The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

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      “Why?” He had to force the word out.

      “Why what? Why did an intelligent woman stay with an abusive husband? I told you it was a classic story—my reasons are just as classic. He didn’t mean to, I deserved it, it won’t happen again, I can’t manage on my own because I don’t know how. You’ve probably heard them all before.”

      He nodded slightly, his jaw hurting from being clamped so tightly. This shouldn’t have happened to her. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but especially her. She’s fragile, small, a debutante, for God’s sake.

      “Finally, five years ago, we got divorced. It was very civilized, as divorces go. I kept Grandmother’s house and Blake married his secretary and went to a law firm in Indianapolis. It was more prestigious than his father’s firm. Also less accepting of his lax professional standards. He was back with his father within a year.”

      She rose, straightening slowly, and limped to the coffeepot, bringing it back and refilling their cups. When she returned to her seat, she gave a small gasp and grasped her leg. “Charley horse,” she said, with a hitching little laugh.

      He nodded, knowing she lied. He wanted to offer to rub the pain from her leg, but sensed the gesture wouldn’t be welcome.

      “Blake’s new wife came to my house late one night two and a half years ago. It was storming to beat the band and she asked for shelter. I remember thinking how much smarter she was than I’d been, getting away earlier instead of waiting for him to change. Blake arrived within the hour.”

      Micah wanted to tell her to stop. The fact that his jaw hurt and her leg hurt and the fire needed another log were all good reasons for her to stop, weren’t they?

      She set down her cup, and he saw that the hand with the chewed fingernails and bumpy knuckles trembled the way it had that afternoon in the church basement. He took it in his and held it, not saying anything.

      “She and I were at the top of the stairs when he let himself in—I’d never changed the locks, since the divorce was so civilized. What an idiot I was.” She shuddered, and her fingers tightened around his. “But it was different this time, because Blake had a gun. I’d felt so powerful, so alive, after we were divorced that apparently I thought I could stop bullets, because I stepped in front of his wife. But he wasn’t interested in me and tried to push me out of the way. I grabbed his arm—can you believe that? The man had a gun and I grabbed his arm. I knocked him off balance and when he went down the stairs, he took me with him.”

      She swallowed hard, and her eyes were dark and sad, glimmering with unshed tears. “The gun went off, just like in the movies. God, what a horrendous noise that makes. I had blood all over me and I was hurt, so I thought I’d been shot, but when I turned my head, he was lying there and not moving. He died on the way to the hospital.”

      “Did his wife tell a different story?”

      “No, but Lucas didn’t believe either one of us.” She rubbed her leg with her free hand, not looking at him. “I kept remembering how much I’d loved Blake, how much fun he could be when he wanted to. I thought of how he insisted I learn to use a gun correctly to keep me safe. It’s easy to blame yourself when the other person is dead.”

      “What happened then?”

      “Lucas lost the case, I sold Grandmother’s house to the church and life went on. On the surface, at least. Underneath—” she hesitated and drew her hand from his “—underneath, I think my life ended when Blake’s did.”

      He gestured toward her leg. “Is that a leftover from the fall down the stairs?”

      She nodded. “It was broken in three places. The surgeon wants to operate again, but I keep putting it off.”

      Micah lifted his hand to her face, cupping her cheek and stroking a tear from her lashes with his thumb. “I think maybe your life’s broken, like your leg was, but not over. Some healing takes a long time.”

      She nodded. “But some things never heal at all.”

      Chapter Three

      Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Don’t you just hate moving? On Susan’s personal list of favorites, it’s right up there with root canal and cleaning the mold out of the refrigerator. But there’s an upside to it. When you’re actually living in your new home, sleeping in your own bed, and spilling grape juice on your own new carpet, you get a different feeling from any other. You feel at home—there’s nothing any better than that. Sometimes, moving is a second, third, or last chance at a brave, wonderful new life.

      Landy helped Micah move into the St. John house. She pushed furniture around after it was delivered, hung towels in the bathrooms and prepared supper for him and his father three nights running. She and Jessie stood on stepladders and measured for window treatments, then put the airy curtains up when they arrived.

      On his first night in the house, Micah gave an impromptu dinner party and Eli, Jessie, Landy and Nancy Burnside came. They laughed, told stories, ate pizza and drank beer. When everyone went home, Micah kissed Nancy and Jessie on the cheek. Landy brought up the rear, and he didn’t kiss her at all, just gave her a long look. After that night, he hardly saw her at all.

      She waved to him across the produce aisle at the grocery store, but by the time he carried his purchases through the checkout, her aged black Chevy was pulling out of the parking lot. He saw her on the River Walk most evenings at dusk, walking as fast as her hitching gait allowed. She and Eli were in and out of each other’s houses, too. Sometimes one of Eli’s numerous and sundry children accompanied her trek around the thumb, and the lapping river water would transmit the sound of her laughter to Micah as he sat on his back porch.

      “I always liked that little girl,” his father said one evening, and Micah looked up to see the setting sun embracing Landy, turning her hair the color of orange marmalade and making his heart ache in a place he hadn’t known was there.

      He thought then about asking her to go to dinner with him, maybe crossing the big bridge into Cincinnati to see a play, but later that night he saw Eli slip through the darkness to her house.

      It was a good match—Eli and Landy. Micah told himself that, but then he sat silent and morose on the porch until he saw Eli go home.

      The “Window Over the Sink” columns arrived in the mail every Friday, and he printed them in Saturday’s Trib. People liked them. “Been there, done that, bought the damn T-shirt,” they told him.

      Plans for the newspaper were working out, coming together faster than he’d thought possible. Advertising and subscriptions were both on an upswing. The town clergymen took turns writing a short, inspirational piece every week. Mrs. Burnside did a rambling twenty inches or so on who was doing what. It was corny, she admitted, writing down when so-and-so’s daughter from Ithaca, New York, visited with her two young sons and spoiled cocker spaniel, but people liked reading it and she had a good time compiling it. Micah liked her writing—and her—so well he offered her the receptionist’s job and she took it, managing his newspaper office as efficiently as she had geometry class. Her coffee was good, too; his entire staff had threatened mutiny when, being the first one in the office one Monday morning, he made the coffee.

      “This stuff,” said Joe Carter mildly, “gives sludge a bad name.” So Nancy made the coffee.

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