I just needed to get some food in my stomach. And hopefully, some decent sleep that night. Then I could forget about all the house nonsense. Stefan and I could laugh about it … assuming he finally got around to calling me back, that is.
Okay, I so didn’t want to go down that road. Instead, I sat back in my seat, sipped my coffee, and watched Mia top off the cup of a cute guy who looked like a contractor, laughing at something he said. I still had trouble believing Mia was waiting tables at the diner. Of all of us, she was bound and determined to get out and never come back. I remembered how driven, how passionate she had been about all the injustices in the world, and how determined she had been to right them. She was going to be a lawyer and fight for everyone who couldn’t help themselves. What had happened?
A couple of older, neatly-dressed women sitting at a table next to us were staring at me. They wore nearly identical pantsuits, except one was baby blue and the other canary yellow. Their half-eaten food sat in front of them. Taken aback at the open aggression in their eyes, I looked back at them, wondering if I should know them.
Were their stares really directed at me? Did I do something in my youth my traitorous memory had yet to reveal? Maybe they were actually looking at someone sitting behind me. I turned around to look, but no one was there. When I swiveled back, their identical gaze looked even more antagonistic.
I dropped my eyes, only half-seeing the paper placemat covered with local advertising, feeling a growing sense of unease in my belly. They didn’t look familiar at all. Who were they? And why me?
“Why did the waitress call you Becca?” Chrissy asked, startling me. For once, I was glad she was there to distract me, even though part of me instantly wanted to scream at her to stop calling me that.
“It was my nickname,” I said, willing those older women to get up and leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them lean toward each other, whispering, hostile eyes still watching me. I adjusted my head until I couldn’t see them anymore.
Chrissy went back to her iPhone “It’s cute. Better than Rebecca.”
I ignored the twist of pain inside me and put my hand on my heart. “Wait. Did I just hear an almost compliment there?”
Chrissy rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying. I think I’ll call you Becca.”
“Don’t,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Chrissy looked surprised. And, if I didn’t know her any better, a little hurt. “What, only people you like can call you Becca?”
Cripes. I could have smacked myself. Why on earth wasn’t there a manual out there on how to be a stepmom to a daughter who is only fifteen years younger than you?
“That’s not it,” I said, stalling for time as I tried to put the feelings that had swamped over me into words. “It just … it just triggers bad memories. That’s all.” I cringed—I sounded so lame, even to myself.
Chrissy gave me a withering look as she furiously pounded on her iPhone. I opened my mouth to say something—I had no idea what … something to bridge the gap that yawned between us—but Mia’s voice interrupted me. “Daniel! Look who’s here! It’s Becca!”
I closed my mouth and turned to look. A police officer was standing at the counter watching Mia fill up a to-go container with coffee. Could that be Daniel? I searched the room, but only saw only a handful of people finishing up their breakfast. It had to be him.
I looked back at the cop. Broad shoulders and dark blonde hair—Daniel. Mia glanced at me and winked. I made a face back at her.
He turned. He was older of course, but yes, it was most definitely Daniel. He wouldn’t be considered traditionally handsome—not like Stefan with his almost pretty-boy looks. Daniel’s face was too rugged, with sharp cheekbones and a crooked nose. But his lips were still full and soft, and his eyes were still the same dark blue. I found myself suddenly conscious of my appearance. I hadn’t taken a shower in two days, and I was wearing an old, faded New York Giants tee shirt. I had scraped my unruly mass of reddish, blondish, brownish hair back into a messy ponytail in preparation for a full day of cleaning and organizing. But I quickly reminded myself that I was being silly. I was a married woman, sitting with my stepdaughter, and he was engaged.
Besides, he had made it more than clear years ago he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in me.
“Becca,” he said coming over, his face friendly, but not exactly smiling. “Welcome back to Redemption.” It didn’t sound much like a welcome.
“Thanks,” I said, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything better to say. Instinctively, I reached up to smooth out my hair, since as usual, a few curly tendrils had escaped and hung in my face. “Not much has changed.”
He studied me, making me really wish I had taken an extra five minutes to jump in the shower and dig out a clean shirt. “Oh, plenty has changed.”
“Like you being a cop?”
He shrugged slightly. “Pays the bills.”
I half-smiled. “There’s lots of ways to pay the bills. If I remember right, you always seemed more interested in breaking the law than upholding it.”
“Like I said, things change.” He lifted his to-go coffee cup and took a swallow, his dark-blue eyes never leaving mine. “I take it you’re still painting then.”
I dropped my gaze to his chest, feeling a dull ache overwhelm me—the same pain I felt when I heard the name Becca. “As you said, things change.”
“Ah.” I waited for him to ask more questions, but instead, he changed the subject. “So, how long are you staying?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. We’ve actually moved here.”
His eyebrows raised slightly. “To Charlie’s house? You aren’t selling it?”
“Well, yes. Eventually. That’s the plan. But, at least for the foreseeable future, we’ll be living in it.” I sounded like an idiot. With some effort, I forced myself to stop talking. Why on earth did I share so much detail? How was this any of his business?
He looked like he was going to say something more but was interrupted by a loud snort. The two pant-suited women both scraped their chairs back as they stood up, glaring disgustedly at all of us before heading to the cash register.
“What’s with them?” Chrissy asked. I had forgotten she was there.
I shrugged, before remembering my manners and introducing Chrissy to Daniel. I made a point of gesturing with my left hand to flash my wedding ring.
His head tipped in a slight nod before looking back at me. “Will you be around later today? I’d like to stop by and talk to you.”
There was something in his expression that made me uneasy, but I purposefully kept my voice light. “What on earth for? I haven’t even unpacked yet. Am I already in trouble?”
The ends of his lips turned up in a slight smile, but no hint of warmth touched the intense look in his eyes. “Should you be in trouble?”
I let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Why do cops always answer a question with a question?”
“Occupational hazard. I’ll see you later.” He dipped his chin in a slight nod before walking away. I noticed he didn’t give me the slightest hint as to what he wanted to talk to me about. That sense of unease started to grow into a sense of foreboding.
“Well, for an old friend, he wasn’t very friendly,” Chrissy said.
I sipped my coffee. “That’s for sure.”
She smirked. “He was pretty cute, though. For an old guy, I mean.”
Man, she did have a knack for making me feel ancient. But, unfortunately, even that didn’t distract my mind from scrambling around like a rat in a cage, worrying about what he wanted to talk to me about.
Chapter 4
After breakfast, we stopped at the grocery store to load up before heading home. It seemed bigger than I remembered, and it clearly had been remodeled in the not-so-distant past, so it was surprisingly nice. As we went down the aisles, the few people
we ran into ignored me, which was a relief. Those two disapproving women in the diner still bothered me. I had wanted to ask Mia about them before we left, but she seemed to have her hands full with customers, and the moment didn’t seem right.
As we pushed our bagged groceries across the parking lot—well, I pushed, Chrissy interacted with her phone—I noticed a homeless woman at the edge of the parking lot. She was dressed in a colorful array of scarves and jackets (far too bundled up for the weather) and was pushing a grocery cart, crippled by a broken wheel, and heaped high with a variety of bags and other odds and ends.
There was something about her, as she trundled forward, head down low. I found myself watching her as I pushed my own cart, also loaded with bags, to my car.
Suddenly, she stopped. Her head snapped up and she looked at me. I could see her eyes widen, almost like she recognized me.
Luckily, we had just reached the car. I ducked my head and opened the trunk. There was something unsettling about her, something I couldn’t put a finger on. I quickly loaded the groceries, not wanting to look at her, afraid if I did, I’d see her hurrying to catch up to me, her cart making a racket on the concrete, that bad wheel spinning out of control, her face a picture of disgust, just like the two women in the diner. Maybe she would even start yelling at me.
I slammed the trunk down and pushed the cart at Chrissy to put away while I unlocked the car. To my surprise, she took it to one of those little cart corrals, while I got into the car. I needed to be safely inside before I looked at the homeless woman again.
But she wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was moving away from us, head down, lips moving like she was muttering to herself.
As Chrissy got into the passenger seat and slammed the door, I watched the homeless woman go, wondering if she would look at me again. But she didn’t. She seemed completely oblivious.
Had I imagined the whole thing?
I shook my head to clear it, and drove home. Chrissy immediately jumped out of the car and disappeared, so I found myself tackling the groceries and the kitchen by myself, which actually turned out to be okay—I dug out my iPod and mini speakers and got some music going, rolled up my sleeves, and dug in.
Seeing my old friend Mia and getting some food into my stomach (and coffee, of course, oh thank God for coffee) had put me in a much better mood. I was ready to make the best of a bad situation … well, maybe “bad” was too strong a word. Maybe “difficult” was more fitting. Either way, I was excited to turn the house into a warm and loving home—the perfect nurturing cocoon to reconnect our little family.
I was knee-deep in dust and grime but making pretty good headway on organizing and sorting and cleaning when the doorbell rang, startling me, causing me to nearly drop a delicate wine glass etched with green vines and tiny purple flowers.
Oh God, that’s probably Daniel. I carefully put the wine glass down and rubbed my hands against my old jean shorts as I glanced at the clock. It was a little after one o’clock. Why on earth had he come so soon? I looked helplessly around the kitchen—it was a mess. I was a mess. Well, there was nothing to be done about it, and besides, he had already seen me in the same outfit at the diner, albeit less filthy than it was at the moment.
But it wasn’t Daniel. It was a woman. She was tall, as tall as I was, and slender to the point of being straight up and down. Her reddish-brown hair was pulled back haphazardly and stuffed into a clip; a few wisps had escaped and framed a strong, plain, but not unattractive face. She wore round, red glasses that matched the splatter of freckles across her cheeks and nose.
When she saw me, her face broke into a huge smile that completely lit her up, making her almost beautiful. “Becca! It really is you!”
There it was again. That twist of pain inside me, the automatic denial rising to my lips. I’m not Becca anymore. Becca died when I was sixteen.
I opened my mouth, and found myself asking “Daphne?”
She grabbed me in a big hug.
“I missed you,” she said into my ear. I hugged her hard as an answer. She had a comforting smell, like lavender and lemongrass.
She let go and squeezed my arm. “I know I just dropped by, but do you have a minute to chat? We have so much to catch up on.”
“Of course, just as long as you can excuse the mess.” I led her back into the kitchen. Just like old times.
She stopped at the doorway. “Wow. Nothing much has really changed, has it?”
“No, it really hasn’t,” I agreed. Even with the clutter and dust, it still felt like Aunt Charlie was going to swoop in any moment, offer us tea and maybe cookies, and tell Daphne she simply MUST stay for dinner. A sharp and intense wave of sadness flooded over me, taking my breath away for a moment.
Could my aunt really have been a monster?
As if reading my mind, Daphne said “I’m just waiting for her to offer me some tea.”
That snapped me out of my thoughts. “Is that a hint?”
Daphne laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘no’.”
I filled up the teakettle and put it on the stove, then started hunting through her drawers. “I haven’t actually found her special tea blends,” I said apologetically. “Although I did buy some tea today.”
“Whatever is easiest,” Daphne said, picking her way over to the butcher-block kitchen table and sitting down. Thank goodness I had already scrubbed it down. “Although she may roll in her grave if you serve supermarket tea from her tea pot.”
“Lucky for me, the graveyard is a good distance away from here, so I won’t see the damage.” I dug the wild orange herbal tea out of the cupboard.
“You know,” Daphne said, staring at the kitchen window. “All her tea blends are probably out there.” She waved to the garden. “Even if you can’t find anything in here, she may have notes somewhere. Maybe you could recreate them.”
I plucked out a couple of mismatched mugs, a red one covered with flowers, and one with the cartoon character Maxine on it that I recalled Aunt Charlie getting as a joke from one of her clients. I quickly washed them. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s true. Too bad I have a black thumb.”
Daphne laughed. “You do not. You spent your entire summer out in that garden. Well, when you weren’t painting, that is.”
That stopped me short. Me, garden? In New York, I couldn’t even keep a houseplant alive for more than a few weeks. My mother used to sigh with displeasure when she came to my apartment—she was a big believer in having something living and green to complete the design of a living space. I didn’t even want to think about how many plants I had sent to an early grave in my attempts to please her. I had finally broken down and bought a few plastic plants.
Which I would then forget to dust.
Putting my New York mishaps aside, now that Daphne brought it up, I could remember digging in the garden, the warm soil between my fingers—the rich, almost green smell of things growing and blooming.
Aunt Charlie had shaken her head in amazement when I coaxed a few of her herbs back, after a particularly destructive thunderstorm. I remembered her telling me I had a green thumb. And it seemed I did.
Until I returned home from the hospital. After that, I couldn’t grow a weed.
I gave my head a quick shake, finished the tea, and sat at the table with Daphne.
“So, tell me everything,” she said.
I shrugged, blowing on my tea to cool it. “Not a lot to tell, I’m afraid. I’m married and have a sixteen-year-old stepdaughter.”
“What made you come back here?”
I was silent. Behind Daphne, I could see the wind tossing the leaves and branches in the overgrown garden. I opened my mouth and found myself telling her everything. How after I divorced my first husband, I had to go back to work and ended up in Stefan’s law firm, which is how we started dating, and eventually married nine months ago. How the firm was struggling financ
ially, and how Stefan suspected an embezzler, but couldn’t prove it yet, so he was working extra-hard and extra-long to save the practice and build a case against the embezzler. How Aunt Charlie willed me her house free and clear, and as Stefan hadn’t taken a paycheck for months, we had no choice but to move.
Daphne laid her hand on mine. “He didn’t tell you.” It wasn’t a question.
I shook my head. “Not until it was too late, and we had lost our apartment. He said he didn’t want to worry me, and he thought it was temporary. He thought he’d be able to fix it, but …” I sighed. “It’s not like I could support us in New York. Assuming I even could get hired, after not working for a year.”
Daphne sipped her tea. “So, I take it you aren’t painting, either.”
I felt that same stab of pain in my gut I’d felt when Daniel had mentioned painting, and gave her a twisted smile. “I haven’t painted in years. And now that I’m here, I have all of this,” I waved my hand around the kitchen, “to clean and organize, and once that’s done, I’ll have to figure out what needs to happen to sell the house. If it turns out we’re going to be here for a while, I may also have to start looking for a job.” My stomach twisted inside at the thought. I had never liked any of the jobs I had, even though I had tried many different things over the years—everything from waitressing to bartending to department sales clerk to legal secretary. I even had a stint working as a stagehand in an off-Broadway production. But, every job I had made me feel like I was slowly suffocating … like I was a butterfly trapped in a killing jar, frantically beating its wings against the glass. And the only way to wash that feeling away? With copious amounts of wine. Every day.
Oh God, I so didn’t want to go back to that.
I swallowed hard, and pushed that thought down—if that’s what it came down to, I could handle it for a short time. It was a small price to pay to keep Stefan happy and our family financially secure. Stefan was working so hard, he likely needed a little break, and if my small income helped put food on the table, then I could do that. It wouldn’t be a big deal, and I’d only need to do it until we got our feet back under us. After all, Stefan didn’t want me working either. He liked having me available to host client dinners and accompany him to parties and events, which would be more difficult to do if I had some other job.
Secrets of Redemption Box Set Page 3
