A Weekend Getaway

A WEEKEND GETAWAY

BY

KAREN LENFESTEY

Copyright © to
Karen
Lenfestey
2014.

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely
coincidental.

A WEEKEND GETAWAY

By Karen Lenfestey

CHAPTER ONE

As Bethany lugged the suitcase
down the creaky stairs of her boyfriend’s Victorian, she kept thinking if he
were more of a gentleman, he’d offer to carry it for her. She grunted as if the
bag contained more than just a weekend’s worth of clothes. Drew didn’t take the
hint, so she added this infraction to the list she kept in her head, then reminded
herself that this would be the weekend that changed everything.

Drew’s voice echoed from the
downstairs bathroom. “What the
hell.
. .?”

His African grey parrot, Captain
Kirk, mimicked, “What the hell—what the hell.” For some reason, the
captain was especially drawn to curse words. They’d thought it was funny until
Drew’s three-year-old niece, Emma, moved in with them a couple months ago.

Beth dropped the suitcase in the
musty front parlor and headed toward the bathroom, one of the few rooms that
had been completely renovated. Surrounded by striped wallpaper, she saw Drew
standing between a claw foot tub and an old-fashioned high tank toilet. “What’s
wrong?”

Drew stared at the tile floor.
“The toilet’s leaking.” He shook his short rust-colored hair while his eyes
remained fixed on the puddle spreading on the left side of the base. “Where are
the rags?”

She’d lived in that house for
nearly a year and he still didn’t know where she kept things? It seemed only
logical to her. Releasing a sigh, she opened up the mahogany doors beneath the
sink and handed him a thick cotton rectangle.

He wiped up the puddle and
watched for another to appear. When it didn’t, he yanked the toilet’s gold
chain and stood there, waiting.

If she didn’t know better, she’d
think he was hoping. “Let’s get going. I promised Ivy that we’d get there
early.”

From around the corner, the
Captain repeated, “What the hell-what the hell.”

A bit of water oozed out of the
gap between the porcelain and the tile. Drew twisted his mouth to the side.
“You’ll have to go without me. I need to fix the toilet.”

“What?” Her heart jerked and
picked up its pace.

They’d arranged for his parents
to watch Emma so that she and Drew could go to her college reunion together.
They desperately needed this getaway. She’d finally worked up the nerve to tell
him the truth—that at thirty-four, she was too old to have a boyfriend.
She wanted more. “I don’t want to go alone.”

“Sorry. We can’t ignore this.
The floor will rot.”

“Do you know how to fix it?”

He pulled on his ear—the
sign that he wasn’t sure. As a software engineer, he hated to admit when basic
household fixtures stumped him. “I’ll have to remove the whole toilet and take
a look. Maybe the seal’s broken.”

She surveyed Drew’s face then
the floor. “Let’s call a plumber and see if someone can come out right away.”

“On a Friday night? That’ll be
expensive. If I can figure it out myself, then that’s what I want to do.”

She crossed her arms over her
chest. “You don’t want to go. Admit it.”

A guilty smile tugged at his
lips. “Actually, I have tons of work to do this weekend. With Emma gone, I
could really make some progress around here. I could tear down that old
wallpaper in her room and paint. Besides, they’re all your friends—not
mine. With my luck, somebody will ask me what I think of the Ponies’ chances of
going to the NFL this year.”

“The Ponies? You mean the Colts
going to the Super Bowl?”

“Whatever.”

She laughed, noticing the bicep
beneath his white T-shirt, strong from all the labor he put into the house. It
looked good on his otherwise lanky frame. “I want to show you off to my
friends.”

Her friend Ivy had snatched up
the guy Beth had always dreamed of and Sarah bragged about her perfect family
on her “Sarah Homemaker” website. Last she saw them, at Ivy’s thirtieth
birthday bash, Beth had sensed their pity like being trapped in the rain
without an umbrella. She had been looking forward to walking in to the reunion
dinner arm-in-arm with her handsome boyfriend/fiancé. Plus, after dinner, there
was a dance. She’d been to so many wedding receptions without a partner and now
that she had one, he was blowing her off.

He walked over to the suitcase,
unzipped it and started pulling out his dress shoes and clothes. He piled them
on the parlor floor. “I’ll have to go to the hardware store and buy some
supplies and who knows how long fixing it will take.” A little black box
tumbled across the wooden floor. “What’s this?” He picked up the velvet square.

Her breath caught in her throat.
She reached for the box. “Nothing.”

Smirking, he played keep away.
Easy to do since he was several inches taller than her five-foot-four frame. He
flipped open the lid and her spirits sank.

She hated that she’d become
that
woman. The woman who had to propose
to her boyfriend. “I was going to give that to you this weekend.”

He pulled out the diamond tie
tack encircled with gold. “Wow. Is that real?”

She nodded. She’d considered
picking out her own diamond, but that felt doubly lame:
Here’s the ring, now put it on my finger
. Since Drew didn’t even
wear his MIT class ring, she’d settled on an engagement tie tack. It felt
perfect—especially since he was the only guy in his department who wore a
tie to work every day.

“Thanks. What’s the occasion?”

Beth’s mouth dropped open. This
wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This couldn’t be the engagement story that
she told her girlfriends. She wanted the proposal to take place in
candlelight—not next to a leaky toilet—and she didn’t want to remember
Drew stumbling across the diamond as he wriggled his way out of spending the
weekend with her. She shrugged. “Just because.”

“Well, I’ll go put it on my
dresser. It’s almost too fancy to wear to work. I’ll save it for a special
occasion.” He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the lips. “Call me when you
get there.”

“I’m not going without you.” She
plopped on the fainting couch with the broken springs and accidentally kicked
over his stack of unpacked clothes. Her mind raced. It was probably too late to
cancel their hotel room, too late to get a refund on the dinner tickets, too.
“What a waste of money.” Money that could go into reupholstering this couch or
paying off student loans or maybe even a honeymoon.

“It’s not a waste if you go.
Beth, you’ve been looking forward to this for a while. You deserve some time
with your friends.”

“We both deserve a weekend
away.” Raising his niece made her realize how much she wanted a child of her
own. This weekend she’d hoped they’d start talking seriously about such things.
“Maybe you can fix the toilet tonight and we can go in the morning.”

He sat next to her and patted
her leg. “I’m afraid it makes sense for me to get some work done here. If you
stay, you’ll be bored. Plus you’re giving that speech.”

Why had she agreed to speak at
the banquet? Because the college girl on the phone had begged her to,
explaining that each of the founding members of the Leadership Club would say a
few words. The truth was, Beth wouldn’t mind skipping the speech. Yet she’d be
miffed if she stayed home. Drew was going to ignore her, like he often did
these days. Ever since Emma moved in, he spent every spare moment on
renovations. They no longer scoured antique stores for Victorian pieces, no
longer went to sci fi movies and no longer traded foot massages while
discussing work.

She glanced at her watch. If he
didn’t want to spend some quality time together, she wouldn’t force it. “All
right. I’m going to go.”

He squeezed her knee and gave
her a peck on the cheek. “You’ll be glad you did.” He popped up and headed for
his laptop. “I’m going to look up how to fix a leaking toilet.”

How romantic, Beth thought. She
added this slight to the checklist, as she climbed the stairs to Emma’s room.
The girl was used to playing alone, but Beth tried her best to be as involved
and present as possible. It wasn’t Emma’s fault she’d had to learn independence
at such a young age.

Beth’s jaw dropped when she
stepped inside the room.

Emma, a tow-headed, blue-eyed
cherub, looked up from the floor where she had smeared finger paints all over
the wool rug. “Sorry, Aunt Beth.” She scrubbed with her Dora the Explorer
washcloth, exacerbating the mess.

“Oh, my gosh, Emma. What
happened?”

“Sorry.” Her lower lip pushed
outward in remorse. She burst into tears.

Beth couldn’t stand to see the
girl cry. “It’s okay.” She knelt down to hug the child. Part of her wanted to
let Drew deal with the mess since he’d just flaked out on her. But the part of
her that needed to be the hero won out. She went to the hall closet, found the
carpet stain remover and sprayed the green and brown splotch. It took two
cycles of scrubbing to get it almost clean. She faced Emma and put on a happy
face to try and cheer the girl up. “Wash your hands and get in the car. It’s
time to go to grandma’s.”

“Is Mommy going to be there?”

Beth’s gut twisted. “I don’t
think so.”

“Why can’t I go to Mommy’s
place? I miss my mommy!”

“Your mommy loves you very much,
but she can’t watch you this weekend.”
Because
your mommy would rather spend time with her boyfriend. You deserve so much
better.
“Grandma told me she bought the ingredients to make chocolate chip
pancakes.” Beth would say anything to distract Emma.

“Yippee!” Emma jumped, revealing
red and green splatters on her pink dress. Beth couldn’t take her like that.
These people, who hopefully would be her in-laws, would think she was failing
as a guardian.

While Emma went to the nearby
bathroom and washed, Beth opened the closet crammed full of size 3T frocks.
Reaching between two outfits with the tags still on, she selected a sailor
dress she’d purchased last week at Macy’s.

Once Emma was changed, they
headed downstairs where they both gave Drew a hug good-bye. Beth told him about
the stain on the rug that he’d purchased special when Emma arrived. “I got it
out as best I could, but it’s still visible.”

His shoulders slumped with the
weight of his house’s to-do list. “What?”

The light gray parrot with red
tail feathers took his cue, “What the hell-what the hell.”

Emma looked up at Beth. “What’s
hell?”

# # #

After dropping Emma off at
Drew’s parents’ house, Beth climbed in her Chevy and headed toward Indiana
University.

As she drove south, she thought
about the Leadership Club. It had been the first place where she’d felt
welcomed. It was better than home. There should be a word for
that—friends that treat you better than family.

Her cell phone rang. When she
saw that it was work calling, she picked up. “Hello?”

“Beth, I have a customer on the
line and no matter what I say, he’s not satisfied,” a panicked female voice
said. It was one of her new trainees. “I hate to bother you on the weekend, but
he insists on speaking with my supervisor and Lisa went home sick. Would you
mind if I transferred him to you?”

“Not a problem.” Beth heard the
click of the connection, and out of habit she curved her lips into a smile.
“This is Bethany, the customer service manager. How may I resolve your
concern?”

“I got these vitamins but I
can’t swallow them,” a gruff, elderly man’s voice came over the line.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’d be
glad to refund you if you’d ship them back to Healthy Habits Vitamins and
Herbs.” The company operated an internet and mail-order business only.

“No. I don’t drive. I can’t get
to the post office.”

“I see. I’d be glad to send you
pre-paid postage so you can mail it from home.”

“You don’t understand. My doctor
told me to take Vitamin C, but it gets stuck in my throat.”

“So you want to take the
vitamins, but they are hard to swallow. Do you have a pill-splitter? That might
help alleviate the difficulty in swallowing. You could take half in the morning
and half at night, if you’d like.”

“I eat a banana for breakfast
and take my pills. At six a.m. every day for the past fifty years.”

The rigidity of his routine made
her smile even broader. She loved chatting with the elderly. “Sir, you can take
both halves with breakfast. If that doesn’t work, I’d be glad to send you
postage and refund you your full purchase price.”

“You won’t deduct for the
vitamins I’ve already taken?”

“No, sir. Our goal at Healthy
Habits is to ensure one hundred percent customer satisfaction. I’m willing to
do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

“Oh.” He paused as if thrown by
this offer. “I suppose I could try using my pill splitter. But if that doesn’t
work, I’m calling you back.”

“Excellent. Please ask for
Bethany when you do. I’d love to hear from you.” But the call wasn’t over.
After telling her stories about his hip replacement surgery and his faithful
German shepherd, the man cheerfully bid her a good day.

Sometimes she really got a kick
out of the customers who called. In fact, she loved talking to people on the
phone, but speaking to a crowd still caused her stomach to twist. Her impending
speech filled her with worry.

In her mind, she wanted to
encourage the students to take advantage of the opportunities the club
provided. Run for treasurer, VP or even president. All things she’d been too
timid to try. She wanted to explain that it was okay if they weren’t sure how
to motivate underclassmen to get up on Saturday mornings to help build a house
for Habitat for Humanity. Get excited, make it fun, and people will join in.
Best of all, when they graduated, they would have an answer to the interview
question, “Tell me about a time you faced something difficult and how you
overcame it.”