The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

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СКАЧАТЬ and its park benches painted green each year and replaced as needed. The walkway was low enough to have been flooded a few times, but high enough to elude most of Mother Nature’s watery tantrums.

      Houses surrounded the walkway on oddly shaped lots, scarcely visible even to each other when trees were in full leaf. Most of the houses were old, some of them large and elegant, some small and cozy.

      Landy had grown up here, in her grandmother’s house at the end of the thumb. Blake Trent had lived four houses away, Jessie Titus in Landy’s grandmother’s carriage house.

      Micah had lived across town in what was optimistically termed a subdivision. Three bedroom, one bath ranch houses, six to the acre, filled the neighborhood. A sign at its entrance told all comers its name was Twilight View, but everyone knew it as the Bowery.

      “Do you live in your grandmother’s house?” asked Micah, driving slowly up the wide avenue the houses faced.

      “I sold it after…Blake died. The church bought it for a parsonage. I was going to start over somewhere else, but I didn’t really want to leave Taft.” She gestured toward the end of the thumb. “My house is further down.”

      Micah turned into the driveway of the house that was for sale, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that she was smiling.

      “This is my favorite house on River Walk,” she said, unfastening her seat belt before he’d even stopped the car. “It’s where Eli St. John grew up. Remember him?”

      Who could forget Eli? Class president. Another of the running backs from the high school football team. He’d been neither as flamboyant as Blake nor as good as Micah. “I am known,” he had said from his spot as the sixth man on the basketball team, “as the deuce of all trades because I’m not good enough to be a jack, much less a master.” He’d been, if guys had talked about things like that, Micah’s best friend.

      Eli, would you come and visit if I lived in your old house?

      Micah felt a surge of pleasure with the memories, and—annoyed with himself for the pleasure—said gruffly, “Is he still in Taft?”

      Landy nodded. “Not still, but again, like you. He got divorced a few years ago and came back here to raise his kids.”

      “What does he do?” Without waiting for an answer, he got out of the car and walked around to open her door, but she was already out, closing the door herself.

      “He’s the min—”

      She was interrupted by a shout. “Well, it is him. I thought for sure you were making it up, Landy.”

      Micah felt his shoulders being thumped and turned to look into Eli St. John’s open countenance. The face had changed so little since he’d last seen it that Micah thought for a disjointed moment that Eli was still eighteen.

      “Micah, it’s so good to see you.”

      “Eli.” Micah did a little thumping of his own, and felt his throat tighten.

      “Landy called and told me you were coming to look at the folks’ house,” said Eli, leading the way to the front door, “so I came over to hide where the roof is leaking and stop up all the gushers coming into the basement.”

      Standing in the foyer of the St. John house, with his coat dripping onto the hardwood floor, Micah felt as though he never wanted to leave it. He hadn’t been inside it for twenty years, but he remembered where the fireplace would be, flanked by built-in bookcases with glass doors. He knew the floor of the living room would be constructed of wide planks, with the imperfections and irregularities of age adding to its beauty. He knew, before he peered into the library or the formal dining room or the family room off the kitchen, before he walked up the curving front staircase or the crooked, narrow back one, that he’d come home.

      Halfway up the front stairs, he said, “I’ll take it.”

      Eli, following him, stopped. “You wouldn’t like to know how much it is?”

      He shrugged. “Are you going to screw me?”

      “No.”

      Micah gave him a sideways grin. “Then, no, I don’t need to know right now. When can I move in?”

      “Tomorrow.”

      He met Eli’s outstretched hand with his own. “Tomorrow? For all you know, I’m a con man looking for a respectable place to launder money.”

      Eli’s smile was enigmatic. “I was on the football field with you. I know better. Landis, you going to take care of this?”

      Micah had forgotten she was there, so enthralled had he been by the house. He looked down at where she stood, his gaze meeting hers in mute apology. But she was laughing, and her eyes were sparkling.

      How could he, for even one minute, have forgotten her presence?

      “Couldn’t you two at least talk this out a little more so I will have earned my commission?”

      Eli looked at his watch. “I don’t have time. I have to make sure the madding crowd over there doesn’t dismantle the dining room, and then I have to make myself look properly preacherly before the evening service. Call me in the morning, Micah, and we’ll finish this over breakfast.”

      He wrung Micah’s hand again, sketched a wave to Landy as he passed her, and was gone.

      “Preacherly?” said Micah.

      “Eli’s the minister at the Methodist Church.”

      “A minister?” But it fit, Micah realized after a moment—Eli was one of the good guys.

      His attention shifted back to Landy. “You never did have anything to eat,” he said suddenly. “Let me buy you dinner.”

      Chapter Two

      Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: April is such a beautiful month. Things start getting green again and there’s hope everywhere and baseball fields ring with the sounds of joy.

      But you have to watch for storms in April, have to listen to tornado warnings and watches and open your basement door and keep a bottle of water and a first-aid kit down there in case something bad happens. Sometimes the price we pay for spring is a heavy one.

      The fact that she wanted to have dinner with Micah surprised Landy. She hadn’t shared a meal alone with a man since the last time with Blake. Her husband had skimmed his meat across the table like a pebble on a pond and she’d said, “I’m sorry,” even though there had been nothing wrong with the pork chop—everything was wrong with the marriage, where terror and abuse had places at the dinner table.

      She hesitated, lost in memory, and was brought back to the present by Micah’s questioning gaze. “All right,” she said, “but come to my house. My cooking is the best example of mediocrity you’ll find this side of a fast-food place. But I have some chili I can heat up that’ll be perfect for a rainy night like this. We can get there in two minutes on the Walk.” And it was safe. Nothing could happen to her there in a house where Blake had never been, where pain had never lived.

      Micah nodded, СКАЧАТЬ