The Luck of the Paw (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 9)

by Susan C. Daffron

  “Okay.” Mia closed the door and sat down on the long sofa. Gizmo leaped up next to her.

  Mrs. Grafton settled into the chair at the tiny table and readjusted her skirt and her thighs to center them on the chair. “I read about you in the paper. Aren’t you excited?”

  Mia narrowed her eyes. The woman’s sudden change of heart was starting to make sense. “I don’t have a subscription to the paper.”

  “Mia! You won the lottery, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I know.”

  “So what are you going to do with the money?” Mrs. Grafton clasped her hands together as if she were praying to the gods of chance. “I am so envious. You know how hard I work.”

  Actually, Mia had no idea what Mrs. Grafton did, beyond complaining, snooping, and spying on the neighbors. “I suppose.”

  “Well, we have a family situation and my dear daughter has asked me for a loan. It kills me to have to turn her down. She’s a dancer and she needs money for surgery.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Is she okay? Did she hurt herself?”

  “Not exactly, but she needs to invest in her career. We’ve always been so close, you and I, so I was thinking you might want to contribute to her cause. She’s very talented, you know.”

  “It will be a few weeks until I receive my winnings.” Mia stroked Gizmo’s head. He was being such a good boy. “I don’t understand. Why does your daughter need surgery?”

  Mrs. Grafton leaned forward. “It’s a competitive business. All of the dancers need to improve on what nature gave them. If you don’t get augmentation surgery for the girls, you can’t compete.”

  “The girls? Wait…you mean a boob job?” Mia flashed back to her book report fiasco. Yes, she really meant boob this time. “Are you seriously asking me to invest in your daughter’s breast-augmentation surgery?”

  “Why yes, dear. That’s what I said. She needs it to further her career. Insurance doesn’t cover it, and it’s so unfair that she can’t write it off either. I mean, it’s a work-related expense! But she’s not self-employed, so the accountant said the deduction wouldn’t fly. And Deb would certainly pay you back. With interest too. She’ll be getting much better tips, and I know you’d make back your investment in no time.”

  Mia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Thank you for the offer. But right now, I, um, have some things I need to do. I have to get up at sex…I mean six tomorrow morning.”

  Mrs. Grafton stood up. “Well, just think about it, dear. It’s an extremely wise business move. We could work out the details so you could double or triple your money. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. You’ll thank me in the end. Deb is very gifted.”

  Mia stood and held onto Gizmo’s collar. “I’m sure she is. Thank you for the muffins.”

  “Return the plastic container when you can. And do let me know when you’re ready to invest!”

  Mia closed the door, turned to the counter, and opened the muffin container. She broke a muffin in half, took a bite, and looked at the dry, crumbly core. Yuck. Gizmo wagged happily as she handed him the other half. “Since you don’t have the most discriminating palette, it’s yours.”

  Gizmo made a few hacking noises, but managed to choke down the muffin. He looked up eagerly. Mia shook her head, put the lid back on the container, and stuffed it into the micro-fridge below the counter. “I don’t think so. No more cement muffins for you. After your last digestive disaster, I think you need to pace yourself.”

  Gizmo settled back down on the sofa and put his head between his paws with a sigh.

  Over the next few days, it became apparent that the word was out about Mia’s good fortune. At her doctor’s office, the receptionist told her about a fantastic new product that she distributed. It was a new type of makeup and Mia could get in on the ground floor just by holding parties for her friends.

  Mia didn’t want to point out the fact that any friends she’d had moved away long ago, so she just nodded politely as the perky woman explained all the “science” behind the new product line. The whole thing sounded like a more complicated version of Avon or Amway, neither of which Mia had even the remotest interest in selling.

  Finally, the doctor was ready to see her. After being weighed on the huge industrial scale that always made her at least five pounds heavier than any other scale, she had to strip and wait around snuggled up in a gown, attempting to cover up and not freeze while sitting on crinkly paper.

  Sitting and waiting for the doctor was part of the process. As if getting her downstairs poked and prodded in incredibly uncomfortable ways wasn’t bad enough, they made you wait so you could dread and dwell upon the special feel of the speculum for a little while longer.

  Why did they call them stirrups, anyway? Was it to make a pelvic exam sound like more fun? Horseback riding might be fun. Being checked inside and out down there was not.

  Doctor Isaacs was a tall, chatty woman who in any other context Mia might actually enjoy talking to. As it was, they usually ended up talking about films. Or the doctor talked, anyway. Movies were expensive and Mia didn’t have TV, so she hadn’t seen a film in years. During the exam, the doctor talked about the movies she’d seen while Mia stared at the ceiling, pretending to be somewhere else.

  Mia turned at the tap on the door. Dr. Isaacs walked in and grinned. “I saw your name in the paper. You won the lottery!”

  “I guess everyone knows.”

  “Lie back and put your feet in the stirrups. Wow, those are great socks!”

  “Thank you.” Mia closed her eyes. Was it over yet?

  “So what are you going to do with all that money?”

  Mia opened her eyes again. “I’m not sure. Maybe travel? I’ve never been, well, anywhere, really.”

  “That sounds wonderful. To infinity and beyond!”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it’s a line from movie. Please scoot down a bit farther, could you?”

  Mia did as instructed and readjusted her feet in the stirrups. “So, have you seen anything good lately?” Mia put her palm on her forehead. Could she be more of a moron? The doctor was staring down her hoo-ha. “I mean movies. Films! When I’m here, you always talk about films.”

  Dr. Isaacs put her hand on Mia’s knee. “Relax Mia; the speculum is more uncomfortable if you tense up. Oh, and yes, I saw Toy Story the other day with my daughter. Tom Hanks is great. He does the voice for a little cowboy toy. Oh and there’s Buzz Lightyear, who is an astronaut action figure.”

  “Sounds fun.” At this point, Mia would have agreed with almost anything to get this exam over with.

  The doctor patted her knee. “All done. You can sit up now.”

  Mia slid to the end of the table, sat, and looked at the doctor. “I’ll probably be moving, but I’m not sure where yet. I’ve been seeing you for a long time. Can I call you for a referral to another doctor?”

  “Just give the office a call when you get settled and we’ll give you some names and transfer your records.” The doctor put her hand on Mia’s forearm. “I hope you find what you’re looking for and can leave everything that happened here behind you.”

  “Thank you. I do too.”

  Chapter 2

  On the Road

  A few weeks later, the day Mia had been dreaming about finally arrived, and she closed the door of the Airstream for the very last time. The lottery winnings were safely nestled in a special new bank account, she’d traded in Dottie, and finally left her job behind.

  She had calculated her two week’s notice so she’d have a few extra days to donate the last of her belongings to thrift stores and clean out the Airstream before she took off on her trip. Most of the items had come from thrift stores to begin with, so in Mia’s mind she was just returning them to their ancestral home. Some other struggling unhappy teenager or twenty-something setting up her home could have them now. It was odd to think that she wasn’t “in her twenties” anymore. Shouldn’t she have her life figured out by now?

  Everything Mi
a owned was loaded in the shiny new 1997 Toyota RAV 4 that she’d purchased. When she told the guy at the dealership she was paying cash, she thought he might faint. He was significantly less impressed with her trade-in, and was willing to give her the princely sum of only $150 for poor old Dottie. The forest green RAV didn’t have a name yet, but Mia figured that after some time on the road, they’d bond and inspiration would strike.

  She’d purchased the RAV because the rear seats folded down, which gave Gizmo lots of room to hang out. However, for this trip, she’d left the backseats up so he could ride there and not be located among the boxes filled with things he might regard as edible. Along with her belongings, Mia had stocked up on road food, maps, and travel guides, so having a new car with space was helpful.

  After spending lots of time staring at the postcards that had come with the lottery tickets, Mia wanted to see Alpine Grove. The notes on the postcards were difficult to read, but intriguing. Why was this “CA” person writing to her father? What did it mean? Was he the one who’d sent the postcards to Mia? If not him, then who? Was her father actually in Alpine Grove? She hadn’t heard from him in twenty years. Why now? After all these years, did he still remember her birthday? Was he aware that she’d won the lottery with one of the tickets he sent?

  Questions about the odd package swirled in her mind. The ruminations were a nice distraction from larger, more complicated questions, like what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Mia hoped that the road trip would help her figure out what she wanted. Now that she had money, she could do almost anything. But that led to an uncomfortable question. What did she want to do?

  For years, she’d been completely focused on what she had to do, so she hadn’t spent any time thinking about what she liked to do. The focus on earning enough to continue to live independently with food and shelter had quashed any desires or dreams for the future.

  Even after taxes were taken out of her lottery winnings, Mia had enough to live on for quite some time, almost no matter what she decided to do. As long as she didn’t fall prey to one of the many scammers trying to part her from her new-found wealth, she’d be fine.

  One happy side-effect of leaving her home town would be ditching her telephone number forever. The calls from people who wanted to “help her manage her money” had gotten so completely out of hand that she’d stopped answering the phone and had turned off the ringer. At work, people who had never talked to her before stopped by her desk to tell her sob stories about sick relatives who undoubtedly didn’t exist or terrible and expensive problems she could help resolve with a sizable donation.

  It would be such a relief to go somewhere where no one knew who she was. After living in an arid area her whole life, Mia yearned to see water. First, she was determined to see the Pacific Ocean and drive up the coast. Then maybe work her way to Alpine Grove and see some of the places on the postcards before winter arrived. If the postcards were any indication, Alpine Grove was pretty and located near a huge lake—another large body of water. Whether it was the ocean or a lake, it didn’t matter. The main goal was to get away from endless flat farmland.

  After dropping off the keys to the trailer with the manager, Mia got into the car and looked over her shoulder at Gizmo, who was enjoying the little nest she’d created for him with his own doggie bed. He looked almost as pleased to be leaving as she was. They both had troubled pasts here that were best forgotten. When she’d taken him in, Gizmo had been an extremely skinny, matted, little stray. She reached back over the seat to stroke his head. “Are you ready, Giz?”

  As she passed the sign that said “Leaving Windiberg,” Mia let out a whoop and Gizmo woofed a vote of support. She was finally getting out of here for good and she was never coming back. Everything that had happened with her mother and Howard was behind her. Outside of Windiberg, no one knew about them or that she now had money. No one cared. Maybe she could leave all the anger and guilt behind and finally move on. The road stretched in front of her like an oasis. She put a CD into the player and cranked up some tunes to accompany the turning point in her life.

  Several hundred miles later, Mia finally reached the coast. The closer she drove toward the Pacific Ocean, the more cars there were. Traffic had slowed to a crawl many times, but at last they’d reached the edge of the United States with nothing except the wide expanse of the Pacific before them.

  Mia parked the car in a public parking lot and got Gizmo out of the backseat. He sniffed around the asphalt while she just stood and stared out at the waves. A few surfers were sitting on their boards, bobbing like colorful corks in the water. A large wave formed behind them and almost in unison, they scrambled to attention in their efforts to catch the curl.

  Mia smiled. Her mother would have loved this sight. When Mia was a little girl, Mom had spun wild, elaborate tales of mermaids and sea monsters who lived in the sea. On her good days, no one was more creative, flamboyant, and funny than Elaine Riggins. One of Mia’s favorite memories was of her mother dancing around the living room, singing along to an old Beatles eight-track. She would pause only to wait for the player to clunk to the next track and clap her hands in glee when the music started again. Her skirt had swirled around her as she cavorted around, lost in her own joyous world of music and lyrics.

  Had Mom ever seen the ocean? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d had the same longing to see water that Mia had, and that’s why Mia would find her standing at the sink, sobbing uncontrollably while doing dishes.

  After years of reading library books related to psychology and mental health, Mia finally understood that her mother had probably suffered from bipolar disorder. In some ways, it had been a relief to have a definition and an explanation for why her mother hadn’t been able to handle many of the day-to-day realities of living her life. The diagnosis offered an explanation for the manic highs and lows. But it didn’t make it any easier for Mia to accept everything that had happened.

  There were times Mia would wake up from a dream crying, realizing that she no longer remembered what her mother’s voice sounded like. In the dream, she kept wanting Mom to turn to her and say “I love you, sweetheart,” but she never did. Other dreams were more about the rage Mia felt toward her mother for not being normal and dependable like other parents.

  A crunching noise came from near her feet and Mia looked down. “Gizmo! What are you eating?”

  The dog quickly gulped down whatever he had discovered and wagged his tail, obviously pleased that he’d devoured his parking lot prize before Mia noticed.

  An old man wearing a straw porkpie hat got out of a car farther down the row and shouted, “Hey lady, can’t you read? Dogs aren’t allowed here!”

  Mia waved at the man and gathered the leash in her hands. “Sorry, Giz, time to get going. We’ll find a dog-friendly beach somewhere. I promise.”

  Mia had scoured her guidebooks for motels that would allow dogs, but there weren’t many, so it was looking like she might get to know Motel 6s rather well. All of the motels in the low-budget chain were pet-friendly without exception, but the travel guides were largely silent about which beaches and parks permitted dogs.

  After driving along the coast in stop-and-go traffic for a while, looking for a beach with dogs happily romping on it, Mia gave up and drove to the Motel 6. Apparently, this one had the distinction of being the first one, which opened back in 1962. The motel was within walking distance of a beach, but not one where Gizmo was allowed. Oh well.

  After unloading her things and Gizmo from the car, Mia sat at the end of the bed stroking the fur on the dog’s head. All of the anticipation of getting ready and leaving was behind her. Day one of driving had been tiring, but uneventful, so at this point the journey was a success. Now it was time to find food. She gave Gizmo’s ears a final scritch. “Okay, let’s go for a walk and see what awaits us out there.”

  After clipping a leash onto Gizmo’s collar, Mia grabbed her key and a baggie and shoved them in her pocket. They walked away from the mo
tel, toward the beach. After crossing a busy road, they began walking along the long sidewalk dotted with palm trees that ran between the beach parking lots and the road. The lots were full of vans and trucks with surfboards attached to or sticking out from them in one way or another. After watching so many TV shows filmed in Southern California when she was little, the environment almost didn’t seem real.

  The late afternoon sun on her shoulders was relaxing and Mia wanted to stop time, to ensure she never forgot this moment. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she was truly happy. Just walking with Gizmo on the sidewalk alongside the beautiful ocean was amazing. Although she had no idea what would happen next, right now was feeling pretty terrific.

  Mia bought a fish taco from a walk-up taco shack and sat on a bench to eat it, sharing a few bites with Gizmo. Then they slowly meandered back to the Motel 6 to settle in for the evening. She reentered the room, fed Gizmo his bowl of kibble, and curled up on the bed to read. It had been a great day.

  Mia opened her eyes at the all-too-familiar sound of canine regurgitation. She rolled over and felt around the nightstand, looking for her watch. Three in the morning? Ugh. Another hack came from the direction of the bathroom and Mia jumped out of bed. “Gizmo! What are you up to?”

  She stopped in the doorway. Gizmo was in the center of what looked like a toilet paper explosion. Bits of white paper were everywhere. Some of it was shredded, some soggy, and some just strewn like streamers around the small tiled area. “Oh Giz. Why do you do this?”

  The dog wagged his tail and spewed out a wad of paper like a spitball, which landed on the tile with a splat.

  Mia shooed the dog out of the bathroom and began scraping up the paper residue from various surfaces and heaving them into the small plastic garbage can. Her next stop needed to be a pet store. There had to be some way to confine Gizmo so he couldn’t eat his way through every place she stayed. If she were banned from Motel 6s, it would completely derail her road-trip plans.