“Thanks, Penny. I appreciate it.”
Penny dropped the scone on the corner of Rebecca’s desk and turned bright eyes to her father. “Dad, I’m ready!”
“Gotcha, sweetie!” he said but his voice cracked and he took a deep breath. “Thank you, Ms. Potter. Thank you very much.”
Finally his eyes met hers and Rebecca felt scorched by all the emotion there—the gratitude and grief.
For a moment, just one second in time, she got lost in his eyes and suddenly the opportunity was right there—tangible and welcome—for her to touch him. Really touch him. She imagined her fingers in his hair, her head tucked under his chin. She could almost feel his arms around her, his hands on her back, her lips at his throat.
His eyes were warm and wide, surprised maybe. She didn’t know, but she could sense that he felt the same.
“Dad! I’m hot!” Penny cried, and both Becca and Will jerked as if they’d been in a trance. The moment ended, and Penny and Will walked out of her room, leaving Rebecca to sit down hard in her chair.
A pile of red card stock was at her elbow and she pulled the top sheet close, fumbled for her pen and dipped the end in ink.
She drew a heart on the outside. A heart with a bandage across it and limping on crutches. On the inside she drew another heart kissing the wounded one, the crutches flying off into the air and the bandage falling unneeded to the ground.
Your kiss heals me, she printed underneath the image.
She sat back. No way was that card going to be a big seller but she so badly wanted to kiss away Will’s pain. And perhaps have him take away a little of hers.
And it made her nervous. Feeling that way put her beyond a crush, put her in that warm but dangerous area closer to love.
AS WILL AND PENNY left the Cup, he scratched at his neck, where he was still hot. He burned with a strange awareness that Ms. Potter knew too much about him. His wife had left him and he was still a wreck and Rebecca Potter knew. It wasn’t like he went around advertising that. He’d actually begun to believe he was doing all right. That he was over the divorce.
His daughter clearly saw something he didn’t.
Two years had gone by, and he had the sinking suspicion that while he’d gotten over Adele leaving, he wasn’t quite over being left.
He swallowed hard against the lump of bitter anger that lodged at the back of his throat when he thought about those red taillights driving away.
“Did you have a good day at school?” Will looked away from the icy road for a second to glance at his daughter.
They’d moved here from South Carolina six months ago and he’d forgotten just how brutal life could be in the snowbelt.
She lifted a mittened hand and pulled down the bit of scarf over her mouth. “It was good. Ms. Potter taught us about perspective yesterday and it was free draw today so I drew a picture of a flower from the bottom like I was a worm looking up at it and then she yelled at Tony for being late. Again.”
He waited with bated breath for her to tell him about the pictures she’d drawn for Ms. Potter. But she just put her scarf back over her lips and stared out the dark window at the Christmas lights still hanging around the eaves of the Presbyterian Church.
“How about school school? You know math class and recess?”
“We had music class today. It was fun.”
He smiled ruefully. Penny was her mother’s daughter, that’s for sure. Adele had been a free spirit, interested in art of any kind. She was a wonderful musician, but couldn’t balance her checkbook. He’d taken care of all the practical things. She’d claimed that’s what had made their relationship work.
Not that it had stopped her from running off with the actor.
“You know your mom really liked music.”
“I remember.”
“Yeah?” Be cool. Let her talk. He resisted his every inclination not to talk about Adele. He reached over and turned down the radio.
“I remember her playing the piano and, sometimes when she taught those singing lessons, she’d let me sit in the same room.”
He smiled at her. “I didn’t know that.”
Penny shrugged, and he got the terrible impression that, in Penny’s opinion, there was lots he didn’t know.
“Do you miss your mom?” he asked, and Penny finally turned to him, her blue eyes unreadable in the dark car.
“Sure,” she told him like he should know that. “Do you?”
His mind went slow and still. “I don’t know, Penny. I miss having a mom for you. I miss being a family like that…”
“We’re a family.”
He smiled and nodded, though he wanted to pull over and wrap his arms around his sweet and solemn girl. “You’re right. You’re totally right.”
“Do you want a new wife?”
Will could only gape at Penny. “What makes you think that?”
She shrugged, her winter coat rustling against the seat belt. “Mom’s been gone a long time. Seems like you should get a girlfriend or something.”
He tipped his head back and howled. “Have you been talking to Aunt Elaine?”
“No.”
“Cousin Alyssa?”
Penny’s mouth tipped up, but she tried to smother her smile. His niece Alyssa was obsessed with boyfriends. She was at that preteen age, when all energies were focused on boys and lip gloss and eye-rolling.
“I don’t want a girlfriend,” he told his daughter.
“But—”
“I do not want a girlfriend.” he repeated. “Tell your cousin that.”
He felt empty inside. Adele and her betrayal had cleared him of any inclination toward romance. He’d seen behind the curtain and knew that all of those things that made Valentine’s Day so special to so many people—the hearts and flowers, the moonlight and candles—were tricks. Shams.
Dressings for empty windows.
It wasn’t real. Not for him. Not anymore.
“When I talked to Mom on Wednesday, she said you can go out to California this summer once school is out.” The words felt ripped from his throat. He’d rather eat mud than let his daughter go out there.
“Ms. Potter has an art camp in the summer. I want to do that.”
He heaved a sigh, relieved in a dark, selfish place that Penny hadn’t leaped at the opportunity. “Okay. But maybe you can do both. Art camp and see your mom.”
“Is she going to come here?” she asked and he nearly laughed at the image of the beautiful and sophisticated Adele in Fenelon Falls. She’d always turned up her nose at the town he’d come from.
“I don’t think so, honey. She’d want you to go to California for the visit.”
Penny looked at him with those big blue eyes that everyone said were just like his. “I want to stay with you,” she said, and Will’s heart just split right open.
Adele certainly hadn’t pushed the idea of a visit. She’d given up all rights in the divorce. He’d been the one pressuring her to have some sort of role in her daughter’s life, and she’d begrudgingly offered the summer trip. But if Adele wasn’t interested and Penny didn’t want to go to California—he wasn’t going to push it.
“Okay.” He nodded. “Summer in Fenelon Falls.”
“Are we going to Grandma and Grandpa’s right now?” she asked, changing the subject.
Thank you, God.
“It’s Friday night,” he said with a grin. “That’s where we go. Are you excited?”
“I’m excited about seeing Alyssa and Bethany and Heather,” she said, listing her girl cousins.
“But not Joe?” he asked with a smile.
She shook her head. “He’s a boy.” She put the scarf back over her mouth and that seemed to be the end of the discussion.
“Does he have cooties?” he asked.
“Cootie’s aren’t real, Dad.” She told him that as if she’d read it in the New England Journal of Medicine. “But he licks his finger and tries to put it in my ear and he chews with his mouth open and—” she purse
d her lips “—he’s gross.”
Will smiled and focused on the road. “Got it. I won’t let him close to my ears.”
Since moving back to Fenelon Falls from South Carolina, Friday nights had changed from a quiet night of pizza and the rewatching of some Disney movie his daughter never tired of to a night of chaos. He had three siblings still in town. All of them had kids and all of them would be at his parents’ place.
Will smiled just thinking about it.
His family and their loud and boisterous style of love was why, after it became very clear that Adele wasn’t coming home, he had packed Penny up and moved her. Well, that and the fact the house he, Penny and Adele had lived in was growing haunted by the ghosts of a family he didn’t recognize anymore.
He’d come up here to forget the past. And to help his daughter. He shook his head thinking of those pictures. Ms. Potter and her art class were a blessing. If she could help him and Penny he would spend the rest of his life thanking her.
Ms. Potter.
There’d been an odd moment in her classroom tonight. Just at the end. He’d been so spellbound by the empathy in her brown eyes he’d almost hugged her. It had been the strangest thing. While staring into her eyes, he could almost feel her arms around him. His hands at her back. It had been so long since he’d felt the soft press of a woman and for that moment he could almost taste it, salty and thick in his throat.
He coughed and shrugged off his jacket, suddenly warm in the car.
He’d been alone too long, that much was clear.
Adele had left two years ago. Almost to the day.
Two lonely years ago. And until tonight he’d been able to ignore just how lonely he was.
If he searched, he wouldn’t be able to find someone as different from Adele as Rebecca Potter. Sure, they had the art stuff in common, but Rebecca was reserved. She actually reminded him of his daughter—still waters and all that.
He admitted after the intense fire of Adele, that the quiet but stimulating company of Rebecca Potter felt like a salve.
But was that really what he wanted? Was that right for him and Penny?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched his daughter breathe on the passenger window and then draw a heart with her finger in the steam.
CHAPTER THREE
January 26—Friday
WHEN HER WHOLE LIFE was said and done and Rebecca was sent to hell, for her impure thoughts and the lies she’d told her parents, instead of burning for all eternity tied to some rock, she’d be back at her folks’ house, suffering through another Friday night dinner.
Elle had warned her that her mother was going to be on the rampage after the big fight she and Elle had had last weekend. Rebecca had the sick feeling she was a bone between two dogs. She should stand up for herself—tell her mother to back off—but she didn’t. She let Aunt Elle fight her battles for her.
At the dinner table, Rebecca braced herself for Jane Potter’s worst.
Coward.
“We could use you tomorrow,” her father said from his throne at the end of the table, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight. When she’d been young she’d thought every bald man was a little like Mr. Clean—slightly dangerous, with that twinkle in his eye. It had been a disappointment when her dad lost his hair to discover he didn’t have any Mr. Clean in him. He was just a bald, middle-aged accountant who loved his job. Nothing dangerous or twinkly in that.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a few Saturdays a year as we go into tax season.” He watched her over his glasses before taking a bite of lamb and chewing.
“Dad,” she said, pushing her peas into her mashed potatoes and refusing to meet his censorious gaze. “You know I work at the café on Saturdays.”
“Well, it’s certainly not like Elle needs you. There’s hardly anyone in there.” Her mother leaned left, so she could see Rebecca around the lilies and candles in the middle of the table.
They sat in the formal dining room, surrounded by all the polished silver and china that the Potter Accounting Firm had allowed her parents to buy. If her mother could have worn it, she would have.
The sister who had done good. Married well. Had a quiet, perfectly behaved daughter who was following in Jane’s boring footsteps.
Everything Aunt Elle wasn’t.
“I certainly hope that you aren’t going to be a part of that dateathon.”
“You mean, am I signing up for it?”
Dad actually laughed. “Heaven forbid, sweetheart. If you wanted to start dating, I’ve told you a million times I’ve got the perfect guy. Jake Cedeka from the club. I really don’t understand your reluctance to meet him.”
“What if it worked out, Dad?” She grimaced. “I’d be Rebecca Cedeka. It rhymes. I can’t take that risk.”
Dad smiled at her lame joke and the ball of tension that sat in her stomach during family meals unwound slightly, allowing her to take a deep breath.
“So you’re going to be Rebecca Potter for the rest of your life?” Jane asked.
Rebecca nodded, though the idea crushed her. “Maybe.” She took another bite of potatoes, which subsequently stuck to the roof of her mouth. “It’s worked for me so far.”
“You are twenty-seven.” The crystal goblet in Jane’s hands hit the table with the weight of a brick. “You won’t commit to working full-time at the firm. You insist on going down with the sinking ship your aunt calls a business…”
“Mom, she’s your sister. I don’t think it would kill you to stop by the Cup for a coffee to show your sister some support.”
“My sister has been supported all her life. My father supported every flighty decision she ever made. I am not about to validate that…business by stepping foot in it.”
The fight between Jane and Elle must have been a doozy. Her mother could be unfeeling at times, even stubborn, but she wasn’t usually so mean.
Rebecca turned to her father, searching for a compassionate voice of reason. Dad just sat there, cutting green beans into bite-size pieces.
I must have been switched at birth, Rebecca thought for perhaps the millionth time.
“But—” Jane wrenched the conversation back to where she wanted it “—we were talking about you.”
“I’m not signing up for the dateathon, Mom. Don’t worry.”
“All right then.” Jane tilted her head. “Then how about those cards?”
Rebecca swallowed. Of course. The cards.
“What about them?”
“You are an accountant with the Potter Firm. There’s a standard of behavior expected of you. You are acting just like your aunt, and she’s never been a good influence…”
“I don’t sign them, Mom. No one knows I make them.”
“I know.”
Jane yammered on and Rebecca’s blood grew hot and thick. She knew it was wrong to let her mother’s opinions matter so much. As Elle had said over and over again—her mother only had the power to wound Rebecca because she let her.
But twenty-seven years of habit was hard to break.
“I sold out last year, Mom,” she said, foolishly trying to defend those small scraps of herself she sent out in the world. “People ask for more all the time. They ask for Christmas cards and birthday cards. I’d hardly call that stupid.”
“If it’s not stupid, why don’t you make it official?” her father piped up, asking what was in fact the million-dollar question. “If everyone loves them and you are so proud of them why don’t you sign them? Why doesn’t everyone in town know that you make them?”
Because of Will. Because it’s no one’s business. It’s private. Because…what if people laughed?
“Some people know…” She sounded like a petulant child. She stabbed a pea that shot off her plate and hit her untouched wine goblet. She put it back on her plate and set down her fork.
“You’re clearly embarrassed by them, Rebecca. And if you’d just listen to your father and me instead of your aunt, you’d see we’re only trying
to help you get your life on track. Aren’t you proud of who you are? Of the Potter name?”
She sighed, heavily. “Of course I am.”
“Then work for us full-time.” Phil shook his head. “I really don’t understand why you have to make everything so dramatic, Rebecca.”
Rebecca sucked in a deep breath and let it out nice and slow—something Aunt Elle told her might keep her from actually sticking her salad fork in her eye during these dinners. She repeated it, just to be on the safe side.
“I’ve decided the Fenelon Falls Young Artist Program is going to have a summer camp. I think I’ll do a whole week on sidewalk chalk.”
“Babysitting is not a job.”
Her mother’s opinion of the program struck deep, drew blood, but Becca pressed on, desperate to leave this dinner having said what she should.
“I’ve contacted the elementary school and they said I could use their blacktop. Won’t that be cool?” She looked at her mother, imploring her to understand how important this was. How much she loved the idea of a group of kids filling a playground with sidewalk chalk murals.
Jane’s eyes were cold. She didn’t get it. She didn’t care.
“How much money do you make teaching this program, anyway?” Phil asked, again getting to what he thought was the root of the matter. “Honey, we’re just trying to help.”
Rebecca, as she usually did on Friday nights, just gave up. She stopped the fight and took the silent and cowardly path of least resistance.
Phil and Jane continued to discuss her as if she wasn’t there. And that was fine. Rebecca, as she’d done for years, concentrated on the shadows, the play of candlelight over lilies and crystal, the beautiful art that existed around her family, although she was the only one who saw it.
Later that night
“I’D BE MARRIED to a man who plays golf with my father…ugh.” Rebecca cried, sloshing green tea over the edge of her favorite pig-shaped mug. “Can you imagine?”
“That’s pretty bad.” Lucky Morgan smiled into her own mug before taking a sip.
Who Needs Cupid? Page 11