Better Than Your Dreams

by Dee Ernst

  “What do I do about Ben?”

  “He knows you love him. Make sure he doesn’t forget. And go easy on yourself. You have nothing to prove. We all know you don’t need a man. But spending the rest of your life with Ben is not such a bad thing.” She leaned forward. “He will never diminish you. He will only add to your happiness.”

  “I know. So what’s the plan?”

  She settled back against the couch and raised her eyebrows. “I have no clue. You’re the expert in romance. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

  She was right. But the first thing I had to figure was what I really wanted.

  Anthony and I had work to do. Lucky for me, he had no outside art commissions pending. Anthony was a very successful painter of what he liked to call “interior landscapes,” usually involving whole walls painted over in the style of the great muralists. He had graduated with a degree in fine art, and it was his passion. But he loved my romance books, and me, and was my most faithful fan as well as employee.

  He had already looked the list that Sylvia had sent him, ten titles in all. It had taken her more than a year to get the rights back, and I really appreciated her hard work for no commission. He arranged them in somewhat chronological order, and now all we needed to do was update the manuscripts, get them formatted, have new covers designed, and boom—the money would come rolling in. That was what Anthony told me, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that.

  Sylvia had gone forth like Don Quixote, trying to sell my newest manuscripts, two books about women over forty who were not knitting, quilting, or solving murders on a senior cruise ship. She said she was surprised by the interest—could it be that editors were finally getting the message that women didn’t stop reading at thirty-nine?

  “There’s a buzz,” she said.

  “That’s good. How’s the backlist coming?”

  “I’m still working on it. I should have a few more titles for you by the spring. What are you working on now?”

  “My daughter’s wedding, Lily’s wedding, Christmas, finding a cover designer for the self-pubbed stuff, and a possible nervous breakdown.”

  “You do know I meant what are you writing?” Sylvia asked patiently.

  I sighed. “Yes, of course I know that’s what you meant, but did you really want me to answer nothing?”

  “You’re supposed to be working, Mona. The LA vacation is over.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a vacation, Sylvia. After all, I did manage to write two manuscripts while I was out there. I have ideas, but it’s really hard to focus right now. I’ll have something started by the new year, I promise.”

  I hung up the phone and sank back onto the couch.

  “Liar,” Anthony called from the other side of the room.

  We were in my office over the garage and had been since early that morning. We’d spent most of the time on a conference call with the tech guys who ran my website. Did I want an online store, where I could sell my books directly? Separate pages for the older backlist titles? Did I want to link Maura Van Whalen with Mona Quincy? By now all my readers pretty much knew we were the same person. Anthony had lots of ideas, most of which involved redoing my entire site. I was hoping for more of a cut-and-paste approach, adding in the new stuff with as few billable hours as possible.

  When Sylvia called, we were just finishing a very late lunch, and I was ready for a nap. “I was not lying,” I said. “I do have lots of ideas.”

  “About centerpieces and favors and white daisies, which I think are adorable and perfect for Randi.”

  I glared at him. “Her name is Miranda.”

  “Not any more, baby cakes. Show me her dress again.”

  I threw him my phone. He’d been rather hurt that he hadn’t been invited along to go wedding-dress shopping, until I told him it involved going through Staten Island.

  “You look pretty hot in that purple, you know. Ben won’t be able to resist you.”

  “Wanna bet? Patricia says I need to remind him how much I love him, but how am I supposed to do that if I never get to see him?”

  “A gesture.”

  I frowned. “Gesture?”

  “Yes. Name a forest in Bulgaria after him or something.”

  I sat up. “Can I do that?”

  He immediately went to the laptop. “Let’s find out.”

  The phone rang again, and it was Miranda. “Mom, guess what? David just closed on a great little place, and I’m moving in with him this weekend. My last final is Thursday, so the timing is perfect. You should see it, Mom. Adorable. It’s a real mess right now, a fixer-upper for sure, but I know it can be perfect.”

  “Oh? You two found a place already? Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s three bedrooms, bath and a half, and even has a tiny backyard. It’s a row house, so it’s pretty old, but it’s got these great moldings and some wonderful original details.”

  That’s love for you. She was obviously parroting David. She wouldn’t know a great molding if it fell out of a Victoria’s Secret bag. “Oh, Miranda.” She was moving in? Already? Didn’t she just meet this boy? “Do you have pictures?”

  “Of course.”

  “Send them. Do you need help moving?”

  “No, thanks, we’ve got that covered. Oh, and I got a job.”

  “What! Oh, thank God. Where?”

  “Right in Boston. IT work at a local bank. Not much money to start, but it’s close, and I’ll get benefits.”

  Listen to her—talking benefits! Just like a grown-up!

  “Mom—I gotta go. I’ll send you the pics, okay?”

  I hung up. They’d found a house. That would bring them even closer together.

  Anthony sat next to me. “How’s my girl?”

  “Got a job. With benefits!”

  “See, I knew she’d get something right away. She’s very smart, you know.” I did know, but even if Miranda were stupider than dirt, Anthony would never say otherwise.

  “She’s moving. David bought a row house, a fixer-upper with great moldings and some wonderful original details.”

  “Does she even know what moldings are?” See, it wasn’t just me.

  “Probably not. She’s sending me pictures.” I closed my eyes. “We need a nap. Miranda living in a fixer-upper is too much for me to get my head around. She’s killing me.”

  “I’m sure she is, but I need to see where she’s going to be living.” I heard my phone make text-receiving noises. “Can I look?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  I felt myself relaxing.

  “Oh, Mona. Look.”

  I opened my eyes. There were eight pictures in all, two of what I assumed was the living room, a few of the bedrooms, a narrow staircase, and a furnace that looked like it was leaning into a dirt wall.

  The main living area was tiny, with peeling paint and dark, ugly wood floors. Pale sunlight filtered through grimy windows. The kitchen ran the length of a short wall, and the stove looked caked with filth, the cabinets cracked and hanging crooked above ancient Formica counters. There was a shot of what may have been a backyard, or it may have been a Superfund site—piles of garbage, broken furniture, and large rusty barrels leaking plutonium. The bedrooms were carpeted in what looked to be avocado-green shag, badly stained. No bathroom pictures. I don’t think my heart could have taken it.

  “This is no fixer-upper,” Anthony said. “It’s more like a teardown-and-start-over.”

  I sat up, not sleepy anymore, and called Miranda back. “Honey, when are you moving into this place?”

  “Next weekend. But I told you, I don’t need help moving.”

  “Yes, but…Miranda, this place looks awful. Has it at least been cleaned out and painted?”

  “Mom, I told you it was a little rough. That’s how David could afford it in the first place. We’re getting some some people together to help us paint and clean up weekend after next. Honest, Mom, it will look great.”

  I remained unconvinced. “Are there thin
gs in that basement?”

  Miranda laughed. “Yes, but David says he’s killed them all. I have to go, okay? Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  I hung up and stared at Anthony. “She says people are coming to help them paint and clean.”

  “Then you should go up there too. Help them. That can be your grand gesture.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Anthony got that look in his eye, the one he always got when he had a great idea that required me to do something I wouldn’t be happy doing. “Go and help Miranda and David paint their new home. That will show Ben that even though you are philosophically opposed to their marriage, you are in total support of their love and commitment to each other.”

  “Anthony, I haven’t painted so much as a fingernail in years.”

  “Come on, Mona, how hard can it be? People do it all the time on HGTV.”

  Now, I am not a princess. I spent many years cleaning and hauling garbage and clearing out piles of crap. But that was before I could afford to pay other people to do those things for me. Which would make my contribution to the cause that much more significant.

  “That might be a good idea, Anthony.”

  “Of course it is. And when David tells his father how hard you worked and how selfless you were, Ben will know that you did it for him as much as for the kids.”

  “Will he?”

  “Of course. I’m telling you, Mona, it will be a piece of cake.”

  Famous last words.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I HAD MADE THE TRIP up to Boston before, of course. I had tried several different routes, and left New Jersey at different times of the day, all in desperate attempts to avoid the deadly traffic in and around Boston proper. Route 95 or Route 93, seven in the morning or three in the afternoon—there was always a stretch where traffic stopped dead for at least a half an hour. At least I got to read for a while, listen to the radio, do a little online bill paying. I never made the trip without my Kindle being fully charged, a few water bottles, and a bag of trail mix.

  The GPS got me to their little row house with no trouble, but sadly, could not find me a parking space. I finally found one that seemed less than a ten-minute walk away, so I grabbed it, hauled my overnighter out of the trunk, then walked briskly to my daughter’s new home. It was in the middle of a long block of identical houses—six steps up to the stoop, two narrow windows beside the front door, two-storied with a tin roof. The block was well lit, and I didn’t see any drunks huddled in the gutter. The cars parked on the street were all fairly new, and none of them were minus the tires and up on cinder blocks. All good signs.

  Miranda hugged me long and hard, and welcomed me to her home. She was obviously proud and happy, as she was bouncing like a new puppy in her eagerness to show me around. Which took less than six minutes. This house was without a doubt the smallest three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half property in all of New England. And possibly the mid-Atlantic states as well.

  The first floor tour was not bad, because David had taken a few days off the week before they’d moved in and gone through the place like Sherman through Georgia. The floors had been sanded and stained, and the windows had been cleaned to let in the December sunlight. Everything in the kitchen had been scrubbed, and the refrigerator looked, if not new, at least clean. The walls were still awful, but they had at least been scraped, so there was no physically peeling paint anywhere. The back door led to what had probably been a covered porch. Now there was a neat new powder room and a washer and dryer in the space. The yard, however, looked even worse than in the picture. I immediately decided to focus all my efforts on the interior.

  On the way back through the house, I saw the door to the basement. “We don’t have to go down there, do we?” I asked.

  Miranda shook her head. “I never do.”

  The second floor had two fair-size bedrooms front and back, with a bathroom and a tiny bedroom sandwiched in between. I had been right about the carpet—fresh from the seventies, and smelling of cat pee.

  The bathroom, fortunately, was not old and gross. It was clean and had a quaint retro feel. The tiny bedroom did not have a window.

  “So I take it this will be your closet?” I asked.

  She beamed. “Yes! David said it might just be big enough!”

  “Does this mean you’ll finally move all of your clothes out of my house?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe the summer ones.”

  “No, Miranda. All of them. If you’re going to be a married woman with a home of your own, you can’t store six months’ worth of your wardrobe with me.”

  She tilted her head. “So, if I were just a woman living in sin, I could?”

  “Yes?”

  “Good try, Mom. We’re still getting married.”

  “But if you did want to just live together, you know I’d be completely okay with that, right?”

  “Mom. We’ve got the church. We’ve got the reception hall. I bought a dress. You bought a dress. It’s happening.”

  I sighed. “I know.”

  The front bedroom was the designated guest room and office combo. It had a futon, a floor lamp, and a desk with a printer and laptop. A file cabinet served as an end table, and there was a small dresser in the closet.

  “The first thing I’m going to do,” I told Miranda, “is tear up all this wall-to-wall.”

  “Yes, that’s on our list. David says there are very nice hardwood floors underneath. Did I tell you how much I appreciate your coming up here? Really. Thank you so much.”

  She hugged me again. I felt tears start. Or maybe it was the scent of cat urine.

  Whatever.

  I ignored the awful carpet, unpacked in five minutes, then went downstairs.

  As I came to the foot of the stairs, I stopped and stared in disbelief. My oldest daughter was chopping onions and scooping them into a Dutch oven like this was something she’d actually done before.

  “You’re cooking?” I tried to keep the shock out of my voice.

  “Very funny, Mom.”

  “Miranda, honey, you could barely make grilled cheese at home.”

  “That was a choice. Just like I chose to try to do better once I moved in with David.”

  “That was only eight days ago.”

  “I usually spend the morning watching YouTube videos on how to cook stuff. Then I go to the store, buy what I need, and make it. I figure if I can learn to cook a dozen different things, I’ll be good for a year or two.”

  I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You are one smart little girl. I’m particularly impressed, because this kitchen looks about fifty years old.”

  She made a face. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. But Ben is putting in a new kitchen for us as a wedding present.”

  “Oh? How nice. So he’s been up here already?”

  She nodded. “He was with David when he bought it. Ben knows a lot about houses, and David wanted his opinion.” She glanced at me. “How are you two getting along these days?”

  “Fine. Great. We’re both really busy, of course. Taking a bit of a break has been a good idea. Really.”

  “That’s good. David was kinda worried that you two were…I don’t know, not speaking or something. I told him you guys were fine. So you’ll be okay with sharing the futon?”

  I stared at her. “Sharing what futon?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Why would I need to share?”

  She stopped stirring the onions. “Because he’s coming. Ben. To help paint and stuff. I told you we were calling in all the reserves.”

  “But I thought you meant your college friends,” I sputtered.

  “Well, yes, but also you and Ben.” She frowned. “Mom? Is that a problem? You just said you two were fine.”

  “We are. I’m just, well, surprised, that’s all. So he’ll be here tomorrow?”

  “No, he’s coming tonight. He’s between jobs, and he’s staying until Tuesday or Wednesday to do the kitchen.”

  “How g
ood of him. I don’t suppose you have anything to drink?”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry. There’s wine in the fridge.”

  No vodka? Heavy sigh…

  Her refrigerator contained more food than I imagined—salad stuff, bread, bowls of things, milk, orange juice—and three bottles of wine. I pulled out a promising-looking red.

  “Corkscrew?”

  “Here. And the glasses are up there. Are you sure this is okay?”

  I forced a smile. “You want a glass? What are you cooking, anyway?”

  She frowned. “Chicken something? With onions and peppers…I’m serving it with polenta.”

  I took a big gulp of wine. “Really? Wow, I guess you really can cook.”

  She shook her head. “No, but I really can follow directions.”

  I spent another forty-five seconds basking in the warmth of this priceless mother-daughter moment, then excused myself, tried not to run upstairs, and threw open the tiny closet I had filled just minutes before.

  Ben was coming for the weekend. And I had packed my grubbiest, most shapeless clothing. Of course I did—I was planning on painting, cleaning, and emptying out a dirty, disgusting backyard. I took another gulp of wine. For sleeping, I had my “What, me Query?” T-shirt from the Passive Voice, and gray leggings with the knees bleached out. I didn’t pack any makeup, well-fitting jeans, or cute shoes. Would it look odd if I ran out to the nearest mall?

  My wineglass was empty.

  Grand gesture, I kept thinking. Remember the grand gesture. And Ben will now be able to witness it in person.

  I needed more wine. I went back downstairs.

  David, when he came home from work, gave me another tour of the house, this one with all pending renovations explained, and I must say the boy had vision. He may have graduated with a degree in finance from Yale, but he was his father’s son, and knew his way around a hammer and wrench. He showed me the work done so far—refinishing the floors, rehanging all the doors, stripping off wallpaper in Miranda’s closet, as well as replacing the vanity and toilet in the powder room, which explained why it was the best looking room in the house. Then he showed me all he was planning to do—he had paint chips, stains for the floor, tile for the upstairs bath, and pavers for the backyard. The kid had lots of plans, and Miranda not only had helped him make them, she had even lent a hand in practical ways.