One More Time

by Deborah Cooke

  It was the only trick she knew.

  But she didn’t know if it was a good one anymore, much less one worth knowing. To tell the truth, the reward ratio was looking a bit skewed. Without Matt, without the sense that she was making sacrifices to keep him in her life, it all seemed pretty thin.

  She’d thought she’d been letting him live his dream, or find what he wanted to do, or wait for the opportunity he wanted most—she’d thought that was what love was about—but in this dark night, Leslie was afraid she’d only been a convenient source of income for her handsome husband.

  She was afraid that she had been the only one in love—desperately, achingly in love, to boot.

  There was a thought to put some lift in her loafers.

  Leslie turned out the light and pulled up the blankets, then stared at the ceiling until her alarm finally rang. She felt a strange, unexpected, link with Robert Coxwell, who—if the Chief was right—had been afraid to let anyone see his weakness.

  And now he was dead.

  Could she have saved her marriage by telling Matt the truth sooner?

  Could she save it by telling him the truth now?

  Would she have a chance to do so, or had his first taste of the truth been too toxic to tempt him back for more?

  Leslie didn’t know, and there wasn’t much to like about that. The fact was though, that without Matt, without knowing that she’d come home and find him here, there didn’t seem to be much point in hauling herself onto the tightrope at all.

  * * *

  Leslie chose to arm herself for Thursday with a lime green balconet bra, trimmed in black ribbon with white polka dots, and matching bikini panties. It was a 1940s pin-up girl special that gave her rocket boobs and made her want to lean against a bomber, pretending to be Rosie the Riveter. But she’d need really red lipstick for that, and really red lipstick wasn’t part of the academic uniform.

  A demure pink would have to do. She didn’t even own a really red lipstick. She rummaged through her make-up, just to be sure, but there was just a variety of pale pinks and mauves, lipsticks that were almost invisible when applied.

  Hmm.

  Leslie wasn’t generally a lime green with black and white polka dots kind of a woman, but this morning—the morning after Night of Troubled Sleep Number Two—called for a little extra oomph.

  The bra had oomph, even if she didn’t. The only hint of her hidden defenses was an unusually pointiness to her breasts beneath her modest twin set. She decided no one would notice, shoved on a pair of loafers and opened the bedroom door to embark on her day.

  Across the hall, the fruit of her womb was sleeping, sprawled across the bed, blankets knotted and nightgown spiraled around her waist. Annette’s dark hair was coiled around her shoulders and her bare bum was as ripe and smooth as a new peach.

  A big peach.

  Annette’s beloved fuzzy puppy was on the floor, cast off during the night as so much else would be in the next few years. Maybe even Leslie. It’s natural to hate your mother when you’re a teenager, right? Either way, it was a lot easier to love Annette unconditionally when she was asleep.

  Leslie stepped quietly into the room, put the puppy back into the nook of Annette’s elbow, remembered a thousand puppy-related traumas. She readily remembered Annette as a baby, suckling at Leslie’s breast, for she had been cherubic then and was still pretty close to it now. Just bigger.

  Almost grown-up.

  Scary prospect. Annette was starting to look like Matt more, his genetic bonus of striking good looks shaping the ripe curve of her lips, the arch of her dark brows, the vivid green of her eyes. Matt’s sister, Philippa, had said for years that Annette would be a classic beauty, though Leslie hadn’t seen it.

  Until Annette started growing up.

  Leslie tapped her daughter’s shoulder with her usual crisp gesture. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” When Annette groaned and rolled over, Leslie said, “My work here is done,” as she always did, then headed to the kitchen.

  There was no coffee brewing.

  She was determined to not drink instant coffee again.

  That was when she realized she didn’t even know how to make coffee. She hadn’t made any in eighteen years, and couldn’t remember if she’d even drunk it in B.M. (Before Matt) days. That was before the effective dawn of time, after all, so Leslie dated the events of her life B.M. and A.M.

  How about A.A.M.—After After Matt?

  A.M.L.—After Matt Left?

  Or maybe A.M.D.H.F.H.O.T.L.—After Matt Ditched Her For His One True Love? That one seemed a bit unwieldy to be useful.

  But maybe true, all the same. Leslie could admit that to herself this morning—when her moat was breached, the drawbridge shattered, and the siege engines were sending Greek fire over the walls. She knew, even if he had the grace to deny it, that Matt had married down the social ladder when he married her, way down, further down than any Coxwell had previously dared to go.

  She believed he had done it because Sharan had broken his heart. Oh, he’d never said as much, just that he and Sharan were through, but why else would he save Sharan’s Christmas cards? She was the one who got away, and Leslie guessed that at some recent point, Sharan had crooked a finger to beckon Matt back to her.

  And he’d gone.

  Leslie wasn’t sure it was best to let herself think about this. It certainly made her feel even more crummy about the current situation than she had before. If ever there had been a morning that she needed a major dose of caffeine, this would be it.

  She would not think about the Java Joint, that grubby student-run café where she and Matt had talked on their fist date, and many many times after that. Like it or not, Matt Coxwell and coffee were forever entwined in Leslie’s thoughts.

  If she couldn’t have one, she would definitely have the other.

  Which was easier said than done.

  Leslie stared at the coffee pot Matt had insisted on buying several years before, with its sleek European aluminum styling, and didn’t know where to start. You’d think, for what this baby had cost, that it would make the coffee for you.

  Or come with staff. A little barista in a cute apron who would stand beside the machine, be perky twenty-four hours a day (proximity to all that caffeine had to have some effect), and make coffee on demand.

  Instead, a red light blinked patiently on the front of the machine, signaling something imperative that Matt would understand. Maybe it was displaying Leslie’s dire need for artificial stimulants.

  She had two graduate degrees, she reminded herself sternly. She had to be able to figure this out.

  First, there had to be water. Leslie knew that much. She managed to open the reservoir, fill it with water, and get it closed again, which was a lot harder than it seemed it should have been. The quantity was a raw guess: She’d just filled it to the top.

  Was the reservoir more crooked than it had been before? Had it always jutted out a little bit at this top corner? Or had that last impatient swipe been too much for its glamorous fragility?

  Maybe she’d broken it. Would Matt ever know?

  Better not go there.

  Next, there had to be coffee. Leslie rummaged through the cupboards, ashamed on some level that she didn’t know precisely where to find the coffee in her own kitchen, then was astonished to discover that the coffee in question was whole beans.

  The bean grinder was beside the beans, which was a gimme. The contraption looked easy enough to use, if she’d known how many beans to use and how long to grind them. There was no sign of a measuring spoon in the vicinity.

  While she deliberated over that, she managed to open the holder for the filter and chuck out the two-day-old filter with its residue of coffee grounds.

  Filters. She didn’t know where Matt kept the filters.

  She looked towards the trash. Could coffee filters be reused? Could she just run another load of water through those old grounds?

  Starbucks was sounding good, but Leslie couldn’t live
on take-out food until Matt came back.

  Whenever that might be.

  If that might be.

  And it irked her to think that she couldn’t accomplish a simple task like making herself a cup of coffee, especially one she so desperately needed.

  As a matter of fact, it infuriated her. How could she have become dependent on Matt for something so simple when there were a thousand infinitely more complicated things that she could have depended on him for?

  How could he have left?

  How dare he leave, not call, and not even leave instructions for the (expletive deleted) coffeemaker?

  She opened a drawer, didn’t find anything she needed, and slammed it shut. She flung open a cupboard, again without a successful find, and slammed it so hard that it bounced open again.

  She began opening drawers and cupboards faster and faster, each one that didn’t obviously contain a package of filters making her more angry. Leslie left them open, moving around the kitchen like a furious whirlwind, then when they were all gaping wide, she let out a primal cry of outrage. It was the first bellow that she had ever allowed to cross her lips.

  It was even an obscenity.

  And it felt good. She shouted again, just for good measure. When she was done, she kicked a chair so that it skittered across the tile floor. That felt so good that she did it once more, but this time, she kicked harder and the chair fell over with a resounding clatter.

  “Um, are you all right?”

  Leslie froze mid-kick and glanced over her shoulder to find Annette in the kitchen doorway.

  Oops. So, the Perfect Decorum box was hurtling into the abyss, as was Keeping Up Appearances for the Child and Temper Control. One glance over the kitchen revealed that Fastidious Housekeeper was also a goner.

  If that was such a bad thing, then why did she feel so much better?

  Lying to Annette would have been a shabby way to cover her mistake. And the façade was shattered anyway: The girl did have eyes in her head, so she might as well go with the old tried and true of honesty.

  “No,” Leslie said firmly. “I am not all right. I don’t know how to use this coffeemaker and I don’t know where the filters are and I don’t know how much coffee to use and I need a cup of coffee, and no, instant coffee will not suffice.”

  “Dad always made the coffee?”

  “Always!”

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Well, you were wrong.” Leslie glared at the entire kitchen, focal point of her domestic inadequacies. “There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know.”

  “I thought you never got angry.”

  “Everyone gets angry. I’ve been holding it back, to work on my ulcer. If I get colitis, I might get time off with pay.”

  Annette smiled tentatively. “You never make jokes.”

  “That’s not true.” Leslie took a deep breath. “I haven’t made any recently, but I used to make jokes all the time.”

  To make Matt smile. She sat down heavily and fought the urge to weep again.

  “I’ve watched him,” Annette said, then took a tentative step into the kitchen. “I could make coffee for you, if you like.”

  Leslie looked up, surprised by this offer. “And if you did, I would love you forever.”

  Annette smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to anyway? I mean, you are my mom.”

  Leslie smiled in her turn and exhaled, reassured by just the promise of real coffee. “It’s true that moms are required to love their children, but I’m talking about love in excess of Mom-Love. A bonus offer. Limited availability, contingent upon the timely application of coffee, but oh, it’s worth the trouble.”

  Annette’s smile widened. “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.” Leslie crossed her heart and touched her fingertips to her lips.

  Annette headed straight for the demon machine, showing an astonishing intimacy with it. “It’s not hard, once you know how.” She plucked a package of filters from the back of an empty cupboard where Leslie had never seen them, ground beans, moved with an easy economy that smacked of Matt.

  Soon the blissful smell of fresh coffee was filling the kitchen. There was a deity after all, and apparently, Leslie wasn’t on His/Her hate list after all.

  That had to be a good start.

  Chapter Six

  “Thank you,” Leslie said when she sipped of the nirvana of the first cup. She even closed her eyes for the second sip and if she saw the olive green walls of the Java Joint, a young Matt earnestly trying to persuade her of something, well, let’s call it a weakness. “Anything you want is yours, my child. Name your reward.”

  Annette poured herself a glass of milk, then looked around. “There aren’t any more muffins.”

  Right. Leslie should have stopped at the grocery on the way home the night before, but she’d been in too much of a hurry to check the phone. She had gotten so used to Matt buying groceries and making dinner that she hadn’t thought about it.

  “Fire that muffin fairy,” she muttered, then winked at her daughter. “She’s been living off our mercy for too long.”

  Annette giggled, watching Leslie over the lip of her glass. “You’re not usually funny.”

  “I warned you that the job descriptions were being re-evaluated.” She felt much more human now that there was coffee flowing into her belly. “So, what’s your price, Queen of the Coffeemaker?”

  “Okay, if I can’t have a muffin, then I want to ask you something.”

  Oh, here it came. Leslie braced herself for a soul-scorching question. “Shoot.”

  “Is it okay to not be sad about Grandfather?”

  Leslie considered this. She knew the right answer, but she liked the new accord between them. She chose to seek more information before she answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I didn’t really like him very much, you know?” Annette sat down, letting her hair fall across her face. “And I’m not really sad that he’s dead. Is that awful?”

  “Well, it’s not very nice, but you’re right: he was a difficult man to like.”

  “I just remember that time that we were there for his birthday and Auntie Phil had—”

  “Philippa. Aunt Philippa.”

  Defiance flashed in those eyes. “Uncle Nick calls her Phil and she said I could, too. It suits her better. Philippa is a frumpy name, but Phil is cool for a girl. And Aunt Phil is cool.”

  “Well, if she’s okayed it, who am I to argue?” Leslie sat down opposite her daughter. “Is Leslie a frumpy name?”

  “It’s a serious name.”

  “What about Annette?”

  Annette smiled. “It’s a pretty name. I like it a lot.”

  Leslie saluted her with her mug. “At least I did one thing right.”

  This confused Annette for a beat. “But you do everything right. Always.”

  Leslie laughed. “Hardly. Go on, tell me about Aunt Phil.”

  Annette studied her for a moment, considering this morsel, then shrugged. “Anyway, I remember the first time Aunt Phil brought Uncle Nick to Rosemount, it was for Grandfather’s birthday, and he was so mean to her. I mean, Aunt Phil is so nice. How could anyone be mean to her?”

  Leslie remembered that night well. It had started badly and got worse, mostly because Robert had been impossible. He had been a man who hadn’t been able to take it in stride when everything didn’t go his way.

  Had Matt been right to show him that he was wrong instead of declining his offer?

  Had Matt thought that she was like his father?

  Was she?

  Leslie became aware that Annette was waiting for an answer. “You’re right. That was a really difficult evening. It turned out that having no potatoes was the least of it.”

  “I didn’t remember anything about potatoes.”

  “Your grandmother forgot to cook any, and your grandfather wasn’t amused.”

  “How could she forget?”

  “She was drunk.” Leslie smiled. “But s
he has such good manners that you have to know her to see it.”

  Annette frowned at her milk. “Did you like him? Grandfather, I mean.”

  Leslie held her daughter’s gaze. “Promise not to tell? Not anyone? Not even your father?”

  Annette crossed her heart and touched her fingertips to her mouth.

  Leslie held her daughter’s gaze. “I thought he was cold and a bit mean, though I’d never say that to your dad. Robert was his dad, after all.”

  “So, you’re not sorry either?”

  Leslie shook her head, then crossed her heart and touched her fingers to her lips again. They shared a conspiratorial smile that Leslie would never have believed possible twenty-four hours earlier.

  Then she opened the fridge and surveyed the limited array of options. “So, what do you say to yogurt and fruit?”

  “Blech!”

  “Well, it’s that or nothing. The grocery fairy is slacking off, too.”

  “Off with their heads,” Annette said in a growly voice. When Leslie looked at her in surprise, she clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. Annette was so abruptly cute that Leslie caught her breath at the glimpse of the little girl she once had been.

  * * *

  “Coffee?”

  Matt opened one eye and groaned under his breath. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the head as well as the gut. He was rumpled and hot and had a crick in his back from sleeping on a wicker settee.

  In his suit.

  Sharan was in front of him, offering him a steaming cup of what looked to be a café au lait, milk frothed on top. Her hair was as long and shiny and golden as it had always been, she was tanned and lithe, and really, he had to look twice to see that she was almost twenty years older than the last time he’d seen her. There were a few lines around her eyes and her mouth, maybe some new shadows in those eyes, but he wasn’t going there.

  She was wearing a floral sleeveless dress that came only halfway down her thighs and followed every curve so closely that it might have been a second skin.

  “Good morning,” she said, her smile turning wicked. “Or is it?”