Three Times a Charm

by Jean Stone

  “Do you suppose it’s true?” Sarah dared to ask.

  He shrugged and said, “Do you suppose it’s not?”

  Sutter talked about his mother and father, about his only brother, who’d abandoned the Cherokee. He talked about his son, who’d sought what he referred to as the truthful ways. Sarah talked about Glisi and her father and how much she missed them both. She told him about the summer triangle of stars and how she thought they were there. “With my mother,” she added. “My mother, who I thought was gone.”

  Then Sutter took her hand and called her “Silent One,” and Sarah’s eyes filled with lost and lonely tears, for Silent One had been her name, her legacy in Cherokee.

  “You know my name,” she said.

  “I always have.”

  “What is yours?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”

  “Standing Wolf.”

  She liked the sound of his name, the serenity of the picture it made in her thoughts. “Does Laura know our names?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes. Of course. She knows many things.”

  Sarah smiled. “Not everything, I hope.” She took his hand in hers; she studied the smooth bronze skin, the strength within his long, sturdy fingers. With his other hand he stroked her silky, raven hair. Then he held her close and she held him too, and they watched the fire and talked about their Circle of Life and how nice it felt to have found each other.

  At two A.M. Sarah made breakfast of eggs and day-old bread and fruit that she found in the freezer. Sutter laughed and suggested her culinary abilities were a unique art form. She swore she was a better cook before Burch went away.

  Which moved the conversation from California back to her log cabin in the Berkshires, back to the present and all the things she would rather have ignored, but there was Sutter, willing to listen, and there was Sarah, at last able to talk.

  With Elton tucked beside them, they fell asleep just before dawn, on the floor before the fireplace, covered by the woven blanket Little Tree had made.

  Not many miles away, two or maybe three, Laura Carrington watched the sun rise over the mountains in her room at the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast. She waited and she hoped Sutter would come back soon with the news that Sarah had at last agreed to meet her.

  She hoped it would happen soon, before her illness progressed further, before her time here was done.

  37

  Andrew couldn’t wait to see Jo. He thought of little else as he drove up the New York Thruway, where his old Volvo crossed the Hudson in Newburgh, moved into Connecticut, then trekked north to West Hope. It was a route that he and Cassie had traveled often in those first months on their own, when Andrew had been unsure what to do in West Hope on weekends, so he’d packed up his young daughter and brought her back to the familiar: the museums, the theater, the park.

  It wasn’t until he realized Cassie loved riding horses that Andrew decided to trust the stable in the Berkshires to do Cassie no more harm than the one in Central Park.

  Such had been the belated start of his attempt to fully commit to the country and the quiet country life.

  He might have done it sooner if he’d thought he’d meet Jo.

  Relaxing his grip on the steering wheel, Andrew looked over at Cassie, who dozed quietly beside him. His daughter was content, they were returning to their world.

  He smiled with anticipation.

  He’d been surprised when Jo and the others showed up at Irene’s—he’d been disoriented, actually, seeing them at the penthouse, out of context. It had been like seeing a doctor or dentist in the produce department of the market: You know that you know them, but it takes a second, a minute, to put the person in the place where you know them, to meld one world into another, to get your awareness legs.

  His legs, of all kinds, had been thrown off by Jo. It seemed clumsy when today’s lover showed up at the door of yesterday’s. He’d been discomfited, Lily might have said if she’d known the whole story.

  He needed to forgive himself for not trying to call Jo sooner; he hoped that she’d forgive him too.

  Soon he would know, because he was headed back to West Hope, and he had a plan. He’d make up for his discomfiture (if that was a word) with whatever it took. He’d let her know the Bensons were far behind him now, that his priority was in West Hope, that his priority was her.

  He nodded his affirmation and kept his foot pressed on the accelerator, each passing mile bringing him closer to the wonderful woman he loved.

  “We’re going to cancel her,” Lily announced at the emergency meeting she’d called late Sunday morning.

  “Cancel who?” asked Elaine, who’d been the last one to get there, later even than Sarah, who’d arrived only moments before.

  “Rhonda Blair.”

  Sarah looked at Lily, Jo, and Elaine, then at Elaine’s father and the woman Sarah had been told married Bob McNulty on the cruise ship. Though Elaine still called her Mrs. Tuttle, Mrs. McNulty laughed and said it was all right. Change, Sarah mused, sometimes happens quickly. She thought of Sutter Jones, how disappointed he had seemed when she said she had to go to work. How he had made her promise to meet him that night for dinner at the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast, which served private meals on weekends to their special guests.

  “Before you cancel Ms. Blair, remember that I’m here to help,” Elaine’s father said. “We can do it together.”

  Apparently Marion had told Jo who’d then telephoned Elaine and Lily to tell them Rhonda Blair now wanted a red-and-white wedding ball. Sarah didn’t know why the drama couldn’t have waited until Monday.

  “And I already have the gown,” Sarah said. She reached into the box she’d brought—the one Jason had sent. She pulled out the red rose-petallike dress.

  “Wow,” Elaine said.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Jo added.

  “It’s going back,” Lily announced.

  “It can’t,” Sarah said. “I bought it from a vendor on the street.”

  Jo was sitting by the computer. “How much?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lily interrupted. “We’re going to cancel her.” She bent down and lifted up a tote bag that Sarah hadn’t noticed. She took out one, then two, then three newspapers. She displayed the headlines. “The Sunday editions say it all,” she said, a smirky grin creeping across her face.

  “Oh, no,” Jo said.

  “Hooray,” Elaine commented.

  But Sarah didn’t get it. So what if the media learned the real story about Irene and John? What the heck did that have to do with Rhonda Blair? Or with Second Chances? It’s not as if the headlines read “Irene Benson slept with Andrew Kennedy of Second Chances, the second-wedding planners.”

  Lily set down the papers. “For those of you here who feel you’re in the dark, let me explain.” She launched into a diatribe about the visit to Irene, then Irene’s visit to them, then the vengeful plan Lily had concocted. “If you want to keep a secret,” she said, “never tell a social-climbing caterer. Present company excepted.”

  Bob McNulty said he’d never climbed any ladder, social or otherwise.

  “And I’ll bet my next paycheck,” Lily said, “if we have next paychecks, that Rhonda Blair had no intention of going through with a big wedding. I think Irene set it up to watch us fail, to have us go to great time and expense only to have Ms. Blair cancel at the last minute. They’re friends, remember. Rhonda and Irene.”

  Sarah remembered that Rhonda had originally requested lavish, the same way Irene had done. “Maybe she’s just getting back at you for those,” she said, gesturing to the newspapers.

  “Not possible. Jo’s mother said Rhonda called Thursday afternoon. We didn’t leak the story until Friday. Irene must have called Rhonda after she’d dropped her bomb at my apartment. She was so afraid we’d stolen her little Andrew. She found a way to keep him, then she thought of a way to screw us too. Hey, if we’re out of business, he’s out of a job, right?”

  Elaine said Lily must be right because she kn
ew how Irene thought. Lily was, after all, a lot like the woman.

  “I beg your pardon?” Lily asked.

  Elaine said she meant no offense, “It’s just that with all that high-society stuff, Lily knows the dance. And at least she waited until we had the check.”

  With that, Sarah smiled.

  Jo smiled.

  Bob and Mrs. Tuttle smiled too.

  Lily didn’t seem to know if she should laugh or cry. “Well, think about it,” she said. “Does anyone in this room honestly think the media never would have found out what happened between John and Irene?”

  One after another, they all stopped smiling.

  “There’s one more thing,” Lily said. “We probably can forget about being asked to plan any big-time weddings now. At least for a while, Irene will still have clout in the social register. So the question is, can Second Chances survive with the likes of Allison and Dave? And Julie and Helen, if they were paying?”

  “We’ll have to try,” Elaine said. “We’ve come too far. Besides, we have lots of other bookings.”

  “Not quite as many once we weed out the ‘Irene-prompted’ ones,” Jo added.

  “But we’ll have our integrity,” Lily said. Sarah wasn’t quite sure how that was connected, but everyone else agreed, so she decided she simply was too anxious, with Sutter and Laura on her mind.

  Andrew hadn’t expected that Jo wouldn’t be home in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. But her car wasn’t in the driveway, and the house wore the blank face that said no one was home.

  He stood at her back door, peered in the window, and wondered if he should just break in.

  Then he decided he must be overtired for thinking such a thought. His lack of sleep last night, his Irene confrontation (s), the long drive home, had surely addled his brain.

  As soon as he and Cassie had arrived back in West Hope, he’d turned her over to their neighbor, Mrs. Connor, who babysat for Cassie, though his daughter was too old for them to call it that. “I’m going to be tied up with some business maybe overnight,” he’d said, using a lame (Cassie’s word) excuse when he’d dropped her off.

  “Monkey business,” Cassie said, with a quick roll of her eyes, and Andrew said, “Behave.” Cassie wanted to comment, he could tell she did, but she seemed to think better of it and simply said, “Good luck.” He wondered if hearing Irene’s tirade had made Cassie realize how fragile life and friends and friendships can be, even when you don’t want them to turn out that way.

  He’d quick-kissed her good-bye, thanked Mrs. Connor, and sped off toward Jo’s, where he was now, standing on the damn back steps, not knowing what to do.

  If he broke in, it might piss her off.

  He thought about the snow day when he’d been here, when they’d spent hours in bed together, stranded under the covers, thanks be to Mother Nature.

  He wondered what she would do if he broke in, then sneaked up to her bedroom and waited for her there.

  Surely the idea was a brilliant one. How could she be pissed at that?

  With a huge, exultant smile, Andrew skipped down the stairs, then moved around the house to the porch on the other side.

  A window was unlocked, though he might have broken the glass to get in anyway. He pushed it up—thinking he’d have replacement windows installed once he and Cassie lived there. Then he started climbing into the dining room, hoping no one noticed from the street. If someone did, he supposed he could wave and say, Jo forgot her key, then they would know that he belonged here.

  And he did belong here, didn’t he?

  Just when he thought he had his balance, his body thunked onto the floor; he whacked his knee on the corner of the sideboard.

  Ouch.

  Shit.

  He lay there a few seconds, waiting for the stars to fade and the jolt of pain to lessen. When it did, Andrew struggled to his feet, brushed off his butt, and looked around the room.

  The first thing that he noticed was the scent, Jo’s scent, light honey and vanilla, not fruity or flowery, but a real, welcoming scent that lingered like lace and moved over him like love.

  With a smile that struggled to rise above his pain, Andrew walked—no, limped—toward the staircase that led up to her bedroom. He slowly ascended, wishing she were there. On the top step he paused. What if she was? What if Jo already was there, already in bed, with another man?

  He laughed. He reminded himself that this was not New York, and Jo was not Irene or Patty, or any of those women who seemed to think Andrew was there just to be used. He also reminded himself that her car—or a car that might belong to an unknown, clandestine lover—was not in the driveway.

  He pushed himself forward and limped into her room.

  She was not there. He stood for a moment, studying the scene, the neat white bedspread tucked perfectly beneath peach-colored toss pillows that she’d clustered together like decorator accents. On the nightstand stood several peach candles that looked as if they’d never been lit; on the bureau was a cache of more candles, those in brass holders of varying sizes. He had not realized that Jo loved candles. He had not noticed them on the two glorious occasions when he’d been in the room. He’d had other things on his mind, he guessed. Other things to look at.

  Andrew took off his jacket, hung it on the back of a cane-seated chair that sat in front of what looked like an old sewing machine. He unbuckled his belt, then looked down at his feet: he still wore his city boots, not his West Hope sneakers. He would never need the boots again, or the silk socks he wore inside them.

  Once Andrew had disrobed, except for his Calvin briefs, he turned back the bedspread and slid between the sheets.

  And he began to wait. He would wait, he knew, as long as it took. If it meant waiting for the sun to set then rise again over the town that was now home, Andrew would wait for the woman he loved to come back to his arms.

  38

  What the hell are you doing here?”

  He had fallen asleep. It took Andrew a second to realize that he had fallen asleep, that he was now awake, that he was in Jo’s bed, that Jo stood over him, her frame silhouetted by the light in the hall, her body as rigid as if she were Red Riding Hood and he the big, bad wolf.

  “Surprise,” he said, sobered by the fact he’d been woken up by the sound of a woman shrieking twice now in the same day.

  Was this the same day?

  He propped himself up on one elbow, wishing that he’d stayed awake, wishing he’d thought to light the peach-colored candles and look like an eager lover instead of a guy who was worn out from too much talk and too much stress and too much driving and too much Irene.

  Jo did a one-eighty and exited the room.

  “Jo?” he called after her, but the only reply was the sound of her footsteps tromping down the stairs. He flopped back against the pillow that smelled like honey and vanilla. “Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

  Hauling himself from the bed, Andrew slipped into his socks, his pants, his city boots. He pulled on his shirt but left it unbuttoned. He slung his jacket over his shoulder. As he started to move, pain sliced through his knee. “Shit,” he said again, and wondered, not for the first time, what he had done in a past life to deserve such crappy luck.

  She was standing at the kitchen sink, her back to the stairs. She didn’t seem to be doing anything; she didn’t seem to be moving, and the water wasn’t running.

  “Jo?” Andrew asked quietly. “I’m sorry I scared you. I thought it would be fun to surprise you.”

  She didn’t respond. He set down his jacket and began buttoning his shirt.

  “I thought you’d be glad to see me,” he added. He didn’t say that he could have predicted this, that he’d never done very well when it came to women, that he’d never figured out why. Patty had once told him that he tried too hard, that women liked their men rough around the edges, unpredictable, undependable, bad boys, if not to the bone, then at least under the surface of the skin. He wondered if forty-three was too late to turn bad.
/>   “I knew you were here,” she said to the window, to the indoor/outdoor thermometer, the birdhouse, and the big backyard. “You left your car in the driveway.”

  He tucked in his shirt. “Well, yeah. I didn’t want to shock you. Just surprise you. Upstairs.”

  She didn’t answer again. Her silence warned him not to move too close. Ten, twelve feet seemed a safe distance.

  “Jo,” he said, “I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds. I thought it would be fun.”

  “How did you get in?”

  He felt ridiculous now, having to admit what he’d done. “The dining-room window,” he confessed. “I wrecked the shit out of my knee.” He thought that she might laugh, but she did not. Instead, she turned around.

  “How dare you,” she said. Her beautiful green eyes had become dark, unpretty.

  He stepped forward. “Okay. It was a lousy idea. I said I’m sorry.”

  But she was shaking her head, her thick, silky taupe hair swishing one way then the other, making him wish he could lose himself in it and forget about the rest. “How dare you come back to me,” Jo said, “as if…as if nothing has happened.”

  He had no idea what she meant. God, sometimes he wished he really was gay, the way that he’d pretended for so many months, when he’d written the column for Buzz magazine, when he’d been working for John because he was Andrew’s mentor and Andrew felt he owed him and…oh, God, it seemed a lifetime ago now.

  “Irene Benson,” Jo suddenly blurted. Then she turned back to the sink, poured a glass of water. “You can’t sleep with both of us, Andrew. I’m not going to be your plaything while you’re out here in the country. Go back to the city, where you can sleep as often as you want with poor, abandoned Irene. God, Andrew, the woman is so old, it really is embarrassing. But she has plenty of money, so I guess that makes up for a lot of things.” Then she flipped around and looked him in the eyes. “Get out of my house,” she said. “Get out of my house before I call the police.”

  If Jo was surprised when she saw Andrew’s car in her driveway and his near-naked self in her bed, he had to believe she wasn’t nearly as stunned as he was by what she’d just said about Irene.