The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

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СКАЧАТЬ to see if her signature looked familiar. But the check was stamped with For Deposit Only and had been cashed without question at a local bank.

      Micah considered for a while that the writer might be Landy. In the end, he didn’t think so, because she had no children and her high-school heartthrob was dead. Susan wrote with a lightness of spirit that had left Landy one night on the stairs of her grandmother’s house.

      He didn’t really know what Landy did, though. She worked at the realty sometimes, but not often. She substitute-taught everything from kindergarten to senior English and occasionally waited tables during the lunch rush Down at Jenny’s. She volunteered everywhere, clerking for the blood drive, reading aloud at Wee Care Preschool, and delivering Meals on Wheels.

      He saw her in church, in the same pew as Jessie Titus Browning with Jessie’s three children lined up between them. Sometimes, Landy wasn’t at the service, and he wondered where she was until one Sunday he went to the basement restroom and found her presiding over the nursery.

      When he caught sight of her that Sunday, Micah stood in the door of the big room that housed the nursery, not noticing the cribs, the changing table or the miniature table and chairs. Not even really seeing the six or seven preschoolers milling around the room.

      He saw only Landy, standing with a baby on her hip. She swayed gently, crooning into the ear of the sobbing infant. Watching her, he remembered something his father had said once. “Equal rights or no, there’s nothing in the world any prettier than a woman with a baby in her arms.”

      Pop had been right.

      The woman looked up and saw him then, and smiled. “Good morning,” she said. “Here.”

      Before he knew what was happening, she had plunked the weeping baby in his arms and was rummaging in a cupboard. “These kids are starving to death. They know they get treats down here, and Colby—he’s the one you’re holding—has kept me so busy I’m behind.”

      “Okay.” Micah looked down at the wizened little face of the baby. “I’ll try not to drop you if you’ll quit crying, how does that sound?”

      He stepped carefully between the toys that littered the carpeted floor and sat in a rocking chair, propping Colby up on his shoulder the way he’d seen countless women do. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? The baby smelled good, and Micah breathed deep.

      Landy handed out disgusting-looking fruit things to the children and began pouring juice out of a can into paper cups. “Sing to him,” she suggested over her shoulder. “He likes it.”

      “You think so, huh,” he grunted, but when Colby’s whimpers became sobs again, he began to sing “Yellow Submarine” in a low voice.

      Pretty soon, Colby stopped crying, and by the time Micah had finished “Hey, Jude” and was halfway through “A Hard Day’s Night,” the other children were quiet, too. They sat cross-legged on the floor and listened.

      “That’s classical music, my dad says,” commented Lindsey, Eli’s youngest. “My brother Max says it’s just old.”

      The snort of laughter from the woman leaning against a changing table made Micah glad he’d come down the stairs, even though his hand was asleep and Colby’s diaper had sprung a definite leak.

      “Would you have dinner with me tonight?” he asked, not caring that all the children heard him and Lindsey was probably going to report to her father that his friend Micah was asking Landy for a date.

      Landy started, and her cheeks turned pink, but she was smiling again when she answered. “Sure, if you’ll sing ‘Twist and Shout.’ I always liked that.”

      “It’s a date, Jess. What in the hell am I doing going on a date?” Clad in white cotton underwear, Landy paced between her closet and dressing table, so distracted that she didn’t even think about her leg.

      “Driving yourself crazy, I’d say,” said Jessie, “and it’s about time.”

      “He just looked so sweet, holding Colby and singing, I couldn’t say no. But Blake used to be sweet, too, and if I’d said no more often, he’d probably still be alive.”

      “Landy—”

      “It’s true. Don’t try and tell me it’s not.” Landy reached for the cup of tea that sat cooling on a table.

      “Okay, I won’t. But maybe if I’d told somebody the first time he ever hit you—after you smiled at Micah and told him good game—Blake would still be alive. Maybe if his parents hadn’t blinded themselves to his violence, he’d still be alive. Maybe if the steps in your grandma’s house hadn’t been so steep, there wouldn’t have been time for the gun to go off and he’d still be alive.” Jessie’s normally soft brown eyes snapped. “You going to live the rest of your life on maybes?”

      Landy got up, going back to her closet. “Maybe,” she said over her shoulder, and laughed when Jessie raised one finger in a universal gesture.

      “Wear a dress.” Jessie poured more tea.

      “Oh, Jess, I don’t think so.” Landy looked down at the scars left by the surgeries on her leg. “This doesn’t look too pretty.”

      Their eyes met in the mirror. “You’re right. You’ve been hiding from who you are ever since Blake died,” said Jessie. “Why stop now?”

      Stung, Landy reached far into the closet and withdrew a hanger.

      It looked like a basic “little black dress” until the wearer moved and hints of plum shimmered in its depths. Darts and seams made it fit as though it had been tailored for her, even though she’d bought it off the clearance rack at the boutique beside Down at Jenny’s. She’d never worn it, but sometimes she would come into her room and try it on. She’d turn this way and that before the long mirror and imagine herself unscarred and free.

      Maybe, just for tonight, that’s what she could be.

      She slid her feet into strappy black cloth heels and fastened silver hoops in her ears, a silver chain around her throat that nestled inside the scooped neckline of the dress, and a row of delicate bracelets that slipped up and down her arm and captured light when they moved.

      “You look wonderful,” said Jessie, her voice soft.

      Landy looked into the mirror again, almost afraid there would be no reflection there because the Landy Wisdom who wore clothes like this no longer existed.

      “It’s really me,” she said, swallowing sudden, ridiculous tears.

      By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she knew the heels were a mistake. She already had one off when the doorbell rang, and she limped to answer, standing with her stockinged foot tucked behind her other leg.

      “Hi,” she said.

      “Wow,” he said.

      She tugged her shoe back on. If she regretted it, so be it. “We should go,” she said. “I’ll turn back into a frump when the eleven o’clock news comes on.”

      “Never in a million years.” He looked up at where Jessie stood on the stairs. “She have a curfew, Jess?”

      She СКАЧАТЬ