A Chance of a Lifetime (14 page)

He'd thought about Goldilocks and the littlest bear and replied in a voice far too awestruck for his pride, “No, they're just right.” Never let it be said that Joe Cadore wasn't a witty conversationalist.

 After grabbing a water bottle and her keys, she waited while Joe hooked on Norton's leash, then the three of them left, followed by a pitiful wail from the kitten. “When Sebastian is bigger, you should get him a leash and a harness so he can come with us,” Joe said.

Lucy gave him one of her looks. “He's Norton's pet. Let him walk him.”

“Like you walk Norton?”

She dished out another look. “I had Norton for a year before you moved in. I fed him, let him out, walked him, cleaned up after him…boy, did I clean up after him. Then you moved in. You came over that first day to introduce yourself, your face lit up, and you said, ‘Gosh, Mrs. Hart, you've got a puppy! Can I play with him? Would he like to go for a walk?'” She shook her head with no sympathy. “You made him fall in love with you, and after all this time, there are no take-backs. You cannot move from that house or have another dog as long as Norton lives, or you'll break his heart.”

There was always a lot Joe could defend about his behavior on any given day, but of that particular memory, he had only small corrections to offer. “I didn't call you Mrs. Hart. And I didn't say ‘gosh.'”

She shrugged but didn't change her words. At the sidewalk, where they normally turned left, she chose right instead. They passed only a couple of neighbors as they walked to First Street, where, not surprisingly, they turned left again. Three blocks down on the opposite side of the street was the bakery. Lucy gazed at it with such pride, while Joe looked at her the same. Opening up this shop was a big deal for her. When she'd lost Mike and the future they'd planned, she also lost a big part of her self-confidence. Joe was proud she was doing this—and prayed every day that it paid off for her—because somewhere along the way, she'd stopped taking chances. The only thing worse than failing, his dad used to say, was not trying at all.

The only thing worse than that was giving up, and damned if he would ever let Lucy give up.

“It needs a sign,” she remarked, her face flushed with a smile.

“Yep. And some gravel to fill in the parking lot ruts.”

“Yeah. I think I'm going to do the dining room with a beachy vibe.”

“I thought you didn't like the beach.” He'd done his best to talk her into a tropical vacation last summer, but she'd turned him down. He'd gone anyway, and he'd had fun, but he would have had more fun with her.

“I'm a California girl,” she reminded him. “I learned to swim practically before I could walk. I love the ocean and the sand and the seagulls and the dolphins and the shells and the sky and the relaxation and the vibe.” She paused a beat. “I just don't love swimsuits in a size—”

She mangled the next word badly, but he didn't ask her to repeat it. When she'd lost Mike and her future, she'd gained weight and lost her self-confidence. It was too bad, too, because she wasn't one of those
if
girls. People didn't look at her and say,
She'd be so pretty if she would just lose weight,
or
She's got such a pretty face if only she wasn't so heavy
.

She was beautiful. She'd been beautiful pre-widowhood when she was thin. She'd been beautiful before she started dieting and exercising and lost forty or so pounds. She was beautiful now, and whether she lost weight or gained it, she would still be beautiful. And funny. And smart.

And damn, he was pathetic.

After a moment more, with a soft sigh, she pivoted and headed south. They walked fast enough to make easy conversation a struggle for Lucy. It wasn't as much of a workout for him, but he got paid to work out five days a week. For him the walks fell outside the range of fitness and into his fun time. Spending time with Lucy, even Saturday working his butt off in the bakery, was always fun.

They reached the west side fire station before he realized how far they'd gone. The sun was sliding down, stealing what warmth the day had had, and Lucy had zipped her jacket halfway and shoved her hands in the pockets. The firehouse doors were open, though, and the firefighters were in lawn chairs around a propane grill that was putting out some pretty amazing aromas.

“Hey, Lucy, hey, Coach,” a half-dozen voices called. Through Joe and Lucy's summer walks, the firefighters had been unfailing in their supply of encouragement, dog cookies, and cold bottled water.

Lucy chatted with them while Norton dragged Joe to the cabinet where the cookies were stored. One of the men hefted out the big plastic jar and unscrewed the top before fixing his gaze on Joe. “Hey, Coach, exactly what's up between you and Lucy?”

“We're neighbors.”

The guy stole a look at her. “Is that all?”

“And friends.”

The guy looked at her again, and suspicion reared in Joe's mind, tightening the same jaw muscles that had always twitched around Ben Noble. That was the same expression Dr. Jerk had worn every time he'd looked at Lucy. Hell, it was the same expression Joe wore all too often around her. “Very good friends,” he emphasized.

“Like, with benefits?”

Joe's teeth clenched, though he covered it with a smile. If he could leave it at that, the firefighter—Tompkins, according to his name tag—would get the wrong idea and back off, and it wouldn't even require a lie. But damn it, he couldn't leave it at that. What if this guy was Lucy's Mr. Right? What if Joe let him believe they were more involved than they really were and Tompkins never asked her out and she lived the rest of her life alone?

“None of your business,” Joe said evenly, silently wishing Norton would chomp on Tompkins's fingers as he took the first cookie.

Tompkins grinned. “So that's a no to the benefits. Good. So you have no reason to mind if I ask her out. Huh.” He tossed a second cookie to Norton, then strolled off to join the other firefighters and Lucy.

Joe scowled as he scratched Norton's head. Last summer he'd thought he had plenty of time to work up the courage to let Lucy know he was interested in more than friendship, then Dr. Jerk came along. In the months since they'd broken up, Joe had thought he still had time, no rush; after all, she hadn't looked at another guy twice. But now this guy…

Joe didn't want to stand in the way of Lucy's possible Mr. Right, but damned if he could step back without putting himself up for consideration first. Letting her know how he felt. Showing her how he felt.

Because the only thing worse than failing was not trying at all, and the only thing worse than that was losing Lucy.

When Calvin was a kid, the women in his family occasionally claimed to suffer from what they called a sick headache—the kind where it hurt to open your eyes, where the muscles in your neck were on the verge of spasming and your stomach was heaving like a bobber in a creek after a heavy rain. His started during dinner, with his parents, Mama and Bennie, and Diez crowded around the dining table. The conversation was too loud, the food smells too rich, Calvin's mind too frazzled.

When the food was mostly gone and everyone was overstuffed, Bennie shooed the parents and grandparents into the living room, filled her hands with dishes, and bumped Diez's shoulder as she passed. “Why don't you guys help me in the kitchen?”

Diez stood immediately, gathered dishes, and followed her. His words drifted back into the dining room. “I can do this. You go sit.”

Bennie's laugh was amused and sweet. “I don't believe I've ever sat after a meal while someone else cleaned up. In my family, cleanup is the young people's thank-you for the older folks' cooking.”

“In my family, cleanup means throwing away the fast-food wrappers.”

As the water came on in the sink, Calvin pressed his fingers to his temples, wishing he could squeeze away the pain, wincing at the brightness of the overhead lights, the clanking of silverware, the lingering aromas of dinner turning sour. He needed a bed, a dark room, and endless silence. Except voices intruded on the silence eventually, most of them belonging to people who were dead. Old jokes, old arguments, odd moments out of time.

At times like these, he wanted to forget all those people, all those emotions, including—especially—J'Myel. He wanted to wake up one morning with everything gone: who he was, who he'd loved, what he'd done. Amnesia sounded like the greatest gift he could have.

Then, in the kitchen, Bennie laughed. Farther down the hall, in the living room, Elizabeth's and Gran's sopranos blended in an a capella version of “Amazing Grace.” Their voices were sweet, the hymn so familiar, one of the first he'd ever learned. He sat back, closed his eyes, and let the words wash over him, and the peace he'd always associated with the song seeped, just a little bit, over him. He'd been lost, God, for so long, wanting desperately for the pain to stop. He'd given up hope, so much that death seemed the only option, but he'd failed at that for a reason. More punishment, he'd thought, but as another of Bennie's sweet laughs drifted in from the kitchen, he knew he'd been wrong.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come. 'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

He was home. If anyplace could save him, it was home.

Fingers trembling, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. In that instant, he believed he had a chance. He could learn to treasure those memories and voices from the past. He could reach the point where he could think of J'Myel without his heart breaking in two. Next week, tomorrow, ten minutes from now, the doubts and darkness might start burrowing their way back, but at that very moment, he thought he just might survive this.

The rich aroma of coffee drifted on the air as steady footsteps approached from the kitchen. Bennie, not the heavy clunk of Diez's size twelve sneakers. Elizabeth and Gran were singing again, and Bennie hummed along to “I'll Fly Away.” He'd forgotten that she had the sweetest voice in their church choir.

He dropped his hands from his face but not before she caught at least a glimpse. “You have a headache?”

“Yeah.” Not as bad as before, though. The queasiness, the sweaty palms, and the spasming muscles were mostly gone, leaving behind a dull—and manageable—ache.

“A couple of aspirin and a cup of Benita's best brew should take care of that. If it doesn't, apple cobbler and vanilla ice cream will.”

“And if that doesn't?”

She picked up the rest of the dishes and gave him a broad mischievous smile. “Oh, honey, if cobbler and ice cream don't cure what ails you, it's time to call the undertaker 'cause you're past saving.”

Once again she left the room, and once again her conversation filtered from the kitchen. “The storage bowls for the leftovers are in the cabinet right there. Don't bother keeping the gravy. Miss Elizabeth would rather make it fresh than reheat what's left.”

Cabinet doors opened, then closed. “Why do you call her Miss?” Diez asked.

“Because I was raised right,” she replied swiftly, then relented. “It's a way for kids and young people to show respect to older people.”

“So should I call you Miss Benita?”

A scuffling sound followed. Calvin knew from too many personal experiences that Diez was trying to avoid the kitchen towel she was snapping at him. “You are not that young, and I am not that old,” she said primly.

Bennie and Calvin were four months apart in age, but he felt that old. Sometimes it wasn't the age; it was the mileage.

He sat a few minutes longer, listening to the music—his father's bass had joined in on “Down to the River”—and the kitchen talk before shoving to his feet. He pushed all the chairs under the table, straightened the embroidered tablecloth, and swept the crumbs into his hand, then went to the kitchen door. Diez was at the sink, hands in soapy water, and Bennie was loading the dishwasher and in the middle of a story.

“—had just gone to live with Mama, and she sent me in to do the dishes after dinner. We'd had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy, and of course she used her cast-iron skillet for the chicken and gravy because Mama would never fry it in anything else. Anyway, doing dishes by hand was a new experience for me, and I was actually kind of enjoying it. I left the skillet for last, and when Mama came in to check on me, I was standing at the sink, singing and just scrubbing away at that skillet with cleanser and one of those stiff scrubber pads.”

Calvin leaned against the doorjamb. He'd heard this story a few days after it took place, and he and J'Myel had practically rolled with laughter that she hadn't known any better. They were
boys
, and they knew just how particular women could be about their cast iron.

“All of a sudden, I heard this shriek from behind me. I jumped about six feet and dropped the skillet on the floor—left a big dent in the wood—and Mama came rushing over, practically in tears. ‘Oh, dear Lord, girl, what are you doing?' she wailed, and she grabbed that skillet and the cleanser and the scrubber and sent me from the room until she got herself under control.”

Diez watched her laugh, his grin tinged with confusion. Bennie was like that—she could make you smile even when you didn't understand what she was talking about.

Shoving off from the door frame, Calvin walked into the room and began gathering coffee cups from the cabinet. “All the cooking in a cast-iron pan helps season it—makes it nonstick and easy to clean. You clean it with an abrasive, it takes off that seasoning and all you're left with is just another pan.”

Bennie nodded. “That skillet had been passed down to Mama from her own grandma, and not once in all those years had it ever been scrubbed. She swore it took more than ten years of constant use to get it back to the condition it was in before I cleaned it.” She reached into the cabinet above the dishwasher, pulled out a bottle of aspirin, and handed it to Calvin, her fingers brushing his.