things are slowing down, and your mother mentioned this morning that she could use an extra for her weekly bridge game.”

More old ladies wallowing in gossip? I shuddered.

He laughed. “Mrs. Klansky won’t be there. And they really do seem to have fun.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fun on my own. I had fun with my children. Although Amber spent most of her time in a book, she could be relied on for an occasion amusing comment, and little Shelby was a regular comedienne. But I needed my children to rely on me, not me on them. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

And that night I would tell both my parents that I wasn’t coming back to the butcher shop to work. After what I’d seen in my few weeks of employment, I probably wasn’t coming back to purchase anything from it any time soon, either.

The bell dinged again. “Take care of this last person and take off. I’m slipping out back a minute…”

“To check your oil,” I finished for him as he reached for his cigarettes.

“Don’t tell your—”

“Mother,” I finished again with a giggle.

“You two still do that,” said a familiar voice.

Any fleeting amusement fled. I could handle playing bridge with Mrs. Klansky better than I could handle this. Having my oldest, closest friend from school see me down and out. Jenna O’Brien. Jenna wouldn’t fantasize about Eddie’s dick falling off if he’d cheated on her. She would have grabbed up Daddy’s meat cleaver and taken care of that problem herself. Despite being petite and gorgeous, Jenna had balls and if her husband had cheated on her, she’d have his in a glass jar to warn anyone else from making the same mistake. God, I’d missed her.

“Still do what?” I asked like it hadn’t been nearly eleven years since I’d talked to her last…shortly after my wedding, in which she’d been my maid of honor, when she’d helped me into my dress and told me point blank that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Was she back in my life now to say I told you so? Should I have listened to her? Should I have had her help me back out of that hypocritical white dress and out of the church? She’d offered, and I’d turned her down.

“That thing you and your dad always do…” I caught the wistfulness in her voice. Jenna’s dad had died when she was eight.

I shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. “Yeah, some things never change. Guess it’s just a bad habit.”

“Heard you kicked your other bad habit.” Like on my wedding day, she was offering me the gracious way out.

Waddling down the aisle five months pregnant, I’d displayed little grace then. Why start now? And since I’d chosen Eddie over her, Jenna deserved to gloat. “Kicked him? I wish I had. But hell, no, I packed his bags so he could kick me aside for a twenty-year-old cocktail waitress. I actually packed his bags for him.”

And then, bracing myself for pity or triumph, I met her gaze. I didn’t have to guess what was in her big brown eyes, the amusement bubbled out with her laughter. “You packed his bags?”

“I thought he was going on a golf trip. Never saw it coming.”

She shook her head, brown curls dancing around her shoulders. “You saw it coming on your wedding day. You just didn’t want to face it.”

“So you’ve come to say I told ya so?” I got up the nerve to ask.

A trace of bitterness passed through her dark eyes. I’d hurt her all those years ago, and she hadn’t deserved it for just being a friend. She sighed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun?” There was that word again.

“Naw, that’s not why I came.”

Enviously I eyed her tiny figure. Obviously she hadn’t come for the fatty pork chops. “So why did you come?”

“I was playing bridge at your house—”

“You were?” I had imagined a group of women closer to Grandma’s age.

She sighed. “Yeah, Mom suckered me in, and I had a minute. Anyway they sent me to get you.” No doubt she wouldn’t have come for me on her own. Unlike the other old neighbors who had wanted to rub my nose in my misfortune, Jenna hadn’t even cared that much…not after all these years. “We could use another person or two.”

“For bridge?”

She glanced toward the back door and lowered her voice. “For poker. You in? I heard you could use the money.”

Following suit, I lowered my voice. “They play for money?”

She laughed. “Hell, yes!”

Damn. Did I know Mom and Grandma at all? Apparently not. “Well…”

“Or would you rather stay here for all the neighbors to wallow in your misery?”

“You know about that?”

“I grew up only a few doors down from here. I know about that.” She’d had her own misery for the neighborhood to wallow in. Her old man hadn’t exactly died from natural causes, unless it was natural for a man to drunkenly fall down his own basement stairs and bust his head open. And then there were the skeptics who had always wondered if Jenna’s mom hadn’t gotten sick of being knocked around and knocked him for once…right down those basement stairs to the unforgiving surface of the concrete floor.

“So you coming? Or you love working here too much to lose the apron for a couple of hours?” Jenna. Eleven years hadn’t smoothed her sharp edges any, edges she’d no doubt developed to fend off the pitying pats of the neighborhood, for the poor little O’Brien girl.

Even after all this time, I could be more honest with her than I could be with my family…or sometimes, myself. I lowered my voice more. “I hate working here.”

“Figured as much. You try to get something else yet?”

I nodded. “I’ve got an interview at Charlie’s Tavern.”

“So you like waiting tables? Is that what you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know what the hell I am now, let alone what I want to be.”

The amusement left, and concern flooded her eyes. “Ah, Mary Ellen…”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry enough for myself,” I admitted.

“And working here isn’t going to help that.” She blew out a breath. “And if you think it’s bad here, Charlie’s is the neighborhood bar. It’ll be worse there. I have a job opening. Mom said I should mention it to you.”

Jenna had always been close to her mom, even more so after her dad’s death. She was fiercely protective of the woman who’d been through so much. And she never disappointed her. If Mrs. O’Brien hadn’t told her to, Jenna wouldn’t have brought up the job to me. Probably wouldn’t have come to see me at all.

She hurried to add, “It’s only temporary. My processor— I’m a mortgage loan officer, by the way—”

Like I didn’t know it. Mom bragged about Jenna as if she was one of her own children. And with the amount of time she’d spent at our house growing up, she very nearly was.

“Yeah, I know. You’re doing very well.” And I wasn’t jealous, not like I was of Natalie. I’d never begrudge Jenna any of her success because I knew how hard she’d worked for it. She’d always been ambitious, like Eddie. Maybe that was why they’d hated each other; they’d been too much alike. Then. Not now. Because Eddie hadn’t ever achieved what he’d hungered for. Whereas even Jenna’s tailored business suit, a rich burgundy suede, shouted out her success as loudly as my mother did. She looked great, but she shrugged off my compliment.

“Well, interest rates are good right now, so we’re busy. And my processor, the person who handles all my paperwork to make sure the loan closes, is pregnant. She wants to take it easy. She’ll come back after she has the kid. But she’s as big as a house now and needs to kick back. You in?”

I blinked. “What? The poker game?”

“The job, you interested?”

“Working for you?”

“It’s crazy, demanding work. But you don’t have to wear that apron.”

I dragged the offensive garment over my head and tossed it on the counter. Yeah, it was temporary. I was becoming my own temp agency. Someone off with a hip replacement or a maternity leave, send in Mary Ellen Black. But I wouldn’t be handling raw meat. And hopefully I’d make more than quarters and hear a lot less pity over my divorce.

And maybe while her processor kicked back, I could figure out just exactly what I did want to be when I grew up. Hopefully, she’d be off a long time with this pregnancy and baby, because if I hadn’t figured it out in almost thirty-one years, I didn’t like my chances of figuring it out in six weeks. “Yeah, I’m interested.”

CHAPTER F
Friendship

Jenna nodded as I came around the counter. “And what about the poker game? You in?”

“Since they’re playing for money, I guess that depends on what you’re paying me,” I hedged.

She glanced around the small store; we were the only two inside. “Cash, or that creep might sue you for alimony.”

Just like Jenna, always thinking, even when I wasn’t. Just what the heck did go on inside my head? Only the orchestra of crickets singing?

“And he would,” Jenna continued. “Creep never deserved you.”

That was why Jenna and I had stopped being friends. Because of her and Eddie’s mutual animosity, I had had to choose between them, a choice I shouldn’t have had to make. Now it was clear that I shouldn’t have dropped her friendship. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, too proud to admit if I’d hurt her. But pain showed in her dark eyes. “You were knocked up, scared, and pressured by your parents.”

And she would know that because she’d always known everything about me. “Yeah. And in love. I really loved him. How stupid was that?”

“Cut yourself a break. It happens to the best of us.”

“Not you.”

She lifted her ringless left hand, but a faint indent marred the third finger. “I was.”

“Was not!” I ignored the pang of hurt over not being invited to her wedding. Why should she have invited me? We hadn’t been talking after my wedding day.

“Your mom never told you that?”

“She mentioned something once, but it was around the holidays and she was making rum balls. Mom’s never completely lucid when she’s making rum balls.”

Jenna chuckled and grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the door. “Mr. Black, we’re leaving for the bridge game.”

“Have fun!” my dad called from the back, a puff of smoke drifting in through the open door.

Jenna’s car waited at the curb, a black Cadillac. She clicked a switch to unlock the door, and I stepped over the leaves in the gutter to crawl inside. “God, I stink like the store. You sure you want me in here? I can walk.”

“Shut up and buckle up,” Jenna said as she slid behind the wheel. “You’re fine.”

No, I wasn’t. But talking to Jenna again after all these years gave me hope that I might be. After all, I wasn’t the only one with a newly ringless hand. I’d pawned mine to pay the cheap, neighborhood lawyer. “So tell me about your marriage.”

She laughed with no amusement. “I fell for a pretty face, a very pretty face.”

“That makes more sense than falling for Eddie. Nobody could ever call him pretty.” Thank God the girls didn’t look a bit like him. When we’d first met, I had thought he looked like Andy Garcia. Now he looked more like Danny DeVito.

She laughed again, in agreement, but no resentment flared in me. How could I resent the truth? “So he was pretty. Tell me more,” I urged.

“You know, Mom was right. Pretty is as pretty does. Never could figure out what that meant until it was too late. He was in construction. So picture the big, hard bod. Strong, silent type. Mom also says beware of the quiet ones, still waters run deep. I don’t know about deep, but he ran all around.”

“On you?”

She snorted. “Yeah, go figure. Guess I worked too much for him.” She’d always been so driven. Growing up poor had given her ambition.

“But he worked a lot, too. Out of town. Building houses.” She snorted again as she maneuvered the Cadillac through the back alley to my parents’ house. “Playing house was more like it.”

“So how’d you find out? Did he finally tell you?”

“Stupid ass had my little brother working with him—remember Rye?”

As a thirteen-year-old too small for his age. “Yes.”

“Well, Rye picked up on it. Told him to come clean. So he did…on Christmas Eve. Merry freakin’ Christmas, huh?”

“So you killed him, right?”

She laughed again as she jerked the Caddy to a halt behind my mom’s minivan. “I’ll never tell.”

“It’s me, Jenna. You’ll tell me.” It was my way of saying I hoped we could be close again, as close as we’d been when we’d told each other everything.

She stared at me for a minute, dark eyes cautious, reminding me that I’d betrayed her trust as much as her ex had. Then she sighed. “Yeah, I probably will. But right now, I’m feeling lucky. They were playing five-card stud when I left, and your granny was kicking ass.”

“Grandma?”

She nodded. “Yeah, she’s a shark.”

Did I know any of the women in my life? Grandma and Mom played poker. And Jenna had gotten cheated on, too, just as I had. I would definitely have to pay more attention to my daughters, make sure I knew them completely. Then maybe, someday, I’d find the time to work on knowing myself.

“You in?” Mom asked as she expertly shuffled the deck of playing cards and dealt them out to the women sitting around our dining-room table. No, this wasn’t a bridge game. The dainty teacups and little cakes and cookies were a bit deceiving. But a pile of brightly colored chips in the center of the lace tablecloth gave away the real game. And so did the bland poker faces of the women sitting around the table.

Bluffing. I knew the look. I’d seen it on Eddie’s face often enough these last couple of years. “Sure, deal me in.” Patting my purse that bulged with quarter tips, I slid onto a chair between Grandma and Jenna.

And memories filtered through my mind. Grandma had taught me how to play this game with my dolls during tea-time. How well could I remember her lessons? Apparently pretty well. A couple of hours later, I pushed back from the table, my pot sliding toward the edge. I’d done well. Real well.

Or they’d let me win out of pity. But I was getting as good at spotting pity as I was at recognizing bluffing. And their resentful faces, flushed from the tea and the game, told me they didn’t pity me now. I stood, swaying a bit. After the first sip, I’d discovered this tea wasn’t simply brewed. It was laced heavily with rum.

“Are you okay?” Jenna asked. “She always got sick whenever we used to drink,” she shared with our mothers.

I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t remember and realize she was right. And here I thought I’d stopped drinking because I’d lost my virginity to Eddie the last time I’d gotten drunk. And like a good, God-fearing Catholic girl I had intended to wait for marriage. I really had. But I think it’s kinda like that chicken-and-egg thing, because I probably wouldn’t have married Eddie if I hadn’t had premarital sex with him and gotten pregnant. Love aside, I’d been too young.

“Are you getting sick?” Mom asked, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied me.

“No, I’m fine.” If I kept repeating it, I’d believe it. “I got another job today and won the pot.” And maybe I could rebuild my friendship with Jenna, too. Life really was good.

“The girls’ll be home soon from school,” Mom reminded me. The public-school bus dropped them right in front of the house.

They couldn’t see me like this. They wouldn’t understand their mother being drunk. I didn’t understand their mother being drunk. Once I’d known it wasn’t just tea, I should have stopped drinking. I should have been the responsible one…as I’d been for the last eleven years.

I’d lapsed. And even while the rum and almond cookies roiled through my stomach, I didn’t really regret joining the game. And I really didn’t want it to end.

Since they’d started their new school a couple of weeks ago, if I wasn’t working at the VFW, I’d made a point of being home when Amber and Shelby got off the bus. I wanted to make sure they settled in, made friends and that nothing had gone wrong during their day. I hated the days I wasn’t there; they’d already lost the attention of one parent as he wallowed in debt and his affair. They couldn’t afford to lose me. Guilt settled heavily on my shoulders.

Mrs. O’Brien, voice soft, spoke close to her daughter’s ear. After a second, Jenna sighed and nodded. “If you promise not to puke in the car, you can come along to an appointment with me,” she offered, no doubt at her mother’s urging, “that’ll give you an idea of what I do, so you understand what you’ll have to do when you start working for me Monday morning.”

“I really should…”

“Heck, go along,” Grandma urged. “This morning I promised to show the girls a few card tricks when they got home. Obviously I taught you well.” Behind her cat’s-eye glasses, her left eye closed in a wink. Had she let me win? She was so good to me, to my girls, too.

I wasn’t the only adult in my children’s lives. Grandma, Daddy, and even my mother were great with them, loved and lavished attention on them. Wasn’t the saying that it took a village? I winked back. “Thanks, Gram. You sure did teach me well.”

Swaying on my feet, I turned toward Jenna, not too proud to accept her offer. “You’re going to work?”

“Doing a re-fi for Lorraine. She runs the beauty shop around the corner from your pop’s store. Come along.”

I could savor my little buzz a while longer. And talk to Jenna some more. Eleven years was too long without her, without her brutal honesty. “Gram, you really don’t mind watching the girls?”

She shook her head, jostling her blue curls. “Go, have fun.”

“We won’t be long,” Jenna offered as she vaulted to her feet. I envied her balance and energy.

“Bring along your winnings,” Mom chimed in. “Maybe Lorraine can do something with your hair.” Leave it to Mom to sober me up. Just like having a boy, I bet she thought that having nicer hair might have kept Eddie from straying.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Jenna tugged me toward the door. “She still gets to you.”

I sighed. “Yup, sad but true, and now she has even more ammunition.”

We climbed into the Cadillac and peeled out of the alley just as the bus was arriving at the front of the house. “I’ll come in—meet the girls when we get back,” Jenna said. She’d never seen them before. How could we have gone from such good friends to no communication whatsoever?

Shame at letting Eddie take over my life had me glancing out the window, and I caught a blurry reflection of myself in the side-view mirror. I looked washed out, old. And I wouldn’t be thirty-one until January, the new year. Would I find Mary Ellen Black by then?

I turned back to Jenna, who, despite her several cups of tea, handled the car with expert skill. It was neighborhood legend how well the O’Briens held their liquor…until Mr. O’Brien had fallen down the basement stairs. Before then, drinking had never made him clumsy, just mean. Jenna’s hair curled around her face in shiny, chocolate-colored waves. Despite her divorce, her clothes didn’t hang on her. I didn’t want to be Jenna. I knew I didn’t possess an ounce of her drive or ambition. But looking at her now, I knew I wanted to be better than me.

“I have no office skills,” I warned her, worried how much I’d disappoint her, especially since she’d only made the offer because of her mother. I was more capable of waiting tables at Charlie’s Tavern or Eddie’s restaurant.

“Can you dial a phone?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“And you took typing classes with me and were a helluva lot better at it. You’ll be fine, Mary Ellen.”

I wanted to believe her. I shifted my purse on my lap, the weight of my winnings lying heavy against my thighs. “So you think Lorraine can do something with my hair?”

She laughed. “Don’t let your mother get to you.”

The years rolled away. We were carefree teenagers again…or as carefree as teenagers ever were. At least, we had been more carefree then than the two divorced women we were now. “Easier said than done. I’ve gotta get out of that house.”

“How did you lose the house? You have Morty the lawyer represent you?”

Heat rose to my face. “Morty was all I could afford. And the bank got my house. The bank got my car, too.”

“So you have nothing.” Her voice held none of the morbid fascination of the other people from my past who had pointed that out to me over the last few weeks.

“Just my name. I took that back. Most people—” especially Mom “—didn’t think I should, that I should have left mine the same as the girls’. But I wanted it back.” And for once I’d gotten what I wanted.

“I never took Todd’s,” Jenna said. “I’d already crossed over from real estate to the mortgage company, had name recognition.”

“Morty did make sure that I wasn’t responsible for any of the debts Eddie had racked up during our marriage. You were right about him.” Even though it had taken years for him to become the loser she’d always thought he was.

She lifted a hand. “Wish I’d been right about Todd. It’s hard to see when you’re too close.”

“You owe Rye for making him tell you.”

“I gave him a black eye.”

“Your ex or Rye?”

“Rye.” She’d always had a bad temper. A rueful smile lifted her mouth as she slammed the Caddy to a stop outside the pink stucco building that housed Lorraine’s Hair Salon.

From that name, I concluded that maybe I wasn’t the only person lacking imagination around here. Lorraine, a heavyset, bleached blonde, settled the pink phone back on her counter as we walked in the door. A few heads lifted from magazines as a handful of women sat under droning dryers. A couple of the neighborhood women waved.

“Hey, Jenna,” Lorraine said, then turned on me. “Mary Ellen, your mama was right. That hair needs some serious help. Have a seat!” She spun a chair toward me and pointed to the cracked vinyl seat. “Sit. I won’t take all your winnings. But we gotta do something about that hair. Gotta liven up your look.”

“We have an appointment, Lorraine,” Jenna reminded the beautician. Despite the prosaic name of her shop, a gleam in Lorraine’s eyes suggested she had an imagination, all right. She was probably imagining me in some big-hair Dolly-do close to her own style.

“I just came along on Jenna’s appointment to understand what she does. But thanks, Lorraine.” For insulting my lank, uninspired hair that is, of course, the sole reason my husband left me for another woman.

“Sit!” she said again, hands on her hips.

“Lorraine, come on,” Jenna interrupted on my behalf again. “The re-fi. I’m going to save you millions or less.”

Lorraine snorted. “A lot less since I don’t have any millions to save. The papers you wanted are all ready and in that folder on the counter. So stop being a businesswoman for a minute and be a friend, Jenna O’Brien. Tell Mary Ellen that hair needs help if she wants to land another man.”

Panic pressed down on my chest, leaving me just enough breath to exclaim, “I don’t want another man!”

“Still pining for the old one?” Lorraine goaded.

I snorted now. A sound I hadn’t thought I could make. “God no, I just don’t want another husband.”

“A new do won’t get you a marriage proposal,” Lorraine began.

“But it might help you find some young stud for hot sex,” Jenna chimed in distractedly as she flipped through the folder of Lorraine’s financial records.

Hot sex sounded good. But maybe that was just the allure of the unknown. It had been good with Eddie for all but the last couple of years. But I don’t think I’d ever had hot sex. The possibility of getting some lured me to the chair. That and the rum still humming through my veins. I’d hardly settled back against the vinyl seat when Lorraine whipped a plastic cape around my shoulders. “So a new haircut can get me hot sex?”

Lorraine and Jenna laughed in unison, the husky harmony hinting that they’d both had hot sex at least once. “It’ll take more than a cut,” Lorraine said, walking in a circle around my chair.

I was glad she did that rather than spinning me. I don’t know what had me more worked up, the idea of changing my hair—or the idea of hot sex. But apparently Lorraine didn’t think redoing my hair would be enough to get it. No doubt I needed exercise, new clothes, new makeup, new attitude…

“A dye,” Lorraine said, bobbing her double chin in agreement with her own wisdom.

“Red,” Jenna said with the firmness of conviction.

“Red?” I gasped.

“You always wanted red hair.”

News to me. I’d had wants back then besides getting out of the West Side? “I did?”

“You wanted to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

“I wanted to be a prostitute?”

Jenna laughed. “You never said you did, but we watched that movie a million times.”

“So, Pretty Woman it is!” Lorraine declared, slapping her pudgy palms together in gleeful anticipation of making me look like a prostitute.

I gulped, but I didn’t argue. Heck, who would be brainless enough to fight looking like Julia Roberts? The only drawback I could foresee if Lorraine actually succeeded was that I’d have to admit Mom was right. Eddie never would have left me if I’d looked like Julia when we were married.

Lorraine fingered through my hair with one hand while grabbing up a plastic cap with the other. “So, was he a cheater or a beater?”

I choked. “What?”

“Cheater or beater?” she repeated her question. “Like Jenna’s Todd was a cheater. So where’d you hide his body, Jenna?”

Obviously the O’Briens had spawned another neighborhood legend. But like the famous mob boss Jimmy Hoffa, Jenna’s ex would probably never be found. A smirk slid across Jenna’s mouth, but she didn’t look up from her paperwork. “I’ll never tell.”

“Cheater,” I admitted. The second I made the confession the drone of the dryers died, and a bunch of permed heads swiveled toward me.

“Who cheated, dear?” Mrs. Milanowski asked. “Your grandmother? Nobody’s that lucky at cards.”

“Her Eddie,” Lorraine explained. I guess there was no such thing as discretion in a beauty shop.

“He’s not my Eddie.”

“I heard about your divorce, Mary Ellen,” another perm-head piped up. “That’s too bad. It’s so hard on the kids.”

What about me?

“He was the cheater,” Lorraine supplied, in case anyone had missed it. She clicked her tongue in disgust. “With all the diseases out there now, it’s almost better if they’re beaters. Safer.”

Without lifting her head from her study of Lorraine’s business records, Jenna snorted. “You’re sniffing too much perm solution, Lorraine.”

“My figures can’t be off—I have a real good accountant,” she defended.

Jenna shook her head. “The math is fine. Some of your ideas aren’t. Getting knocked around is not safer.”

Lorraine crossed herself. “Forgive me. Your poor mama…”

“Is back at Mary Ellen’s house playing cards.” Jenna waved a hand in dismissal of Lorraine’s concern. “She’s fine.”

“What she put up with from your father…”

Jenna shrugged. “It’s over now.”

I shivered despite the warmth of the plastic cape. I’d grown up in this neighborhood. How come I wasn’t as strong and resilient as these women? I hadn’t pushed Eddie down the stairs or dismembered him. How come I just wanted to pull my lank, drab hair around my face and hide?

But Lorraine had my hair, yanking, clipping and spreading goo on it. An hour later, when she whipped off the plastic cape and whirled me toward the mirror, I concluded that I didn’t look like Julia Roberts at all. Probably the baggy jeans and Czerwinski Butcher Shop sweatshirt ruined that image.

But I wasn’t bad. The red was deep and rich, and it had conditioned my hair so that it flowed around my shoulders in thick, soft waves.

“That other woman. The one from the cannibal movies…” Mrs. Rewerts lifted her hand and shook it in the air. “You know the one. She has that color hair and Mary Ellen’s same green eyes.” The other women nodded in agreement and stroked my fragile ego with oohs and aahs.

“Julianne Moore?” I looked like Julianne Moore? She’d do. And maybe, so would I. I turned toward Jenna, who had put down her paperwork to study me. “What do you think?”

“What do you think?” she countered.

I shrugged and watched the rich waves dance around the shoulders of my bloodstained sweatshirt. “I like it.”

She nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”

And I knew she wasn’t just stroking my ego. Jenna wouldn’t do that, not the Jenna I’d known eleven years ago and not the one I was getting to know again. Maybe we would never regain the friendship we had once shared, but I hoped we could forge a new relationship. I really needed a friend.

CHAPTER G
The Girls

“Mommy, you look like a movie star!” Shelby shrieked before vaulting into my arms. Although Amber had come to the kitchen, too, when Jenna and I walked in, she hung back. A book clutched in her hand, she studied me from behind the glasses that had slipped to the end of her cute little nose.

“So what do you think?” I asked. Although only ten and a half, Amber was wise beyond her years. Maybe it came from all the reading, or from some recessive gene that had skipped Eddie and me. But she was one smart kid, and I valued her opinion.

A slow smile spread across her bow-shaped lips, and she nodded, her perpetual ponytail bobbing at the back of her head. “It’s smokin’!”

“Who’s smoking?” Mom asked as she lumbered up from the cellar with a jar of stewed tomatoes in her hand. She set it on the counter without taking her gaze from my new hairdo. “Lorraine is a little too wild for the West Side.”

Translation: In Mom’s eyes, I did look like a prostitute. Good.

“It’s pretty,” Shelby insisted, fingering a strand. “And soft.”

Mom sniffed. “Anything’s better than it was. Did you see your father when you came in? He went out to check his oil, and dinner’s ready. You’re staying, Jenna?”

“Thanks, but I’m supposed to meet some Realtors at Charlie’s, Mrs. Black.” She winked at me. “They give me referrals for free drinks.”

“You need to eat. You’re too skinny. It’s all ready to go on the table. Goulash.” Mom routinely fed the neighborhood, sending dishes to ailing neighbors, cooking for funerals and open houses.

Jenna’s stomach rumbled. “One plate, and I’ll get Mr. Black.”

“Wait, Jenna. You didn’t meet the girls.” I slid an arm around Amber’s thin shoulders. “This is Amber. And this little monkey is Shelby. Girls, this is—” Was. But I was hoping. “My oldest and closest friend, Jenna O’Brien.”

“Nice to meet you,” Amber mumbled, shyly but politely.

“How come you never came to our old house?” Shelby asked with a child’s inquisitiveness. “Weren’t you friends there?”

“I was really busy,” Jenna hedged. “But that’s no excuse to let a friend slip away.” Jenna caught my eye before she went outside to get my dad.

Dinner was a wild affair. Grandma was still suffering the effects of too much tea. And Dad and Jenna had taken a while and a few beers before they’d made their way into the house. Shelby was on, entertaining Jenna with all her considerable charm, while Amber sat back and watched everyone with amusement shining in her eyes.

“So you come into my store and steal my help away, Jenna O’Brien, and then you have the nerve to sit at my table and eat my food!” Daddy shouted, lifting his hand as if to cuff her, but just squeezing her neck with affection.

“If I don’t, you’ll keep shoveling it in until you explode,” she sassed back with a wink at the girls, who giggled at her bravery. Despite their having lived with him for a while, Daddy still intimidated them with his booming voice and gruff teasing.

But Daddy was the only grandfather they had; Eddie’s parents had died when he was in his teens. I’d always felt sorry for him because of that. Even as crazy as my parents sometimes made me, I couldn’t imagine life without either of them.

“Jenna’s right. You need to watch your weight. You know what the doctor said—” Mom began.

Daddy lifted his hand, waving away medical advice. “What does he know with that fancy education?” Obviously Daddy thought the eight years of schooling that he’d had before the nuns had kicked him out for brawling gave him more sense than a doctor who’d gone to college and medical school.

“Daddy, Mom’s right. You need to take better care of yourself.” Mom shot me a smile for my support. She really did worry about Daddy, loved him even after all their years together. Maybe that was why she nagged him; she was scared of losing him the way she’d lost her father. Could it be why she nagged me? Because she cared? No, nobody could care that much.

“Strong like bear!” Daddy growled, flexing his burly arms.

The girls squealed. He pounded on the table, making the plates dance. Grandma choked on an overcooked noodle. I thumped her back with one hand while I handed Amber a napkin for the milk she’d squirted out her nose.

“I’ve forgotten how much fun dinner at the Black house always was.” Jenna sighed with a satisfied smile, covering her empty plate with a protective hand before Mom could ladle another helping on it.

“You work too hard,” Mom tsked, nagging Jenna, too. “You need to come around more.”

Daddy spoke to Jenna, but he was staring at me. “Yeah, you do. You’re good for this girl.”

“That’s not what you said when you caught us drinking—” Jenna halted when the girls displayed wide-eyed interest. “Drinking all your chocolate milk.”

I leaned in close. “Smooth. Good save.”

She flipped me off under the lace edge of Mom’s treasured tablecloth. Growing up with three brothers had given Jenna some of her rough edges.

“Grandpa doesn’t care if we drink all his chocolate milk,” Shelby said.

“Of course not, he always has more in the garage,” Jenna teased.

“Stay away from my garage,” Daddy growled.

She laughed as she rose to her feet. “Well, I’m late. The meal was wonderful, Mrs. Black. Thanks for…checking the oil in my car, Mr. Black.”

I got up to walk her to the door. “So where do I report for work? And what time?”

“You can wait until after you get the kids on the bus. Then meet me at the office. I’m on Walker between the bakery and insurance office. First Choice Mortgage.”

“Your own place?”

“Satellite office. The broker’s downtown. You’ll have to run down there occasionally. Do you have a car?”

“Grandma’s Bonneville.”

“Is that the same one you used for your driver’s license road test?”

“Yes, the car and I know each other well.”

“So do we, Mary Ellen Black. You’re going to be okay.”

I nodded, emotion choking my throat. Standing on the gravel driveway next to her car, an overwhelming desire to hug her compelled me to throw my arms around her despite all the years we’d not had any contact.

She held herself stiffly in my arms, then squeezed back for just a second before pulling away. Had she sought me out only at her mother’s urging? Or, as a divorced woman herself, had she understood how alone I felt, how much I needed a friend now? And did she need one, too? I wanted to be that friend again.

“I missed you,” I admitted. “And I’m sorry.”

“Eddie’s your past, Mary Ellen. Forget him.”

I shook my head, tumbling my new hairdo. “I can’t. I have to think of the girls. He’s their father.”

“They’re great girls. If they came out that big, I might have considered it. But raising babies, having someone completely helpless, completely dependent on me…” She shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the topic. “You’ll figure things out, Mary Ellen. And if you don’t, you’ll get by. That’s what most of us do.” I watched her get into her shiny black Cadillac. If she were just getting by, I could handle that.

“How come we never see Daddy anymore?” Shelby asked as I pulled the blanket to her chin. Amber, lying next to her in the old double bed that had been mine, turned from the light to face me. She wanted an answer, too, but from the sorrow in her eyes, I guessed that she already knew.

“We don’t all live together anymore, Shelby…”

“I know. We’re divorced—”

“No, sweetie, just your father and I are divorced.”

“A divorce affects the whole family,” Amber said with her usual sobering wisdom.

“Our family got divorced?” Shelby asked.

Before I could think of a response, Amber answered. “Yeah, but Dad was gone before that. He’s always cared about his restaurant more than us, Shelby.”

Could I argue with the truth? The resentful ex-wife in me wanted to wholeheartedly agree, but the mother in me wouldn’t allow it. “Your father loves you both very much, Amber.” And I truly believed he did, as much as Eddie could love anyone.

“He loves the restaurant more, Mom. I heard you say that to him a bunch of times.”

Waiting until the girls had gone to bed to have our fights hadn’t worked, apparently, not even in a house the size of the one we’d lost. Not that we’d fought all that often. I hadn’t wanted to nag Eddie, not the way Mom nagged Daddy. But I had to face the fact that I’d had a lot of resentment, even before the divorce, more directed toward the restaurant than the twenty-year-old waitress—and apparently so did my girls.

“I was mad when I said that, Amber. You know how when you’re mad you say things you don’t mean.” Liar. “Like when you call Shelby names…”

Amber’s lips quirked up in a smile. “Well, sometimes I mean those. I hate sharing a bed with her. She’s a hog, and she snores!”

“Do not!” Shelby protested vehemently.

“How would you know? You’re sleeping when you’re snoring. You can’t know what you’re doing when you’re sleeping!”

Heck, I didn’t know what I was doing when I was awake. There was no guidebook for how to handle divorce, nothing that applied to every situation and every child. My girls were smart. They deserved honesty. But they also deserved a father.

“Okay, girls, how about we visit your dad?”

“Where?” Amber asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Since I didn’t know where he was living, I had no choice. “We’ll go to the restaurant. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll have a girls’ day out. We’ll have lunch and go to the mall. I’m starting my new job on Monday. I need a few clothes. You both need some new shoes.”

“Shoes…” Shelby sighed, her eyelids drooping as she drifted off to sleep to dream of new shoes. She was definitely my child.

Amber studied me a while longer; I knew the cadence of crickets never echoed inside her head. “Do you want to show Dad your new hair, Mom? Do you think it’ll make him change his mind about the divorce?”

Had she been listening to my mother? I had to find a place of our own. Of course, a reconciliation was what she wanted. Until I’d come to my senses in the form of the foreclosure notice, it had been what I wanted, too, to salvage my family. But Eddie wasn’t my family any longer; my girls were.

“Honey, are you hoping…”

“I’m not, Mom, okay?” She reached out to flip off the light, but I caught her hand and held it back. Then after slipping off Amber’s glasses, I stared into her eyes, swimming with unshed tears.

“It’s okay to hope, Amber. It’s okay to dream. But dream about things you can get with your brains and your ambition. Don’t hope for your father and me to get back together. It’s not going to happen.”

“Because of that ’ho?”

My mother wasn’t the only one she’d been listening to; evidently Grandma had shared a new word with the girls. I bit my tongue to hold in a laugh. “Amber!”

“Mom, once he sees you looking like that—”

I touched a lock of the soft hair. “I didn’t do this for your father, Amber. I did it for me.”

And it felt good. It felt damn good to do something for me.

“We’ll go see your father tomorrow, and we’ll talk about setting something up so that you can see him more. That’s all we’re doing. Okay?” And a visit was long overdue. Eddie didn’t deserve them, wouldn’t support them, but they needed him.

She nodded.

“I love you, Amber.” I kissed her forehead and stood up to head for the door and the couch in my father’s den.

“Mom?” I stopped and grasped the door frame, my stomach clenching. What now? “Don’t forget about shoe shopping, okay?”

Oh, yeah…despite her brains, this one was mine, too.

CHAPTER H
Happiness

Although I didn’t want to raise any hopes in my children or my mother, I took extra time with my makeup and clothes. I had some pride; it was about time that I showed it. And showed Eddie what he’d given up… The girls. I wanted him to want them back, to want to spend some time with them. I didn’t want him to want me. Okay, maybe I did, but I didn’t want him back.

“Going to the restaurant today is a really good idea, Mary Ellen,” Mom said, nodding at my hair and makeup, the highest praise she’d ever given me.

Even staggered by her compliment, I had to clarify, “For the girls, Mom. Yes, it is.”

“Maybe for you, too, honey.” She really did care, did love me. “Good luck.” But she would never understand me.

“Good luck with what?” Dad asked on his way out the door to open the store. Jesus was back to help him with the Saturday-morning crowd, and I didn’t know who was more relieved—me or Dad. He bussed my cheek on the way out the door. “You look good, honey. I’ll miss you today. It was great having you at the shop.”

“It was fun being with you, Dad.” And despite the neighborhood gossips, I had enjoyed spending time with my dad. While I knew Eddie would never have the kind of relationship with Amber and Shelby that I had with Daddy, I wanted him to have some relationship with them, any relationship.

As I pulled the Bonneville into the restaurant lot later that morning, I realized I should have accepted my mom’s wish for luck. Luck that Eddie would be happy to see his girls, that he would show them that they’re important to him.

But as I parked in the shadow of the concrete building on the east side of Grand Rapids, I didn’t feel lucky. I should have called him, should have warned him. But then, wouldn’t it be just like the little weasel to have refused? He’d done it while we were waiting for the divorce. In fact, I could scarcely remember the last time he’d seen his children. And while I hated him for that, I hated myself, too. I should have done this for the girls sooner.

“Is Dad here, Mommy?” Shelby asked.

“God, you’re stupid,” Amber snarled. “Dad’s always here.”

The shadow of the building grew, swallowing me in the darkness. This, not some twenty-year-old cocktail waitress, had been my husband’s mistress and not just for the last couple of years, but for all eleven years of our marriage. A new hairdo wouldn’t make him want me, wouldn’t make him regret what he’d thrown away. I couldn’t compete with bricks, a brass bar and jovial customers.

I threw open the door of the restaurant and stepped out of the shadow. As the light washed over me, I realized something else D-day had done for me. I didn’t want to compete anymore. I didn’t want Eddie to act like a husband or a lover, ex or jealous. I wanted him to be a father, nothing else.

The Saturday lunch crowd wasn’t what it used to be. But then not much was. I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure who I was yet, but I wasn’t Mrs. Edward Nowicki. Still, the staff glanced up with trepidation when we walked in. Perhaps they expected a repeat of my hysterics on the day the bank had slapped the foreclosure notice on the house. The hostess, standing behind her podium in the foyer, smiled politely, looked at the girls and then back at me. Her pouty mouth fell open. “Mrs. Nowi—”

“Ms. Black. Mary Ellen’s fine,” I corrected her. “Trina, isn’t it?”

Her head bobbed, her fine blond hair bobbing with it. “Yes.”

“Is Eddie in?”

Amber snorted at my rhetorical question.

“He’s in the office, Mrs.—Mary Ellen.” Trina’s heavily mascaraed eyes widened with a hint of panic.

“I’ll go back and let him know he has visitors,” I offered. “Would you mind seating the girls for me? They can order, too. They know what they want.” A father. And I intended to make him act like one, if only for a few minutes.

“Mrs.—” The confusion over my name stopped her protest, and I slipped past her and down the hall, past the rest rooms to Eddie’s office.

The door was ajar, so I pushed it open the rest of the way. Well, so much for my hopes and dreams. Obviously Eddie’s dick hadn’t shriveled up and fallen off. All three and three-quarters inches of it jutted out of his pants then disappeared between the lips of the girl kneeling in front of him.

“Excuse me—” Both of them jumped.

“Don’t look guilty,” I said at their stricken expressions. Good thing I’d come back alone.

“Mary Ellen—”

“It’s okay, really,” I insisted as Eddie dragged the blond girl in the tight, black waitress uniform to her feet with one hand, while he struggled to zip up his pants with his other hand.

Obviously he still had the same reaction to me, new hairdo and all, that he’d developed the last couple of years. I could deflate him faster than anyone. “We’re divorced. It’s okay now.”

Now. Before it hadn’t been. When he’d first told me about this young woman in his life, I’d been devastated, hysterically heartbroken. Now I was just quietly bitter. The divorce decree made a difference. This wasn’t my husband getting a blow job in his office. This was my ex. I honestly didn’t care. In fact, I was amused by the blush on both their faces.

“Why are you here? I told you there’s no money.” He finally lifted his chin to face me, and I noticed a yellowing bruise around one of his eyes.

“Money would be nice,” I admitted. “You should help support your daughters—”

“I told you—”

The young girl shrank away, probably wishing in her embarrassment that she could disappear. Maybe she wasn’t a ’ho, to borrow Grandma’s new word. Maybe she was just young and stupid the way I’d once been. But I was older now…

“Eddie, there’s other support than monetary. The girls need your attention. You’ve hardly seen them since you left—”

“You’re staying with your dad, and I can guess how he feels about—”

“I’m going to leave now,” the girl said as she awkwardly tried to slip past me and into the hall. I sidestepped, allowing her to escape what she was probably sure would be an ugly scene. She’d been present the day I’d gotten the foreclosure notice.

“He feels like a father should,” I went on. “He wants his daughter to be happy. He resents whoever makes her unhappy.”

Did Daddy resent Eddie enough to have given him that black eye? Despite his age, Daddy could still be a brawler. And it wouldn’t take much to beat Eddie. Although his driver’s license said five-eight, Eddie stood only five-six in his stocking feet. I could tower over him with heels, and for some reason, I’d worn platform tennis shoes today. I could take him. And if he hurt my girls, he’d be sporting another black eye. “You should feel that way, Eddie—”

“About you?” he asked, his thin lips twisting into a sneer. “Is this for me, Mary Ellen? The hair? Wearing some makeup for once? You think that’s going to make me change my mind? You should have thought of something before you got the dye job. Blondes are more fun!”

A laugh sputtered out. I couldn’t help it. “You’re such an ass, Eddie. The saying is that blondes have more fun, but since that poor girl hooked up with you, she won’t know fun anymore.”

His face reddened again. Despite the bleached highlights in his hair, he showed his age. Forty, prime time for a mid-life crisis. He hadn’t realized all those big dreams he’d had, only owning this restaurant, and he was on the verge of losing that. “You were never any fun, Mary Ellen,” he accused.

I shrugged. “Not since I met you, no. I don’t want you back, Eddie.” I wanted me back, wherever I’d been hiding the last eleven years. I wanted fun, but before I could satisfy my desires, I had to make sure my girls were happy. And they needed a relationship with their father.

“Then why—”

“For the girls. I brought them. They—” Miss him? How? He hadn’t been around much before the divorce. He’d been busy trying to save this sinking ship “—wanted to see you.”

“They did?” His flush deepened, and I remembered that middle age was prime time for a heart attack, too.

“You okay, Eddie?”

“There’s a lot going on right now, Mary Ellen. Now’s not a good time—”

My hand clenched into a fist, but before I could swing, I took a deep breath, exhaled, closed my eyes. I had to keep it together. For the girls. “Just a few minutes, Eddie. Talk to them. Ask them about school, gymnastics…show some interest in them, okay? Fake it!”

He didn’t try to lie to me for once; he didn’t claim to have any interest in them now, as he was obviously preoccupied with something else. And I knew what a mistake I’d made. Without seeing him, they could weave the fantasy that he might actually care about them, but seeing him, seeing the blank, bored expression on his weaselly face, they would know the truth. Even Shelby who was usually so blissfully oblivious…

As he walked up to the table where the hostess was serving them chocolate milk, the girls didn’t meet him with bright smiles. And he didn’t wrap his arms around them, torn apart from missing them. I missed them while they were at school. He hadn’t seen them in several weeks and displayed no joy in seeing them now. Instead, he looked embarrassed, face flushed, and for a man who usually oozed charm, he didn’t look as if he had a clue what to say to them.

“I’m sorry…”

I turned at the meek voice near my shoulder as I held back from the table. “What?”

“I’m sorry…about…”

I waved a hand at the little blonde’s anxiety. “I said it was okay. Really.” And for me, it would be since I was free of Eddie. But it wouldn’t be for her, not unless she ran like hell. I thought about warning her, but I wasn’t that benevolent. After all, she had known he was a married man even if he’d forgotten.

“But you were probably expecting…”

I followed her gaze to the table where Eddie stood above the girls, and they carried on a brief, stilted conversation. My heart ached for the disappointment on their little faces. They wanted what I had with my father; that’s what had inspired last night’s questions. But Eddie would never satisfy their longing. He would never be half the man my father was. “What? A big family reunion?” I shook my head. “No, I wasn’t.” Too much had changed over the last couple of years.

“Eddie feels bad, really he does.” God, she wasn’t just young; she was stupid, too. “About losing the house and not having any money. It’s killing him that he can’t support them. He feels so guilty that he can’t stand to see them.” Her voice cracked. “There really isn’t any money, you know…”

A commotion drew my attention away from the stammering blonde to the foyer. Two broad-shouldered guys strode in, knocking aside some of the ferns I’d potted in brass urns. I winced as dirt scattered across the thick burgundy carpet. Eddie backed away from the table, turning toward the hall to his office without even a goodbye to his daughters.

“Eddie!” the guys shouted and stopped his retreat.

The blonde clutched my arm. “Oh, God!”

I refrained from shaking her off and peered closer at the new customers. “Dougie?”

The guy with the most muscles and least neck turned toward me, staring intently from beneath a bushy unibrow. “Mary Ellen? Mary Ellen Black?”

“Dougie. I haven’t seen you in years.” Not since high school. Dougie hadn’t graduated with Jenna and me, though. Instead, he’d been doing time for some offense or other.

“Great to see you. You’re looking great.” From the appreciative gleam in his eyes, I figured he meant it.

“So you got married?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m divorced now. There’re my girls—” I gestured toward where the girls sat, wide-eyed at all the goings-on. Plates of pancakes growing cold in front of them.

“Cute kids,” he murmured.

Even a hoodlum’s compliments swelled my mother’s pride. “Yeah, they are.”

“I’ve got a couple of boys,” he said. “I married Sue. Remember Sue?”

There had been about ten girls named Sue in every class I’d attended, but I nodded. “Give her my best.”

“Mary Ellen!” Eddie’s voice rose with impatience. Not that he seemed particularly eager to talk to his visitors, but I guess he didn’t want me talking to them, either.

“I’m sorry. You all have business. The girls and I will leave now. Say goodbye to Daddy.”

I hustled them out the door, not worrying about paying the bill or leaving a tip. Except I did stop near the ’ho. “You can do better,” I told her. That was probably the best tip she’d ever gotten, no matter how long she’d been waitressing.

The girls and I walked past a Lincoln Navigator parked too close to the doors, and headed toward the Bonneville.

“I didn’t like the food there,” Amber said. “Can we get something to eat at the mall?”

As they climbed into the back seat, I fought the urge to drag them into my arms for reassuring hugs. “Sure we can. Shoe shopping always makes me hungry.” And so I’d blow the rest of my poker winnings and leftover VFW tips.

“I don’t want to eat here anymore,” Shelby declared, her bottom lip jutting out in a pout.

“That’s up to you two. Whatever you want.” And it was. Eddie hadn’t requested any scheduled visitation.

“I used to want to go home,” Amber admitted. “Back to our old house. Back to my old school, too. But there’re some neat people at the new one. They don’t care what you wear or where you live…” Not like the wannabe high-class neighborhood where we’d lived. “Some don’t even speak English,” Amber said, probably impressed someone talked less than she did; with her shyness, she usually spoke very little.

Shelby nodded. “Yeah, it’s okay.” And maybe it was. But they deserved more. And somehow I had to get it for them…for all of us.

CHAPTER I
Initiation

“Remember that I warned you how crazy it gets around here,” Jenna said Monday morning, before I had even swung my purse from my shoulder. No laced tea had mellowed her this morning. “People will yell at you. I will yell at you. Tell her, Vicki.”

The woman sitting as close to the desk as her swollen belly would allow nodded. “She can be a miserable bitch, worse than me with these raging pregnancy hormones.”

“You regretting the job offer?” I asked. My gut clenched with nerves. I’d been a lot more comfortable at the VFW.

Jenna, in a crisp, burnt sienna–colored pantsuit, shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. But her dark eyes wouldn’t meet my gaze, wouldn’t let me see if she cared if we resumed our friendship, and that gave me hope that she did care. Maybe she was scared to let me know it. “You regretting taking the job?”

“No, not yet.” Because I wanted this opportunity for employment and friendship.

“You might.”

I shrugged, too, but my shoulders retained all the tension I was feeling. “You might regret it more. I don’t have any experience.”

She nodded, but her hair stayed in the perfect knot on the back of her head. “Well, hell, it’s worth a try, huh?”

I hoped she was talking about the job and the friendship. “Sure.”

“Vicki will show you the ropes. I’ve got a breakfast appointment.” She was gone before I’d yet to swing my purse from my shoulder.

“Here, I lock mine in the desk,” Vicki said, grabbing the bag from me. Since the front of the building housing the mortgage office was a wall of windows looking onto a street that had seen better economic days, locking up one’s valuables seemed like a wise decision. But maybe a cheap lock on a metal desk wouldn’t be enough. And the computers that topped each of the two desks in the outer office were openly on display. Those windows needed blinds.

And the plain beige walls needed some color, maybe some paintings with vivid hues. The soft gray, metal desks could use some vases of flowers to spruce them up and relieve the commercial look of the office. But it was an office, not a house. I couldn’t decorate it. I had to work in it…if Jenna still wanted me to. “Was she trying to scare me off?” I asked.

“No, just warning you. It gets hectic around here. Jenna’s at it around the clock. She’ll work you.”

I dragged in a quick breath. Would I be able to handle the job? But that didn’t bother me as much as Jenna’s hours. Why did she work so much? So that she wouldn’t miss Todd? So that she wouldn’t feel so alone? I had the girls. Did she have anyone?

“She’ll pay you well. That’s why I keep coming back after the babies.” Vicki fixed me with an intense, blue-eyed stare.

I smiled at her, hoping to relieve the tension. “So you’re warning me, too?”

She laughed but didn’t deny it. “It’s my job.”

“Understood. I just need to make some money right now.” Enough to get me out of my mother’s house, to get away from the West Side again. To make a life for myself and my daughters… And after my brief stint at the VFW and the butcher shop, I was used to temp jobs.

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