“Don’t tell me you’re so afraid of the empty nest that you’re going to try to win your ex back,” my mother exclaimed.

“Get serious, Mother.”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Bernice stood. “Take a look at what’s in the shopping bag. And don’t be stubborn about it.” She kissed my forehead, then clicked her way to the foyer. “Good luck with…whatever,” she yelled before the door slammed.

I kept glancing over my shoulder at the bag. Curiosity finally won out and I went to investigate.

Another little black dress. I drew it out and held it in front of me. Not bad. Maybe I’d wear it tonight. If it fit. I looked at the tag and was surprised to see that it was actually my size. Maybe Bernice had finally gotten it into her head that I was never going to be a size eight. I grinned. If that was the case, was anything possible?

Nikki Rivers

Nikki Rivers knew she wanted to be a writer when she was twelve years old. Unfortunately, due to many forks in the road of life, she didn’t start writing seriously until several decades later. She considers herself an observer in life and often warns family and friends that anything they say or do could end up on the pages of a novel. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and best friend, Ron, and her feisty cairn terrier, Sir Hairy Scruffles. Her daughter, Jennifer, friend, critic, shopping accomplice and constant source of grist for the mill, lives just down the street.

Nikki loves to hear from her readers. E-mail her at nikkiriverswrites@yahoo.com.

Window Dressing
Nikki Rivers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

From the Author

Dear Reader,

Don’t you just love a road trip? Music blasting, wind in your hair, brand-new pair of sunglasses perched on your nose? I’ve been taking road trips with my best girlfriend, Deb Kratz, ever since we’ve been old enough to drive. The destinations have changed over the years—and so have we. But we always have a blast.

Window Dressing starts with just such a road trip between Lauren Campbell and her best buddy, Moira Rice. Lauren, divorced for ten years, thinks she knows exactly where she’s going—taking her son, Gordy, to start his freshman year, after which she will do all the things she’d always planned. But, as we all know, the roads we take in life don’t always get us to the destinations we’ve planned on. Too often there are detours.

In some ways, I’m like Lauren. I had my trip planned, too, but found myself on a different highway in midlife. As Lauren does, I discovered that an alternative route can turn out to have an even better view. It’s not easy leaving some of that window dressing behind. After all, it’s not nice to litter on the highway of life—but everyone does. And along the way, we also pick up things—other ideas, other people, other careers. Other ways of living.

Window Dressing celebrates the choices we make in our lives—and the friendships and loves we find along the way.

I hope you will always stay open to the journey.

Nikki Rivers

P.S. I would just like to add that neither Deb nor I ever flashed any truckers on those road trips. Really.

This book is dedicated to friends and road trips and the millions of chips and snack cakes eaten along the way.

I’d also like to thank my editor, Kathryn Lye, for her continued support and encouragement over many years and many journeys. Special thanks to Ron, my husband extraordinaire, who leaves me little treats to find among the manuscript pages on my desk and keeps me fed when I’m on deadline and my daughter, Jennifer, who helps me keep my sanity in this insane process we call writing. Both of them, by the way, are excellent road trip companions.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 1

“Welcome to weirdness,” Moira Rice said as she rode shotgun in my aging Chevy.

“Put on your glasses, Moira. That sign said Welcome To Indiana.”

Moira shrugged her shoulders. She was the only woman I knew who could make a shrug look sexy. It didn’t hurt that she was wearing a turquoise off-the-shoulder sweater and that her long, wavy chestnut hair was pinned loosely on the top of her head.

“Same thing,” she said. “I mean, Lauren, just look—” she jutted her chin toward a steak and waffle house we were passing, “—they don’t even have normal fast food down here. And every other car on the road is a pickup truck. And, have you noticed, they all have gun racks? And every driver is wearing a cap extolling the virtues of farm equipment or beer. Even the women. Like I said, welcome to weirdness.”

I craned my neck so that I could see the backseat in the rear view mirror. “I’m sure Indiana has no more weirdness than any other state and I’d prefer you didn’t make comments like that in front of Gordy,” I said primly.

Moira arched her brow and gave me a sideways look. “Gordy isn’t hearing anything but whatever passes for music these days via that wire attached to his ear.”

It was true. My eighteen-year-old son, Gordy, his head leaning back on the headrest, his eyes peacefully closed, had been hooked up to his iPod since we’d taken I-94 out of Milwaukee just after dawn. He’d only unplugged long enough to order when we’d pulled into a drive-through south of Chicago.

“I just want him to be happy with his choices, that’s all,” I said defensively.

Gordy was going to be living in Bloomington, Indiana, for the next four years while he majored in finance at Indiana University. Like the slightly obsessive mother I am, I wanted him to be enraptured with his surroundings. As much as I was going to miss him, I wanted him to be happy enough to justify my agreeing to let him go away to school.

Moira checked out the backseat. “Looks happy enough to me,” she said. “You know,” she added with a frown, “the kid is starting to look like the shirt more and more every day.”

Moira had been calling my ex-husband, Roger Campbell, the shirt ever since she’d discovered that he had his business shirts custom made. I glanced in the rearview mirror again. Gordy did look like his father—which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like his father, my son was a brown-eyed blonde—handsome with an athletic body. But I knew that he also got some of his beauty, style and grace from his grandmother. My mother. Who I am nothing like.

“How can he not be nervous?” was my question. The fact was, Gordy seemed as cool as the Abercrombie and Fitch clothes and the hundred and fifty dollar sunglasses he was wearing—all gifts from the shirt.

“Honey, how can you not be relieved?” was Moira’s comeback.

Moira was that rare thing in Whitefish Cove—the suburb of Milwaukee where we were neighbors—a mother who’d managed to completely let go of her children. Kenny and Gina had gone east to school and stayed to work on Wall Street and the Garment District, respectively. They made one trip home every year and Moira and her husband Stan made one trip to NYC every year and everyone seemed satisfied. But here I was having heart palpitations at the thought that I wouldn’t see my son until he came home for Thanksgiving break. I was already planning the first meal in my head.

His favorite meat loaf. Garlic mashed potatoes. Glazed…

The blare of a semi’s horn and the hoots of its driver snatched me from my recipe revelry.

“Nice rack!” the trucker yelled before blasting on his horn again.

“Are you crazy?” I demanded.

“Just trying to liven this funeral procession up a little,” Moira said as she stuffed her sizable boobs back into her sweater.

I frantically checked to see if Gordy had witnessed Moira’s flashing but his mouth was hanging slightly open as he softly snored, oblivious to the recent show. Of course, chances are, he’d already seen something of what Moira had to offer. She was fond of sunbathing topless in the back yard and exercising semi-nude in the living room with the drapes open. Whitefish Cove’s Junior Leaguers didn’t quite know what to make of her. But I liked her. I thought she was funny and audacious—different from anyone I’d ever known. My ex had never shared my appreciation of Moira’s quirkiness so I didn’t start to really get to know her until after my divorce. Now, after a few years of dancing around each other, we were starting to become best girlfriends and I was loving it.

I did, however, expect her to stay completely clothed on interstate highways.

“It’s a wonder you don’t get kicked out of Whitefish Cove,” I snapped as I stepped off the gas and pulled in behind the semi, hoping the driver would see the maneuver as a sign that the show was over.

“That’s the beauty of being married to a brilliant CPA, girlfriend. Half the men in Whitefish Cove have Stan on retainer. Several, who shall remain nameless, of course—”

“Of course,” I hastened to agree.

“—would be peeling potatoes in some country club prison if it weren’t for Stan.”

Although I didn’t know any details, nor did I want to, I knew she wasn’t kidding. Stan might have been the neighborhood savior as far as the men were concerned, but to the women, Moira was the neighborhood thorn. She loved to shock the uptight wives and flirt with the bewildered husbands. More confident in her sexuality than any woman I’d ever met, she made no apology for carrying around twenty extra pounds while I seemed to be constantly apologizing for my extra fifteen. Although on Moira the pounds were mostly in the right place while I tended to be somewhat lacking in the rack area. Under similar circumstances, I was pretty sure that truckers would not be honking in my honor.

“Are we there, yet?” Gordy moaned sleepily from the backseat.

“Such enthusiasm for higher education,” Moira drawled.

“Nah,” my son, the college-bound, said, “I just gotta take a whiz.”

I flicked on the van’s blinker and took the next exit.

A huge bag of potato chips and three diet sodas later, we were there.

Indiana University looked like it had stepped out of central casting. It was that perfect. Big, ancient limestone buildings, gorgeous landscaping and students who didn’t know the meaning of the word acne.

“Stepford U,” muttered Moira.

“Behave yourself,” I hissed as I pulled the van onto the U-shaped drive in front of the residence hall Gordy had been assigned to and claimed a parking space just vacated by a Mercedes. A few dozen kids were lugging trunks and duffels and what looked like several thousand dollars worth of electronics out of upscale SUVs. Gordy spotted his roommate—a boy named Dooley from Michigan that he’d been getting to know via email for the past month—and was out of the car and shaking hands before I even had a chance to turn off the engine.

“Isn’t that cute,” Moira said. “Acting like little men.”

I gave Moira a stern look. “Am I going to have to make you sit in the car?”

“You and what fraternity?” she asked over her shoulder as she got out.

I opened my door and stepped into cloying humidity. “Holy hell,” I gasped.

“You’ve got that right. What floor did you say Gordy is on?” Moira asked as she fanned herself with the empty potato chip bag. “Maybe I’d rather wait in the car, after all.”

I slammed my door. “Nothing doing. You’re hauling. In this heat it’ll be no time at all before you’ll be too dehydrated to open your mouth.”

Close to the truth. Several trips to the second floor later, we were gasping for breath and begging for bottled water from some kids who’d had the foresight to bring a cooler full of drinks.

Moira and I sat under a tree to catch our breath while we re-hydrated and watched Gordy mingling and laughing and acting like this was a homecoming instead of a goodbye.

“I don’t think I was ever that confident,” I said.

“You did a good job, girlfriend,” Moira stated.

“Can it be as easy as it looks for him?” I wondered.

Moira sighed. “In my experience, hon, it’s never, ever as easy as it looks.”

By the time we’d finished unloading, Gordy had gone full sail into his brave new world.

“Call if you need anything,” I said for the hundredth time as I lingered outside the car trying to hold back my tears.

Gordy rolled his eyes. “Mom, if you cry, I swear I’ll—”

Moira, waiting in the car, started to honk the horn.

“I’m just a little misty,” I promised. Moira honked again and I said, “Just take care of yourself, okay?”

“Deal,” he said, then added, “You, too,” and looked at me long enough for me to know he meant it. Finally, he grinned. “See ya, Ma,” he said, then turned and ran from me without a backward glance.

Which was a good thing.

So how come it made me so sad?

I sniffed back tears and went around to the driver’s side of the car.

“Well, that was subtle,” I said when I got in.

“Someone had to save the kid from humiliation.”

I sniffed again, turned the radio to a classical station, which I knew Moira would hate, and started the long drive home.

But I can never stay mad at Moira for long and by the time we pulled off the interstate north of Indianapolis in search of more road snacks, I’d changed the station to oldies rock.

The convenience store/gas station that beckoned us from the night had seen better days. The florescent lighting inside was so cheap it hummed like a tree full of cicadas and I could feel my shoes stick ever so slightly to the badly mopped floor. Apparently, a sweet tooth’s needs override fear of germs because the smeared and cracked self-service bakery case drew us like a couple of flies.

“Are you sure you don’t mind driving right through?” I asked Moira as we peered at a couple of questionable looking donuts hiding behind the fingerprints.

“’Course not,” Moira said. “It’ll be an adventure—speeding across state lines in the middle of the night. Besides, we’re both kid-free now. We can sleep as late as we want to tomorrow.”

I had no intention of speeding and I wasn’t at all cheerful about my new freedom to sleep late. I decided to change the subject. “Is it the bad lighting in here or do those donuts look a little green to you?”

“I consider myself somewhat adventurous,” Moira said, “but in this case I think we should stick to packaged snacks with readable expiration dates on them.”

I agreed and we went in search of the junk-food aisle.

“Cupcake?” Moira asked, once we’d buckled in again.

I grabbed the chocolate cupcake with the white squiggle of frosting bisecting the top and ate it the way I’d been eating them since I was ten—by tearing off the frosting with my teeth. It easily came off in one piece.

“Now that’s talent,” Moira said before downing half a bottle of soda in one chug. Her burp could have rivaled anything Gordy ever emitted.

“That was truly disgusting,” I said as I pulled out of the gas station and into local traffic.

She burped again. “Don’t tell me you’re not acquainted with the car rule.”

I glanced at her then back at the road. “The car rule?”

“Yeah, if it happens in a car, it doesn’t count.”

I hooted. “I bet some guy told you that back in 1978.”

Moira stuck her nose up in the air. “That may well be, but even so it is one of the few known laws of the universe,” she insisted. “Why do you think so many people pick their noses at stoplights?”

I pulled up to a stop light and we both looked to the right then started screaming with laughter. A guy with long greasy hair in the pickup next to us actually did have one of his digits shoved halfway up his bulbous nose.

“Seriously, Mo,” I said after the light had changed and we’d pulled away from digit man and turned onto the ramp that would take us back to the interstate, “what if Gordy isn’t as cool as he pretends to be about going to school? What if he’s really been acting as phony as that knock-off Fendi on the floor at your feet?”

Moira gasped and grabbed her purse. “How did you know?” she demanded as she scrutinized it. “Is it that obvious?” she implored, the threat of handbag humiliation burning in her eyes.

I sighed impatiently. One of the many things Moira and I don’t share is a love of all things fashion. “No, it’s not that obvious. You told me it was a fake—that you’d bought it when you and Stan went to Mexico last spring.”

Moira frowned. “Oh, right,” she said.

“Forget your damn purse, will you? We were talking about Gordy, remember?” I asked her testily, certain that the happiness of my son was more important than whether women more in the know than I would spy that Moira’s bag was a fake.

“Hey,” Moira said, obviously satisfied that the bag would pass inspection as she tucked it back down by her feet, “you’re not allowed to get serious on a road trip. Plenty of time for that once we’re back on Seagull Lane. Here,” she said as she tossed a cellophane bag at me, “have some pork rinds and listen to me sing backup to this song. You’ll swear it’s Cher.”

As long as it didn’t count, I ripped open the bag of pork rinds with my teeth and dug in. The thing was, Moira really did sound like Cher.

Thousands of calories and several dozen oldies later, I was maneuvering the car through the softly curved streets of a dark and sleeping Whitefish Cove.

As usual, Moira had to comment on the street names. Sea Spray Drive. Fog Horn Road. And her all time favorite Perch Place.

“Absurd,” Moira pronounced, “considering you couldn’t see Lake Michigan if you climbed to the roof of the largest Cape Cod in the Cove with a pair of binoculars.”

“But you can sometimes feel it on your skin or taste it on your tongue,” I said, parroting my usual argument in favor of all things maritime.

“Leave it to you to glamorize humidity and lake-effect snow,” Moira said as she stuffed wrappers and half-eaten junk food into a bag so we could dispose of it discreetly and avoid possible ridicule by late-night joggers or carb counting insomniacs.

The Cove was reportedly first settled by fishermen which made the street names somewhat less absurd. To me, at least. Moira, however, was sure that the khaki wearing denizens liked to think of themselves as New Englanders, which made their collective fantasy of being related to the founding fathers doable.

It was true that the Cove had a lot of white picket and waving flags and many of the houses were more than one hundred years old. Which was why I’d been so thrilled when Roger had announced that we were buying our “starter house” in Whitefish Cove. It had looked so stable. So family oriented. Two things, at twenty-two, that I’d craved more than anything.

I pulled into the meager driveway of my two story wood frame cottage. The original clapboard siding was painted white and the window boxes under the first story windows, bursting with red geraniums, were painted the same blue as the front door. I loved the place now as much as I had when we moved in, but I was in no hurry to go inside now that Gordy wouldn’t be there. When I cut the engine, the last of my energy seemed to go with it. I just sat there, arms clinging to the steering wheel.

“You’re going to have to get out and go inside sometime, honey,” Moira said. “Look at it this way, you’ll never have to wait for the bathroom again.”

Not very comforting, but true. My house was probably the only one left in the Cove with only one bathroom. It was one of the reasons Roger had wanted to dump it. Right around the same time he’d decided to dump me. In the years we’d lived there, I had bonded with the house like it was an old friend. I knew every creak. Every draft. But to Roger, the house had been nothing but an investment and, as with me, the time eventually came to trade it in on something that had a higher market value. He’d traded the house for a high-rise condo overlooking Lake Michigan. He’d traded me for a twenty-one-year old flight attendant named Suzie with a z.

Finally, Moira got out of the car and came around to the driver’s side and opened my door. To save her the trouble, I dragged myself out.

“Geeze, girlfriend, you really are in bad shape.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “Come on over and I’ll scramble us some eggs and shake us up some martinis. A couple of those and you’ll forget you have a kid.”

“Tempting, but I think I’ll just go inside and wallow a little.” I didn’t want to forget. At that moment, with the summer coming to an end and my nest newly empty, everything just seemed too precious. What I really wanted to do was put on my oldest, softest pair of cotton pajamas and climb into bed with a couple of photo albums. I truly did intend to wallow.

By late September, with the leaves starting to turn on the maple tree outside my living room window, I began to think there had to be a limit to how much a woman should be allowed to wallow. Not that I hadn’t been out of the house since Gordy had deserted it. And I’m not just talking about the twice-weekly trips to the post office to send fresh baked cookies and care packages to Bloomington.

Whitefish Cove wasn’t exactly a bedroom community, miles from real civilization where the cul-de-sac ruled and there wasn’t a decent restaurant you didn’t have to wrestle traffic on the freeway to get to. We were really a village that was only fifteen miles from the trendy east side of Milwaukee and just a few miles more to downtown. But I’d done the “meeting old girlfriends for lunch” thing to death. Moira, who’d recently started to collect art, had dragged me to every new gallery show in town. I’d gone to enough regional theater performances to fill the bottom of my purse with programs and parking stubs. I hadn’t turned down one single invitation since I’d left Gordy in Bloomington. I’d even issued a few, determined not to become a forty-one year old recluse. But I was quickly becoming sick of hearing about how lucky I was to be divorced with my only child two states away.

“Why, you can do just about anything you want to do,” a friend from my college days exclaimed over her basil, tomato and fresh mozzarella salad. I’d taken the initiative of inviting her and a former roommate to lunch at the latest trendy sensation—an overpriced café in a building that had once been a garage for city buses. The huge door at the front was left open at the owner’s discretion, which was one of the big draws. The excitement! The suspense! It was rumored that he’d opened it during a March snowstorm last year and there was a big buzz going on about whether he’d leave it open for the first snowstorm this year. Personally, I couldn’t get past the fact that I was eating a fourteen-dollar sandwich in a place where someone once drained motor oil from a city bus.

“Like what?” I asked after I’d swallowed a bite of my baby spinach and radish sprouts on asiago foccacia.

“Well—anything. You’re footloose and fancy free,” pointed out the former roommate who was trying to overcome bulimia, so she was eating nothing at all.

“Well, I have been considering finding a new kind of volunteer work—”

My former roommate laughed. “That’s Lauren. Always the good girl.”

These kinds of conversations did not make me feel better about my situation. Neither did spending the money on overpriced sandwiches since Gordy’s support had started going into a trust on the day he started college and the maintenance Roger had to pay me was in nineteen-ninety-six dollars. So I went back to wallowing and baking until Gordy called one afternoon. I was absurdly pleased to hear his voice when I picked up the phone.

“Ma,” he said before I could tell him how happy I was that he called, “you gotta stop sending all the cookies. One of my roommates saw a roach last night.”

“You’re not eating my cookies?” I asked with a modicum of mommy devastation.

“Ma—come on. Who could keep up? We get a package like every three days.”

Perhaps I’d gone a little overboard, I thought as I eyed the two batches of oatmeal cookies cooling on the kitchen counter. “Okay,” I vowed, “no more cookies. So, how are things going?”

“Things are cool, Ma. Gotta go, though. Class. See ya.”

“But—”

But he was gone.

I packed the cookies up and took them next door to Moira’s.

“Listen, hon, I know you’ve got time on your hands,” she said as she chewed on her fifth cookie, “but you can’t bring stuff like this over here. I have to be able to get into my new red dress for that cocktail party next month. CPAs and their wives. Big Yawn. I plan on being the most exciting aspect of the event and these cookies aren’t helping.”

That was the night I started watching the shopping channels on TV. Looking forward to finding out what the deal of the day was at midnight was about all the excitement I was getting. One night I found myself reaching for the phone while the on-air personality rhapsodized about a kitchen tool that would replace just about every other implement in the house—and all for $19.95. I snatched my hand back and vowed right then and there that there were going to be some changes made.

With butterflies in my stomach, the next day I called the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee campus, ordered a catalogue of courses, and made an appointment to speak with a counselor in the department of continuing education.

Two days later, my heart did one of those funny little stalls when I opened the mailbox to find the catalogue had arrived. Oddly, I was not comforted that the postal rules hadn’t changed since I was a twelve. Good things, like free makeup samples, took forever to arrive. Things that you’d just as soon not see, like report cards—and catalogues that were going to force you to start thinking about where your life was going—showed up in no time at all.

I took the catalogue to the breakfast nook, poured myself a cup of coffee, and started to page through it. After a half-hour I was wishing I’d made decaf. I felt lost and nervous as a high school freshman trying to find her locker.

I’d always intended to finish college someday. I’d even taken a college course here and there over the years. I’d sit in lectures thinking about the Halloween costume I could be sewing or the party I could be planning or the soccer game I was missing or the committee I could be chairing. Pretty soon I’d drop out, vowing to go back again when Gordy got older. Well, now Gordy was older and it was going to be different. It had to be. When Gordy graduated from college, maintenance from Roger would stop and I’d have to buy him out of the house if I wanted to stay on Seagull Lane. Which I did. I intended for my grandchildren to someday visit me in my little cottage.

Before I’d dropped out of college to marry Roger, I’d planned to major in elementary education. The prospect of being a teacher no longer interested me, I knew that much. But I had no idea what else I wanted to do.

Hoping to brainstorm, I called Moira but Stan said she’d gone shopping so I switched on the tube, found an old Bette Davis movie and lost myself in how Paul Henreid looked when he held two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them, and handed one to Bette. It wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening. Afterwards, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on, horrors of horrors, soft white bread. Since I no longer had to set a good example for my son, cheap white bread had become my new guilty pleasure. I dug in the refrigerator and came out with a can of chocolate syrup. I poured some into a big glass of milk and stirred. Then I tucked the UW catalogue under my arm, picked up the sandwich and milk and took everything up to bed with me. Maybe if I slept with the catalogue under my pillow, I’d dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

The phone woke me up the next morning. I sat up and grabbed it on the first ring. The college catalogue, still open in the vicinity of my lap, slid to the floor with a thump.

“Hello?” I croaked as I squinted against the sun filtering through the semisheer curtains in my bedroom window.

“Mrs. Campbell? This is Sondra Hawk from Priority Properties. I’d like to set up an appointment to check out the house. Today if possible. What time would be convenient?”

“Check out the house?” I asked dumbly as I pushed hair out of my face and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Ten a.m. I never slept this late. Ever. I swear. The shame of it made my body go hot all over. I sat up straighter in bed and tried for a more cheerful, wakeful tone. “You want to check out the house?”

“Yes,” Sondra said then gave a little laugh. “You know, get acquainted with its idiosyncrasies.”

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked as I got out of bed. That way if Sondra, whose voice sounded like she was one of those alarmingly well put together women who knew how to accessorize, asked me if I’d still been in bed I could honestly answer no.

But, of course, she didn’t ask.

“We here at Priority Properties,” she explained, “pride ourselves in getting to know a house before we list it. The first step—”

I frowned. “Wait a minute—did you say list?”

“Yes—list.”

“Excuse me, but you seem to be under the false impression that I’m selling my house.”

Sondra didn’t miss a beat. “I have the signed agreement right here in front of me.”

I shook my head. “No—that’s not possible.”

There was a slight pause before she said, “Mrs. Campbell, your husband signed the agreement.”

“Nonsense,” I insisted, knowing this must be a mistake. “I don’t even have a husband. I have an ex-husband,” I conceded. “But he no longer lives here. I live here.”

“But it’s his name on the deed, Mrs. Campbell. It’s his house. And he’s putting it up for sale.”

I told Sondra I’d get back to her and hung up the phone. I started to punch in the number for Weidermeir, Junket and Sloan Associates Engineering but thought better of it. This was something I had to do in person. I showered in record time, pulled on a white T-shirt and an ankle-length, army-green drawstring skirt that was only slightly wrinkled and ran a brush through my wet hair. My dark blond hair is chin length, parted in the middle and tends to be stick straight if I don’t blow dry it. But this was no time to worry about volume. My adrenaline was shooting into high gear. I needed to confront Roger while the anger was still pumping through my veins. I shoved my feet into some brown leather clogs, grabbed my purse, and headed for the garage.

Southeastern Wisconsin likes to keep you guessing about the weather. October had arrived and the leaves on the trees were gold and crimson but the day was as steamy as an August heat wave. I was practically to Roger’s office before the air conditioner in my aging car had any effect on the sweat factor under my T-shirt. I arrived downtown looking as haggard and bewildered as I felt.

The attendant at the underground parking facility wouldn’t let me in. No spaces reserved for ex-wives, apparently. I managed to snag a parking spot on the street five blocks away. Which meant, of course, that I was noticeably damp by the time I reached Roger’s building. The ride up in the elevator made me feel queasy and I wished I’d eaten something before leaving home.

The receptionist didn’t have a clue who I was and looked dubious when I told her my name. She was as crisp and unwrinkled in her tightly tailored taupe suit as I was sweaty and disheveled. I noticed her giving me the once over while she buzzed Roger’s office, making me wish I’d spent some time with a blow dryer and an iron, after all.

“He’s with clients,” the receptionist said as she hung up the phone. “If you’d care to wait—” She waved her hand toward the sumptuous waiting area. But I wasn’t interested in being awed by the Mies van der Rohe knock-off chairs or in paging through this month’s copy of Structural Engineering.

“I really don’t care to wait, thank you. I’ll just go on back.”

She was on her feet and out from behind her desk before I could open the door to the inner sanctum.

“Of course,” she said smoothly, like she was used to managing uncooperative people. “Please come with me.”

I followed her down the plushly carpeted hallway to a small room that wasn’t a conference room, nor was it an office. Perhaps it was the place they led all irate ex-wives to. The Ex Waiting Room. How modern. How sophisticated. How condescending.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

Coffee? I was boiling inside and out. “No, thanks,” I muttered.

“As you wish,” she said, then left.

“As you wish,” I singsonged to myself as I flounced around the room. Her poise was pissing me off almost as much as that immaculate taupe suit she was wearing. I noticed the furniture in the Ex Waiting Room didn’t even bother to be knock-offs of anything. No doubt I’d have gotten my coffee in a plastic cup.

So not only was I getting my house sold from under me, I was now labeled second class at Weidermeir, Junket and Sloan.

Which, of course, was what I was. But having my nose rubbed in it didn’t make me happy. Not that I would ever want Roger back. In fact, every time I saw him I believed just a little bit more in divorce.

I was pacing and mentally counting up Roger’s deficits in the husband department when the door opened and he walked in.

He was still handsome and I suppose you could say he looked intimidating standing there in a suit that probably cost more than the contents of my entire closet and a shirt that was custom made. On the other hand, I knew he got gas from cucumbers and that he had the hair on his back professionally waxed. These things saved me from being intimidated by cashmere or thread counts.

“What is this about, Lauren?” he asked impatiently.

I crossed my arms. “What do you think it’s about, Roger?”

He sighed again. “I take it Sondra called you. She wasn’t supposed to do that. Not until I’d had a chance to warn you.”

“Warn me? About what?”

“Lauren,” he said with that blandly condescending way I’d come to hate when we were still married, “try to focus. I meant warn you about Sondra listing the house, of course. With winter coming, now is the best time to put it on the market. Plus, with interest rates—”

I only partly listened while Roger quoted a raft of statistics.

“Roger,” I finally interrupted, “why does the house have to be put up for sale at all?”

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling before turning back to me. “Lauren, that was the agreement,” he said slowly, like he was explaining something to a child. “I pay you maintenance, child support and pick up the tab for the house until Gordon goes to college. At which time, the house reverts back to me, the maintenance ends and the child support goes into a trust to pay for Gordon’s education and other expenses.”

I stared at him for a moment. Could this be right? I shook my head. “The agreement was until he finished college, Roger. Which means I’ve got four more years until—”

He gave a derisive chuckle. “Delusional, as usual,” he said. “You’ve always lived in your own little dream world, Lauren.”

I gasped. “Me? Are you kidding?” I demanded. “Dream world? I’ve been a single mother for ten years, Roger. I was the one who stayed, remember? I’m the responsible one, while you—”

“Now wait just a minute! If you were really responsible, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You’d have a career in place and you’d be able to buy the house yourself if you wanted to stay there so badly.”

“My career,” I said tightly, “was raising our son.”

“Fine. But now that’s over.”

“Over?” Okay, maybe I knew that. And maybe I knew that this day was eventually coming. But it made no sense to me that eventually had suddenly become now.

“That house is Gordy’s home, too,” I pointed out. “What do you expect him to do during the holidays? Summers?”

Roger shrugged. “He’ll do what most children of divorced parents do. He’ll spend part of the time at my condo and part of the time at your apartment.”

The word apartment still had the power to make me cringe inside—and not only because, without a job, I couldn’t possibly afford one. The reason I’d fought to stay on at Seagull Lane, fought to bring my son up in exactly the manner he would have been raised had his parents not been divorced, was because he wasn’t going to have my childhood. Not if I could help it.

Roger looked at his watch. “Look, I’ve got to get back to my meeting. This has taken up too much of my time already. I’m sorry the Realtor’s call shook you up, but I think if you check with your lawyer, you’ll see that I’m well within my rights. So don’t try to make me out to be the bad guy, Lauren. I’ve been patient with you long enough.”

After Roger left, I slumped into a chair, fished my cell phone out of my purse and called my lawyer’s office. She was with a client so I asked for her voice mail and left her a message detailing precisely what I needed to know. Namely, was I about to become homeless?

On my way out, I managed to give the receptionist a bright smile and wish her a good day but I was glad once I was back on the street and I didn’t have to hide how scared I was.

I walked without purpose, trying to remember the details of the divorce agreement. Could I have actually gotten wrong something as important as this—a roof over our heads? Bread on the table? Was it possible that my life was about to change even more than I thought it would? Was I going to go from an empty nest to no nest at all?

I started to feel sick. I wasn’t sure if it was lack of food or the humidity or the fear, but when I passed a restaurant, I decided to go in. I didn’t even notice the name of the place. The air conditioner was pumping out cool air and there was food to be had. That was enough for me.

The waitress showed me to a booth and I ordered iced tea. When she left, I opened the menu and immediately honed in on the dessert section. Chocolate Suicide. Yeah, I could use a little suicide, especially if it was sweet. But then I remembered the receptionist’s tight, taupe skirt. When the waitress came back, I ordered the salad of field greens with grilled chicken.

When it came, it was huge and it occurred to me that maybe I should eat half and take the rest home for dinner. I mean, maybe I was going to have to start doing that kind of stuff. Maybe I was going to have to start doling out my food so a loaf of bread would last me a week and a jar of peanut butter would last me a month. I’d have to start putting milk in my coffee instead of more expensive flavored non-dairy creamers. Unless, of course, I ended up living under a viaduct in a discarded washing machine carton where I’d only have refrigeration from October to May.

I nibbled while I thought of the humilities I might have to suffer, but as soon as the food hit my stomach I started to feel stronger.

I was right about this and Roger was wrong. I had four more years to get my act together. Not that I was admitting that I’d been irresponsible. You can’t be irresponsible and serve as PTA president, block watch captain and room mother. You can’t be irresponsible if you tucked your child in every night and made him breakfast every morning.

I stabbed a hunk of something green and ruffly and shoved it into my mouth. I was getting angry again. After all, marriage was a contract. A bargain between two people. Both Roger and I had been up-front before we’d gotten married about what we wanted and expected. I had kept my end of the bargain. Roger was the irresponsible one who hadn’t. It was hard to believe that in the beginning we’d both wanted the same thing.

I met Roger the summer before my junior year of college. I was working at a day-care center and I’d taken a group of seven and eight year olds on a field trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum, perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. We’d brought bag lunches and eaten them on the lawn near some huge, metal sculptures. Afterwards, I’d passed out little disposable cameras, given the kids a quick lesson and told them to get snap happy. It was such a joy to watch them decide what they wanted to shoot. I was grinning ear to ear when Roger came up to me and told me that he’d never seen anything as beautiful as how I was with those children. I was speechless. I mean, here was this terrific-looking man dressed in a gorgeous suit, looking at me like I was the best thing he’d ever seen. He handed me his business card and asked me to please give him a call so he could ask me out to dinner. I watched him walk away then looked down at the card.

An engineer. And at a firm I’d heard of. A firm everyone had heard of. You bet your life I called.

He wanted a traditional wife, he’d told me on our first date. Someone who would stay at home and raise his children. Someone who would care about his career, which was just starting to take off, as much as he did. It sounded like heaven to me. Raised by a single mother, I was a latchkey child before the term was even coined. Being a stay-at-home mother was exactly what I dreamed about being someday. I loved kids. I was only twenty-two, but my biological clock had been ticking ever since I’d started babysitting at fifteen.

After six dates, Roger declared himself enchanted and proposed. How could I refuse? He was offering me everything I ever wanted. This handsome, ambitious man wanted to take care of me and our offspring for the rest of our lives? Blame it on fiercely independent mother backlash, but I was more than happy to let him.

I became pregnant with Gordy when we were married less than a year. We bought the house in the Cove. Bought the minivan and the infant car seat. Life, as far as I was concerned, was beautiful.

Until Roger made partner. The youngest ever in the firm. He started to travel more on business. He started to buy more expensive suits. He started to complain about how I dressed. But the real fighting began when he enrolled us in a wine-tasting club. I just couldn’t get behind the idea of spitting out deliciously expensive wine once it was in my mouth.

By the time Gordy was six, Roger was no longer enchanted. Two years later, we were divorced.

Just as I was signaling the waitress for more iced tea, my cell phone rang. I dug in my purse for it and flipped it open. It was my lawyer.

“So, I’m right, aren’t I?” I asked in a rush of certainty that I really wasn’t feeling in my belly anymore. “I still have four more years.”

There was a moment of silence, then, “Lauren, maybe you should make an appointment and come in so we can discuss this.”

I closed my eyes. “No, give it to me now.”

She sighed as the waitress refilled my glass.

“All right,” she said. “No. You don’t have four more years.”

My mouth went dry. I looked at the retreating waitress in a panic. I didn’t have enough spit to call her back, so I took a gulp of iced tea then yelled, “Excuse me? Miss?”

She turned around and I said two words. “Chocolate Suicide.”

CHAPTER 2

Buzzed from the caffeine in two orders of Chocolate Suicide, I ran up the stone steps of Moira’s Tudor and jabbed the doorbell.

“Door’s open,” Moira yelled.

I found her in the living room, wearing only a pair of French-cut panties, rolling around on a Pilates ball.

“Jesus, Moira, what if I’d been the UPS guy or something?”

Moira jumped off the ball, her breasts bouncing with enthusiasm. “Then I guess I would still be getting some exercise,” she said with a smart-ass grin.

Moira was always alluding to other men and rumors were rife among the neighbors on Seagull Lane. I’d taken a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude and had no idea if the rumors were true.

“Geeze, honey,” she said as she took in my appearance, “you look like hell. And what’s that all over your shirt?”

I looked down. “I’ve just done two rounds with Chocolate Suicide.”

“Well, it obviously didn’t kill you, but, sweetie, you sure look wounded.”

For one harrowing moment I thought she was going to hug me. I don’t consider myself to be all that narrow minded, but that didn’t mean I wanted to feel Moira’s bare breasts against my T-shirt. Thankfully, she grabbed a kimono off the sofa and slipped into it. But not before I had enough information to put another Seagull Lane rumor to rest. Not an ounce of silicone on that body. I’d never seen them in action this long before. They were real, all right.

Heavens, was this any time to focus on another woman’s breasts? My world was crumbling. What did I care about silicone? “Something terrible has happened—” I began.

“Well, I’m here to listen and help but you seem awfully rattled. Before you start spilling your guts, you need a martini.” She peered at me again from under her false eyelashes. “Or maybe three.”

I was in no shape to argue. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her make a shaker of martinis.

“Here,” she said, handing me one. “Drink up.”

I’m usually a white wine kind of gal, but the first sip went down easily. Delicious and cold enough to ice skate over the surface. I took another sip. And another.

“Good,” Moira praised. “The color is starting to come back into your cheeks. Now let’s go get comfortable so you can tell mama everything.”

I followed her into the living room and sank onto one of the two white sofas that flanked the fireplace. While the women of Whitefish Cove often worked for years at taking layers of paint off their woodworks and crown moldings, Moira had done just the opposite. Everything was painted a creamy white—even the stone fireplace. Sacrilege to most of the ladies of the Cove, but I thought it was really quite striking. The color in the room came from a red shag rug on the floor and the artwork on the walls—which were mostly bold slashes of color on canvas—the kind of stuff you look at and think you could do yourself just as well. But what did I know about art?

“So,” Moira said once I’d let the down-filled cushions of the sofa enfold me, “spill it.”

I chugged the rest of my martini, put the empty glass on the coffee table, and spilled. The look on Moira’s face grew more horrified with each word.

“Honey,” she said when I’d finished, “you must have had a man for a lawyer.”

I shook my head. “Nope. A woman.”

“Traitor bitch,” Moira mumbled.

“Not really. I insisted on doing it this way.” I braced myself, figuring Moira would look at me and say stupid bitch. But she didn’t. Instead, she asked me why.

“Okay,” she said, “you’re not dumb. So what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I wanted my life to go on just as I’d planned it,” I said. “I wanted to be a ‘stay at home mother,’ I wanted to be a block watch captain, room mother, chairman of the annual Christmas cookie exchange. I wanted to drive a minivan to soccer games and sew Halloween costumes. I wanted everything that Roger had promised me when I’d married him, damn it. And I didn’t see why Gordy should have to suffer having his life uprooted just because his parents had fallen out of love. Besides, I’d always planned to go back to school and eventually support myself. I mean, I had no intention of living off a man who didn’t love me for the rest of my life.”

“I’m not sure I share your ethics on that one,” Moira murmured as she refilled our glasses from the shaker she’d brought with her from the kitchen.

“The most important thing to me was to know that Gordy would be taken care of until after college.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I guess that’s how I screwed up. I thought I was going to be taken care of for four more years, too.” I leaned forward again and buried my face in my hands. “Don’t you see? I thought I had four more years to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

Moira set her glass down on the table, then gathered me to her ample, unfettered bosom. “You poor thing,” she murmured as she rocked me in a way that my own mother certainly never had. I closed my eyes and settled in. Of course, Bernice wouldn’t have been nearly as comfortable to be held against, either. My mother had good bones and never put anything into her mouth that could lead to hiding them. When she was upset, she lost herself in sit-ups or yoga, not double helpings of dessert.

My eyes popped open. OMG! My mother! How was I ever going to face my mother with this?

Comforting as they were, Moira’s arms weren’t going to cut it. I pushed away from her and grabbed my glass off the coffee table, downing the second martini, which wasn’t nearly as cold or delicious as the first, in one huge gulp. I burped then wailed, “How the hell am I going to tell Bernice?”

“I think we need more booze,” Moira said.

She’d met my mother.

Moira was back in the kitchen, shaking up the last of a bottle of Stoli, when Stan came home. I sat up straighter and tried to look less like a tearful lush, then I remembered that Stanley Rice, who at six foot three and about one hundred forty pounds looked like Ichabod Crane in Ralph Lauren, wasn’t known for a keen sense of observation when it came to anything other than business and his model railroads in the basement. He barely glanced at me.

“Hello, Lauren,” he murmured absently while he sorted through the stack of mail he’d brought in with him.

“Hi, Stanley,” I said, trying not to slur my words. Not that he’d notice that, either.

Moira came into the living room with the shaker and another glass. She poured Stan a martini. “Here you go, snookums. Something to fortify you.”

Stan looked blankly at the glass Moira had thrust into his hand. He took a sip and a small smile played around the corners of his thin mouth. “Ah,” he breathed.

“That’s a good boy,” Moira said. “Now you go downstairs and play with your trains until dinner is ready.”

Stan shuffled off like an obedient mental patient. I still hadn’t figured out how someone as vibrant as Moira had ended up married to the barely breathing Stanley Rice.

“I should go,” I said as I tried to stand up.

“Don’t be silly.” Moira refilled our glasses. “You’re staying for dinner.”

I looked around the room. “What dinner?”

She raised a perfectly arched brow. “You have heard of delivery, haven’t you?”

She fished a cell phone out of her kimono pocket and ordered a pizza.

With a tummy full of pepperoni pizza to help soak up the vodka, I wove my way back home under darkness, hoping that the ladies on Seagull Lane were all too busy either scrapbooking or exfoliating to see the shameful condition I was in.

At nine o’clock the next morning, I shot up from a dead sleep into a sitting position. Someone is in the house, was my first thought, followed closely by Something must have crawled inside my mouth and died last night. My third thought was spent wishing I could unscrew my head and set it aside for the day because the pounding going on inside of it was driving me crazy.

And then I heard the noises from downstairs again.

I threw back the covers on my four-poster bed, then crept to the top of the stairs.

A woman was standing at the foot of them, shaking the newel post.

“Excuse me,” I said. “What are you doing in my house?”

The woman looked up at me. “Oh, hello, there. I guess you didn’t hear the bell.”

“I guess I didn’t,” I muttered.

She held up a set of keys. “So I just let myself in. I’m Sondra Hawk. We spoke on the phone.”

I’d been right. She did know how to accessorize.

Shiny black boots, shiny black purse, shiny black belt, shiny black hair cut as severely as the black and white houndstooth check suit she was wearing. The jewelry all looked like real gold. And there was just enough of it to announce that Sondra Hawk was both successful and tasteful.

Suddenly, I was keenly aware of what I must look like. Not to mention smell like. According to my T-shirt, I’d had chocolate, and something red. Most likely something Italian because I was pretty sure it was garlic fermenting in my mouth.

Damn it. Sondra the Hawk was probably wondering how someone like Roger Campbell could have ever been married to someone like me. A thought, unwelcome as a swarm of wasps at an ice cream social, entered my mind. I wondered if they’d had sex, yet—Ms. Coordinated of 2006 and Roger “I have all my shirts custom made” Campbell. If they hadn’t, I figured they’d eventually get around to it. And on sheets with a minimum 600 thread count. I thought longingly of the yellow sprigged sheets currently on my bed wishing I were still snuggled between them even though I was pretty sure that no one had ever bothered to count their threads.

But there was no running away from the woman with the leather notebook that matched her bag. Anyway, was I woman or wimp? I decided to hold my head high, despite the map of indulgence on my T-shirt. I started down the stairs. “May I ask what you’re doing here, Ms. Hawk?”

“I’m here to inspect and get to know the property, Mrs. Campbell. We at Priority Properties pride—”

“Yes, I know. You pride yourself in getting to know a house before you list it.”

She gave me a frosty smile. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll just make myself at home and take a look around.”

“And if you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you.”

“Certainly,” she said. “Of course, some people find it too emotional an experience—”

She let her voice trail off as she shook the newel post again then jotted something down in her notebook.

“No entrance hall,” she murmured as she jotted some more.

There had once been a tiny entrance hall and an enclosed staircase. The one big change Roger and I had made in the early years was to tear down the wall so that the narrow staircase was now open to the living room. Which meant that there was really no entrance hall, but I’d always thought it was worth it because it had opened up the living room so much.

“Small, isn’t it?” Sondra commented as she moved to the center of the room and inspected the ceiling. “This should really be replastered,” she said. “And I would strongly suggest changing your window treatments.”

I’d made the simple tieback muslin curtains that hung in the front windows myself. I’d always thought them charming. Sondra’s tone had reduced them to rags. I didn’t want to know what she thought of the rest of my decorating. She was probably inwardly sneering at my blue-and-white check camelback sofa and my chintz wingback chair, the cushion worn down to fit my tush like a baseball in a glove.

“You’re lucky wide-plank floors are back in style, but this one needs refinishing—or you could just carpet over it. It would probably make the room warmer.”

The dining room didn’t fare much better than the living room, but it was the kitchen that really took a beating.

“You’d be wise to have a new floor put in and the built-in booth in the breakfast nook should be torn out to open the room up.”

She wanted me to get rid of the booth where Gordy had eaten Froot Loops and fish sticks? Where he’d helped me decorate Christmas cookies and did his homework while I cooked dinner? I was debating whether to cry or to kick her out on her tight rear end when something she said caught my attention.

“Excuse me—what was that you just said?” I asked.

“I was just saying that you’ll have to get right on this list of improvements. It’ll be a miracle if we’re ready to show by the end of October. Once we hit November, things slow down until well after the holidays.”

“You mean the house could just be sitting here, empty, all through the holidays?”

She gave me another frosty smile. “Well, we don’t like to think so. I mean, our sales staff is excellent. But, this house hasn’t got much more than location going for it. I suggest we get it on the market as soon as possible. But, even with the best of properties,” she added in a tone that made it clear that this was not one of them, “people just don’t like to relocate during the holidays.” She sighed. “Now let’s take a look at the upstairs.”

I followed her up but I hardly heard anything else she said as she inspected the larger bedroom in the front and the two smaller ones in the back and I only vaguely heard her outrage when she discovered the one small bathroom with the claw-footed tub. I was too busy forming a plan.

Once she was gone, leaving a list of problems behind, I called Roger’s office. His secretary tried to put me off but I told her to tell him it was regarding the sale of the house. She put me on hold but it wasn’t long before Roger picked up.

I didn’t waste any words. “Roger, I think we need to talk. Could you drop by after work today?”

“If you spoke to your lawyer, Lauren, you know I’m well within my rights—”

“Roger,” I said pleasantly, “please. I know the house is going on the market. Sondra was here this morning and we went through the entire house together,” I said, making it sound like we’d bonded while discussing cracks in the ceiling. “She made a list of liabilities that I think we need to discuss.”

“Liabilities?”

I smiled. I’d gotten his attention.

“What kind of liabilities?”

“Well, the list is quite detailed and I thought we should probably go over it together.”

“Just fax me a copy, okay?”

“Roger, since I’m going to be living here while these repairs are being done, I’m the one who will have to handle the plasterers and painters and the carpenters. So I think—”

“Plasterers? Carpenters?” he grumbled before giving the kind of sigh that would have made me nervous if we were still married. “Yes, maybe we better discuss it.” I could hear him flipping pages on his day planner. “I’ll be there around six-thirty.”

“Perfect,” I said. When I hung up the phone I headed for the shower. I needed to get rid of the stench of yesterday’s pity party, then start making a grocery list.

I’d decided to splurge on ingredients, so I drove to the Market in the Cove in the heart of the village. When I pulled into the parking lot my heart did a little flip. God, I used to love this place. When Roger and I were still married I relished shopping here on Friday mornings, planning special dinners for the weekend. Once Roger split I’d started going to the bigger, less expensive chains. But they were just grocery shopping. The Market in the Cove, with its low green awnings and its clusters of pumpkins and corn stalks flanking the entrance, was an experience.

Buckets of fresh cut flowers greeted me as soon as I was through the door. Warm gold and vibrant orange zinnias. Jaunty brown-eyed Susans and roses of yellow and pink and red. There was a bucket of pale, creamy giant mums. I decided I had to have some of those. I grabbed a shopping cart and chose half a dozen. After the flower girl, in an adorable cobbler’s apron, wrapped them for me, I moved on to the butcher’s counter. The butcher wasn’t the same one as in the old days, but he was just as friendly when he held out the length of white butcher paper where an expertly trimmed loin of pork reclined for my approval before he wrapped it.

The fresh vegetable section was even more beautiful than the flower department. Every tomato appeared to be the same size and fully ripe. The asparagus was thin and tender enough to make one doubt the calendar and there were varieties of mushrooms I’d never even heard of. I chose a selection of vegetables to marinate and pan grill and was sorting through the fresh rosemary when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Lauren! I haven’t seen you shopping here in ages!”

I grimaced. Amy Westcott. The biggest gossip in the Cove. I made myself smile before I turned around.

“Amy! What a surprise!”

Amy lived across the street from me in a huge Colonial that was decorated within an inch of its life. She had parlayed a fondness for painting vines, flowers and birds on assorted surfaces into a business. Amy’s Ambience, her little gift shop in the village, was stocked with the overflow from her house as well as hand-dipped candles, homemade soaps and a selection of useless, overpriced gifts. Moira and I had often speculated on how she managed to keep her shop open since there never seemed to be any customers.

“Is it true what I’ve heard?” she asked with that overly concerned air that people affect when they’re hoping that whatever horrible thing they’ve heard really is true.

My stomach clenched. Had Amy somehow heard that I was soon to be homeless? “I don’t know,” I answered pleasantly. “That depends on what you’ve heard.”

“That you’re selling your little house!” she exclaimed, her fresh-scrubbed face looking the picture of innocence. Amy never wore makeup. She didn’t have to. This was a woman who’d sailed through high school without a zit or a blackhead to slow her down. And she was sailing into middle age with barely a crow’s foot to her name. “I mean, I saw Sondra Hawk over there this morning, so I just thought—”

“Oh, that,” I said as I turned my attention back to the rosemary. “I was just having the house—um—appraised.”

“Appraised?”

I didn’t have to look at her to know that she was skeptical.

“Yes. I’m thinking of having another bathroom put in,” I said, a little astounded that I’d grabbed this idea out of thin air.

“But, didn’t Gordy just leave for college? I would think the last thing you’d need is another bathroom at this point.”

I looked at her in her white button down and sixteen inch strand of pearls and wanted to tell her that it was none of her business but it’s like I was programmed to be nice. So instead I gave her a bright smile and said, “Well, you never know what the future will hold, do you?”

I could see that this response had whetted her appetite for more information. I decided to counterattack. “So how is Chuck doing? The stock market is so unpredictable these days.” Chuck was a stockbroker who liked to brag that his clients were the only ones who hadn’t lost money in the ’90s.

“Oh—well—Chuck is fine. And, as always, he just has a knack for picking the right stocks,” she said with a brief laugh, then opened her mouth to pounce again.

I beat her to it.

“And the girls? How are Annabelle, Belinda and Camille doing?”

“Oh, the ABCs are doing terrifically,” she gushed. “I’m sure you heard about our Belinda coming in first at her twirling contest and—”

I nodded, smiled, oohed and aahed in all the right places as Amy talked batons and gymnastics and swim meets. The ABCs, as Amy and Chuck liked to refer to their girls of eight, ten and twelve, were, as Moira liked to put it, “nauseatingly talented.” Not to mention Amy’s favorite subject. She could go on for hours. And that’s exactly what it felt like she was doing.

I looked at my watch. I didn’t have any more time to be nice. “Oh, gosh, look at the time!” I interrupted. “Gotta rush. Nice to see you.” I tossed a bundle of rosemary onto my other groceries and took off, rattling my cart down the aisle and leaving her standing there in her Eddie Bauer khakis with a dumbfounded look on her face.

Shameful, maybe, but I fully admit that I enjoyed every minute of preparing that meal, even though I was going to be feeding it to Roger.

The plan was to fill the house with the scents of home cooking so he wouldn’t be able to resist accepting my invitation to stay for dinner. Then I’d whet his appetite with baby spinach and fresh pears tossed with his favorite vinaigrette and a sprinkling of blue cheese and walnuts and wow him with my honey mustard pork loin and my pan grilled vegetable medley. I’d lull him with freshly baked yeast rolls then move in for the kill with warm apple crisp.

First I’d have him eating off our wedding china, then I’d have him eating out of my hand.

One thing in life I was sure about. I was a damned good cook. It was one of the reasons Roger had married me.

It was just past noon and I was kneading the dough for the rolls when I heard the front door open and close, followed by the tap-tapping of high heels on my liability floors. I thought at first that it might be the Hawk again, back to insult the backyard or something. No such luck.

“Hello, Mother,” I said when I looked up to find her standing in the kitchen doorway. “What brings you out to the Cove?”

But I didn’t really need to ask. She had a shopping bag from the upscale boutique she managed dangling from her arm. The only time my mother made a visit was when she’d plucked something tasteful from a clearance rack that she was certain would be perfect for me. Luckily, with her discount, she got the stuff for next to nothing so I didn’t really feel guilty that I never wore any of it. I was totally honest with her about this, but Bernice, who’d done some modeling in the fifties and sixties and still dressed, groomed and moved like she was camera-ready at all times, just could not seem to give up trying to dress me. It’d been a battle between us since I was about ten and decided I’d rather be comfortable than look “pretty.”

My mother, even at sixty-two, was still what I thought of as a Hitchcockian beauty. Tall and blond and sophisticated with a very chilly edge. She was wearing a pencil-thin camel skirt and a cream cashmere twinset. Her skillfully colored champagne hair was drawn back in a perfect French twist. Her earrings were small swirls of gold surrounding pearls. I looked down at my flour-dusted denim coveralls and sneakered feet.

Like I said, my mother and I are nothing alike.

“I brought lunch,” she said as she held up a little shopping bag from the café near her boutique, “but it looks like I needn’t have bothered.”

“Actually,” I said, “I could use some lunch. This is for dinner.”

“Are you having a party?” she asked skeptically.

“No,” I answered as I went back to kneading the dough.

“Surely you don’t bake this kind of thing for yourself?” Her voice held the kind of horror mothers usually reserved for something worse than the possible consumption of carbohydrates.

“No, Mother, I don’t.”

She reached into the refrigerator and brought out a pitcher of iced tea.

“Is that your honey mustard pork loin marinating in there?” she asked.

“It is.”

She poured herself a glass of tea, then sat down in the breakfast nook and started to lay out what she’d brought for lunch. Salads sans dressing. My mother carried her own fat-free concoction in a handsome little bottle she kept in her huge, tote-size purse.

“Well, it can’t be that you’re seeing someone,” she said.

Although she was right, her tone still pissed me off. “Why can’t it?” I asked with the petulance that only she can bring out in me. “Just because I haven’t dated anyone since that excruciating blind date back in nineteen ninety-eight—” I sprinkled more flour on the ball of dough “—doesn’t mean that I couldn’t date if I wanted to.”

“Well, are you seeing someone?” my mother asked, her voice icily amused.

“As it happens, no,” I answered curtly.

“Then what’s with all this mess?”

To Bernice, a mess in the kitchen was anything that eventually led to washing dishes. My mother’s idea of preparing dinner is to stop at the deli or pick up the phone. I probably teethed on biscotti and I was pretty sure my first solid food had been something with olives and feta cheese.

“Actually,” I said, despite my reservations, “I’m expecting Roger for dinner.”

“Oh, my God,” Bernice exclaimed, a forkful of arugula halfway to her mouth, her beautifully made-up green eyes wide, “don’t tell me you’re so afraid of the empty nest that you’re going to try to win that asshole back.”

I stared at her, wondering if her latest Botox treatments had somehow affected her mind but she didn’t seem to be drooling or anything.

“Get serious, Mother. I would prefer,” I said, picking up the dough and giving it a good bashing, “to never be in the same room with him again if I could help it. It’s the nest I’m after—empty or not.”

Okay, I’d said it. And I knew it would bring on the questions. And I knew what her reactions to my answers would be. My mother was not going to be pleased to find out that I was willing to flatter and feed my ex-husband just to keep from getting my ass tossed into the street. But what the hell, might as well get it over with.

I took a deep breath. “Mother, there’s something I have to tell you,” I began, preparing to spill my guts while my mother sipped her tea.

“This has too much sugar in it,” she said before I managed to get one word out. “I don’t see why you don’t leave it unsweetened and offer your guests the option of artificial sweetener.”

I rolled my eyes like a teenager. “Well, Mother, it’s not like I have crowds coming through here every day asking for iced tea.”

She eyed my hips. “Then do it for yourself,” she said.

Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I’m not fond of pouring my heart out to someone while they’re insulting me. The fact that it was my own mother just added to the fun.

I slapped the dough against the breadboard, sending up a little puff of flour. And then I told her my story.

And what did she say?

“Of course, it would never occur to you to just go out and get a job.”

I had to force myself to stop kneading the dough. It was long past time to shape it. Face it, the last five minutes had been overkill, but I’d needed to keep my hands busy while I told my mother what a mess I’d made of my life. “Of course, I’m going to get a job,” I said as I opened a cupboard door and searched for a baking sheet. “But I need time to find one, Mother.”

“Right. You’ve only had ten years,” she answered.

That my mother disapproves of my choices in life is no secret to anyone who has ever seen us together. But, just in case I might have forgotten, she was kind enough to take this opportunity to remind me.

“I honestly have never understood why you didn’t finish college. You weren’t raised to be dependent on anyone, Lauren. Certainly not a man. I’ve been taking care of myself since I turned sixteen. I’ve—”

I found the pan I needed and slammed it onto the counter top. “Just because you programmed yourself to be the woman you wanted to become when you were twelve years old and first discovered that you had cheekbones doesn’t mean—”

She didn’t let me finish. “Oh, you think that isn’t exactly what you’ve done?” she asked.

I gasped. “That’s nothing like what I’ve done!”

She shrugged. “Keep your little delusions, Lauren, if it makes you feel noble. At least I have the consolation of knowing you aren’t trying to win back that jerk you married.” She stood. “That said, I hope you intend to do some grooming before Roger gets here. It wouldn’t hurt to have him feel sorry that he screwed up for a change.” She picked up her enormous purse. “Take a look at what’s in the shopping bag,” she said. “And don’t be stubborn about it.” She came over and kissed my forehead—easy since she was about five foot eleven, even without the mules, and I was five foot six—murmured disapprovingly over my hair for a few moments, then clicked her way back to the front door. “Good luck with Roger,” she yelled before the door slammed.

“That woman drives me nuts,” I muttered to the dough as I started to shape it into dinner rolls. Face it, we drove each other nuts.

I’d always suspected that my mother had “career girl” stamped on her birth certificate. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men—there had been no shortage of men over the years to take her to dinner, the theater, New York—she just didn’t want to be married to one. She certainly hadn’t wanted all the things that came with marriage in the fifties and early sixties. I was obviously an accident. She’d stayed married to my father just long enough to give birth to me. Gorgeous and irresponsible, Daddy had set out for the Florida Keys before I’d learned to talk, but I still heard from him every Christmas and on my birthday. And I still kept a picture of him, wearing swim trunks and a tan George Hamilton would envy, on my bedroom dresser.

I finished shaping the rolls, covered them with a gingham linen towel and went to the sink to wash my hands. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the shopping bag Bernice had left in the breakfast nook. Curiosity finally got the better of me and I wiped my hands on a towel and went to investigate.

Another little black dress. I drew it out of the bag and held it in front of me. Not bad. Maybe I’d wear it tonight. If it fit. I looked at the tag and was surprised to see that it was actually my size. Maybe Bernice had finally gotten it into her head that I was never going to be a size eight. I grinned. If that was the case, then anything was possible.

CHAPTER 3

For a few minutes I almost forgot.

As I started down the stairs, wearing the dress my mother had delivered earlier, the scents from the kitchen took me back to evenings when the sound of music had come from Gordy’s room upstairs and the house had felt cozy and safe. That’s how I’d felt in this life I had built for Gordy and me. Home safe—like a kid who’d been playing kick the can and had rushed out madly from the shadows of dusk to hit goal. But I’d forgotten something about how the game was played. The win was always only temporary. You never knew what was going to happen in the next round.

I was bending over the open oven door, basting what I’d hoped was going to help me win the next round, when I heard the front door open and Moira’s voice loudly purr, “Yum-mee—something smells good enough to eat. And look at that table,” she said as she came through the dining room. “And look at you, girlfriend!”

I shut the oven door while Moira stood in the kitchen doorway and studied the dress I was wearing.

“Donna Karan?” she asked.

“Right,” I answered.

“Bernice was here,” Moira said.

“Right again.”

She grimaced. “How did it go?”

“It was typical Bernice. First she cut me down at the ankles and then she wished me good luck.”

“Good luck? Don’t tell me you’re expecting a man for dinner!” Moira put her hand to her chest and slumped dramatically against the wall. “Oh my god, you’re dating and you didn’t tell me!”

“I am expecting a man for dinner. But it’s not a date. It’s strictly business.”

Suspicion brought her upright again. “Business with whom?” she asked.

“Roger,” I answered as I walked past her to check on the table one last time.

Moira scurried after me, her arms outstretched. In the fringed peacock-blue cashmere shawl she was wearing over a matching V-neck sweater, she looked like a horrified exotic bird. “Cloth napkins and a Donna Karan dress! I had no idea you were this desperate.” She swept me into her arms. “Sweetie, don’t you know Stan and I would never let you starve? You don’t have to resort to this!”

It took me a moment to disentangle myself from her shawl.

“Resort to what?” I demanded once I’d spit fringe out of my mouth.

“To trying to woo the shirt back into your life,” Moira stated like the answer was obvious.

“Damn it, does the entire world see me as that pathetic? Bad enough that my mother jumped to the same conclusion. I expected more from you, Moira. Give me a little credit, will you?”

Moira flapped a hand at me. “Simmer down, hon. I mean, it’s a gigantic whew that I was wrong, but why the big production if there’s gonna be no seduction?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly say there wasn’t going to be any seduction,” I said demurely as I fluffed the giant mums in the short amber color vase in the middle of the dining room table. “But not,” I added before Moira could erupt again, “sexual seduction. I’m using food to have my way with the man, true,” I admitted, “but only so I can convince him to let me stay in the house for a few more months.”

Moira digested this information for a few seconds. “Hmm, shrewd,” she said, nodding sagely. “Very shrewd.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

She pulled a pout. “Well, I am a little hurt that I wasn’t consulted since you know how I love mischief, but it’s a solid idea, sister. Roger was always a sucker for your cooking. That dress isn’t going to hurt, either.”

I looked down at myself. For once, my mother had gotten it right. The dress fit like it was tailored for me. Made of something black and soft, it had a wide V neckline and hugged my body to the waist where the skirt flared gently to just above my ankles. It made the most of my flat midriff and decent waist-line while it hid my slightly generous hips and backside. I looked good and I knew it.

“Thank you,” I said.

Moira followed me back into the kitchen and plucked a crumb of topping from the apple crisp cooling on the counter. “I could easily be bribed into something for a dish of this stuff.”

“Come over for leftovers later. You can dry the dishes.”

“I’ll dry the dishes as long as you dish the dish. I want to hear every little crumb of what goes on between you and the shirt,” she said.

I assured her that I would spill like a toddler trying to pour a glass of grape juice, then steered her toward the door. The last thing I needed was Moira hanging around when Roger arrived. But as she was leaving, I suddenly wanted to grab onto her fringe and make her stay. “I wish you could hide under the table and feed me lines if Roger gets difficult.”

She pulled me into a quick hug. “Hey, you can pull this off. Just let your inner diva meet your inner bitch queen.” She did a little shimmy, fringe flying and breasts bouncing. “Mix ’em up a little. After all, God wouldn’t have given us multiple personalities if he hadn’t wanted us to use them.”

Moira could always make me laugh.

And Roger could always drive me crazy.

“If this is some sort of attempt to win me back, Lauren,” he said as he surveyed the table twenty minutes later, “I can tell you that you’re only embarrassing yourself. I’m with Tiffany now. You remember—the twenty-eight-year-old aerobics instructor?”

I resisted the urge to lunge at his neck. For just a moment it flashed through my mind that no jury with at least one female member would convict me. After all, it was the third time that day that I’d been accused of trying to lure Roger Campbell back into my life. Surely I was expected to have limits.

I managed to keep from curling my fingers into weapons and tried for a reasonable tone. “I don’t know what your fantasies are, Roger. But I assure you, winning you back isn’t one of mine. I was just trying to make our discussion more pleasant. I mean, you gotta eat, right?” I said, with a shrug. “But if you’d rather not join me, that’s not a problem. I’ll go turn the oven off and then we can go into the living room and talk.”

He followed me into the kitchen. I’d been pretty sure he would.

“What’s in the oven?” he asked, then, “No, don’t tell me. Your honey mustard pork loin.”

“Well, that’s just amazing, Roger,” I said with what I thought was just the right amount of awe. “After all these years your senses still recognize it.”

He opened the refrigerator door without asking, a territorial infraction that ordinarily would have driven me nuts. This time it was just part of the plan.

“You’re marinating vegetables,” he said as he breathed in deeply.

For all his faults, Roger knew a decent balsamic vinegar when he sniffed one. When he shut the refrigerator and saw the apple crisp on the counter, I knew I had him.

He looked at his watch. “I have to be out of here by eight,” he said. “Tiffany’s car is in the garage again and I have to pick her up after her last class.”

“No problem. Go fix yourself a drink while I start grilling those veggies.”

To keep him out of my hair while I cooked, I’d set up drinks on the coffee table in the living room, complete with a silver ice bucket and tongs. This was the kind of thing Roger had wanted me to do when we were married but usually by the time he got home from work the coffee table was full of puzzles pieces or finger paints or homework assignments.

Once we were seated in the dining room with our salads, I could see that he appreciated the vinaigrette. But I decided to wait until he had some protein and carbs in him to make my pitch. I did, however, point out the list Sondra had given me, folded like a napkin next to his water goblet. He shoveled in salad while he started to read. But the longer he perused the list, the less eating he did until finally he threw down his fork where it clattered against the salad plate. The noise didn’t even make me flinch. Pleasure spread through me like the warmth of good wine. I no longer felt responsible for Roger’s anger.

“There’s nothing wrong with that kitchen,” he fumed while I enjoyed my salad. “It’s—well, it’s quaint. And as for the living room ceiling, who doesn’t expect an old house to—”

“Roger, that’s exactly what I told Sondra,” I said. “People expect some—um—quaintness when they buy a house this old.”

“Right,” Roger agreed as I got up to clear away the salad plates and bring in the entrée.

“Did you explain to her that the floors are original to the house?” he asked as I served him slices of perfectly roasted pork loin from a platter we’d gotten for our wedding.

I nodded. “Yes, I did, Roger. But she still suggested wall to wall carpeting.”

Roger was offended at the notion, but not so much that he wasn’t able to cut into his meat and seize a hunk between his teeth.

“Mmm—you always could cook,” he said as he chewed.

I sat down across from him and handed him the basket of rolls.

He slathered butter on a warm roll and took a bite.

“You know, I was thinking—” I began. Then I went into my spiel about how Sondra the Hawk said the house probably wouldn’t sell until after the holidays if we didn’t get it on the market soon.

“So, it occurred to me that since the house will be empty anyway, maybe I could have just a tiny little extension before I have to get out.”

“Lauren—” he began warningly.

I plowed on. “It would really help you out, too, Roger. I could be here to supervise the work on the house, which would free you from having to deal with workmen. Besides, just think what it would mean to Gordy to have one last Christmas in his childhood home.”

He raised his brows and I wondered if he had started having them shaped. I could tell that he was definitely using some sort of skin products on his face. Probably frantic to keep up with the twenty-eight-year-old aerobics instructor, Tiffany.

“Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself?” he asked while he cut into his third helping of the other white meat.

“Well, of course, I’d love it too, Roger. I mean, I know that soon Gordy may not even want to come home for the holidays—”

He raised his knife in triumph. “Didn’t I warn you not to make Gordon your whole life?”

I knew right away I was going to go for humble agreement, even though it made the grilled asparagus in my mouth hard to swallow.

“You were right, Roger,” I said, shaking my head like I was really too bewildered to fathom why I hadn’t listened to him in the first place. I was beginning to wish that Moira were under the table. I was giving the performance of my life and I had no audience.

“But putting all that aside,” I went on, “the main thing is, it would be a shame if the house just sat here empty all winter when your son could be having the stability of coming home—I mean really coming home—for the holidays.”

He gave in before he even tasted the apple crisp.

“But you’re on your own financially this time, Lauren,” he said. “I’ll give you a month to find a job and then the maintenance stops for good. I’ll agree to have the work done on the kitchen, but there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the house. If Preferred Properties doesn’t want to handle it, there are plenty of other companies out there who would jump at the listing. Meanwhile, it’ll be your responsibility to find someone to do the work. And stay away from those national companies. They charge a fortune. Better to find some local man. Just make sure he has references.”

“Of course,” I said, proud of hiding my panic at the idea of finding a job in a month.

“So,” he asked as I served him another helping of apple crisp, “how is our son doing?”

I filled him in on what I knew about Gordy’s new life, then pointed out that it was time for him to leave. “You’ve got to pick up Tiffany, remember?”

At the door he lingered, giving me that little smile of his that I used to find sexy and now just seemed arrogant.

“Come on,” he said, leaning in a little closer and cocking his head like he thought he was Robert Redford, “tell the truth. Even if you weren’t trying to get me back, you were kind of hoping this whole sexy Martha Stewart scene would at least get you a roll in the sack for old times’ sake, weren’t you?”

“No,” I said sweetly. “Were you?”

I saw by the look on his face that my mother had, indeed, been right about the dress.

An hour later the dishes were done and Moira and I were sitting in the breakfast nook, eating the rest of the apple crisp right from the baking dish while perusing the employment section of last Sunday’s newspaper. It was a warm enough evening to have the back door open. The faint neighborhood sounds drifted in and I felt safe again. But I had to keep reminding myself it was only temporary.

“Here’s one,” Moira said. “Dog grooming assistant. Says they’re willing to train anyone who can demonstrate a love for dogs.”

“I wonder what that means?” I asked suspiciously.

“It probably means you have to not mind getting your leg humped by a German Shepherd with performance anxiety.”

I laughed.

“Or getting pissed on by a poodle. Or lapped by a—”

Sometimes it didn’t do to encourage Moira. “Stop it,” I said nearly choking on my apple crisp. I tossed a pen at her. “Circle it.”

The circle looked pretty lonely on that big page, even though it was the miscellaneous employment section—the last hope of the unskilled.

I sighed. “Face it, I’m not qualified for much.”

“I still think this one about dancing at the Leopard Lounge is your best bet.”

“I’m not seeing me wearing an animal print thong and wrapping myself around a pole anytime soon. Not with my thighs.”

“It’d be the best thing for your thighs, sweetie. It’s become very chi-chi to use stripping moves as a workout, you know.”

Hoping Moira wasn’t going to tell me that she’d had a stripper pole installed in her bedroom, I picked up the page where we’d circled an ad for a day care aide. The pay was paltry and I could no longer see myself wiping noses and helping with snow boots.

“Wait!” Moira yelled as she circled an item in red ink. “I think I just found the solution to your employment problems!”

I grabbed the section of the paper out of Moira’s hand. “A temp agency?” I asked dubiously when I saw what she’d circled.

“Why not? Look,” she said, poking the newsprint with her finger, “it says they have a variety of jobs for inexperienced people and that they offer free refresher courses in computer and clerical skills.”

“I don’t have anything to refresh,” I muttered.

“You’ve done a lot of volunteer work. That shows you’ve got people and organizational skills. The rest,” she said with a flap of her hand like it was the easiest thing in the world, “you can fake.”

Temporary Solutions had a suite of offices downtown in a glassy building that had a shiny marble lobby and a wall of elevators. I was glad I’d borrowed one of Moira’s more conservative suits for the occasion. When I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator I was convinced I looked like employee material.

Unfortunately, the first thing they did at Temporary Solutions was test my skills. As far as I could see, there was absolutely no way to fake it. Excel? QuickBooks? PowerPoint? Lotus Notes? The only lotus I knew was a yoga position—about as unobtainable by me as a position at Temporary Solutions was beginning to look.

“You never have worked in an office, have you?” Christy Sands asked.

Christy, who had the harsh hair of a woman who’d been bleaching it for most of the twenty-something years of her life and the slightly red tan of a tanning bed addict, was what Temporary Solutions called my personal career counselor. She was supposed to help me find the job with a perfect fit. What good would it do to lie?

“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never worked in an office. But I’m a fast learner and I really, really—”

“Please,” she said. “I’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing worse than a premenopausal woman begging for a job because her husband just dumped her for a younger woman.”

I gasped. We’d barely met and my existence had already been reduced to a one-line cliché. It was degrading. And, in my case, not exactly the truth. I considered setting her straight but the truth wasn’t going to make me look any better, was it? I was still a premenopausal woman looking for a job because her husband dumped her. I’d just managed to avoid it for ten years.

Having waited so long to take the plunge, I decided I wasn’t going to be deterred by someone who looked like she could be a future candidate for Roger’s harem. (“You remember Christy—my twenty-six-year-old-career-counselor girlfriend?”)

“It says right here,” I said, thrusting the ad I’d clipped from the newspaper in her face, “that you have jobs that require no—”

“Whoa—take a chill pill,” Christy said. “We do have a few jobs that you actually don’t need qualifications for.” She eyed me up and down. “I might have something,” she said as she turned to her computer and started to type. “What size dress do you wear?” she asked as she scrolled through a screen.

I thought I better not lie. Christy was wearing a turquoise Chanel knock-off bouclé suit with a skirt that was about ten inches long. She already knew I wasn’t a size nine. “Fourteen,” I said.

Hmm, the world didn’t stop spinning. In fact, Christy didn’t even blink.

“You don’t mind working with the public, do you?” she asked.

I assured her that I didn’t. “In fact, I’ve had a lot of experience with—”

“Yeah, I know. The PTA fund raiser, the Girl Scout cookie sale, the soccer candy-bar sale,” she recited wearily.

Okay, so maybe I was a tad bit of a cliché.

“Just show up at eight tomorrow morning. I’ll see if I can work something out. Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d come into the office as often as you can. Here’s a list of times when tutors are available in our computer room. Here’s a list of classes we offer for a nominal fee. Now just fill out these forms and—”

I was nearly giddy as she loaded me down with forms and folders. Cliché or not, I was in! I’d been hired!

By ten the next morning, I was standing in the dairy section of Market in the Cove, dressed in a milk maid’s costume, complete with fake blond braids hanging out of my bonnet and white Mary Janes on my feet. Somehow, when I’d thought of the humiliations I might have to suffer as unskilled labor, this one had never occurred to me. When Christy said there were no qualifications necessary, she hadn’t been kidding. I was, however, getting twelve bucks an hour to hand out samples of a new brand of yogurt.

Moira would have been proud because I wasn’t alone. One of my personalities kept reminding me that this was honest work and nothing to be ashamed of while another was praying that I wasn’t going to run into anyone I knew. Still another personality was considering lobbing a few four letter words at a group of teenagers giving me a walk-by heckling when I spied Amy Westcott and Bonnie Williams standing in front of the deli counter. I quickly ducked behind a display of imported cheeses.

Bonnie Williams lived across the street from me in the Victorian next to Amy’s Colonial. They were very chummy but Moira and I still liked Bonnie—and not just because she had more weight to lose than either of us did. Despite the fact that she was naive enough to swallow almost anything Amy told her and that she was overly fond of scrapbooking, Bonnie was really a sweet woman who was prone to sharing her homemade strawberry preserves and bread and butter pickles. It didn’t hurt that her husband owned the hardware store in Whitefish Cove’s quaint little downtown, either. He was a font of information for a woman living sans male in a house as old as mine was.

I could have handled Bonnie witnessing me prancing around among the curds and whey, but Amy? If I knew Amy, she would squeal and gush about how adorable I looked and then speculate endlessly up and down Seagull Lane about what had driven me to make such a fool of myself for a buck.

I peeked out from behind the display. Amy was being waited on in the deli. Bonnie would be next. I decided that maybe people in the flower department deserved some free yogurt, too. I headed that way and found a vigorous Boston fern that offered camouflage but still allowed me to see the checkout lanes. As soon as my neighbors got into line, I could hustle back to dairy where I belonged.

“Is this yogurt organic?” asked a thin young woman in black whose arms were loaded with little pots of herbs and sprouts.

I looked down at my basket of yogurt. “Um—well, I’m not sure—”

“Well, I just thought because you’re in front of the potted organics that the yogurt was somehow connected.”

“Oh—no.” I picked up a little plastic tub from my basket. “It has active yogurt cultures,” I said, “but—” The young woman seemed to be looking over my shoulder.

“I think that woman in the checkout line is waving to you,” she said.

I squatted out of sight so fast that I practically lost my fake braids, but not before I’d seen that the woman waving was Bonnie. Hopefully, Amy was too busy checking that her gourmet goodies were being bagged appropriately to have noticed me lurking about like a demented trick-or-treater.

“Are you all right?”

I looked up to find the seeker of organics staring down at me. “I’m fine,” I said even though I wasn’t. I was pretty sure my knees had locked on my way to a squat. I decided to use it to my advantage and managed to waddle back to the dairy aisle without anyone in the checkout lines catching sight of me. There, I was able to grab onto the rim of a refrigerated case containing six kinds of goat cheese and hoist myself upright.

“Care to try our new yogurt?” I asked the flabbergasted woman I’d popped up in front of.

She not only declined, but turned tail and ran over to the bakery department like they were giving away their five-dollar brownies, leaving me to wonder if it was possible that I was under-qualified for a job that required no qualifications.

“Christy said I moved less product than any other milkmaid before me,” I later whined to Moira as I sat in her kitchen eating cold shrimp and perfectly ripened mango. Moira always had these types of exotics in her refrigerator. “I mean, I couldn’t even give the stuff away.”

“Well, it stands to reason that if you’re going to hide from half the customers and scare the other half off, you’re not exactly going to be queen of the milkmaids, are you?”

Weren’t girlfriends supposed to be sympathetic? “Well,” I said defensively, “I probably won’t have to hide much tomorrow. I’m appearing at that little supermarket on the east side. I’m not likely to run into anyone I know.”

Moira looked thoroughly disgusted with me.

“What the hell,” she demanded, “do you care what the neighbors think of the kind of job you’ve got? Especially someone like Amy Westcott?”

She was right, of course. And I’d never been a job snob. “It’s not the job I don’t want people to know about,” I told Moira. “It’s the reason for the job. It’s the fear that people like Amy are going to find out how stupid I was about my divorce. I mean, Roger left me for a younger woman and I didn’t even get the house! I didn’t even ask for a settlement! I just wanted to keep pretending that everything was just as I’d been promised it would be. I was living like a married woman whose husband just never came home. I feel so damned stupid.”

“There are worse things than feeling stupid,” Moira said.

“Like what?”

“Like having your feet hurt. Yours are swelling even as we speak. You better go home, hon, and soak them or you’re not going to get your Mary Janes on in the morning.”

I smiled weakly. “Now that’s a warning I never thought I’d hear at the age of forty-one.” I picked up the scuffed white shoes and ambled to the door.

Moira followed. “Just keep reminding yourself that it’s not going to last forever. Nothing ever does.” She grabbed me into a big hug. “And you’re not stupid. You’re human. A good human. One of the best. But you’re not mistake proof—none of the species is.”

When I walked home that night, I paused under the maple tree in front of my house and took a deep breath, letting the crispness of the night fill my lungs. There was a sudden wind and orange-and-crimson leaves fluttered down all around me and skittered across the sidewalk. Soon the tree would be bare and my hands would be blistered from raking. Autumn would be over and winter would come blowing in.

Moira was right. Nothing lasted forever. Even blisters, I thought with a small smile. They only felt like they were going to.

Buoyed by Moira’s pep talk last night, I tied on my pinafore the next morning, vowing to move product. I arrived at East Side Groceries in a good mood and in full costume. For three hours I was charming and chatty and sweet enough to turn those braids into the real thing. And then my mother spotted me.

Her hand had been hovering above a carton of fat-free cottage cheese when she got a look on her face like Tippi Hedren in the movie The Birds. And I don’t think it was because she suddenly remembered what fat-free cottage cheese tasted like.

In my freshly polished Mary Janes, I skipped over to her just to see the mortified look on her face. “Care to try our new yogurt, ma’am?” I asked in my best milkmaid voice.

“You know,” she said, her mouth tight, “I was glad when you didn’t immediately run to another man after Roger. I wanted you to have time just for you. To discover yourself. But look at you. You’ve wasted the last ten years of your life.”

“What do you expect, you old bat, when you make the kid dress like that?”

Both my mother and I swung around toward the raspy voice to find a tall, scruffy-looking man, leaning on a cane, and eyeing my mother beneath a critically lowered brow.

Bernice was momentarily speechless. I was pretty sure that no one had ever called her an old bat before.

“A joke,” he said, staring at her and then looking at me with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. “Doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, does she?” he asked.

“Afraid not,” I answered while I noticed that the scruffiness wasn’t so much scruffy as it was a rather attractive five o’clock shadow.

“Excuse me,” Bernice said, “but I’d rather not be talked about like I wasn’t here.”

“Then perhaps you should leave,” the man suggested. “In fact, that probably would be for the best. Leave, woman,” he intoned like he was playing to the back of the house, “and let your unfortunate daughter get on with earning an honest day’s wages.”

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” Bernice said in her best ice-maiden-of-the-’50s fashion.

The man leaned closer to her. “I think the manager is on his way over to see what the commotion is about. If I were you Mama, I’d get my skinny ass out of here. If you get sis here fired, she’s gonna have to move back in with you and that would sort of cramp your style, wouldn’t it, doll face?”

Regal as a queen, my mother turned away from him. “Expect a phone call tonight,” she said to me before she headed for the seafood department.

“You’re my hero,” I said to the man with the mouth. “Have some yogurt.”

“I’ll take the yogurt, Heidi, but I reject the mantle of hero. Those suits they have to wear are always so confining,” he said with a look of distaste and a little shiver. Then he tossed the free carton of yogurt into his cart, hung his cane on the handle and limped out of the dairy department.

“Mother,” I said into the phone later that night, “I swear to you that I have no idea who he was.”

I was in the wingback chair in the living room, my feet in a basin of sudsy hot water, waiting for a cup of tea to steep and listening to my mother tell me for the fifth time how appalled she’d been to find me handing out samples at the supermarket.

“To think that you would settle for being a vendor—a hawker in a ridiculous costume. I have important clients who live in that area, you know.”

My mother didn’t have customers. She had clients. I found the perfect dress for a client during my last buying trip to New York, she’d say. The same women had been keeping her in business for years. And they brought in their friends and their daughters and their daughter’s friends. The boutique, in a converted town-house east of the river on a little street off Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee, was so exclusive you could barely find the sign.

The kind of women who dressed like my mother just seemed to know how to find it. I was sure that if my mother didn’t manage the place, I’d have absolutely no idea where it was.

I wiggled my toes in the satiny water, took a sip of chamomile tea, and let my mother elaborate on all the ways I was a disappointment to her. When I could get in a word, I said, “Mother, I have to start somewhere. Besides, it’s only temporary.” I added a good-night and hung up.

The phone immediately rang. I picked it up.

“The least you could do is let me wish you a good-night,” Bernice said. “And I know you have to start somewhere and I’m proud of the fact that you’ve at least started. But for heaven’s sake when you’re walking around with that basket of yogurt, stand up straight. That slouch just makes you look even more ridiculous. Goodnight, dear.”

CHAPTER 4

“I’m Your Handy Man,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said.

Oh, my, I thought. The name of the company was the reason I’d decided to call it but I hadn’t expected someone with a deeper voice than James Taylor’s to answer the phone.

“Hello?” the deep voiced asked.

“Oh—uh, I need an estimate.”

“For?”

“Some work in my kitchen. A breakfast nook has to come out—”

“I always liked breakfast nooks,” said the voice.

“Oh, me, too. But the house is going up for sale and the Realtor said they weren’t popular anymore, so—”

“Well, that’s just sad.”

Who was this guy? A deep voice and an appreciation for breakfast nooks. Quite a combination.

“I think so, too,” I told him. “But it’s kind of not my decision.”

“Oh. Then what is yours to decide?”

I was left sort of speechless. His voice was so—well, deep—and a little unnerving for it’s lack of inflection. Cave man stuff with a kinder, gentler edge.

“Well, it’s for me to decide who to hire to do the work.”

“Then I suggest you hire me.”

There was a smile in his voice this time that I found hard to resist. “Maybe you should come over so I can have a look—um, I mean so you can have a look at the work I need and then you can um…” What was the word? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember it.

“Give you an estimate?”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes at the woodwork.

“Sounds cool. Tomorrow morning? Nine o’clock?”

“Can you make it earlier? I’ve got to be at work at 9:30.” I was scheduled to hawk cereal in a superhero costume at a grocery store on the south side.

“Eight, then. I like my coffee strong and black. I’ll bring the bagels.”

He not only brought bagels, but he brought a carton of cream cheese spread—and a set of shoulders that filled out a softly worn flannel shirt better than any man I’d actually ever seen in person.

He held out the bag. “Your voice told me honey and cream cheese,” he said with a quirk of the corner of his mouth. “Am I right?”

“Actually, you are right. But, come on, how could my voice tell you that?”

“Okay, it wasn’t just your voice. It was a combination of your voice and your fondness for breakfast nooks.”

“Ah,” I said. It made perfect sense to me. After all, I had decided he was one of the good guys because of his voice and his fondness for breakfast nooks. His dark, almond shaped eyes held my gaze for a beat too long. I cleared my throat. “Uh—why don’t you come into the kitchen and meet the doomed booth.”

He treated me to a sudden, lethal grin. “Lead the way,” he said.

“Toasted?” I asked, once we were in the kitchen. It seemed like a good idea to keep my hands occupied.

“Is there any other way?”

I split a bagel and popped it into the toaster then poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him.

He took a sip. “Hmm. Nothing like the first cup of the day.”

Watching him appreciate my coffee was such a pleasure I could barely take my eyes off him. He ran a hand through his hair—dark, parted in the middle and long enough to brush the back of his collar—and it dutifully fell back into place.

“You’re going to join me, aren’t you?” he asked.

I thought about my hand joining his in that silky, straight hair but I had a feeling he meant the coffee.

“Of course,” I said and turned away from him to fill a mug. I turned back to find him studying the breakfast nook. “So,” I said, after I’d taken my first sip of coffee, “what do you think?”

“I think it’s a shame to get rid of her—”

“I know, it breaks my heart.” I ran my fingertips over the scarred wood. “This is where my son did his homework while I cooked supper. Where he frosted his first Christmas cookie. Where—” I stopped, suddenly embarrassed by my emotional display, as well as the deepening grin on his face.

“You sound like a hell of a mom,” he said. “My mom was like that. I miss her.”

“She doesn’t live nearby?”

“Actually, she died a few years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, just as his bagel popped up.

“That’s okay. It was cancer. By the time she went, it was a relief just to know she wouldn’t be in pain anymore.”

I felt immediately more comfortable with him. I reminded him of his mother. That was safe. That was a role I knew how to play.

“Sit down. I’ll get you some butter,” I said as I put his bagel on a plate. He slid into Gordy’s side of the booth, which just made things more comfortable still.

After my bagel popped up, I slid in across from him. My mother would not approve of this familiarity, nor would she approve of the sweats I was wearing. I could almost hear the lecture she’d give me on preserving decorum and boundaries. It was like she was in my head and I couldn’t get her out.

“I’ll rip her out for free if I can have her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, wondering how he’d get Bernice out of my head and, more puzzling still, why he’d want to keep her.

“This booth. I’ll take it out for free if I can have her.”

“Oh—the booth.” Of course he was talking about the booth. “For free? Really?” Roger would be overjoyed at this perk, although I would have preferred that Quint was ripping my mother out of my head for free. Oh, hell, who was I kidding? I’d pay.

He shrugged. “What can I say. I have a thing for breakfast nooks.”

I saluted him with my coffee cup. “I’ll be glad to see her go to a good home. Now, what about the floor? How much do you think that will cost?”

“Well, that depends on what you have in mind…”

Over toasted bagels slathered with cream cheese swirled with honey, we discussed ceramic tile versus vinyl flooring with a smattering of laminated wood tossed in. I had no idea what I wanted—after all, it’s not like I was going to be walking on the new floor. Or sweeping it. Or scrubbing it. I looked at the old linoleum that shined only because I was willing to wax it once a month. Finally, a new kitchen floor and it wouldn’t even be mine.

“I could take you shopping,” Quint said.

I looked up at him, wondering how he knew I was bummed. How he knew that shopping would cheer me up.

“I could even get you a discount in a couple of places.”

Oh, of course. He was talking about flooring.

“Does that service usually come with the contract?” I asked with a careless laugh to hide my embarrassment.

He shrugged, his mouth quirking again. “That’s one of the cool things about being your own boss. I can do pretty much anything I want.”

“I bet you can,” Moira shamelessly purred from the back door.

“Hello,” Quint said, flashing his brief, kilowatt smile.

“Quint, this is my friend and neighbor, Moira Rice. Moira, Quint Mathews.”

Quint rose as Moira sashayed into the kitchen, looking spectacular and mussed in a long silk robe the color of champagne.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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