Three Times a Charm

by Jean Stone

  Damn.

  She watched the windshield clear.

  Could there be any truth to Sutter’s claim?

  Her gaze dropped to the floor, where the Hilltop brochure lay upside down.

  And Sarah knew that she could not go to Second Chances until she saw Sutter again.

  “Do you mean we’ll have to stay inside all day?”

  “I think it’s for the best.”

  “The driving will be awful.”

  “The walking will be impossible.”

  “I was afraid of this.”

  “We could go downstairs and build a fire.”

  “Or we could stay here.”

  “Yes. We could stay here.”

  “But what about Cassie?”

  “When I called Lily, I called Mrs. Connor too. She’ll watch for the school bus. She’ll call Cassie over to her house.”

  “And you’ll have to stay here.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “All day.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Hmm. Whatever shall we do?”

  Andrew rolled on top of Jo again and could not believe how happy he was.

  10

  Sarah wasn’t sure she’d ever make it to the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast. She wasn’t even sure she should.

  Sitting rock-rigid on the seat, staring out at the growing whiteout that was covering the sky, the road, and all the air in between, she gripped the steering wheel more tightly and thought about the facts as she knew them, the facts that she would replay to Sutter Jones if she ever made it to the inn alive.

  My grandmother said my mother died in childbirth, she would begin. She gave me the same answer when I was five, seven, eight, every time I asked, pretending I hadn’t asked before. Finally Glisi told me to stop asking, because the answer would always be the same. She said I would see my mother one day when the Great Spirit called me home.

  She wondered if Sutter would be understanding or if he would be obstinate and stick to his story.

  She would tell him how she’d once asked her father if he had at least a picture of her mother, but that he’d said no and left the room. Her grandmother then said she should leave well enough alone.

  Maybe she would tell Sutter how she’d wondered about her mother off and on: What had she liked, what had she disliked? Maybe she would say she’d always wanted to know how her parents met but that she hadn’t wanted to upset anyone any more than she already had just by being born and killing her mother.

  When I was told my mother was white, she might say to Sutter, I wondered what that must have felt like. She might not tell him that more than once she’d studied herself in the small hand mirror that had been Glisi’s, looking for traces of the woman who had not been Cherokee.

  She might say she’d thought about her mother when she was pregnant with Burch. She’d wondered if her mother had experienced the same unending glow that Sarah felt from the moment, it had seemed, that she conceived. Sarah wondered if she had been as welcome as Burch had been, if her mother had felt the maternal connection Sarah felt each time Burch moved within her womb, each time she closed her eyes and imagined she could feel his soft, small breath within her.

  She’d wondered so many times if her mother had died before she’d seen Sarah, before she’d held her in her arms, before she’d seen the miracle she’d wrought.

  But she couldn’t say that to Sutter, because he said her mother wasn’t dead.

  Around one last corner, down one last slope, Sarah carefully turned the steering wheel and the truck did a slow skid into the parking lot at the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast.

  “He isn’t here,” Grace Koehler said when she hustled Sarah into the living room of the cozy inn. Grace and her husband, Paul, had owned the inn since the late eighties, when many corporate types had ditched their nine-to-five jobs for the promise of their own business. The room was country-comfortable; the Koehlers seemed to have made their business a success.

  “He left?” Sarah asked, not wanting to remove her hat and drip snow-water on the gleaming hardwood floor.

  Grace nodded. “Very early this morning. Before the weather turned.”

  Sarah was surprised at her disappointment. She introduced herself to Grace, whom she’d never really met but had known about through the talk around the butcher shop, the town hall, the post office. Grace nodded as if she, too, knew who Sarah was, having no doubt learned from the same venues.

  “He left a card for you,” Grace said, “in case you came around.” She dug her hand into the pocket of her long red sweater and withdrew a business card. “If you’d like to call him, you’re welcome to use my phone. His cell phone number is on it—he said you can reach him anytime.” The woman smiled. Perhaps she thought Sutter Jones was Sarah’s lover.

  Sarah took the card. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Would you like to call now?” Grace asked. “From here?”

  Sarah thought quickly. She wouldn’t want to call from the shop; if she waited until she went home tonight she might change her mind. “Yes,” she replied, “if you don’t mind.”

  Grace produced a cordless phone, directed her to the dining room for privacy, and told her not to mind her wet boots. She also said, “Don’t worry about toll charges. We have free long-distance minutes.”

  Sarah made a mental note to add the Hilltop to the list of good places to offer out-of-town wedding guests. Then Grace left Sarah alone, and she moved to a large bow window and looked at the card.

  JONES AND ARCHAMBAULT, it read.

  ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

  It listed an address and phone on Madison Avenue in New York City. Someone had printed Cell with another number after that.

  She dialed.

  He answered.

  “It’s Sarah Duncan,” she said.

  He paused, then said, “I’m sorry. You took me by surprise.”

  “I thought we might have coffee, but I understand you’ve left town.”

  He paused again. “I’m headed for Los Angeles on business.”

  “I’d like to ask you some questions. I’d like to tell you some things too.”

  “Yes. Well. I’m in New York right now. At the airport.” He gave a short laugh. “Actually I’m on the plane. We’re waiting to push back from the gate.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Sarah that he would have gone so far so fast. “Oh,” she said. “You really have left the area then.”

  “Well. Yes.”

  Outside, the snow had not let up. The wind made it look as if it were coming down sideways, Old Mother West Wind blowing to the east. “Is this true?” she asked. “About my mother?”

  In the silence that followed, Sarah heard a female voice. “Please turn off all cellular phones at this time. You may turn them back on once we reach our destination.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sutter said again, “I have to hang up. I’ll call you from L.A. I have your number.”

  The line went dead, and Sarah sat with the phone in her hand, trying to recall how long the flight was to the West Coast but knowing it had been too many years for her to remember.

  11

  The snowy, icy misery of Wednesday turned into a full-blown nor’easter that left twelve to fourteen inches on West Hope’s January ground.

  Jo and Andrew had spent the day together, rising out of bed only sometime in mid-afternoon for homemade beef vegetable soup that Andrew thought she’d skillfully concocted, underscoring his belief, he’d said, that she was the perfect woman. When he was on his second bowl, Jo admitted that the soup hadn’t come from her stove but from her mother’s, that she had never once made soup, that she had no clue where to begin. He looked so disappointed that she told him she’d be sure to get the recipe.

  After lunch they’d gone back to bed and hadn’t gotten up again until late in the evening, when the grinding crunch of snowplows passed by the house a second time, alerting Andrew to the fact he could safely traverse the roads back to his cottage, to his daughter.

>   As they stood at her back door, holding each other longer than was necessary, Jo had said, “Let’s not tell the others just yet, okay? Not until we know where this is going.”

  “I know where it is going,” Andrew had whispered in her ear.

  But she shook her head. “Please.” She hadn’t said she wanted a little more blissful time before withstanding the inevitable questions from Lily, the knowing winks from Elaine. Not that any of them wouldn’t guess by her smile. Or her happy walk. Or the glow that Andrew had said radiated from her cheeks as he kissed her face one last time and went out the door.

  Still, as she walked into the shop the morning after the storm, when the sky was smugly bright with sunshine, as if it had never done the things it had done the day before, Jo was greeted by Elaine, who looked so happy too that she had to hold back from blurting out, I’m in love with Andrew and he’s in love with me.

  Instead, it was Elaine who did the blurting. “Ovens,” she said. “I need them.”

  “Well,” Jo said, hanging up her coat, “you go, girl.”

  Elaine put one hand on her hip. “I’m serious, Jo. I need a full restaurant kitchen next door. It’s the only way we’ll be able to cater multiple weddings. Lily already took another call from a prospective bride this morning. We have to get this business into gear, and we have to do it fast.”

  Jo walked through the studio, said good morning to Sarah, who answered with a short wave, then went into the showroom, where Lily busily chatted on the phone and Andrew sat, smiling—maybe glowing too.

  It was difficult to look at him and not reveal her joy.

  “A full kitchen sounds like a heavy investment,” Jo said in a steady, even tone, as if the most wonderful man who’d ever come into her life wasn’t sitting five feet from her. “Maybe you should wait until our revenues are more solid. Until we have more checks in hand. Or at least until the Bensons pay off their balance.”

  Elaine shook her head. “I’m going to do this on my own. I plan to remortgage my house.”

  Moving to her desk, Jo marveled at the changes in Elaine, at the confidence she’d gained in the last six months. She’d been at such a low point after her breakup with Martin. Perhaps it was true that sometimes people had to hit bottom before they could pull themselves back up, one leg of panty hose at a time. Had Jo done that with Brian? Was that why she was finally able to love a man again? She cleared her throat. “You managed the Benson wedding without a problem.”

  “Only because the Stone Castle has a kitchen. I don’t want the Second Chances catering arm to be restricted to those venues. I want a full kitchen here and the equipment for a field kitchen off site. Off any site. It will give the business a great competitive edge.”

  “A coup de grâce,” Andrew said with a chuckle. “Or would that be foie de gras?”

  Jo quickly glanced at Andrew. He winked a sexy wink.

  “It’s foie gras,” Lily said, hanging up the phone. “No de involved.” She looked at Jo, who peeled her eyes from Andrew with much reluctance. “We just had another call. A July wedding at Laurel Lake. I doubt that there’s a kitchen there.”

  “I rest my case,” Elaine said. “Which is why I need to steal Andrew for today. I need him to go to Springfield with me, to the restaurant supply outlet. I’d like to be up and running to serve our Valentine’s Day events.”

  Andrew laughed. “Elaine, I don’t know anything about restaurant equipment.”

  “You didn’t know about wedding planning either,” Lily chimed in. “Now you’re a pro. Or something like that.”

  Everyone laughed, because it was pretty funny. Andrew David, internationally renowned television journalist, turned Andrew Kennedy, receptionist to wedding planners. None of them had mentioned that now that they knew who Andrew was, past and present, perhaps he might desire an alternative career to working for a bunch of women. Perhaps, like Jo, the others wanted him to stick around. That would change, Jo guessed, when they learned what had occurred between the two of them. That would change if they caught sight of the love sparks that now jumped from her to him and him to her. If nothing else, Jo would be distracted, Andrew would be distracted, nothing would get done, and their secret might leap from its safe yet still fragile cocoon, and everything would change too fast, too soon. She sighed a quiet sigh. “I suppose we can spare him,” she said. “I want to work with Sarah on the Rhonda Blair wedding this morning. This afternoon the couple from Pittsfield is coming in for their initial consultation.” She pulled her eyes from his again. “Unless you need him for something, Lily…”

  Lily shook her head. “I want to work on the Rhonda Blair wedding too. I’m thinking about over-the-top tasteful…I’m thinking harps….”

  Elaine signaled to Andrew, and Andrew stood up. “At your service, ma’am,” he said. “Please. Anything to escape the harps.” He turned to Jo. “So we’ll see you later, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Jo replied with a lopsided grin, though what she really wanted was to stand up and kiss him good-bye, a long, lingering kiss that he’d remember all the way east on the turnpike and all day and then back home again.

  By noon, Sarah had a headache. She loved Lily, really she did, but sometimes the woman’s enthusiasm was annoying as hell. It had been bad enough that the day before, Sarah had braved the storm and made it into the shop (once she’d made it to the Hilltop Bed and Breakfast, she was more than halfway there). She’d worked all day, then spent the night on Lily’s couch upstairs (“There’s no need for you to risk your life, Sarah,” Lily had said. “What would we do without you? What would Burch do without his mother?”). She hadn’t bothered to tell Lily that Burch, apparently, would do just fine. Instead, she’d stayed because she was exhausted from trying to distract herself. She was glad she’d left extra food out for Elton. Even he would know better than to venture too far beyond his doggy door in the howling storm.

  She hadn’t, however, expected Lily to treat their snow day as if it were a girls’ sleepover, complete with a dinner of popcorn and Doritos and endless chatter, chatter, chatter about Frank Forbes, her ardent beau, and how wonderful he was.

  “His wife left him after years and years. How could she have done such a hideous thing?

  “His parents are ailing but still living, and he takes care of them. And he still runs the family antiques business as if it belonged to his father, always asking his advice, always including him in the big decisions.

  “And that horrid brother of his, Brian! What he did to Jo was bad enough, but can you imagine how his parents feel?”

  When Lily got off the subject of Frank Forbes and got onto Sarah and Jason and what did Sarah think was going to happen, Sarah promptly said good night. Lily told her she was a bore, though she at last turned off the light.

  Sarah rubbed her temples now, amazed that they had accomplished anything that morning. Because Rhonda Blair’s fiancé was from Spain, and Rhonda’s Texas home was so close to Mexico, they decided to follow a color scheme of red satin and gold lamé. “Fat red roses,” Sarah had said, “bundled into bouquets with wide, metallic gold ribbon. We can layer them along the fireplace mantel—not in vases. I can make gold pouches to hold just enough water to keep them moist.”

  “And let’s add touches of black leather to the decor,” Lily had chirped. “It would be rather erotic, don’t you think? We could make the groom look like a conquistador.”

  “Or a moron,” Sarah said, and that’s when Jo suggested they take a lunch break, and Sarah said it was the best idea anyone had had that day.

  “I’m going across the green to see how Frank is doing,” Lily announced. Converting the old town hall to hold his antiques business was proving a challenge. (Sarah had heard all the yakkety-yak details the night before.) But Sarah recognized that being involved—going with Frank to auctions and offering her feminine opinion—was keeping always-in-motion Lily from getting weary of the sometimes tedious tasks at Second Chances.

  “Sarah?” Jo asked. “Are you inter
ested in a sandwich at the luncheonette?” The luncheonette was two doors down from Second Chances, and the women (and Andrew) had become its best customers. No doubt that would change once Elaine’s catering kitchen was up and running. But for now the luncheonette offered a decent sandwich and a cup of soup.

  “Sure,” she said, then went to get her coat. As she stood by the back door buttoning it, she heard Jo’s voice call out from the showroom, “Hello, how are you?”

  A man replied, “Is Sarah here?”

  She retraced her steps into the showroom. Sutter Jones was standing there.

  “I decided this was more important than going to L.A.,” he said. “I would have come back right away, but what with the storm…”

  Jo didn’t say a word. Sarah knew that Jo would be confused—she didn’t know Sarah had talked to Sutter again. Jo hadn’t asked, because she respected Sarah’s privacy the way Sarah respected hers.

  “Maybe you could bring me back a tomato soup and grilled cheese,” Sarah said to Jo. “Are you hungry, Sutter?”

  “Tomato soup and grilled cheese would be great,” he said. He took off his leather gloves and unwound the cashmere scarf from the neckline of his coat. “I never thought a New England winter could equal the intensity of the Sierra Nevadas.”

  Jo smiled and, without another word, slipped quietly out the door.

  “I haven’t told my friends,” Sarah said as soon as Jo was gone. “I’ve known that my mother was white since I was in college, but I never told them”—she stumbled for the word—

  “That you’re a white Indian,” he said.

  She blinked.

  “I know your mother’s white,” he said in a clear, definitive voice. “I’ve known her for many years.” He sat in one of the plump navy chairs across from the desk. After a moment he said, “You don’t know anything about her, do you?”