Left to Chance

by Amy Sue Nathan

  “Fine. I know, you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Not now, if that’s okay. So, do you remember who bought the house?”

  “Well, if memory serves me…” She tapped her chin. “Deanna bought the house on her own. I would remember seeing him come into the office.”

  I stretched my arm over the back of the sofa and surreptitiously turned as if inspecting the stitching in the leather.

  A lanky teenage boy with blue-streaked hair cleared tables nearby. He had multiple earrings and black eyeliner. He hummed a melody that matched the warmth of Perk, belying his harsh appearance.

  I turned back to Josie and pointed to the name clipped to the waist of her linen pants. “Tell me about your job. When did you start selling real estate?” I would have to beef up my social media surveillance in the future.

  “I’m the receptionist. I was really bored all day with all three boys in high school, so I went to Kay Kaplan and asked her for a job. Been three years now.”

  “Do you know who bought Nettie’s on Lark? I’ve heard some footsteps upstairs, but I haven’t seen anyone. I don’t know if it’s a guest or the owner.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’m just curious. Plus, it’s a little creepy to think I’m in that big house all by myself.”

  “You can stay with me!”

  “Next time?” I said it before I realized the implications.

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  “You don’t know who bought Nettie’s?”

  “Trade secret.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I’d had to sign confidentiality agreements with some of my higher-profile clients, but for the most part, publicity was part of their plan.

  “So? Did you talk to Miles?”

  “No. I decided if there was a problem with Shay he wouldn’t be getting married, and it’s not my place to ask too many questions.” Miles had made that clear. “I’m taking her to the mall this afternoon, so I’ll know if something is wrong. I mean—if she were sick or something he wouldn’t let her go to the mall, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Tell me more about Evan and the boys.”

  Josie chugged the last of her latte and glanced at her phone. “Tomorrow. Same time, same place? Or we can meet for lunch at the Fat Chance. Either one, but I won’t take no for an answer. I’ve got to fly. Have fun with Shay today.”

  Josie walked over to the cool-dude busboy. I thought she’d hand him a tip, or tell him to get a haircut. Instead, she put her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek. He shook his head and looked around the room.

  “No one cares if I kiss you.” Josie smoothed his hair and looked at me. She pointed to him as he collected more mugs, plates, and newspapers and walked toward the back of Perk.

  “Jonathan,” she said. Her smile widened. “My musician.”

  And her middle son.

  * * *

  I skimmed last week’s Chance Gazette and this morning’s Columbus Dispatch, but my thoughts wandered back to San Francisco and down to San Diego, over to Dallas and then Savannah, and up to Alexandria, the site of the newest Hester property. My heart pounded. I should have gone to Virginia. Maybe the week of training wasn’t enough for the new photographers. Maybe their portfolios were bogus. What if I missed an e-mail? If someone quit? I pulled out my phone. The ringer was at full blast. No missed texts or urgent e-mails.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tissue-wrapped necklaces. I’d wanted to have them with me, but wasn’t ready to wear them in public. As I laid the chains over my hand, the hearts caught the light and glistened.

  “A gift?”

  I looked up and saw Cameron, without his apron and with a little bit of hat hair. I dropped the necklaces into the tissue and folded it. “No.”

  “Sorry, I just thought…”

  “No, I’m sorry. That was rude. Want to sit?”

  “Thanks, but no. I’m done for the day and getting out of here.”

  “At nine in the morning?”

  “I just work the earliest shift, then I have the whole day.”

  “For what?” I covered my mouth with my hand and talked through it. “Sorry. None of my business.”

  “Not a problem. I’m just meeting my sister before she heads off to teach summer school.”

  I placed my hands in my lap. “I heard your sister is a teacher here. Is that why she moved back here? For a job?”

  “Why don’t you ask her? She’s outside. I’m sure she’d like to meet you. She’s heard about our Poppy Lane antics. Just don’t give away any of our secret hiding places. I need to maintain my big-brother mystique.”

  I lifted my plate and cup and looked around for a place to deliver them.

  “Jonathan will get it. It’s his job. Great kid, by the way. That was his mom with the soy latte and blueberry scone, right?”

  “Right.” I remembered my apparent blushing and my cheeks grew warm. I ignored it and hoped Cameron would do the same.

  With the necklaces back in my pocket I walked to the front of Perk. Cameron pointed out the same window I’d looked in yesterday. I thought I was about to get busted.

  “That’s Deanna.”

  Sitting on the bench facing Perk was a woman with a long sleek bob and aviator sunglasses. Standing facing her was a tall man with one hand in his jeans pocket. Prickles traveled from my fingertips to my neck.

  “I have to go.” I stepped backwards. “Is there another door?”

  “The service door in the back. Where are you going?”

  I looked Cameron square in the eye and whispered, “That’s Beck Stillman.”

  “I know who it is. Wait. You don’t want to see Beck?”

  “No, I don’t. Please, Cameron.”

  Cameron touched my elbow and led me through the maze of Perk’s storage room to a back door. He pressed the lever, pushed open the door, and I stepped outside into the alley behind the Main Street shops. He stood against the door, keeping it open.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a good friend.”

  Cameron stepped out into the alley and the door closed with a thud and a click. “Then tell me what the hell is going on.”

  * * *

  “So, you’re uncomfortable around him. How are you going to get comfortable if you avoid him the whole time you’re here?”

  “Believe me, he would rather I stay far away from him, from here, from everything.”

  “You’ve been away for what? Six years? You’re really going to let him dictate where you go and who you see when you come home? What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing, it’s not like that. I’m the one who hurt him. And I don’t think I realized how much.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Teddi I know.”

  By this time, I was pumping my arms. “But you don’t know me very well, do you?”

  Cameron stopped. I stomped a few more times and then stopped, turned, and looked around at him even though I wanted to keep moving until I was going, going, gone. “Please don’t make assumptions about me. Especially if they make me out to be the good guy.” I spit my words and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand even though I had tissues in my pocket.

  “I’m not assuming anything. You asked me for help and then you told me there’s tension between you and Beck because you left. You leaving here is really kind of sad, I think. It certainly doesn’t make you the bad guy.”

  “I ran out in the middle of Celia’s funeral.”

  “You were upset.”

  “I didn’t go back. That was the last time I saw Beck. Until yesterday, that is.”

  “Oh.”

  I paused and fiddled with the edge of my pockets.

  “It must’ve been awful,” Cameron said. He touched my elbow, but I wasn’t sure if it was to draw me closer or to keep me at a distance. “Who was there with you?”

  “The place was packed. But I was alone.”

  Celia and I had always attended fu
nerals together, or at least knew the other was there. Synagogue, funeral home, graveside. Grandparents, townspeople, two kids our age during high school. That day, I was alone; I didn’t know where to look. Up or down, in or out?

  At least at a wedding there were drinks and hors d’oeuvres. When alone as a wedding guest, I talked to the bartender, sipped cocktails, nibbled my way through the mashed potato bar. Maybe funerals should have cocktail hours too.

  Mini latkes with applesauce.

  Kosher wine to drown your sorrows.

  Monogrammed tissues.

  I’d draw the line at funeral favors.

  Celia would have taken that tangent to town. Our irreverence was legendary and soothing—at least to us. And now, to me.

  “I’m sorry it was so hard for you,” Cameron said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  “As far as I can see, neither do you.”

  “How can you say that? I left all these people behind to deal with the fallout without me. I went off to Chicago, moved in with a friend from college, and didn’t look back. Literally.”

  “You were in pain.”

  “For six years?”

  “Apologize then. Explain everything to Beck. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “I can’t. It’s complicated. And it wasn’t a mistake. That’s the problem.”

  “Look, I remember you and Celia and Beck as kids. I remember a lot of fun times. Those don’t get erased with one bad decision.”

  Oh, if it had been only one.

  “You’re assuming I’m the person I was when I was ten. I’m not. And I doubt you are either.”

  “You chased me and Beck around the backyard until all of our sides hurt from running and laughing. You climbed trees and built forts with Celia and then went inside and did whatever other things girls did back then. Played with dolls? I didn’t know you very long but I remember someone who was brave and adventurous and fun. That’s part of your DNA. I can’t believe you’re that different.”

  “Things change. Celia’s gone. That changed everything for me. And for me and Beck.” I gasped and turned away, the truth tugging on me like I’d been tangled up in a fishing line and was being dragged out to sea, where I’d drown.

  Cameron stayed quiet, but I knew he was there. His shadow overlapped mine on the ground.

  “I didn’t know.” He said it in a soft, yet full and deep voice, without any hint of surprise or sarcasm.

  I shrugged and turned around. “No one did.” My eyes were filled but had not overflowed.

  “Was it serious?”

  Why did people always ask if a relationship was serious?

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because he hates me for leaving.”

  “I don’t think he hates you. He didn’t say anything either way.”

  “You talked to Beck about me?”

  “Not about you, but he came over last night to see Deanna and I mentioned you’d been there and he didn’t say anything.”

  My heart twisted, released, and then twisted again. “Beck and Deanna?”

  “She took him out for dinner to thank him because he fixed her fence. He wouldn’t let her pay for any of the materials and he’s always stopping by to help out. I think he feels responsible for the house, even though she owns it. And I’m better with an espresso machine than a hammer.”

  “They’re not dating?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I shrugged.

  “Deanna said the word in Chance is that he hasn’t dated anyone in years. I think she’d like to be the one to change that. But, you know, he had some trouble after Celia died.”

  “What do you mean he hasn’t dated anyone? Wait. What trouble?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Oh.” Cameron shook his head. “It’s not my place to say anything. Sorry I mentioned it. I just figured—” Cameron’s phone dinged. “It’s Deanna. I’m going to tell her to walk home without me.” He tapped his phone and pressed it against his thigh.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I am not leaving you in the alley in this…” Cameron scrunched up his face. “In this condition,” he said, waggling his finger at me.

  I laughed, though I wished I hadn’t.

  “See? I do know you. Hey, what are you doing right now?”

  “Nothing for another hour. I’m picking Shay up after her class and taking her to the mall.”

  “Come with me to the cemetery.”

  I fanned myself with my hand, strangely lightened by the morbid suggestion. Then I borrowed a hint of the Southern accent I’d picked up at our hotel in Atlanta. “Why, Cameron Davis, you do know how to make a lady feel special, bless your heart, but no thank you.”

  “I gave you a scone.”

  “I bought the scone.”

  “Details, Teddi Lerner, details.”

  “What is your fascination with that cemetery?”

  “I like history.”

  “There are these things called movies, you know—or even books.”

  “Yes, I know about books, I’m a teacher. AP History. But there are other reasons I go there.”

  My chest felt heavy, my heart so exposed I wanted to zip it up. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean … I didn’t know…”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s that I like to write stories so I look at the headstones and think of the people’s lives and what they might have been like. What happened in their dash.”

  “Their dash?”

  “Between the day they were born and the day they died, there’s always a dash. Sometimes there’s a list of labels, and that can help, but the ones that just have dates and a dash, I feel sorry for them. I wonder if there was nothing at all or just so much that no one could pare it down for a marble slab.”

  “That’s kind of sad.”

  “I don’t think of it that way. I look at it as an opportunity, and I’m kind of obsessed with it. Maybe I could give someone life again with a story or a novel. Sounds pompous, I know. I don’t have a God complex or anything. I just think that the future sort of lies in the past. No pun intended.”

  “Have you ever written one?”

  “One what?”

  “A story inspired by a headstone.”

  Cameron bent his arm and held it out so that I could link mine with it, and I did. “Walk there with me and I’ll tell you.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, the next walk I’m taking today is around an air-conditioned mall. But you be sure to tell your friends I said hello.”

  Cameron shook his head and laughed as I slipped my arm from his. He held on to my hand for just a second. “See you around, Teddi Lerner.”

  I had a feeling he would.

  Chapter 12

  I LOVED HAVING A car.

  Me: I’m here.

  Shay: Want to show you something. Back door open.

  I stepped over the moss-grown cracks in the slate path that led around the house and toward the deck. Purple clematis climbed a wooden trellis we’d hung on the house before Shay was born, the new plantings offering hope, but a long-range plan that had not turned out as beautifully as the flowers.

  I turned and stood in front of the trellis. I’d left my camera at Nettie’s but I could come back when the light would land on the flowers and make them sparkle without Photoshop. Maybe flowers that Celia and I had planted would be the right photo for the contest that I hadn’t yet decided if I’d enter. I watched my feet as I walked. Pro, con, pro, con, pro, con. I wasn’t sure why it mattered. I shook my shoulders and waggled my arms to reset my thoughts.

  Then, I saw a worn brown leather duffel bag to the side of the back door—Beck’s duffel bag, the one he’d carried in and out of my apartment after dark and before dawn dozens of times. Where was his car?

  I shoved my hands into my pockets and palmed my stone. I looked around the backyard as if I were a detective, looking for any unusual movement in the bushes or u
nlikely shadows on the ground. Nothing besides a squirrel kept me company, and even he hopped along the top of the fence and out of view. I hoped I’d maintain my balance so easily, if need be.

  I stood outside the duffel bag’s force field. Clouds provided a shield from direct southern sun, so I saw inside the house without squinting. Shay’s back was to the door and she stood at the kitchen counter with Beck. She nodded and Beck stretched out his arm behind her and drew her in with a squeeze and kept her close. He nodded. Maybe they were talking about the wedding, or Celia, or me. Maybe she was trying to wrangle him out of a few shopping dollars. Then Beck kissed the top of Shay’s head.

  I stepped back, almost onto the duffel, my fist releasing my stone, my heart pounding. I picked up the stone and shoved it back into place and breathed. The guy who hugged and nodded and pulled his niece in close—that was the Beck I knew. That was the Beck I missed. The Beck I’d forgotten about on purpose.

  I turned and tiptoe-ran across the path, stepping on any moss or plants in my way. I needed to get around to the front of the house. I was panting but moving in slow motion, the small Cape Cod somehow reminding me of the new, sprawling Hester property in Scottsdale.

  Made it.

  I lifted my hand, kept it far from the doorknob, and knocked.

  Shay opened the door right away. “Why are you all sweaty? And why didn’t you come in the back?”

  “I’m just anxious to go, sweetie.”

  “I want to show you my collage. It’s in the kitchen.”

  She pulled me inside and through the house at a clip.

  “You here alone?”

  “I’m not a baby, Aunt Tee.” Shay’s voice was course, impatient.

  “No, you’re not.” The collage lay on the counter. I pushed my hair off my forehead and behind my shoulders. There was no one else in the room. I looked outside. No Beck. No duffle bag. Shay lifted the paper and turned it around. She inhaled as if she were about to reveal a long-held secret.

  “Hey, Aunt Tee! Look!”

  I stared and as I blinked, shades of color and bits of paper morphed into one seamless and cohesive family portrait of Miles, Shay, and Celia. “That’s amazing.”

  “Thanks.” Shay looked at her creation, and a tentative grin grew into a wide smile that rivaled Celia’s. I flinched to stop myself from looking for my best friend.