by Liz Talley
THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM
Copyright ©2018 Liz Talley
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, including photocopying, recording, or by information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The use of locations and products throughout this book is done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way been seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
Edited and formatted by Victory Editing.
Cover design by the Killion Group.
When it comes to book clubs, you can’t beat the Bayou Book Bitches.
We drink wine (and vodka), read good books, and laugh A LOT. I’m so glad you invited me to stick around.
#orangeisthenewzucchini #Marywillnotdothat #ibrokeyourbaseboards #Denmarkisauscity #guestauthorsseemtostick
And also to my friend Kathy Sikes, who loves dogs as much as I do!
Come Home to Me
Morning Glory:
Charmingly Yours
Perfectly Charming
All That Charm
Prince Not Quite Charming (novella)
Home in Magnolia Bend:
The Sweetest September
Sweet Talking Man
Sweet Southern Nights
New Orleans Ladies:
The Spirit of Christmas
His Uptown Girl
His Brown-Eyed Girl
His Forever Girl
Bayou Bridge:
Waters Run Deep
Under the Autumn Sky
The Road to Bayou Bridge
Oak Stand:
Vegas Two-Step
The Way to Texas
A Little Texas
“A Little Texas” in Small Town U.S.A. with Allison Leigh
A Taste of Texas
A Touch of Scarlet
Novellas and Anthologies:
The Nerd Who Loved Me
“Hotter in Atlanta” (a short story)
Cowboys for Christmas with Kim Law and Terri Osburn
A Wrong Bed for Christmas with Kimberly Van Meter
Dedication
Also by Liz Talley
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Want More?
About the Author
Sunshine Voorhees David wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t. Because Sunny didn’t cry anymore. Tears never changed a damn thing. They just caused a gal’s mascara to run and made her nose clown red. Nope, Sunny definitely wasn’t going to cry.
But that didn’t mean the hard peach pit of despair sitting in her gut wasn’t growing heavier each day that passed. Life felt pretty crappy at the moment, and after changing her mother’s diaper earlier, that wasn’t just a figure of speech.
“I told you I wanted to watch CSI: Victims Unit. This is Law and Order,” Betty Voorhees complained from her wheelchair in the living room. “And this chicken potpie’s cold.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be cold if you’d told me you needed to go to the bathroom instead of just… going to the bathroom.” Sunny crossed her arms and gave her best Nurse Ratched impression.
She’d known it would be hard taking care of her invalid mother, not just because Betty was disabled but because the woman might as well have been a pit viper. No one would ever say her mother was an easygoing woman, but after a massive stroke left Betty partially paralyzed, the bitterness cemented inside her mama was inoperable. Sunny didn’t know how she was going to last much longer as a caretaker and prayed the résumés she’d dropped off around town would net her a reprieve from playing nurse… along with the much-needed money to complete the renovations to the house. How her sister Eden had dealt with their mother on her own for over a decade baffled Sunny.
“You’re nothing like Eden. She never talked to me so disrespectfully,” Betty complained before picking up her fork with her good hand and eating the potpie despite it being cold.
“I’m definitely not my baby sister, Mama,” Sunny said, walking out of the room and through the small kitchen to the back porch.
“You got that right. Your sister’s ten times the person you are.” Betty’s arrow found its mark even as Sunny escaped into the crisp winter day.
Her breath crystallized in the air as she tapped a cigarette from her emergency pack. Much more of dealing with her mother and she’d go from emergency cigs to a pack-a-day habit. She’d started smoking almost sixteen years ago—a week after she’d left Morning Glory. She’d picked up the habit from the Marine she’d met and married, but every time she got pregnant, she quit. And each time she lost the baby, she’d dry her eyes, go down to the gas station, and buy a carton. Last time she’d gone five months without lighting up. Five damn months.
Taking a drag, she contemplated her life at the moment. Thirty-four years old. Widow. Survivor of five miscarriages. Unemployed. Living with her ex-stripper, ex–drug addict handicapped mother.
Wasn’t life just dandy?
Sunny blew out a cloud of smoke and tried to focus on the positive. She still had her looks and a degree in business administration. She had food. A roof over her head. And an offer from Rosalind to go out to California and work with her at the insurance agency in the fall.
She needed a new start, and the West Coast sounded good. Sunshine and beaches.
But first she had to do something about her mother.
“Sunny,” her mother called, her strident voice easily heard through the back door that needed new weather stripping.
“Ma’am?” Sunny called, cracking the kitchen door, refusing to relinquish the first good thing about her day—the cigarette.
“Come here. Please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Old habits die hard in the South. Move back to Mississippi and pick back up with what her aunt Ruby Jean had beaten into her when she was five. Please, Thank you, Yes ma’am. No, sir.
Sunny sucked in a long drag, stabbed out the cigarette in the chipped dish balanced on the wooden rail, and reentered the old house, skirting around the stacks of tile she’d left sitting in the path. She’d already spent nearly two thousand dollars of her widow’s benefit in the kitchen, splurging on a big farm sink because that’s what all the women oohed and aahed about on HGTV. She’d tiled the countertops because granite or quartz would have no return on investment in the neighborhood they lived in. She still wore the neutral gray paint color flecked in her red hair, and she loved the new light Jimmy Joe had installed for her for the price of a case Bud Light and some oatmeal cookies. Now if she could just talk Betty into letting her list the house for sale.
Her mother swiveled her head when Sunny came into the living room. Betty’s face drooped on one side, making her look unbalanced. And pitiful. Which would work more in her favor if she weren’t as deadly as a cobra. “I’m sorry for yelling at you about the potpie.”
Sunny raised her eyebrows. “You are?”
“I am. You’re not used to taking care of anyone. But yourself.” Betty made the comment a backhanded compliment. Of course she would. That was the way the woman operated—sly comments, selfish tendencies, and plenty of blame.
At one time, Betty Belle Voorhees had been full of smiles and dreams. Sunny had seen the pictures of her mother in Aunt Ruby Jean’s family albums. The innocent girl in the tinted photos grinned, posing impishly, looking so much like Sunny herself when she was young that they might have been mistaken for each other. Blond hair, violet eyes, and pink cheeks, shining in fluffy Easter dresses and kitty-cat Halloween costumes. Betty had been a girl unsmudged by the ugly smokestacks of reality. A girl far removed from the crackhead stripper she’d become. A girl who could never imagine she’d end up wheelchair-bound and hateful at age fifty-seven.
“I’m going out for more paint,” Sunny said, picking up the remote control and setting it on the old TV tray her mother used as an end table. Staging. That was something she might have to consider if they put the house on the market, but how in all that was holy could she afford to pay for staging? Would anyone come to Grover’s Park to stage a house for sale?
Probably not.
She needed to get a job. Her money was stretched tighter than Dick’s hatband. Whoever he was.
“I ain’t going to no damn nursing home,” Betty said, trying to swivel her head. “So you might as well just save your money. This house ain’t gonna sell no way.”
“It’s not a nursing home, Mama. It’s a retirement community. They have fun activities like pizza night and trips to the movies. You’ll make friends.”
“I don’t want friends. Or pizza. If I’m staying in Morning Glory, I’m staying here. In this house. The same one we’ve had in our family for three generations.”
Sunny ignored her mother and grabbed the keys to her bike from the credenza. Her mother’s secondhand van needed a new transmission and was in the shop, which made it very inconvenient to carry much from the hardware store. Besides, there was no sense arguing with her mother when she was in such a mood. Better to escape, though that was a stretch. Morning Glory was far from an escape. Instead, the small Mississippi town was an albatross of memories, dragging her further down.
Blue-collar folks populated Grover’s Park, which meant all was quiet as Sunny straddled her deceased husband’s Harley-Davidson. She wedged the helmet on her head, imagining the scent of Alan lingering in the foam lining. But it wasn’t there. Alan was gone. In fact, he’d been gone from her before he’d been killed in Afghanistan. The only thing holding them together had been the baby, a weak anchor at best. Even if their daughter had been born, she and Alan would have drifted further apart. The chasm had been too deep, the blame too immense.
Sunny pulled on her gloves, snapped the chinstrap, and fired the bike. The roar was satisfying, and she was glad she’d sold her Acura in favor of the bike even if she’d frozen her ass off on the way down to Mississippi. The black-and-silver beauty suited her now. Or at least who she wanted to be—a tough chick who didn’t give a damn.
Pulling out of the neighborhood, she headed toward the town square, passing the elementary school she’d once attended, a rare smile forming as children tumbled out the double doors and onto the playground like frisky puppies. The frigid air on her face and neck made her wish she’d grabbed her wool scarf to tuck beneath her chin. Naked trees lined the streets leading to the town square and Mick Seaver’s hardware store. She pulled into a parking space near the flowerbeds containing early-spring pansies and snapdragons.
“Hey, Sunny,” Mick called from behind the counter when she pushed into the store.
“Hey, Mr. Seaver,” she responded, shaking her head so she didn’t have helmet hair. “How’s it going?”
“Same old, same old,” Mick said, tapping at his phone. His silver hair looked dull in the dim fluorescent light. Sunny had gone to school with his youngest son, Will. In school, Will had gotten into tons of trouble, so Sunny found it vastly ironic that Mick’s son was now the associate pastor of Morning Glory Baptist Church. Weird how some people changed. People probably would say the same kind of thing about her. That Sunny Voorhees used to be the homecoming queen and valedictorian. Can you believe what a loser she is now? Such a shame. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Screw ’em. She didn’t care what anyone thought about her.
“I need a quart of the gray paint, just a pint of the white trim,” she said, eyeing the trim brushes.
“I got the colors on your index card in my file. Won’t take a minute to get ’em mixed.”
“Thanks.” She headed to the paint aisle, picking out the cheapest cutting brush. Then she grabbed a package of paint-pan liners and blue painter’s tape. The door dinged as she walked toward the desk Mick stood behind, operating the paint shaker.
Sunny’s stomach dropped when she saw the brown curls at the base of the new customer’s neck.
In an instant she was sucked back to Morning Glory High School’s cafeteria, standing in line with her then best friend Marcie, spying a clump of sophomore boys cracking jokes by the milk and juice fridge. His hair was shaggy, the color of aged pennies, and the way he smiled made her extend her neck to watch him, like a curious meerkat. She remembered thinking she’d never seen anyone like him before. The way he moved, the way everything about him was so natural, like he didn’t care what anyone thought. He knew exactly who he was.
But that was nearly twenty years ago. Henry Todd Delmar wasn’t a boy any longer. He was a full-grown man.
The boy turned, giving her his profile, and she could see he was maybe fifteen, close to the same age Henry had been standing in the lunch line, smiling as his friends goofed off.
“Can I help you, young man?” Mick asked, glancing over his shoulder at the boy. “Oh, Landry, I didn’t recognize you. Grown a foot or more since I saw you last.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said. The kid seemed so serious.
Henry and his wife had had a boy, so the kid could be Henry’s. But just because a teenaged boy had hair the same color as Henry’s didn’t mean it was his son. She was being paranoid… and creepy standing there watching the kid scuff his sneaker against the aged tile of the store.
“My dad sent me to pick up that lawn mower filter he ordered.”
“The Tecumseh?”
“I guess,” the kid responded.
Sunny turned and concentrated on her short list. Still needed some paint remover. One small bottle. The kid was not Henry’s. Besides, Henry was out of town on a project. Or so she’d heard around town.
“Here you go, kiddo,” Mick said, tapping at the cash register. “I can put this on your dad’s account if you want.”
“Okay,” the kid said.
Wasn’t much of a conversationalist. But most kids weren’t these days. They walked around with their heads down, studying their cell phones.
The door dinged again.
“You got the filter, Lan?” the man entering the store asked.
Sunny ducked.
She’d know that voice anywhere. Henry Todd Delmar.
Her heart raced as she crouched beside a row of drop cloths, amazed that her first inclination was to hide. Good Lord, she was thirty-four years old and way past hiding from confrontation. Not that there would be confrontation. Maybe awkwardness. Definitely awkwardness.
She should stand up and stop acting like an idiot. She and Henry were water under the bridge.
A creaky old bridge.
One that groaned beneath the weight of emotion… of hurt… of pus-filled, festering betrayal.
Which was why she stayed exactly where she was.
“Hey, Delmar, good to
see you back,” Mick called out, hammering something. Probably her paint. Please don’t say anything, Mick. Please for the love of God, don’t tell him I’m here.
“Thanks, Mr. Seaver. Take this out to the truck, Landry. I’ll be right out. Forgot I needed some—”
“You won’t believe who’s in here,” Mick said. Sunny could hear the excitement in his voice.
“No, no, no,” Sunny whispered, steadying herself with her fingertips since her arms were full with the supplies she’d already picked up.
Dear Lord, she was hiding behind paintbrushes like a moron, but maybe that’s what a gal did when she wasn’t wearing makeup and her hair was ratty from a bike ride. Not to mention there was a pimple on her chin she chalked up to the stress of dealing with her mother. And she wore a jean jacket that had a mustard stain on the elbow. No woman in her right mind would want to see her ex with a zit on her chin and condiments on her jacket.
The hardware store’s phone rang.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Sunny mouthed, closing her eyes.
“I was going to say— Hold on a sec,” Mick said. There was a rattle and the lifting of the receiver. “Seaver’s Hardware. This is Mick.”
Sunny slow-released the breath she held. Maybe whoever was calling had a complicated question that would keep Mick from blabbing about her being there. Either way, it bought her a reprieve.
“Excuse me,” someone said to her right.
Oh crap. Henry.
“Sorry,” Sunny said, grabbing a roll of plastic and standing, letting her hair swing forward to hide her face.
Henry slid by and walked to the end of the aisle. Sunny wanted so badly to look at him. It had been a long time since she’d laid eyes on him. He’d changed his cologne—no more Polo. It had been replaced by something more sophisticated. Something his ex-wife or a girlfriend probably picked out for him. Something that likely cost more than anything she owned except maybe the leather jacket Alan had bought her for Christmas one year.
She watched Henry from the corner of her eye as he picked up a can of spray paint. John Deere green. Then he put it back. Standing there for a few seconds, he reached for another and gave it a shake. She felt his perusal and turned her head away from him as she made a production of putting the plastic drop cloth back and picking up a different brand. The arm that held her other items ached.
