C01 Take a Chance on Me

by Susan May Warren

  “Dude,” Darek said, visibly trying not to raise his voice, “you shouldn’t have let him climb on the rocks.”

  “What are you talking about? We did it our entire lives. Besides, he’s fine, aren’t you, champ?” He rubbed Tiger’s back; the little boy gave him a mournful look.

  Ivy made her way to Darek. “I can walk myself home. I just live across the street behind the Footstep of Heaven.”

  Darek glowered at Casper like he wanted to take his brother apart piece by piece.

  “Meet us at the car, Son.” John Christiansen reached out for Tiger.

  Darek seemed to hesitate, and Ivy was about to insist again that she could make it across the street on her own when Darek kissed the top of Tiger’s head and handed him over. “I’ll be right there.”

  Tiger curled against his grandfather’s shoulder.

  Darek caught Ivy’s hand without ceremony and headed toward the sidewalk.

  “Darek, really. I’m a big girl.”

  “My dad is trying to keep me from pummeling my brother.”

  Oh.

  Around them, families packed cars with coolers, blankets, folding chairs. Others hiked home, catching the hands of their children. Cars began to move down the street. Darek kept hold of her hand as they crossed between traffic. They walked in silence down the sidewalk for a moment, his face tight.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Yes, but Casper might not live through this,” he growled.

  “It was an accident. Kids fall.”

  He shook his head. “My son looks like he’s been beaten up. Between the stitches and fat lip . . . they’re going to call child protective services on me.”

  She frowned at him. “No one is going to call CPS.”

  But he wasn’t kidding, not by the grim look on his face. “You don’t know the Holloways.”

  “Who?”

  “Felicity’s parents. His grandparents. After she died, they sued me for custody but lost. Since then, they’ve accused me of negligence twice. I have to bring Tiger over on Sunday and . . . Oh, this is bad.”

  His expression was so defeated that she took his face in her hands. Looked in his eyes and said what she’d said to herself every time a social worker appeared at the door. “Everything is going to be fine. No one is going to take Tiger away from you. You’re his father, and he’s a normal, rambunctious five-year-old boy. I don’t know the Holloways, but certainly they can see that.”

  He looked at her as if drinking in her words, longing to believe her. Then, softly, “You are so beautiful.”

  Oh, she hadn’t expected that. Or the way he slid his hand around her neck, leaned down, and kissed her.

  Right there, in front of his family.

  When he let her go, he surrendered a smile. “When can I see you next?”

  Tomorrow? She held that word in. “Call me.”

  “Don’t just show up on the Footstep of Heaven doorstep?”

  She smiled as he took her hand again, headed down the street. In the distance, thunder began to roll once more.

  “Maybe it’ll rain after all.” She glanced up to see two figures at the gate. She recognized Claire and then . . . Jensen Atwood?

  Yes. Jensen was unloading Claire’s portable keyboard from his truck parked in front of the house, now carrying it toward her apartment.

  And then, to Ivy’s surprise, she heard, “What’s he doing there?”

  Darek was looking at Jensen, his expression dark. He let go of her hand. “What is Jensen Atwood doing at your house?”

  She stared at him, his tone so abrupt, so angry. “What? I—”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Why are you yelling at me?” She took a step away from him, suddenly seeing the man from the auction, angry and rude.

  He must have seen her face, for he cringed and looked away, his voice falling. “Sorry, I . . . You’re right. I just . . .” He looked back down the street, where Jensen was returning to his truck. “Who is your roommate?”

  “I don’t have one. I live behind the house in the garage apartment. But Claire Gibson lives above the bookstore.”

  “Claire.” He shook his head, his voice going softer. “I should have known.”

  “Should have known what?”

  He drew in a long breath, turned back to her. “Nothing.” He reached out and touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I just . . . Jensen Atwood brings out the worst in me.”

  “Why? Who is he to you?”

  “It’s a long story, for another time. I don’t want it to wreck our night. Let’s just say that if there is anyone you should stay away from in this town, it’s Jensen Atwood.”

  “You used to say that about you.” She tried a smile.

  Darek gave a harsh chuckle. “I did, didn’t I?” But his laugh died. “I actually mean it about Jensen.”

  His words slid inside, settled under her skin like a burr. “Why do you hate him so much?”

  “Because he stole my life from me.”

  She frowned, but he leaned close to kiss her on the cheek. “I’ll call you.”

  Then he dashed across the street to where his family waited in their Caravan. Casper roared off on his motorcycle.

  And Ivy stood there on the sidewalk, an icy hand around her heart.

  How did Darek know Jensen Atwood?

  SHE COULD AT LEAST make him a sandwich. Claire peeked out the window to where Jensen was building the long ramp that would replace the steps to the backyard. True to his word, he’d arrived about an hour ago, unloaded wood and power tools from his truck, and begun work as if she wasn’t even in the house.

  As if he didn’t need her.

  And maybe he didn’t because while she worked a double shift at Pierre’s yesterday, he’d already modified the front stoop. A tiny ramp sloped from the ground to the house, peaked at a new landing, then led into the entryway.

  Or maybe he was simply used to working alone, used to being—or trying to be—invisible.

  Not that people wouldn’t notice him, in his baseball cap, a button-down shirt cut off at the arms—threads loose where the sleeves should be—and a pair of ripped and faded blue jeans perfectly seasoned for his physique. He clomped around in work boots like a real carpenter and even wore one of those leather tool belts, a square pencil behind his ear, which looked like it might be getting sunburned.

  In fact, the man looked like he’d walked off an L.L. Bean cover.

  Yeah, real inconspicuous.

  She’d popped her head out once and offered him a glass of water—just to be polite—but he’d waved her away.

  He’d smiled, though, as he did it, and it conjured up the memory of him driving her home after the gig. Normally she would have let Kyle drive her home—he usually picked her up to help with her equipment—but with Jensen offering . . .

  You have a beautiful voice.

  Oh, she shouldn’t have let that go to her head quite so easily.

  She needed to remember exactly why she hadn’t talked to him for three years. And it wasn’t because he’d caused an accident that took Felicity’s life.

  No, that she blamed on Felicity.

  Not that Jensen shouldn’t be blamed for his part in that terrible evening. The fight that caused Felicity to don her running shoes and take off.

  Maybe he thought Claire didn’t know. That no one except Darek knew.

  But Claire had been sitting on the beach that night, heard every word of the fight as Darek’s and Felicity’s angry voices echoed over the lake.

  She knew exactly what part Jensen really played in Felicity’s death.

  That thought had fueled her as she spent the morning cleaning out the entry hall, moving boxes of old boots and hats, fishing gear, snowmobile helmets. She’d even moved the rough-hewn bench, sitting there since the dawn of time, out to the garage. Then she went to work on the kitchen table, lifting it onto cinder blocks so Grandpop could move a wheelchair under it.

  Taking a break, she searched the fridg
e for something edible for lunch. In the freezer she found leftovers from a ham, a hunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread she’d baked a while back. Hopefully it wasn’t freezer burned. She thawed it all, constructed a couple sandwiches, added some condiments and pickles, arranged them on two plates, and with her back to the door, eased it open.

  “Jens?”

  Oh, the old nickname just slid out. She didn’t mean it.

  He looked up, a hint of surprise on his face, and for a second, she felt it—the past, easy and fun, perfect. The sunshine baking into her skin, the scent of evergreen in the breeze, gooey sweet marshmallows on her tongue, the crackle of a bonfire as it ate away the darkness.

  She wanted to devour those days, let them nourish her, but she swallowed them away.

  Jensen stood, turning his hat backward so that a clump of his blond hair stuck out in front, curly and thick. “Whatcha got there?”

  “How about a little lunch?” Claire balanced the plates, but with the steps destroyed, she was stranded on the stoop.

  He reached for the plates, then turned his back to her. “Hop on.”

  She didn’t know what to make of his offer, nearly lured by the nostalgia of their past.

  “I got this,” she said and jumped down. She tried not to notice the disappointment on his face.

  He was just here to help. And the sooner he finished, the better for everyone.

  He set the plates down at a nearby picnic table and examined his sandwich.

  “It’s all we had. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

  Jensen slid onto the bench. “You don’t have to feed me, Claire. I could go home for lunch.” He picked up the sandwich. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” she said, sliding opposite him. She bit into her sandwich. It did taste freezer burned. “I’ll get us some milk.”

  “I have water.” He gestured toward a jug in the bed of the truck.

  “You’re turning into quite the handyman for a big-city boy.” He was tan, his arms a nice bronze, and he looked anything but a city boy. “I remember that first summer you came back after moving, and I barely recognized you. You had your hair long—”

  “As I recall, you called me Jenny until I got it cut.”

  “Tough love, baby.”

  “You were tough, all right. Yelled at me for a week for quitting football.”

  “You didn’t even try out for the team down in Wayzata.”

  “They’re a state-ranked team. I barely got any playing time, even here.”

  “And hockey? You played decent hockey.”

  He gave her a look. Well, she’d thought so.

  “Moving my senior year pretty much destroyed any sports aspirations for me.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were good.”

  “Thanks for that. But I think it was just you being nice to me.”

  Oh. There he went again, stirring up the past. She blew out a breath, tried to remember his many sins. “Well, I didn’t know anyone except you, Felicity, and Darek. I had no choice.”

  Not true, but it kept him at a distance.

  “I couldn’t believe that you came back after your trip to Bosnia that first summer. I thought you were gone for good, and then one day you appear on the dock. Fresh from Europe, all exotic and curious and . . .”

  “And you came over in your boat and immediately tried to get me into trouble.”

  He grinned at her, wiping his mouth on his arm. “What trouble?”

  “You nearly got me killed! I’d never been tubing before.”

  “You kept yelling at me to go faster. You don’t say that to a teenage boy with a fresh boat license!”

  Claire laughed. “Yeah, maybe.” She looked out at the lake lapping at the sandy beach as if reaching out to pull them into the past. “Those were good days.”

  Jensen was silent as he finished his sandwich. Then he went over to the truck, picked up his bottle of water, and drank it down. “Want some?”

  “I’ll get some from the house.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s well water. Yum.” He grinned and replaced the cap.

  This not liking him, not letting him inside to nudge her memories, might be harder than she thought.

  He picked up a board.

  She got up. “So what will this look like when you’re finished?”

  “Well, any single run of a handicap access ramp can’t rise more than thirty inches. The back door is too high, so we’ll have to make two. The maximum slope ratio is one-to-twelve, so I’ll make them both twenty feet long with a landing in the middle.” He held the board at the angle from the house. “Like this.”

  “That’s a big ramp.”

  “Your grandfather loves his yard.”

  Yes, he did. Claire found herself smiling.

  “Once we finish this, we’ll have to move inside and adopt some universal design elements. Nonbarrier showers, and I might have to widen the entry doors, lower the handles.”

  “But I’ll be living here with him.”

  “What if he needs to get out on his own? You don’t want him to depend on you for his freedom, do you?”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  He had put the board down and picked up a shovel. “Learn what?”

  “Building. Handicapped access rules.”

  Jensen walked over to the corner of where he’d sprayed an orange square. Planted his shovel in the ground. “I worked at the senior center a year ago for my community service doing some repairs.”

  Right. “What are you doing?”

  “We have to pour footers for the landing.”

  “So you have to dig holes?”

  He was already making a dent in the earth. “It won’t take long. I’ll pour the footers tonight, then tomorrow start working on a deck base.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  He glanced at her. “We’ll get it done before your parents come home, if I have to work day and night.”

  Her throat tightened. Wow.

  She picked up the paper plates, then went to the cold campfire pit and dropped them in. Stood looking at the charred black wood.

  “What about your community service hours?” She winced when she said it, but . . . well, all this time working with her couldn’t be good for his sentence.

  He was moving dirt behind her; she could hear him grunt. But he said nothing. So she turned, stuck her hands in her back pockets. “Jensen? What about your community service hours? Or are you all done?”

  He had created a substantial pile and now sank the shovel in deep, letting his foot rest on it. “I’m not going to make it.”

  Huh? “I don’t understand.”

  “I have too many hours to complete by the end of the month. I’m not going to make it.” He began to shovel again. “I was kinda stupid when I was first sentenced. Angry, even. So I didn’t have my heart in it and I pretty much wasted my first year. Thankfully Mitch got ahold of me and made me see the light, made me turn my hours in every week, even though the court didn’t mandate it, but . . .” He dumped out another spadeful of dirt. “I have too many left.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He didn’t stop shoveling. “It means that in a few weeks, I’ll be in violation of my probation and they’ll send me to jail.”

  Jail.

  She didn’t know why the word took her like a fist in the chest, squeezing out her breath. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about that after the accident, but she’d nearly cried with a sort of tangled relief when he’d only been sentenced to community service. Because despite his sins, he suffered too. People just didn’t see it.

  She hadn’t really seen it. Not until the other night when he’d been willing to leave the concert because he was bothering her. Bothering Deep Haven.

  Maybe . . . maybe he had changed. She watched him work, his strong muscles rippling across his back, down his arms, and remembered the boy who had made her laugh with his stupid jokes or occasionally ven
tured out to his deck and serenaded the night with his harmonica. Who had asked her to prom her senior year when he discovered she didn’t have a date and returned from his sophomore year in college to take her.

  Maybe he wasn’t the man who’d had an affair with Felicity Christiansen, who had broken her heart and gotten her killed.

  No. Felicity wouldn’t have lied about that, would she?

  Claire blinked back the strangest rush of tears and headed toward the side of the house.

  Jensen didn’t look up, just kept digging as the hole grew deeper.

  One person at a time, Ivy would quietly enact justice in Deep Haven.

  Like working out a plea agreement for Devon Ford on his juvenile petty offense—aka underage drinking—charge. He was a good kid, just needed a wake-up call, so she’d offered probation with a deferred sentence. As long as he kept his nose clean for a year, the charges wouldn’t appear on his record.

  And then there was the matter of Krista Brown and her first-offense possession of marijuana. Ivy offered Krista’s defense attorney a deal for his client: a fine and an agreement to seek treatment.

  All that in between her five criminal traffic complaint arraignments, three initial appearances, one pretrial, and one sentencing. After lunch, she had three probation violation hearings, two omnibus hearings—all in traffic court—one contested omnibus hearing, and a review hearing.

  Then came the CHIPS—children in need of protection or services—cases: two review hearings, an admit/deny hearing, and a number of permanency review hearings.

  The docket repeated itself tomorrow.

  By the end of the month, she’d probably know half the people in Deep Haven, at least the ones who drove without a license, sped through town, or were fighting to keep their children.

  “That’s your third Diet Coke.” Diane Wolfe, the county social worker, slid onto a wire chair overlooking the harbor, holding her basket of fish-and-chips. A taller woman, she kept her dark curly hair short, wore little makeup, and had a no-nonsense way about her that suggested she looked at the facts—a good thing when dealing with the intricacies of families. Diane’s office was just down the hall, and she and Ivy spent the better part of these court days together. Daniel had always encouraged a positive relationship with local social workers and law enforcement. Hence why Ivy had also invited Mitch O’Conner, the probation officer, to join them for lunch.