by JoAnn Ross
“We’re both adults. I hope there’s never anything you feel you can’t share with me,” Gloria said mildly. “So, be a serial monogamist with Aiden while you’re here. You are leaving after New Year’s. Meanwhile, it could brighten the holidays.”
Jolene had already considered that idea after a particularly hot dream involving Aiden, and those handcuffs he wore on his belt. And had rejected it as being nothing more than an adult version of her youthful fantasies.
“I don’t think it’d be possible to have a fling with him. Maybe once, back when he was wild, but he seems so grounded now. He might not even know it yet, but my guess is that he’s going to stay here in Honeymoon Harbor, keep his job and choose himself a woman for the long term. One he can marry and have kids with.” And, of course, they’d undoubtedly get a dog.
“While I was getting my ultrasound, I imagined a family Christmas at the lighthouse, with children’s stockings hanging from the mantel.”
“Not happening.” Jolene took a longer gulp of her wine.
“I’d been thinking of taking a lover,” her mother volunteered.
The unexpected statement almost had Jolene spitting out her wine. Then she remembered that her mother was still in her forties. And had been widowed for years. “I think that’s an excellent idea.” And, although some people might consider thinking about their parents having sex as icky, she’d rather talk about that than her own sex life. Or, more specifically, lack of it.
“Oh, I can’t now. At least not until we get the tests back and they’re all clear. Because what man would ever want to go to bed with a bald woman with only one breast?”
“Overreacting much?” Jolene asked her mother. “And to answer your question, I’d say maybe a man who doesn’t reduce women to body parts? Also, I’ve never known you to be such a negative thinker.”
“I’ve never looked cancer in the face. Or, to be more accurate, in the breast. Though you’re right about the negativity.
“Caroline told me that negativity only draws negative forces and suggested meditation and imagining white lights and such. It was all a bit woo-woo for my taste, but I appreciated the gesture and I am trying to think positively. I tried meditation, but my mind wanders.”
“It takes practice.” Jolene felt a sizzle run through her as she thought back to the image she’d conjured up while waiting for her ticket. The one where Aiden had replaced her Hawaiian beach boy.
“That’s what she told me. But, it’s hard.” She dabbed at her eyes with the corner of the linen napkin. “Not just the meditation, but this feeling of having my life swerve so out of control.”
“I know.” Jolene took her mother’s hand in hers. “And we’ll get that control back as soon as we know what we’re dealing with. So, returning to the original far more interesting topic, who did you have in mind for your lover?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Scout’s honor, I will not.”
“You were never a Girl Scout.”
“Lucky thing. I never would’ve sold any cookies because we’d have eaten them all ourselves.”
“Good point. Okay... Michael Mannion.”
“Brianna’s uncle?” Jolene barely remembered him.
Michael Mannion was a painter and a world traveler, who’d breeze through town every few years, the closest thing Honeymoon Harbor had to an actual celebrity. She’d seen his paintings during a gallery showing she and Shelby had gone to. She remembered him looking a lot like Pierce Brosnan, with his dark hair and those riveting blue eyes most of the Mannion men seem to have inherited.
“He came back to town a year or so ago. I cut his hair, and sometimes, I get the feeling that he might be a tad bit interested, but then again, he’s such a charmer, it’s hard to tell.”
“You told me he painted that mural on your spa wall for free.”
“He was probably just being nice,” Gloria said. “Because his sister-in-law and I are friends.”
“A sketch is being nice,” Jolene argued. “That’s one big-ass wall, Mom.” A wall that now took spa guests to a visual Tahiti. Or Hawaii. Which, dammit, caused that fantasy to flash back again.
“When you put it that way... For a while he and Caroline looked like they were going to be a thing, back when Ben and Caroline were separated—”
“Seth’s parents were separated?”
“For a short time earlier in the year. But Ben got his act together and Caroline went back to him and they’ve been traveling the country in a motor home. She swore to me that she hadn’t let her relationship with Michael go any further than friendship and him teaching her painting, but it was obvious to a lot of us who were watching that he wouldn’t have minded if she’d chosen him.”
“Wow. Talk about a soap opera.”
“I really felt for her. She didn’t want to leave Ben, but he’d become such a negative old stick-in-the-mud. She’d just gotten to her breaking point. Then she had her heart attack—”
“Brianna mentioned that at the wedding. That must’ve been what scared him into doing whatever it took to win her back.”
“It probably made him realize what he’d lose if he’d lost her,” Gloria agreed. “But she told me he’d already been working on fixing things before that. They even had a date. In Port Townsend. And he brought her flowers.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It was. I was so happy for them. But that’s when I started thinking that maybe it was time to get back out there. Although I haven’t been on a date since I was fifteen, so I’ve no idea how it’s done these days.”
“It’s probably not a movie and milkshakes afterward at the Big Dipper. Michael Mannion’s a world traveler. He might take you to Seattle. Or even Hawaii. Can you imagine spending January lounging on a tropical beach instead of wind, rain and gray skies?”
“I said I’d been thinking about the idea of a lover,” Gloria said. “Not that he’d probably ever ask me.”
“So, ask him. It’s a new world, Mom. I realize you haven’t dated since you were a teenager, but women can initiate things now.”
“So Caroline and Sarah keep telling me. And easy for them to say, since they’re both happily married... Sarah keeps offering to set us up. But it’s a moot point now.”
“Why?”
“I told you. Because I may have cancer.”
“And you may not.”
“But still, even having a suspicious lump means that it may be lurking inside, just waiting to break out.”
“I don’t remember you ever being so pessimistic.” Even all those years with Jolene’s father, her mother had always believed he’d change.
“I know. I just don’t feel at all like myself anymore. I’ve been overly emotional all year. Dr. Lancaster diagnosed it as probable perimenopause, and put me on a low-dose estrogen. I asked her about the risk now, with the lump, but she suggested we just wait for the tests, then we could discuss taking me off the pills gradually, or quitting cold turkey.”
“She sounds sensible.”
“She is. And very nice. Did I tell you she has a daughter? There doesn’t seem to be a husband in the picture so I’m guessing that she’s divorced, but of course, it’s not the type of conversation that comes up in a well woman checkup.”
“Well, my vote is that you should move Mike Mannion to the top of your list of potential lovers.”
“I don’t have a list! This is a small town. There aren’t that many eligible men. At least not that I’d be interested in.”
“Certainly none as good-looking as him.”
“He has a haircut scheduled next week. He said that Harriet Harper, Sarah’s mother and the matriarch of the family, informed him that his shaggy—and, personally, I think sexy—hair might be appropriate for a bohemian European artist, but he’s in Honeymoon Harbor now and she expects him to look respectable for their family Thanksgiving
.”
Jolene laughed, her mother joined in, and for that frozen moment, sitting here together, watching the sun set into the lake in a fiery blaze as the fishing boat puttered back to the dock, life was as perfect as it had been in a very long while.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WEEKEND AWAY turned out to be everything Jolene had hoped for. By mutual, unspoken consent, neither she nor her mother talked again about the cancer scare Saturday night or Sunday morning. Nor when they made a side trip to Port Townsend, where they stopped at a craft store where they bought several sample-sized bottles and jars Gloria could use in her Christmas booth. To add to the presentation value, Jolene tossed a roll of gold-edged labels, two gold calligraphy gel pens—since all hers had been lost in the fire—and, thinking optimistically, she put a hundred gold organza drawstring bags for the sample collections into their cart. Then on impulse, threw in another hundred.
“Surely that’s too many,” Gloria protested.
“We’re in optimism mode, remember?” Jolene reminded her mother. “So we’re thinking large.”
After staying long enough for a lunch overlooking the water, real life started to intrude on their drive back home to Honeymoon Harbor when Sarah Mannion called Gloria’s cell, inviting her and Jolene to Thanksgiving dinner.
“I should get a result from my ultrasound tomorrow,” Gloria mused. “I don’t know if it’s going to end up a biopsy, or surgery, or—”
“Or nothing.” Jolene heard Sarah say through the car’s Bluetooth speaker. “I have a cousin in Denver who had a biopsy, and I flew over to be with her although it’s not like a full surgery, and was fairly painless for her. She was sore for a few days due to bruising. It wasn’t terrible, and she was able to go back to work, but I wouldn’t have wanted her cooking a holiday dinner.”
“I have Jolene to help.”
Jolene wondered if her mother remembered she didn’t know how to cook. Her hours had been so erratic in the past few years, if her meals didn’t come off a catering truck on set, they were takeout or frozen Lean Cuisine, except for those glorious gourmet days when she’d go over to Shelby and Ètienne’s.
“I’m so glad she’s come home to be with you. But seriously, if you do end up needing a biopsy, I know you well enough to know that you won’t stay lying down. You’ll be up trying to do it all.”
“Hi, Mrs. Mannion,” Jolene broke into the conversation. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll make sure she stays put.”
“I’m sure you would, dear,” Sarah Mannion said in her velvet bulldozer voice, the same one she’d used for years to maintain order with a school full of teenagers. “But Brianna would love a chance to see you. Everyone was so busy at the wedding, the two of you didn’t get much time to talk.
“It’s not that big a crowd. Just family. Quinn’s closing the pub that day, but unfortunately, Thanksgiving isn’t the calmest of days for some families and there’s more drinking, so Aiden will be on duty. Then, of course, Brianna and Seth, and his parents, Caroline and Ben, my mother and father, John and me, and John’s brother Michael, who’ll be joining us for the first time in years, which is a treat—”
“We’ll come,” Jolene said quickly before her mother could reject the invitation. “What can we bring?” She was thinking along the lines of wine or a veggie plate from the market.
“Just yourselves,” Sarah responded.
“We insist,” Gloria said, ignoring her daughter’s sharp look. “I’ll bring my cranberry apple pie. And Jolene would love to bring a side dish.”
Jolene felt a stab of panic. Although potatoes were a vegetable, she doubted a bag of chips counted as a side dish.
“Wonderful. We’ll count on you coming. We’ll eat at three, so why don’t you plan to show up anytime after noon? That way we’ll have plenty of time for chatting while the turkey’s roasting. And don’t worry, Caroline and Ben, and John and I will be the only ones there who’ll know about your heath situation, so it won’t become part of the conversation.”
“Thanks and we’ll see you then,” Jolene said, holding up her hand before her mother could try another objection. She hit the phone icon on the steering wheel, ending the call.
“You did that because she said Michael will be there,” Gloria accused. “And put me in a box because if I’d refused after you’d accepted, I’d sound rude.”
“I cannot lie. I absolutely did accept on purpose. It’ll be like a first date, but you’ll be surrounded by people, so you won’t have to worry about keeping up your end of the conversation the way you would if you were out to dinner alone. It’ll also let you see if there are any sparks.”
“There is the slight problem that except for my pot roast, which would be superfluous given the roast turkey, neither of us can cook anything up to Sarah’s standards.” Sarah Mannion was a home cook whose fried chicken always won both county and state fair blue ribbons year after year.
“At least you can bake.”
“My mother taught me to make that pie the Thanksgiving before she died. When I make it every year, I feel as if she’s in the kitchen with me.”
“That’s lovely.”
It also made Jolene realize again what her life would be like without her mother. Which had her feeling guilty for not returning home all these past years, but that was going to change. She was no longer a girl who could be taunted, bullied, drugged and assaulted. She was a kick-ass Emmy nominee who was on her way to having her own cosmetics business. Look out Paltrow and Kardashians, Jolene Wells is coming for you. But even if her business took off like a rocket, next year when her mother made that pie, no matter where she was, or what she was doing, she’d be back in Honeymoon Harbor in the kitchen with her. And every Thanksgiving after that.
“I’ll text Shelby and have her ask her fiancé for a side dish recipe that I can make without risking poisoning everyone.”
“Isn’t he the one who owns the restaurant you took me to last time I visited?”
“That’s him.”
Her mother shot her a skeptical look. “There was nothing on that menu either of us could make. I didn’t even know what half of it was.”
“I know. He could probably be an Iron Chef if he wanted. But he likes me. And he’ll come up with something I can handle because he loves Shelby, who’s my best friend, and will do anything to make her happy.”
“We can only hope,” Gloria said, as Jolene hit the phone symbol again on the steering wheel and called Shelby, explaining her situation.
They were just turning onto Lighthouse Lane when Shelby texted back a recipe she swore Ètienne said had sold like hotcakes when he’d had a food truck, saving his money to open Epicure.
“That was fast,” Gloria said, after the phone read the text.
“It was. Maybe we should go shopping for the ingredients for it and the pie now. Just in case life gets complicated.”
“See, you think my test is going to go badly, too.”
“No. I truly don’t. But it’s good to be prepared and by shopping ahead of time we’ll miss the Thanksgiving eve market wars.”
“That’s a treacherous day at the market,” Gloria agreed. “I remember one time Helen Jackson and Ruth Hunsaker nearly got in a hair-pulling battle over the last can of cranberry sauce.”
“Perhaps we should buy double the ingredients for the cheesy corn in case I screw it up the first time.”
“Like a test run.”
“Exactly.” Jolene nodded. “And if it works out, we can eat it for dinner.”
“I always knew I’d raised a brilliant daughter,” Gloria said as Jolene turned the car around and headed toward Marshall’s Market.
* * *
“ÈTIENNE SAID THAT he used grilled corn,” Jolene said reading from the text again. “But that I can get away with canned.” She put four cans into the cart that already held a box of panko bread crumbs, b
acon and three different types of cheeses.
“Good. Since this isn’t exactly grilling weather.”
“I still need garlic and a jalapeño. What do you need for the pie?”
“I already have the flour, salt and butter at home. So, I only need four different kinds of apples and a bag of frozen cranberries. The frozen foods are just two aisles over so we might as well get them first.”
“Okay. Where’s the wine?”
“The far wall.”
“We’ll pick up two bottles. One for us and one to take.”
“You can never have enough wine at a dinner party,” Gloria agreed. “And it just may give me enough courage to speak to Michael.”
“Surely you two speak when you’re cutting his hair.”
“True. But that’s professional. As you pointed out, this will be almost like a date.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. What if he thinks it’s a fixup?”
“It’s a family dinner.” Jolene wasn’t about to admit that she’d had the same conversations with Shelby over the years about ways to fix each other up for test meetings without appearing too obvious.
That hadn’t been a problem in high school, given that Jolene had never dated. Except for Aiden. And those weren’t exactly dates, but secret rendezvous. Which, at the time seemed wonderfully romantic, like a young noblewoman sneaking out of the family country house for a tryst with the stable master in a romance novel. Though, to be more accurate, given the social structure of Honeymoon Harbor, Aiden would’ve been a duke, and she’d have been a scullery maid.
She’d just turned the corner at the frozen food aisle when she nearly ran into the man she’d been imagining in his bedchamber—his royal blue silk Regency period dressing gown open to the waist, revealing a mouthwatering ripped chest—about to ravish her. Rather than embracing Jolene in his manly arms, he was taking a stack of Hungry-Man dinners out of the freezer.