by Liz Flaherty
One More Summer
By Liz Flaherty
Grace has taken care of her widowed father her entire adult life and the ornery old goat has finally died. She has no job, no skills and very little money, and has heard her father’s prediction that no decent man would ever want her so often she accepts it as fact.
But she does have a big old house on Lawyers Row in Peacock, Tennessee. She opens a rooming house and quickly gathers a motley crew of tenants: Promise, Grace’s best friend since kindergarten, who’s fighting cancer; Maxie, an aging soap opera actress who hasn’t lost her flair for the dramatic; Jonah, a sweet, gullible old man with a crush on Maxie.
And Dillon, Grace’s brother’s best friend, who stood her up on the night of her senior prom and has regretted it ever since. Dillon rents Grace’s guest house for the summer and hopes to make up for lost time and past hurts—but first, he’ll have to convince Grace that she’s worth loving…
88,000 words
Dear Reader,
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In loving memory of my mom, Evelyn Shafer, and of Debbie Coleman, Dottie Eberle and Inge Pitman, all strong women that cancer took away too soon.
And for Nancy Dotson, Sadie Shafer, Betty Brennan, Lynn Flaherty-Lewis and Kay Weathington, sisters all. And my other mom, Mary Farrell.
And for my girls and grandgirls, Tahne, Kari, Laura, Mari and Tierney.
And for Nancy Rairdon, Becky Blackburn and Debby Grosvenor, who were BFFs before the phrase was coined. I will love you always. Promise.
“’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone…”
-Thomas Moore
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
Her father used to say it was a good thing her name was Grace, because that was sure as the world all she had going for her. Her hair wasn’t gold-streaked and curly like her sister Faith’s—it was just plain brown. And when it rained—which it seemed to do at the most inappropriate times—its thick waves frizzed themselves into an unholy mess. Her eyes weren’t green like Faith’s either, or sable-dark like her brother Steven’s. They were just plain brown like her hair. The only time you could even tell she had eyelashes was when she remembered to use the eyelash curler and then apply two coats of the kind of mascara that came in a hot pink cylinder. Grace, being Grace, didn’t remember to do that real often.
She wore overalls most all the time, and they bagged in the butt because she was built straight up and down like a boy who hadn’t yet reached puberty. Her legs were far and away her best feature, but she hardly ever showed them because that meant remembering to shave nearly every day. Grace generally only remembered on Saturday nights when she locked herself in her bathroom and filled up the claw foot tub and turned the radio on real loud. It was the only time she ever took for herself and even her father didn’t have the heart to interrupt. When she came out of the bathroom—wearing a chenille bathrobe that most likely came over on the ark—her hair would be all damp and fuzzy. She’d curl up on the end of the couch in the parlor with a romance novel from the library and a bottle of cheap white wine she bought at the drugstore and try to ignore the fact that she had no life.
That’s what she was trying to do, on this hot May evening of her father’s funeral, but people kept interrupting her. Didn’t they understand about Saturday nights? This was her time, not to be interfered with or impinged upon.
“Gracie.” Faith’s voice was soft. It was always soft, and Grace wished just once Faith would give in and bellow. Bellowing was good for the soul. “Honey, you need to decide what you want to do.”
“Decide?” With regret, Grace laid her book on the back of the couch on top of a puddle of Louisa May’s cat hair and swung her chenille-covered legs so that her feet rested on the floor. “When in my life have I ever decided anything, Faith? It’s always been decided for me, so why don’t you and your husband and Steven just decide for me? Maybe you can find a reasonable apartment complex that caters to single ladies with one-eared cats. I can get a nice little job down at the textile factory so that no one has to worry about me being destitute and you all can continue your lives uninterrupted.”
“Gracie.” It was Steven’s voice this time, low and lazy. Grace’s friend Promise used to say Steven’s voice was calculated to make women’s knees go weak and their brains turn to curdled milk. Of course, Promise was in love with him, which no doubt made a difference. “You’re being a pain in the ass.”
“Well, yes,” Grace admitted, “I probably am. But I’m overdue, don’t you think?”
He reached for her wine bottle and refilled his glass. “Yes, I do, and so does Faith, but you’re shooting the messengers. As I remember it, we tried to get you out of here, tried to help you make a life for yourself. You wouldn’t leave Papa and you wouldn’t leave Peacock.”
“He was our father, Steven.”
“He was a mean and cantankerous man,” he said.
“Steven,” Faith said reprovingly, “you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Grace exchanged a look of amusement with her brother—even though she was mad at him and didn’t want to remember how much she loved him. Faith lived in a world in which meanness, greed and unhappiness did not exist. In unspoken and rare accord, Grace, Steven and Faith’s husband, Grant, did nothing to upset that world.
Grant spoke. “Well, Gracie, whether you like it or not, you need to make some decisions. Your father left his entire estate divided equally three ways. Steven and Faith have already signed their shares over to you.”
Grace’s eyes widened. She sat up straighter and gulped the rest of the wine from her glass. This was the good stuff, bought at the liquor store by Steven, and she shouldn’t be wasting it by swilling it down. But some occasions just demanded swilling. “What are you talking about, Grant? I’m not a charity case.”
“Pipe down, Gracie,” Steven said, “and listen a minute. You go
t those papers, Grant?”
“Right here.” Grant left Faith’s side and came to where Grace sat. “Steven and Faith sat down and tallied this up. Hourly rates for nursing your father, for keeping this house all these years, for chauffeuring him around, for doing the yard work and so forth. They totaled it all up and divided it by three. The way they figure it, they each owe you about a hundred thousand dollars in addition to their shares of your father’s estate.” Grant grinned, his gaunt, scholarly features suddenly boyish. “Faith and I assume you want to donate that additional hundred thousand she owes you to your nephews’ college funds and Steven has promised to keep you in good wine rather than paying you his hundred grand.”
And Grace, who’d hardly ever cried since the night Dillon Campbell stood her up for the senior prom and her father said it served her right for thinking any young man in his right mind would want her, burst into tears. “I hate you,” she wailed. “I hate all of you.”
“Well, sure you do, Gracie,” Steven drawled. “We knew that.”
“I thought it was going to be a bed and breakfast. That’s what you said when you first came up with the idea. You were going to call it Elliot House.” Promise pinned Mrs. Rountree’s sheets to the clothesline. “You were going to charge an arm and a leg and you weren’t going to take in any more laundry or baking or cleaning for people.” She snapped out pillowcases and attached them to the line, grimacing when the wet cotton blew back and slapped her face.
“That was the plan.” Grace scratched the place on her shoulder where the skin was peeling off. What had she been thinking, mowing the yard in the top to Faith’s castoff bikini? “But Maxie needed a place to live and so did Jonah. I only do a couple people’s laundry and clean two houses because the owners aren’t able to do for themselves and I just flat like to bake. What was I supposed to do?”
“Stick to your guns, for once. I don’t know what Steven was thinking of, going back to Knoxville and leaving you to your own devices. He should have known you’d end up running a boarding house for destitute senior citizens.”
“They’re not destitute. They just need a place to live where they’re allowed their dignity.” Grace led the way to the house, the empty basket propped on her hip. “Making this place into a bed and breakfast would take more money than I’ve got, and I’m not going begging to Steven and Faith. They’ve done enough.” At the back stoop, she stopped suddenly and squatted on the sidewalk. “You poor little thing.”
“Oh, Lord.” Promise covered her face with her hands, shaking her head.
“He’s so thin I can feel every little bone.” Grace straightened, the kitten a ball of black fluff up by her neck.
“Louisa May will hate it.” Promise picked up the basket Grace had set down and followed her through the screened porch into the kitchen. “The kitten has both ears, so she’ll be jealous. And she had no idea when you took her in that you were a soft touch for every homeless animal that shows up on the porch.”
“I’m not going to keep it, for heaven’s sake.” Grace poured milk into a saucer and warmed it in the microwave. “Here you go, Rosamunde.” She set the cat on the counter and watched it lap eagerly at the milk.
“Rosamunde?” Promise raised an eyebrow.
“Pilcher. She wrote The Shell Seekers and—”
“I know what she wrote. You don’t name a cat you don’t intend to keep.”
“Everything deserves a name.” Grace petted the small black head with one hand and scratched her sunburn absently with the other. The kitten stopped drinking and gazed straight at her with dark blue eyes. “Everything deserves to be loved.”
Dillon Campbell’s eyes were blue like that. When he was excited or happy, they would brighten with silver glints that had made Grace’s pubescent heart go banging away against her ribs. She’d get light-headed and stumble over things even more than usual. “Watch where you’re going, girl,” her father would yell. But she would ignore him and go on thinking about Dillon with the silver blue eyes. Tripping over things in her path had been a small price to pay for the hot-chocolate-with-marshmallows feeling the thoughts gave her. Way beyond puberty, if the truth were told.
Promise, as familiar with Grace’s kitchen as Grace was, poured steaming water into a teapot. “What are you thinking? About if you can foist that cat off on me?”
Grace grinned at her. “I could, you know.”
“Could not.”
“Could so.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Okay.” Grace went into the laundry room. “So, when are you leaving for England, Prom?” she called. “I know you’re getting a late start because of Papa’s dying and all, but it’s still only the middle of June.”
“I’m not going.”
“Not at all?” Grace re-entered the kitchen carrying a basket of Mrs. Rountree’s clothing, still warm from the dryer. “They don’t need a house-sitter after all?”
“Actually.” Promise cleared her throat and stared intently at the cat sleeping on the kitchen counter before reaching for an armload of the clothes.
Grace rolled her eyes and sipped the tea Promise had poured. “I understand that as a schoolteacher in our conservative neck of the woods, you have to practice diplomacy at all times or be out on your ear—except for those clandestine sojourns to Knoxville with Steven, of course—but this is me you’re talking to, remember? Just say it.”
“Actually I was the one who changed her mind about going. And actually, I need a place to stay because I’ve given up my apartment. I’m damned if I’m spending the entire summer in Knoxville waiting for the gorgeous Dr. Elliot to go off duty.”
That didn’t even require thought. “You’ll stay here,” Grace said immediately. “You’re not half bad at folding clothes and you’re a better cook than I am.”
“Who isn’t?” Promise sighed. “But I want to pay rent, Grace, just like anyone else would.”
“All right.” Grace folded, wondering idly how Mrs. Rountree managed to go through twenty-two pairs of white cotton underwear in a week. Then, remembering Mrs. Rountree’s age, she thought she knew, and felt a moment’s sorrow for the dignity of the feisty old aristocrat who still maintained her mansion at the other end of Lawyers Row.
“There’s more.”
Something in Promise’s voice made her look up. The tone was higher, for one thing, and there was a barely suppressed tremor that came from the back of the throat. The other woman’s blue eyes were focused on her, but they weren’t bright and laughing like they usually were. Grace recognized pain in the gaze—she’d seen a good deal of it in her lifetime—and, even more unsettling, she saw fear.
An ache began in her chest and fear echoed in her stomach. She wanted to leap up and draw Promise into a bear hug that would keep all demons away, but she knew it wouldn’t really work. And they had never done things that way. Even on the night of the senior prom fifteen years ago, they’d covered their tears with laughter and their pain with ribald jokes and a bottle of wine stolen from the rack in Promise’s mother’s kitchen.
“After all these years of breaking up and making up, you’ve finally murdered Steven,” Grace said into the fragile silence, keeping her voice even. “I knew it was just a matter of time. It doesn’t matter. We can keep you hidden until the authorities give up the search. We’ll hire that good-looking Danny Russo as your lawyer if they find you. Even if they put you away for life, you’ll have something fine to gawk at whenever he’s around.”
Promise laughed, although it was a sickly attempt. “And what about his wife? Alice doesn’t impress me as the type to just sit back and let other women stare at her husband.”
“Nah, she won’t mind the staring. Touching, now, she might object to.” Grace stood, going to move Rosamunde to the basket in the corner of the kitchen. It was lunchtime. She would warm the soup, make the sandwiches, and everything would be all right. That expression would leave Promise’s eyes and they would both forget the words, There’s more.
H
eavens, she’d need to clean the bedroom on the other side of her own for Promise. She wouldn’t mind sharing the bathroom. Lord knows, they’d giggled in front of the same mirror often enough in their lives, and Promise had always liked the old claw foot tub.
Then Promise was beside her, spreading ham salad on wheat bread while Grace stirred the vegetable soup. “I don’t want to go to jail. Those orange outfits are so tacky.” She kept her head bowed and spread the sandwich filling long after it was distributed smoothly from crust to crust on the bread. “I have cancer, Grace. Breast cancer like my mother had. Like she died from.”
Grace continued to stir, although the metal spoon clanged against the side of the pan and the soup sloshed dangerously close to her arm. “Well,” she said. After a hard swallow that proved your heart really could lodge in your throat, she tried again. “Well.”
She left the stove, reaching into an overhead cupboard for soup bowls that clattered together no matter how hard she tried to hold her hands still. “We’ve known each other for twenty-eight years, Promise Delaney, ever since kindergarten. It still amazes me what you will do to get attention. This is even worse than when you fainted during the eighth grade production of Romeo and Juliet.”
“I had a temperature of a hundred and three and that outfit weighed four hundred pounds.” Promise’s voice trembled, although Grace didn’t know if it was with laughter or terror or both.
“Likely story. I still think you just had an advanced case of stage fright.”
“It was pneumonia.”
Grace sniffed. “So you say.”