C01 Take a Chance on Me

by Susan May Warren

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he winked.

  She could see him then—raccoon eyes, dirty, strong, heroic. Yes, fighting fires would have been his element.

  “How long were you on the team?” she asked Darek as Ingrid set her burger in a fresh homemade bun. The sight could make her cry. She’d had a piece of toast and a yogurt for breakfast while sitting at her desk at the courthouse, cramming in a few hours before she let herself escape.

  DJ was right—the traffic citations and other disturbance complaints had doubled, just this week.

  “Three years, but I started fighting fires here, in Deep Haven. We had a terrible fire about eight years ago, on a lake near Canada, on the east end of town. Smoke covered the entire county.”

  Grace swiped a chip. “A bunch of the nice houses and resorts in Moose Valley burned before they could stop it.”

  “That’s terrible.” And then it happened, the stupid question she’d feared might slip out. “Why did you stop firefighting?”

  A hush descended around the patio. Amelia concentrated on applying mustard to her burger. Grace scooped up potato salad.

  “He got married,” Casper said, sliding off the table and grabbing a plate. “And then Tiger came along.”

  She layered lettuce and tomato on her burger, hating that she’d reminded them of so much pain. “I see.”

  “But once a pyromaniac, always a pyromaniac,” Casper said, clapping his brother on his back. “He only learned to fight fires because he spent years setting them.”

  “That is not true,” Darek said. He picked up two plates—one for Tiger, probably.

  Ivy added fruit and potato salad to her plate and headed over to the condiments.

  “Really. Then who was it that burned down the garage, huh?” This from Grace, and Ivy suddenly wanted to thank her—and Casper—for rescuing her.

  “I didn’t burn down the garage—”

  “It wasn’t his fault. Not exactly,” Ingrid said, setting Tiger on a bench. “I’m the one who told him to make a nice bed for the dog.”

  Huh? She must have frowned because Casper laughed and said, “We’re just confusing her.” He came up beside Ivy, slid his arm around her. “We had this outbuilding, see. Something my grandfather built years ago. More of a workroom. My grandfather called it his doghouse—he even installed a little heater and electricity in there so he could listen to the Husky football games in peace.”

  “My mother was a baseball fan,” John said. He turned off the grill.

  “Anyway, this was before we got Butter—we had this old dog named Chester, and he used to love to sleep in there. We even put in a dog door. One day, Mom was cleaning out the basement and found this old foam pillow from one of the sofas we’d long since destroyed. She thought it might make a good bed for Chester.”

  “I just wanted him to go put it in the outbuilding—”

  “She told Darek here to make a good bed for the dog. So he did. Shoved that foam pillow right up against the heater.”

  Ivy glanced at Darek. He shrugged, but a smile played on his face. She sat down at the picnic table next to Casper, across from Ingrid.

  “I looked out the kitchen window about three hours later and saw this strange glow from the woods,” Ingrid said. “Right about then, Darek, who’d long forgotten about the dog bed, came through the house asking about dinner. He saw the glow, opened the door, stood there for a moment, and then said . . .”

  As if they’d planned it, in unison, every person recited, in a long, awe-filled tone: “Wow.”

  “‘Wow’? That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Ingrid said. “Then he shut the door.”

  Ivy stared at Darek. “What were you thinking?”

  Darek set Tiger’s plate in front of him. “I was thinking, Wow.”

  She laughed and picked up her burger. The juices dripped onto her plate as she took a bite. She just barely stopped her eyes from rolling back in her head. “Delicious,” she said to John.

  “Thank you.”

  “What did you do?” Ivy asked Ingrid, taking another bite.

  “Well, I asked, ‘What’s wow?’ then opened the door. The garage was an inferno, two stories tall, engulfing the building.”

  “Oh, my.” Ivy nearly choked and wiped her face with a napkin. She could have eighty more of those burgers.

  “Yes. I yelled to John and grabbed the phone. By the time the fire trucks got here, we’d decided to douse the surrounding forest with hoses, knowing the place was long gone.”

  “It didn’t catch anything else on fire?” She dug into the potato salad.

  “Nope. We were lucky. But I was more specific in my instructions the next time.”

  “I was a very obedient child,” Darek said.

  Ingrid rolled her eyes as John coughed, pounded his chest.

  “What? It’s Casper who caused the most trouble. Didn’t he steal a car at the age of seven? How about sink his snowmobile in Lake Superior in July? And what about the time we came home to find him and the entire Deep Haven hockey team skinny-dipping in Evergreen Lake in February?”

  “That was Owen’s fault, not mine, and it was a dare.”

  Everyone laughed. Ivy had never felt so full, so satisfied.

  “Did someone mention my name?”

  She looked up, past Ingrid, and saw a young man, a younger version of the broad-shouldered Darek, come around the house to the porch. He wore a Minnesota Wild T-shirt, a pair of loose athletic shorts. Behind him came a pretty woman with her mother’s signature blonde hair, wearing loose faded jeans and a sleeveless orange shirt.

  “Owen!” Ingrid jumped up, stepped over the picnic bench, and hurtled toward her youngest son.

  He wrapped her in his arms, twirling her around.

  Casper had also risen and now hugged the other woman tight. “You should have called us!”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” she said.

  “That’s Eden, my sister,” Darek said quietly. “And Owen. I stood in for him that night at the bachelor auction.”

  “So he was the one I was supposed to buy,” Ivy said.

  Darek glanced at her, but she winked.

  He smiled then, his blue eyes twinkling, something sweet and dangerous in them. And although she was full enough to burst, she drank it right up.

  So much so that she hurt.

  Yes, Darek probably had no idea what he had here. But Ivy did. And she had no intention of letting that go.

  JENSEN WATCHED AS Claire stood at the back of the stage like a ghost, a shadow of herself, playing the songs, adding backup, but without life. Pale, almost as if she hadn’t really shown up for tonight’s gig.

  For the first time in three years, he wanted to talk to her. He sat at a back table on the open-air deck, nursing a glass of raspberry lemonade and listening to the Blue Monkeys twine out a rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way,” the sound seasoning the flavor of the night. Behind him, tourists and locals fought for space along the rocky beach, unfolding blankets and chairs in anticipation of fireworks.

  He should probably leave after this set, before people noticed him enjoying his freedom.

  Emma leaned into the mic, her Fender over her shoulder, the sun draping a long shadow behind her. “‘You can go your own way! Go your own way . . .’”

  Jensen shook his head at the irony of the words.

  No, if the people of Deep Haven had their choice, he wouldn’t go anywhere. In fact, he’d better start bracing himself for a stint in the clink. He imagined that the county prosecutor was already writing the violation complaint. Hopefully he wouldn’t go to Oak Park, a level-five prison. Maybe he’d end up at Stillwater or Faribault. Or maybe they’d simply send him to the local lockup, here in Deep Haven.

  They’d probably prefer to put him in stocks in the public square.

  He took a sip of lemonade, the bitterness watered down by the melting ice, then motioned to the waitress for a refill.

  The song ended and J
ensen added his applause. One more song and he’d bug out, head home. Try not to think about Claire’s reaction to him at the hospital.

  He couldn’t explain why he still dragged himself down here tonight to listen to her, why he still hung on to the faint hope that she might forgive him, be his friend.

  Yes, he was a lonely, pitiful man.

  The applause died as Emma stepped up to the mic again. “Thanks for coming out, everyone! We’re going to take a ten-minute break before the fireworks start, and then we’ll come back at you with another set—this time with a little Skynyrd.”

  They received more applause as Jensen dug out his wallet. The night air smelled of campfire and celebration and he wanted to stay.

  He put a ten on the table, sure that covered his drink and more. He was rising when—

  “What are you doing here?”

  He looked and saw Claire barreling off the stage toward him. Her voice carried in the air, although probably only he heard it, with the clatter of conversation on the deck and the music piped out over the radio. She wore a blue tank top, shorts, a long crocheted vest, and a pair of black flats and looked like she wanted to finish what she had started at the hospital.

  He held up his hand. “I was just leaving.”

  But that didn’t seem good enough. She came right up to him, put her hands on her hips. “Jensen, I swear. What’s going on? I see you at every single gig. Sitting in the back like some sort of stalker. Why?”

  He hadn’t expected that. She saw him? Every time? Oh, he was a crazy, sorry lot because the tiniest spark lit inside him. He tried to swallow it away, but there it was, all warm despite the way she glowered at him.

  “I . . . I like your music.” That sounded right, and he chased his words with a smile.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  He braced himself.

  And then, to his horror, her eyes began to fill, her jaw clenching.

  “Claire?”

  “Leave me alone.” She stalked toward the steps to a grassy path that led down to the lake.

  He knew her better than that, thank you. “Claire!”

  She didn’t stop, but he didn’t expect her to. He ran after her, caught up. “What did I do?” Wait, that wasn’t the right question. He added, “This time.”

  She brushed her hand across her face, quick, sharp, as if to wipe a tear. “It’s not you, Jensen. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

  She shouldn’t have yelled—? “I . . . Well, you can yell at me anytime, Claire, if it helps.”

  Oh, that sounded stupid. And martyrish. Maybe he should have left her alone.

  But she stopped, considering him for a long moment. So long that he had the urge to turn and run.

  “People do that to you, don’t they?”

  She had such pretty eyes. Amber, really, in the right light. He’d forgotten that—or maybe not, but he’d tried to. “I—”

  “You’re a scapegoat in this town.”

  Now she had his attention. “I don’t know about that. I think Deep Haven has their reasons.” Even if he was innocent of the crime they accused him of, he could certainly agree with their anger. Their grief.

  “I know. But the truth is, you probably don’t deserve what they handed down to you.”

  Who was this woman, and where had they put the Claire he knew, the one who hadn’t talked to him in three years?

  “I don’t understand. I thought you agreed with—”

  “With how you were treated? No. I believed that it was an accident. I’m mad at you for other reasons.”

  Well, now that they had that cleared up . . . “What reasons?”

  She pursed her lips, turned away from him. “I’m not a fool.”

  Wow. Not a clue. Still . . . “Listen . . . the reason I keep coming to your gigs is because I miss you.”

  Now he might as well open up his chest, let her take a good look at the ache inside. But he didn’t know when, out of some cosmic misalignment, he might find himself talking to her again, especially in a moment when she wasn’t hating him completely, so he went on. “I used to love to listen to you play, and . . . I know I come to all your gigs, but it’s just because I miss you and Darek. I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  She was staring at him, her mouth open a second before she closed it. Then her face began to crumple.

  “What did I say?” He winced. “I’m sorry, Claire. I don’t mean to hurt you. I’ll go.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “No. Don’t go.”

  Don’t go?

  He couldn’t breathe. Okay.

  She looked at the harbor and let out a trembling sigh. “Do you remember that Independence Day we made a campfire on Paradise Beach after the fireworks and stayed out all night, sleeping under the stars?”

  “Your grandfather drove by three times that night.”

  “He knew you and Darek were red-blooded males and never understood how we could be just friends.”

  Yeah, him either. In fact, if he were honest, despite his efforts he’d never really thought of Claire as just a friend. And Felicity . . . she’d been more of a conundrum.

  “You told us the story of Bosnia that night.” He’d wanted to climb out of his sleeping bag, take Claire in his arms, tell her that he’d never let anything like that happen to her again. Never let her feel trapped, overwhelmed, abandoned. But Felicity kept looking at him, tossing rocks onto his sleeping bag, and, well, he’d been tossing them back, just for fun.

  It seemed Felicity always had to have his—and Darek’s—attention. Even in Claire’s most desperate, vulnerable moments.

  “That’s right; I did,” Claire said. He got a hint of a smile.

  “Then we stayed up all night and played truth or dare.”

  “Mostly truth,” she said.

  “Except you dared Darek and me to go for a midnight swim.”

  “I saw the way Felicity was flirting with you. I thought you needed cooling off.”

  He laughed, but a little heat pressed his face. And then, for some stupid reason, he reached up and thumbed away the tear glistening on Claire’s cheek. “What’s the matter?”

  Her smile faded, something haunted in her eyes. Then she turned away.

  “Claire?”

  “My parents are coming home.”

  He stalled at this, and she glanced back at him.

  “Yeah. From Bosnia. To sell my grandfather’s place.”

  He didn’t know how to react, hating the traitorous leap his heart took.

  “Not to you, Jensen. To Darek and Evergreen Resort.”

  See, she could see clear through him. “What? No.”

  “That’s what they said. They’re going to use the money to put him in a home, and . . . and they expect me to move on with my life.”

  Move on. He hadn’t really noticed it before but . . . yes. She should move on. Beyond Felicity, beyond her grandfather. Beyond Deep Haven.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “That’s the point!” She held up a hand as if in apology. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to move on. I like it here—and I have nowhere else to go.”

  Jensen frowned at this. “What are you talking about? Don’t you want to leave? Go to college or move away, start a new life?”

  “Why? This is my home. I like it here.”

  He just stared at her.

  “Don’t you?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Of course not. I get that. But . . . see, I don’t know what I’d do. Play music? Make pizza? I do that here. And my grandfather’s here. I don’t want to go. I want to stay and take care of him.”

  “Then stay.” Jensen didn’t know where the words came from, but they came out of him with power. “Stay.”

  “How? Grandpop can’t live in that house, at least not until he’s better—”

  “What if we installed ramps, made it handicap accessible?”

  “I don�
�t have money for that.”

  “But I do. I have my entire trust fund, just sitting there gathering interest. And believe it or not, I’m pretty good with a saw and hammer.”

  Jensen still couldn’t believe the words emerging from him, but he let them hang there, not caring that they were edged with a sort of sad desperation. And hope. He could nearly taste it. Please, let me help, Claire.

  He could admit a small bit of satisfaction that Darek wouldn’t win again, wouldn’t take the land Jensen wanted. But even more, he wanted to help Claire. Anything to make her come back to life. Maybe the last good thing he did before they took him away in handcuffs. He wasn’t going to fulfill his hours before the deadline anyway. This felt like a better project than a useless fight for his freedom.

  “You’d do that for me? Help me take care of my grandfather?”

  His smile emerged slowly, from deep inside. “If you’ll let me stay and listen to you sing.”

  A beat passed before, “I don’t sing much.”

  “You should. You have a beautiful voice.”

  She blinked at him. “I do?”

  He lowered his voice, met her eyes. “You do, Claire. Why do you think I keep hanging around the back of the room?”

  She stared at him. Then her mouth clamped shut and she turned away.

  And he’d blown it. He knew it in her posture, the way she watched the dark water, the moonlight catching the waves like the glint of a blade.

  He’d moved in too fast, reminded her too much of . . . of what they should have had, maybe.

  Then, suddenly, she nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Good grief, too much surprise in that. He made a face but erased it fast when she smiled.

  There was a softness, a touch of friendship in it. Even a hint of what might have been.

  “Okay, Jensen. You can stay.”

  Ivy fit into his family so easily that it felt to Darek as though she might have always belonged. She laughed at his mother’s lame jokes and asked his father a million questions about the resort, acting genuinely interested in his endless stories of days gone by. She praised Grace’s new potato salad recipe and posed for Amelia’s photos. She and Eden exchanged favorite hot spots on the University of Minnesota campus, Ivy’s alma mater, although clearly she’d spent more time in the library than his sister. She asked the right questions about hockey to Owen and didn’t even act annoyed when he went on about his new digs and shiny new sports car.