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Authors: Shelby Gates

Second Chance (3 page)

BOOK: Second Chance
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Elle spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning. The moments she’d wanted to spend wallowing, crying in a collapsed heap on the floor? That idea had disappeared as soon as Cash had walked out the door. She’d already spent a decade crying and regretting things that had happened on the island. She wasn’t about to waste any more time. Not if she could help it, anyway.

She stripped the sheets and drop cloths off the furniture and started the first of several loads of laundry. Thankfully, her mother had thought to turn the utilities on. And thankfully, the ancient washing machine still had some life left in it. She didn’t have laundry soap, but a hot rinse was all she wanted, just something to get the dust off.

She rummaged through the cupboards in the kitchen. Someone had come through and cleared out the food. She whispered a silent thank you for that. The last thing she’d wanted was to find a refrigerator filled with twelve year-old containers of sour milk and moldy cottage cheese.

She made a mental note of what she found as she pried open the cupboard doors. Her grandmother’s familiar dishes were there, the scalloped china plates etched with tiny pink flowers. She’d always insisted on using her good china, had never understood why people stowed them away in hutches, only hauling them out for special occasions. The same with her sterling-silver flatware. She opened another cupboard and found the old jelly jars used for drinking glasses, the chipped mugs for coffee and tea. Down below, a cupboard filled with heavy copper pots and pans for cooking and baking. It was all there.

Under the stove, she found a few cleaning supplies. Dust rags, a half-full bottle of Pine Sol, and the lemon-scented wood polish she remembered so well. In the closet by the back door, a mop and a broom and her grandmother’s old aluminum canister vacuum.

It wasn’t much but it was enough to get started.

She attacked her room first, the tiny guest bedroom tucked into the back corner of the cottage. It was east-facing, its bay window a massive picture frame for the Atlantic ocean below. She stopped for a moment and focused on the view of the ocean that stretched endlessly before her, a brilliant blue dotted with whitecaps. On impulse, she unlatched the lock and cranked the side window open, letting the breeze tickle her face and rustle the white valance mounted above.

This was what she wanted. What she’d missed.

She stripped off the tarp that covered the white daybed, then rummaged in the closet for a set of sheets. She found them, just like she knew she would, the sheets and pillowcases neatly folded and tucked in a plastic storage bag,. She unzipped the bag and the scent of lavender filled the air, bringing tears to her eyes. Twelve years ago, these had been in her grandmother’s hands, freshly laundered, stowed back in the bag, simply waiting for the next time Elle would visit.

And that time had never come.

The sound of a phone ringing startled Elle. It wasn’t her cell, but the house phone. A line that she didn’t know was still connected. She hurried to the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Elle?” It was a woman’s voice, one she didn’t recognize.

“Yes.”

“Oh, Elle. This is Evelyn Landemeer.”

If Cash had been the last person she’d expected to hear from, Evelyn Landemeer was a close second.

“Evelyn,” she said. “Hello.”

“Dear, it’s so good to hear your voice,” she said, her voice stiff and formal. Exactly how Elle remembered. “It’s been much too long.”

“It has been a long time,” Elle said.

“It’s not quite the same around here without your grandmother. Hasn’t been for years.”

Elle tried to picture Evelyn. She had no idea how twelve years might have aged her, but she remembered what she’d looked like the summer she’d last visited. Tall and slender with perfectly coiffed silver-blond curls. Tailored clothing, expensive jewelery. The complete antithesis of her grandmother.

“I miss Lily terribly,” Evelyn continued.

Elle wasn’t sure what to say to that. Her grandmother and Evelyn had what could only be described as an icy relationship. Her grandmother rarely had an ill word for anyone, but she always bristled when Evelyn’s name was mentioned, her lips pressing together in a thin line as she maintained a stony silence. Elle had never learned why and it was a subject she’d let die with her grandmother.

“I don’t want to keep you,” Evelyn said. “I’m sure you’re busy getting settled in and what not.”

Elle wondered if there was a camera crew following her and broadcasting her every move.

“But I have an offer for you,” Evelyn said.

“An offer?”

“Yes, dear. For your grandmother’s cottage.”

“Someone just told me there was only one realtor on the island,” Elle said, confused. “And I haven’t even put it up for sale yet.”

Evelyn chuckled. “No, no, dear. You’re misunderstanding. I’m making the offer. I want to buy the cottage.”

Elle tightened her grip on the phone. “Excuse me?”

“An offer,” Evelyn repeated. “To purchase it.”

“Oh.” Elle hesitated, letting the words sink in.

It was exactly what her mother wanted. An offer to buy the house.

“I’m up to date on its current market value,” Evelyn said. “Two hundred thousand. Cash.”

“Oh.” It was the only thing Elle seemed capable of saying. The phone she was on was old-fashioned, the kind with a coiled cord, and she wrapped it tight around her finger.

“It’s a more-than-fair offer,” she said. “Especially considering its condition.”

Elle shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “Yes,” she said slowly. “It seems like a fair offer.”

“So?” Evelyn waited.

“Well,” Elle stammered. “I
…I’ll need to consider it. Take it back to my mom. She’s the one selling, not me.”

“Lovely. Shall I have my lawyer draw up the papers?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“This isn’t a standing offer,” Evelyn warned, her voice suddenly frosty. “I expect an answer by mid-week.” She said goodbye and the phone went dead.

Elle returned the phone to its cradle. She sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

She could sell it today and walk away with the money. Hand it over to her mother, get the five percent she was promised, and be done. She could do a lot with ten thousand dollars.

And she could get off the island and away from Cash Brady.

She stood up and picked up the house phone, her fingers poised above the mounted key pad. Ten seconds was all it would take. Ten seconds to punch in her mother’s phone number and tell her about the deal.

But she hesitated.

Calling her now would mean leaving the island. Soon. And now that she was there, back in her grandmother’s familiar house and back on the island that had been her home away from home for her entire childhood, it didn’t seem like such a clear decision. Especially, because it was Evelyn Landemeer making the offer.

She knew, without a doubt, that her grandmother wouldn’t want her house to go to Evelyn Landemeer.

Not for two hundred thousand dollars.

Not for anything.

 

FIVE

 

 

The first item to hit Elle’s shopping cart was coffee. Two cans. Next was creamer. She’d spent her entire first day on the island, cleaning and mulling over both her encounter with Cash and her conversation with Evelyn. The last thing on her mind was groceries. When she’d finally stopped and looked up from scrubbing counter tops and washing floors, it was past nine o’clock. She hadn’t stopped once for food.

On cue, her stomach growled. But she knew the island, knew that Foster’s Foods would already be closed up for the night. George Foster had the only grocery store on the island and his prices were fair but his hours were not. He closed every night at eight, without fail. Sundays, he didn’t even open.

She’d gone to bed hungry and headed to the store first thing the next morning, starving and with a raging caffeine-withdrawal headache.

She pushed her cart down each aisle, selecting frugally. With no income to speak of and a very small savings account, she had to be careful. Coffee was a necessity, Oreos were not. She grabbed bags of noodles and rice, chose seasonal produce. She skipped the bread aisle and bought a bag of flour and sugar and a container of yeast. She was perfectly capable of making her own. A stop in the freezer section for frozen hamburger patties and the dairy aisle for milk, cheese and butter and she was set.

She maneuvered the heavy cart to the store’s check out. Two cash registers. No conveyor belt for groceries. A cashier waited, a woman she didn’t recognize. She wasn’t surprised; after all, it had been more than a decade since she’d stepped foot into the store.

A cooler of beverages sat adjacent to the cash register, stuffed with sodas and cold coffee drinks. Her head pulsed and she opened the glass door, selected a Starbucks frappuccino. It was too much money but she didn’t care. She needed it.

“Are you filming an episode of Chopped?”

She recognized that voice. She turned around.

Cash stood behind her, holding a bottle of diet Pepsi and a sandwich from the deli counter. He wore black slacks and a sea-blue polo with the words Keefer Realty embroidered on it.

“Excuse me?”

He motioned toward her cart. “All of those ingredients. Not a single pre-packaged item.”

He’d inspected her entire cart?

“I like to cook,” she said. She winced and rubbed her throbbing temple.

He smiled. “Since when?”

Twelve years ago she’d abhorred cooking, had avoided the kitchen at all costs. She could barely open a can of soup. She hated that he remembered that.

“Since a while,” she said. She put her groceries on the small counter by the register and the cashier started her bill.

“Hmm.” Cash went to the other lane, handing over his drink and sandwich. He paid and grabbed the plastic bag the cashier handed him.

Elle waited for her total, watching the prices as they flitted across the screen. She swallowed hard when the cashier announced the amount and handed over her debit card. She’d have to use every trick she knew to stretch her groceries and make them last.

Cash lingered nearby while the cashier loaded the bags into the cart.

“Do you need something?” Elle asked.

He shrugged. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, really? What would I need from you?”

His eyes settled on the cart of groceries. “A ride.” He paused. “Unless you plan on pushing that cart all the way back to your place.”

Elle felt her face redden. In her haste to buy coffee and food, she’d sort of forgotten that minor detail. Transporting everything home.

He glanced at his watch. “I’m free for another hour. And I don’t mind swinging you home. But I’m not gonna sit here and wait.”

He turned to go.

She gritted her teeth. “Wait.”

He stopped.

She sighed. “A ride home would be…nice.”

His mouth stretched into a smile. He stowed his bag in the front portion of the cart and pushed it through the doors of the grocery store.

A blanket of thin clouds hid the morning sun but they couldn’t hold back the heat. Ten o’clock in the morning and it was already warm. Elle pushed up the sleeves of her thin, long-sleeved t-shirt. She’d need to change as soon as she got home.

Cash stopped the cart at the back of a silver Honda Pilot. He unlocked the trunk and transferred the groceries. Elle intercepted one of the bags, fishing out her iced coffee.

He finished loading the bags and slammed the trunk shut. “Beautiful day,” he commented.

Elle moved to the front of the car, opened the passenger door. “It’s always a beautiful day here.”

“Always?” Cash slid into the driver’s seat. “Your memory must be failing. What about the summer before junior year? The summer it rained for twenty days straight?”

“It wasn’t twenty days,” she said. She cracked the top of her coffee and took a long drink. She could instantly feel the icy liquid temper her headache.

“OK. Nineteen.”

“Whatever.” She didn’t want to make small talk, didn’t want to reminisce with him. If they started talking about the weather twelve years ago, they might start talking about other things. Things she wanted to keep in the past.

He fiddled with the air conditioner, pushing buttons, and a soft blast of cool air hit her face.

“So tell me what plans you have,” he said.

She breathed a sigh of relief. She could talk about the present. “I already told you. Get the house ready to sell.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He approached a stop sign, clicked his blinker on. A group of teenage girls in skimpy bikinis crossed the sidewalk, bags strapped over their shoulders, headed for the beach. “But get ready how?”

Elle shrugged. “I don’t know. Just clean it up. Take off the wallpaper. Paint. Maybe refinish the floors. Do some work in the yard. That kind of stuff.”

BOOK: Second Chance
12.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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