Reunion in October (The Calendar Girls Book 2) (10 page)

My expression must have given away my bewilderment because she laughed. “Joshua, silly.”

Joshua? How the…? Who told her about Joshua?

Claudia. She must have spilled the beans, the big mouth. “Wait ‘til I get hold of her.”

“Get hold of whom, sweetheart?” She leaned down and pushed the hair off my brow before placing a kiss on my forehead.

“Claudia. She had no right to tell you about Josh, who, by the way, is not the new man in my life.”

Mom took her seat and waved a hand at me. “Claudia didn’t tell me about him.”

“She didn’t? Then who…?” A spider of suspicion crept over my neck before my mother even took a breath to reply.

“I got it straight from the gorgeous man’s mouth. So there’s no sense in denying it. Though, why you’d want to hide this news from me, I can’t begin to imagine.”

Well, smack me with a white glove and call me Chester. “Josh? Josh told you about us? When?”

“This morning, when he came over to get rid of my leaves.”

“
Josh
raked your leaves?” I should have known my siblings wouldn’t suddenly care about Mom’s needs or my indentured servitude.

“No, he came with some kind of ride-on tractor with a vacuum attachment. Had the whole yard done and bagged in less than ninety minutes.”

Appreciation warred with a glimmer of resentment. I mean, okay. I was grateful he’d taken care of this task for Mom—and me—but at the same time, he really shouldn’t have, and certainly not without telling me first. “What else did he tell you?”

Before my mother could answer, the storm door in the kitchen squealed, and a male voice ran roughshod over my nerves. “Knock, knock.”

I stiffened in my chair. Michael.

He strode into the dinette with the self-assurance of someone who was not only welcome, but
invited
. Always proper and polite, he leaned down to kiss my mother’s cheek first. “Hi,
Mom
.”

The honorary title, along with the inflection, raised my hackles, which no doubt was his intention, so I forced myself to remain impassive.

“Sweetheart,” he crooned as he bent to kiss me.

At the last minute, I turned my face away, so he wound up with his lips against my ear. “I might be stating the obvious,” I said with a smile that nearly cracked my face in half, “but I seem to be the only one surprised to see you here.”

He took the chair next to me, and I forced my feet flat on the floor so as not to slide my seat farther away. “Your mother thought it beneficial for you and I to meet on neutral ground.”

“Uh-huh. Neutral. So naturally, you chose here.” I couldn’t hold back the acid in my tone. “The house I grew up in. The place I ran to five years ago when you abandoned me at the altar.”

One blink. That was all he offered me before a solicitous grin spread his lips thin. “Well, in all fairness, sweetheart, I did try to talk to you at the home where we planned to build our future together the other night, but you threw me out. Twice.”

My mother glared with enough ice to freeze the Atlantic. “Francesca, how could you?”

I ignored my mother’s displeasure, my anger totally reserved for Michael. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.” Not that I had a gun, but he didn’t know that.  “I came home from a date to find you inside my house with no warning or advance notice. For all I knew, you might have been a burglar. I haven’t seen you or heard from you in five years—”

“A date?” Naturally, Mom only paid attention to what she wanted to hear. “With Josh?”

“Yes, Mom.” I turned back to Michael. “You had no right to—”

“Josh who?” This time, Michael interrupted my argument.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but Josh Candolero.”

“That kid who used to follow you around all the time?”

Rising from the table, Mom announced, “I’m going to make a fresh pot of coffee.” She shot a meaningful glance my way. “Maybe even bake a Bundt cake while I’m at it.”

In other words, she was giving us time alone. Setting up that neutral ground Michael had no doubt planned with her before I got Mom’s phone call about her leaves.

After my mother abandoned me in true storybook fashion, I turned my full attention to the villain in my drama. Josh might think I was Cinderella, but I didn’t need Prince Charming to sweep me away to a magical castle on a hilltop.

Michael’s frown etched deep lines in his mouth and brow. “How old is the brat these days? Twenty? Twenty-one? Not robbing the cradle, are you?”

“He’s nearly thirty.”
Give or take a year or two
. “While we’re discussing this, keep a few other facts in mind.” I clasped my hands on the table to keep from smacking him. “A., he’s not a ‘kid.’ He’s a grown man.” Sure, I’d wrestled with the same issue about dating him, but I wasn’t about to give Michael the satisfaction of knowing I had my misgivings regarding the differences in our ages. Maybe if he thought I was serious about Josh, he’d take the hint and go back to Oregon. “And b., he never followed me around.”

“Of course, he did. No matter where you and I went in this town, he always popped up. He only stopped shadowing you when we went to college. But all through high school, he was devoted to you and
hated
me. Don’t you remember what happened before the junior prom?”

That was the trouble with growing up in a small town. Even if I forgot some silly little incident from my past, someone else always remembered. I had completely forgotten about that story, mainly because I wasn’t really a part of it and only heard about it after the fact from Michael. “It” happened several days before Michael was supposed to be my date for the prom.

Joshua Candolero, age ten, and his seven-year-old sister, Rosanna, spent the day at Michael’s house—“annoying” him was the way Michael had phrased the visit afterwards. Within forty-eight hours, both Candoleros came down with the chickenpox. Michael, who’d never had them as a younger child, showed the first symptoms the night before prom. I wound up staying home, my dress never worn, no corsage, no photo to cringe over twenty years later. At the time, I was crushed. Now, I saw it as an omen about where my future with Michael would really go: Nowheresville.

“He did it on purpose, you know,” Michael grumbled. “Gave me chickenpox to keep me from going out with you.”

I threw a hand in the air and slapped my palm back on the table for effect. “For God’s sake, Michael. Chickenpox is contagious before most of the symptoms appear. At best, he might have had the sniffles that day. He couldn’t possibly have known he’d pass a virus on to you. And even if he somehow knew the blisters would appear within days, he also would have had to know you hadn’t ever been exposed to chickenpox before and that you didn’t have a natural immunity. That’s a big stretch.”

Then again…

Thinking about all Josh had done lately to get my attention, I admit, a small piece of my brain wondered if maybe he did intentionally get Michael sick that day. Josh and Michael had only known each other through me: I was Josh’s babysitter, and Michael was my boyfriend. That day was the one and only time they’d ever hung out together. Could Josh have orchestrated Michael’s illness just to keep him from taking me to prom? How silly, I chided myself. Aloud, I added, “He was still a child at the time.”             

He said nothing for a long moment, and I stared out the window behind his head where a blue jay veered from one side of the yard to a plastic bird feeder on the other. Finally, Michael reached across the table to cup my fingers in his palm. Warmth zinged from my hand to my heart.

“I meant what I said the other night. I made a huge mistake, Francesca, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. If you really can’t forgive me, I’ll have to find a way to live with that. But I really hope you’ll reconsider. I know I was wrong. Give me a chance to prove we can make it work. You were this close…” He pinched his thumb and forefinger a hair apart. “…to being my wife. Can you honestly say you now feel that same way about Josh Candolero?”

“Of course not,” I snapped before I thought better of it. There went any hope he’d assume Josh and I were heart-deep in a romantic relationship. Lying had never been my forte. I’d have to lay all my cards on the table. “We’ve only gone on a couple of dates.”

His audible sigh of relief pierced the air between us. “That’s good.”

I arched a brow. “Really? Why?”

“Because it means you’re not serious about him.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “And that’s your business because…?”

“Because I still love you, and I want us to get back together. I thought I’d made that plain.”

I folded my arms over my chest, determined to remain impenetrable to Michael’s soft words and buttery routine. “What if I don’t want that?”

“Don’t be silly, Francesca,” my mother interrupted, returning to the room. “Of course you do.”

I swerved my attention to the doorway where Mom loitered, a Cheshire cat smile quirking her frosted pink lips. “What happened to the Bundt cake?”

She didn’t even have the good taste to squirm. Waving a hand, Mom regained her seat across from Michael and me. “The last thing you need is extra carbs, especially since you’ll soon be trying to fit into your wedding dress again.”

Slamming my fist on the table, I shot to my feet. “That’s it. I’m done.”

I probably left skid marks in Mom’s driveway when I peeled out less than a minute later.

Chapter 8

Emily

I want a divorce.
The words echoed in my head all night. Why? Why had I even dreamed I’d say such a thing? Did I seriously feel that way? Lying in my darkened bedroom, I fought to sleep, but my mind had other plans. Pros and cons stacked up in a mental list.

Pro: He supported me emotionally and backed me up when it came to discipline for the kids. Con: He hadn’t done much of either lately. Pro: I loved him. Con: Didn’t I? Punching my pillow, I rolled to my side and forced my brain to shut down. Eventually, exhaustion won out, but my sleep was restless, at best.

By mid-morning on Sunday, my family had managed to solve their crises without me. Melissa spent the night at Angela’s house so she’d have plenty of hot water for a shower (and the opportunity to dress up for Justin without undergoing my parental scrutiny before she walked out of the house). The idea didn’t thrill me, but having gone to bed while the plans were made, I didn’t get a vote. One of Corey’s friends had gained permission from his parents, who’d planned to watch the scrimmage anyway, to take my son back to their house after the football practice, and allow him to also indulge in a hot shower. Even Roy managed to take the initiative and, using the excuse that we had children under the age of five in the house, persuaded Oxford Fuel Oil to make an emergency Sunday delivery. Okay, we only had
one
child under the age of five in the house, but they didn’t know that. I didn’t want to think about the surcharge they’d probably tacked on to our bill, so I made a conscious effort to focus on the positive.

Imagine that: my family showing resourcefulness. Without me. I should go to bed early more often. They might actually learn to survive on their own.

Monday’s morning routine went off without a hitch, and once the older kids had gone to school, I took Luke to the library. I dropped off the weekend’s movie rentals and spent an hour playing with my son during the library’s Mommy Time program. After an hour of
The Wheels on the Bus
and Parachute Parade, I wandered over to the bestselling paperback shelves, feeding my continual delusion that someday I’d actually find time to read something besides new recipes for cooking chicken cutlets.

A man perused the shelf beside me, picking up various books, reading the blurbs, and quickly replacing them. He was shorter than Roy and lacked my husband’s muscle tone, but he had gorgeous blue eyes, sandy-colored hair, and straight, white teeth behind full, red lips. I guessed him to be in his mid-thirties and found it odd to see him in the library at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. Maybe he was unemployed? In the current economic circumstances, a lot of people came to the library to access the Internet for employment ads or to update their résumés. Or maybe he was just a visitor, here for the local surfing, which would be a washout with today’s pending thunderstorms. Though he didn’t look much like a surfer in a pale pink button-down shirt and dark khaki pants. More like a surfer-slash-executive, or a surfboard salesman.

When he reached in front of me for the third time, he offered a fleeting smile. “Sorry.”             

“That’s okay,” I murmured with a smile of my own. Guilt struck my conscience. What was I doing? Flirting with some guy in the library? With a toddler on my hip? I hitched Luke a little higher and took a step away, one shelf over, focusing on the rows of titles for something interesting. The familiar orange sticker that signified a novel by a local author caught my eye, and I picked up the book.
Family Bloodlines.
The story, about a woman bored with her housewife life who becomes obsessed with a serial killer, left me flat. With a “Pffft,” I shoved the book back in its place on the shelf.

“Excuse me.” The man sidled near me again. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Hmmm?” I didn’t even look at him this time, remaining noncommittal, in case he was a creep. Or worse. I’d already made eye contact, which was a huge mistake. I wouldn’t add to my momentary lapse of good judgment and endanger myself or my child. Instinctively, my hold tightened on Luke.

“Why’d you put that book back?”

On the shallowest scale, the answer was none of his business. I gave him the look I normally reserved for my kids when they were caught in the act of some infraction. “Is there a problem?”

“No, not really.” He glanced toward the shelf where I’d replaced the book and gestured with his thumb. “You see, I’m the author of that novel.”

I looked at the orange sticker on the spine—local author—then back at this executive-surfer-dude-looking guy. “You wrote
Family Bloodlines
?”

Pointing to the black boldface type below the sticker, he said, “Yup. Ambrose Chase, that’s me. I guess I’m not what you expected, huh?”