by Fiona Grace
Sense only began to leak back into Audrey’s head when she turned and realized that everyone in the place was holding their breath, watching and waiting for World War Three to erupt. Not wanting to witness the casualties, she skittered up the stairs with her head down, still feeling the weight of her entire graduating class’s eyes on her back.
It was only when she escaped out to the lobby, behind a potted plant, that she finally took a deep breath. Exhaling, she stared up at the ornate chandelier and let out a little groan. She replayed the last few moments over in her head, cringing mightily as she banged the back of her head gently, rhythmically on the wall.
Michael, who had forever been the stuff of her every dream, her every torrid fantasy … was a complete and utter piece of crap.
As was most of her life.
This was not how things were supposed to turn out. In high school, she’d accepted her role as the invisible wallflower because she knew that if she kept her head down and studied and made something of herself, eventually, she’d be a success, like Kevin. Wasn’t that the formula? Work hard in school so you could impress everyone later. She’d followed it to a T, hoping that by now she would have the husband who adored her, beautiful kids, the enviable career and home. She’d have dozens of stories to tell people about the wonderful life she’d made for herself.
But what did she have now?
Not even one of those things.
At that second, she felt it sliding over her body like a suffocating blanket. The self-pity. Her face contorted into ugly-cry mode. A sob caught itself in her throat, but before she could let it out, she realized that Mitzy was leaning over so she could peer at her from behind the reception table, part disgusted, part amused.
“Are you okay, dear?”
Audrey batted aside the palm fronds that were doing a terrible job of concealing her despair, plastered a smile on her face, and waved. “Just fine, thanks.”
“You’re not leaving so soon?”
“Oh, yes I am,” Audrey muttered, heading for the door and pulling out her phone, wondering if anything in this world could make her feel better.
Thankfully, she knew just who to call.
*
Sabrina was waiting at the door when Audrey limped down the street, her feet two giant blisters. The second Audrey reached the top step, Sabrina deposited a glass of red wine into Audrey’s hand. “Bad?”
“Worse,” Audrey said with a grateful smile, kicking off her shoes in the foyer and taking a gulp, letting it slip down her throat.
Audrey’s older sister had The Life. The Life most people, including Audrey, only dreamed of.
Sabrina was wearing yoga capris, matching sports bra, and a hooded sleeveless jacket. Her white-blonde hair, no roots, was piled in a so-called “messy” bun that looked like it’d taken effort to achieve. Her “relaxation wear” still managed to look more put together than most of Audrey’s ensembles. And even though she’d just popped Byron out six months ago, she had nary a stomach pooch to speak of.
Many siblings might have been jealous. Sabrina was the popular one in school, the girl with all the friends, the person to whom good things came easy. Now, she had a brilliant husband, a an IP lawyer whose clients included some of the biggest firms in Boston, the gorgeous brownstone on the swankiest street in the city, and three adorable rug-rats … and yet she still managed to look like one of the Real Housewives of Beacon Hill.
Right now, at her lowest of lows, Audrey should’ve probably wanted to wring her sister’s neck for getting all those things she always wanted but never could attain. But she simply couldn’t. Brina was number one on her friends list. The person she’d call if she needed to hide a body. Automatic Maid of Honor, no need to ask the question, if she ever had the fortune of walking down the aisle.
Audrey followed her into her showroom-perfect living room and collapsed on the sectional next to her. For someone with kids, who had absolutely no idea company was coming, she’d kept the place remarkably clean.
But that was Sabrina. All-around perfect, all the time.
Brina pulled her knees under her body and took a sip from her wine glass. “Michael?”
Audrey set her glass of wine on the coffee table, grabbed a brocade pillow, and clamped it over her head.
“I told you.”
She had, yes. Wise Sabrina, the Seer of All Things Male.
Unfortunately, Audrey hadn’t listened.
Brina knew all about the Michael Breckenridge thing. She’d seen the way Audrey drooled over him when they were in high school. The second Audrey got the text from him, she’d been all in Brina’s face, asking what it possibly could mean. In addition to her many talents, Brina could probably have had her own television talk show, The Man Whisperer, imparting her sage advice to the clue-challenged Audreys of the world. Brina had explained, in detail, that she should be careful, that it was only a text, that no, this didn’t mean that they were destined for one another.
Audrey had listened politely, as she always did whenever her sister talked, and then … completely disregarded everything she said.
As usual.
She’d allowed her thoughts to spiral out, elevating that text to the importance of the Magna Carta. She’d obsessed. She’d planned. She’d actually been planning a destination wedding in some Caribbean paradise.
“One of these days, I need to listen to you,” she said, voice muffled by the pillow.
“Duh.” Brina reached over and snatched the pillow away from her head. “Come on, tell me. It can’t be that bad.”
Hair crackling with static, Audrey tried to burrow between the cushions. “Oh, it can be! It’s worse. So much worse, Bri. First of all, he was married. Second of all, he only wanted me for a tumble among the coats.”
Brina winced. “Seriously?”
“Not to mention that these past fifteen years have been really cruel to him. He’d morphed into Ben Franklin on a bad hair day.”
“Really? Wow.”
“Also, he’s a lush.” She grabbed her wine and drained the glass in one swig. “More, please.”
Brina complied, pouring her a glass of what was probably the expensive stuff, since that was all they really had around there. She and her husband, Max, were into the “finer things” like that. Not that Audrey knew the difference. She gulped like she was at a keg party.
“Well, at least now you know. You can move on,” Brina offered brightly.
Audrey slumped into the sofa, pulling a blanket over her evening gown. This didn’t make her feel better. Brina had forever had a long line of suitors to go through, like tissues. For Audrey, there was no one, nowhere to move on to. “And I’m going to lose my apartment,” she moaned.
“You’re what?”
Audrey stuck her lower lip out. “New owners. They’re nearly doubling my rent. And I can’t afford that and my student loans.”
“Oh.” Brina patted her heart. “Well, you know you can move in here.”
Audrey looked around. “And sleep where? On this sofa? You don’t have the room.”
“Nonsense. Plenty of room. I’ll put the girls together. They’ll love to bunk up.”
Audrey shook her head. “I’m sure Max would love that.”
“Don’t be silly! He’d be happy to—”
She stopped when Audrey flashed her a doubtful look.
Max was a nice guy, and they got along, but she wasn’t exactly sure she could live under the same roof as him. He was a bit OCD and liked perfection, which was why he loved Brina—and why Audrey knew she’d probably drive him to an early grave. The first and last time he’d visited her apartment in Southie, his eyes did an Indy 500 around her cramped living room, silently judging every dust particle. After five minutes, he’d feigned an allergy attack and told Brina he’d wait outside.
Brina sipped her wine. “Fine. But what else are you going to do?”
“Well, up until precisely an hour ago, I was really holding out hope that Michael and I would fall hopelessl
y in love, and he’d invite me to move in with him, thus beginning the romance of the century,” she said, staring miserably into her now-empty glass.
“Aw. Honey,” Brina murmured.
Audrey ran her hands through her hair, shaking out the updo. “I know. I’m stupid. I’ll never learn.”
Brina pushed off her part of the sectional and sat down next to her younger sister, wrapping an arm around her. “You can move out of the city? The rents are cheaper the farther out you go.”
“Not being on call. I need to be close enough to get to the center right away.” Audrey put her head on her sister’s shoulder and recalled her last moments at work, dealing with Mrs. Marx. She cringed. “I hate it, too. I hate my job.”
Brina blinked her long eyelashes. “What? Oh, no you don’t! You love those animals. You always have. You were born to be a vet.”
“You’re right. I love the animals. It’s the people I could do without. I mean, some of them are okay, but I just get frustrated, and …” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could just pack it all in and start over somewhere else.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that.”
Sabrina launched into a long-winded speech about how Boston was the greatest city in the world, and all her friends and family were here, and if she did move away, she’d miss it. Audrey only heard part of it, because at that moment, the ad she’d seen on her phone while riding the T popped into her mind.
The sun-bleached, cobblestone streets.
The bright blue Mediterranean Sea.
The one-dollar price tag.
All of it, far, far away from this horror show that had become her life.
Meanwhile, Brina droned on. She was just getting to the inevitable part about how important it is for one to learn to count one’s blessings, when Audrey straightened up like an exclamation point and grabbed her bag. “I know what I could do!”
Yes, Audrey had concocted many hare-brained schemes before that never worked out, her imagined marriage to Michael Breckenridge just one of them. She probably had a wild, talk me down from the ledge look in her eyes, because Brina stopped mid-sentence and uttered a cautious, “Don’t tell me …”
She ripped the phone out of her purse and scrolled to find the ad in her feed. Of course, she couldn’t find it, now that she wanted it. “It was here … somewhere …”
“This isn’t another Tinder date, is it? That last one was a serial killer in the making. What was his name, Bruce? He looked straight out of Silence of the Lambs.”
“No. Of course not.” Though part of her had to admit, this probably wasn’t much saner.
“What?” Brina leaned forward and peered over her shoulder. “You really think the answer to your problems is going to come from an ad on Facebook?”
“No … wait. Here it is!” She thrust it under her sister’s nose, which wrinkled instantaneously.
Then, much to Audrey’s chagrin, Sabrina started to laugh.
Audrey pouted. “What? Are you looking at it? Look! A dollar, for a house in paradise. That’s a total deal. I think it might be a sign.”
Sabrina made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Aud. Are you serious?”
“Yes! Doesn’t it sound amazing?” She clapped her hands.
“No. That’s a scam. It’s right up there with Nigerian Princes.”
Audrey’s hopes plummeted. She took the phone back and opened the link. “You think? I don’t think so. It makes sense. They have all these old houses and they just need people to come in and rehabilitate them. To make them livable again.”
“Yes, the key phrase is ‘make them livable again,’ meaning they’re not livable now,” Brina said, rolling her eyes. “And what do you know about restoring an old house? In a country that probably doesn’t even have a Home Depot?”
“But Dad—”
“Dad did the work. We mostly just sat around while he was doing his contractor jobs, inhaling sawdust and paint fumes and asking when it was time for dinner.” She held up a hand. “He also had a Home Depot.”
Audrey gnawed on her lip. Brina could always be relied upon to deliver the truth bombs.
“Not to mention that you don’t even know how to say hello in Italian.”
“I do,” she murmured, still staring at the phone, burning the image into her retinas. Of course, ciao was about all she knew how to say. Good thing it meant both hello and goodbye. How much harder could all the words in between be? “And I did learn a thing or two from Dad. Didn’t you?”
Brina scrunched up her face. “Nope.”
That was true. But Brina hadn’t paid as much attention as Audrey had. Up until the time her dad up and moved out when she was twelve, Audrey was her dad’s mini-me. Audrey had often followed her father around those massive Back Bay mansions he had the luck of restoring, asking to help. She’d learned a few things.
Of course, that was a long time ago.
“He walked out on us, remember?” Sabrina added. “I’m glad I didn’t learn anything from him.”
Audrey frowned. Brina had always taken the hard tack when it came to Miles Smart. Good riddance, she’d said, which was the way her mom felt, too. But Audrey had a soft spot for her dad. He had a wanderlust. Hadn’t wanted to be tied down. Maybe there was more of him in her than in Brina.
Brina took the phone from her, slipping it back into her purse, and poured Audrey another glass of wine. “Besides, honey, that’s just the vino talking. You know that you’d never do anything like that.”
“What do you mean? Of course I would. I could,” she said, staring at her glass. Was it just the wine talking? No … even though she was getting tipsy, it seemed like it was perfect. The answer to all her problems.
“It’s all right not to be reckless. It’s a good thing.”
“This isn’t reckless.”
“Even if it isn’t. Honey. Remember when you got that scholarship to UCLA?”
Audrey’s eyes met her sister’s. She knew where this was headed. “Yes, but I was only eightee—”
“You really wanted to go. You were ready to send in your paperwork. And then … you bailed. Right?”
Audrey frowned. “But I—”
“Point is …you are not a risk-taker. You’ve lived in Boston all your life. You’ll die here,” she said with a shrug. “And it’s okay. You don’t have to go anywhere. Everything you need is right here.”
The wine was definitely starting to go to her head. When she closed her eyes, visions of warm sunshine, cool breezes, and a quaint little home on a cobblestone street, with flowers bursting out of window planters, crowded her mind.
Sure, she could probably find everything she needed here. Maybe not now, but eventually.
But what if she wanted something else?
CHAPTER FIVE
Audrey woke with the standard hangover three glasses of red wine normally gave her.
She was a lightweight, so she’d expected this. Hadn’t cared much then. Didn’t care much now. It’d been a necessary evil. It’d gotten her through the night.
Though, as she stared up at the water stain on the ceiling, her situation did not appear any rosier with the dawn of the new morn, like she’d hoped.
She moved her head only a fraction of an inch from the pillow before deciding that it would likely pop off if she attempted to move it any more. She groped around the bedside table for her phone, swiping it onto her chest and tapping the screen to wake it up. The brightness of the display scalded her tender retinas.
The first thing that came in sight when she regained focus was a picture of that Italian paradise. It wasn’t hard to find this time, because apparently, in her half-drunken haze last night, she’d gone and made it her wallpaper. For both her Home screen and her Lock screen.
She had a foggy memory of the T-ride home, almost as if it’d happened decades ago. She vaguely recalled the smell of unwashed bodies, ripe from marinating in the day’s heat at the Red Sox game, all packed into the train car like sardines. The wine had mellowed her
. She hadn’t even minded riding up against some drunken college kid’s armpit. Now, the smell of it and the old alcohol lingered on her skin, making her want to retch.
Then her bleary eyes focused on the time.
Eight forty-five.
“Mother of pearl!” she shouted, rocketing up out of her bed. There were worse things than her head popping off. Namely, being super-late to her job and having the Dr. Brice Wattses and Dr. Emerson Ferrises of the world give her trouble.
She showered and readied herself in record time, boarding the T for a ride that was only slightly preferable to last night’s, and only then, because she’d been three sheets to the wind. This time, she found herself sandwiched between a scowling, I-hate-the-world teenager whose Death Metal was so loud he might as well have not been wearing earbuds, and a man who smelled like salami. The combination of the two roiled her already queasy stomach.
To take her mind off it, she pulled out her phone and once again found herself transported to that charming cobblestone street under the bright sun. She sighed as usual, then pulled up the website and paged through the other photos. There were many of the town, each one more breathtaking than the next. Small outdoor cafes. An open-air market. A harbor dotted with tiny boats. A small, rustic stucco church with an old brass bell.
Underneath, it said, READY TO OWN YOUR PIECE OF PARADISE?
Yes, Audrey screamed in her head. She clicked the link to find photographs of young people standing in front of their purchases, looking as if they’d just won something big from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. That could totally be me.
Then she read the paragraph underneath: We’d love to welcome you to our happy town. If you’d like to own a piece of paradise, just enter the lottery for one of these properties listed below. Bid must be at least $1 USD, and buyer must agree to pay $1,000 deposit and make required repairs to the property at their own expense within one year of purchase. Winners will be notified by email. Good luck!