The Debutante's Second Chance

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For Tahne Flaherty, Kari Wilson, Laura Flaherty,

Chris Flaherty, Jim Wilson and Jeremy Flaherty.

Some by blood and some in-law,

but all the children of my heart.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Prologue

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Susan, I’m married to my high-school heartthrob, and have three great kids. I named this column “Window Over the Sink” because it’s my favorite part of my house. I call it the poor woman’s therapist, because when I look through its panes at the Twilight River and imagine the breeze singing through the sycamores and maples and cottonwoods, I feel immense comfort. I’m writing this first column right around April Fool’s day because that’s something else that gives comfort in this life: being a damn fool once in a while….

The first column appeared on Micah Walker’s desk on the last day of March, before he’d even put out the first issue of the Taft Tribune with his name on the masthead as the owner-editor. The article was in a plain, white, number-ten envelope that had been mailed in Taft; the return address was a post office box. The column ran about seven hundred words, neatly printed on a laser printer. Some of it, like “high-school heartthrob,” made his journalistic side wince, but the terminology fit in the small Indiana town on the Twilight River. If he tightened it a little, it would fit right into the Tribune.

Allison Scott, the reporter who had come with him from Lexington to work on the Tribune, stood in the doorway of his office. “Did you write this by any chance?” he asked when she came in. He handed her the column.

“No,” she said instantly, and began to read. When she was finished, she looked wistful. “I kind of wish I had. It’s not technically perfect, but you sure can feel it.”

“You’re a romantic.” She was, but that didn’t stop her from being one of the finest reporters he’d ever met. “I’ll tighten it up and run it. I don’t think ‘Susan Billings’ is her real name, but that’s who we’ll make the check out to.”

“Don’t tighten it,” Allie suggested. “Let the feelings come through.” She turned to go.

He nodded. “Where are you off to?”

“A meeting. Domestic Violence Awareness. They’re going to discuss a sheltering system for battered women and children, the Safe Harbor Railroad.”

Micah shook his head. “Little towns are supposed to be utopian. They shouldn’t need that kind of group. Let me know if there’s something the paper can do,” he said, “without endangering anyone, I mean.”

“I don’t know if they’ll even let me in. Secrecy is the reason for its success, I guess.”

He nodded, half-listening. “How’s your mother?” he asked, without looking up.

“What?” Allie sounded startled.

“You know, your mom. How’s she doing?” Micah never interfered in anyone’s private life; he was pretty proud of remembering that Allie’s mother had been ill.

“Oh. Better. Much better.” But she seemed shaken by the question.

“Good.” He smiled absently in her direction, his mind already moving away. “That’s good.”

“Well.”

She seemed uncharacteristically indecisive, and he looked at her again. “Was there something else, Allie? Do you need a few more days off?”

“No. No, thanks.” She straightened. “Well, I’m off to the meeting. You’re right, though—how could a place that produces a ‘Window Over the Sink’ need an Underground Railroad? It just seems wrong.”

Chapter One

Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Sometimes I miss having heroes. All the ones I knew when I was young seem to have developed feet of clay and leapt without conscience from the pedestals I placed them on. But today I lay on an uncomfortable cot and gave blood. I looked around at the people who gave their time freely, at the others who gave their blood just as freely. I saw a minister, a newspaper editor, a reg istered nurse who was spending her day off inserting slender needles into veins, half the Taft High School baseball team still wearing their practice jerseys. And I realized there are heroes all around us, and they don’t need to be on pedestals because they don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.

Landy Wisdom didn’t look at all the way Micah remembered her from high school. Her hair had been the color of sunlight then, her eyes like the darkest of the lilacs that grew in studied profusion in her grandmother’s side yard. Her figure had been lithe and nubile in her designer jeans and silk blouses and cashmere blazers. Her clothes hadn’t been bought at JC Penney or Kmart like most everyone else’s, but on shopping trips to Cincinnati and Louisville. She’d been, in a town without a social scale, a debutante. Her grandmother had owned the brewery and was one of the few people in town who had servants. Landy’s boyfriend had been the high school quarterback, the son of Taft’s best-known attorney, who’d gone on to stardom at Notre Dame.

But there had been more to Landy than that. Her best friend had been Jessie Titus, whose grandmother had kept house for old Mrs. Wisdom. Landy had aided with her grandmother’s charities, but she’d been hands-on help. She’d washed dishes at dinners, cleaned up after dances and walked every inch of every walkathon ever held in Taft.

Micah remembered talking to her once as she slogged through rain for crippled children. She hadn’t had a raincoat because she’d tossed it over the shoulders of the minister’s wife, and mud splashed up her legs as she walked.

“Who are you?” he’d demanded. He’d been so angry then, furious at the “haves” in what he was finding to be a “have-not” world. The fact that Landy Wisdom didn’t fit into his idea of a “have” made him even angrier. People who had it all didn’t share things when that sharing got them wet, cold and muddy.

“I’m just Landy,” she’d said quietly, a hurt look in her eyes, “and I’m sorry you don’t like me.”

Twenty years later, standing in line in his London Fog raincoat and watching Landis Wisdom as she wrote down information for the Red Cross blood bank, Micah felt a niggle of shame because he’d put that look in her eyes. Good writing and solid investments had made him into one of the “haves” he’d so despised, and along with the money had come the realization that there really wasn’t that much difference in people.

But he still wondered who she really was, and what had happened to the debutante he remembered. The hair color had deepened to the hue of honey, the eyes to violet. She wore a navy blue sweater with faded jeans and no makeup, no jewelry other than tiny pearls in her ears, not even polish on what appeared to be chewed-to-the-quick fingernails. Her figure had thickened a little over the years, but not much. She still looked nice.

But not like a debutante. Not like the richest girl in town. She’d evidently not jumped on the plastic surgery bandwagon, because small lines had carved themselves into the skin at the corners of her eyes, at the outer edges of her mouth, in her forehead between her eyebrows. She looked every minute of her thirty-six years.

“Are you a first-time donor?”

He realized with a start that the husky voice he heard was hers and that she was speaking to him.

“First time here,” he said, suddenly remembering why he was in the basement of the Taft United Methodist Church. “I just moved here two weeks ago, but I have a Red Cross card somewhere.” He rummaged in his wallet, feeling as clumsy and foolish as he had on that walkathon.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Another voice, softer and filled with laughter, made him look for its source. “Look up, Landy, and see who you’re waiting on.”

“Don’t swear in church, Jess. Our grandmothers will come back and haunt us.” But Landy looked up, and Micah saw recognition leap into her eyes. They were like pansies, not violets. Dark and mysterious and tragic.

“Micah Walker.” She sounded glad to see him, and the welcome in her voice opened up a warm place inside him, a place he wasn’t about to look into. “I heard you and your dad moved back. You bought the Tribune?”

He nodded, and Jessie said, “About time someone bought that rag. Maybe you can turn it into a real newspaper.”

Her voice made Micah remember she was there, standing beside Landy’s chair, and he extended his hand. “Jessie, it’s good to see you.” Her name tag said “Jessie Brown” and he remembered that she was a widow.

“Micah, is that your card?” Landy asked. “I’d love to talk to you, but there’s someone waiting.”

“Oh, sorry.” Micah turned to apologize to the person behind him, recognized his father and grinned instead before returning his attention to Landy. “It’s all right, it’s just some old coot.”

She grinned back at him, the expression having more of an effect on him than Ethan’s thump between his shoulder blades. He thought abstractedly that the debutante wasn’t entirely gone; Landy’s front teeth were beautifully but undeniably capped.

After Jessie had taken a pint of his blood, the volunteers in the church kitchen gave him a ham salad sandwich and a glass of juice. “Wait over there a bit,” she’d said, “till you get your legs back.”

He exchanged pleasantries with the volunteers, recognizing Mrs. Burnside, his high school geometry teacher, among them. Another donor passed behind him and sat at the end of the table, muttering thanks to Mrs. Burnside when she brought him his sandwich and drink.

Micah continued talking to the woman on his right, whose name was Jenny and who owned the café downtown, appropriately named Down at Jenny’s. But he felt the hair on the back of his neck standing on end and knew he was being stared at. He looked toward Landy’s table, but she was busy. In profile, her face looked pale, and he saw that the hands that shuffled the papers on the table were shaking. Frowning, he looked toward the end of the table.

Lucas Trent hadn’t changed much in twenty years. He was bigger, his florid complexion redder, but he was still handsome, wearing the patina of the city as surely as he did his expensive suit. Micah wondered, not for the first time, what had kept Trent in Taft when he obviously held the two-stoplight town in the lowest kind of contempt.

The attorney used to stand at the fence at football games. “Come on, you dumb farm boys,” he’d shout. “Protect your quarterback.” The quarterback, of course, being Blake Trent, Landy’s boyfriend and Lucas’s son.

“Mr. Trent.” Micah nodded a polite greeting.

“Walker.” Trent returned the nod. “Heard you were back in town. Do you plan on staying long?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve bought the Taft Tribune.”

“Made a success of yourself, have you.” It wasn’t a question, and Trent’s expression was cold and dark. “Next thing we know, you’ll buy a house on River Walk and start socializing with my erstwhile daughter-in-law.”

“Erstwhile?” That wasn’t a word used much in places like Taft. Most people would have said exdaughter-in-law or son’s former wife.

The simplicity of speech had been only one of the things about Taft he’d been happy to leave. He’d found the town stifling as a teenager and had been happy to shake its river valley dust from his feet when he went away to college. Graduation had landed him a job in Lexington, Kentucky, and he’d loved it there.

“You mean you haven’t caught up with the gossip yet?” Trent’s face was drawn and angry, the kind of anger that comes with suffering. “No hint of scandal has passed under your journalistic nose?”

Micah shifted impatiently in his chair, wondering what was taking his father so long. “I try not to deal in scandal unless it involves hard news.”

“Oh, it was hard all night.” The attorney shuddered, and pain crossed his face. “Blake’s dead,” Trent said, “and Landis is the reason why.”

Landy helped put the church basement in order, trying not to watch the tableau across the room. Even so, she saw Micah’s face harden and knew Lucas had told him.

Micah would believe whatever Lucas said. He’d never liked her anyway, would be eager to accept that she was not only a poor little rich girl but a murderer as well.

“Landy.” Mrs. Burnside’s voice reached her. “Would you help me in here, dear?”

“In here” was the kitchen. She’d have to walk past the table where Micah sat with his father and Lucas Trent and feel their baleful gazes burning holes into the back of her sweater. She wondered why it was the unhappy things, like painful memories and people thinking badly of you and the need for donated blood, that seemed to be unending. Happy spaces in time were always fleeting.

“Don’t slump.” Jessie’s voice came softly. She stood beside Landy, pulling on her coat. “Stand tall and smile like there’s nothing that could ever reach you. Don’t make me whack your spine to straighten you up the way Grandma used to.”

Landy stretched up tall just the way Evelyn Titus had taught her. “See you later, Jess. Kiss the kids for me.” She drew her mouth into a smile and moved across the room, going to the sink to dry the pitchers used for juice.

“Good turnout today,” said Mrs. Burnside.

Landy nodded, trying to think of something to say. “So, how do you like being retired, Mrs. Burnside?”

“You can call me Nancy, dear. We’re not in geometry class anymore. Retirement’s all right. I miss the kids, especially those few every year who soaked up information like a sponge.” She tilted her head and lowered her voice. “Like that Walker boy. He wasn’t gifted, or even extraordinarily intelligent, but he loved learning as much as anyone I ever taught. He had a bad reputation, but he was a pleasure to have in class.”

“Was he?” Micah had been in Blake’s class, two years ahead of Landy. He’d seemed taciturn and always angry. Blake hadn’t liked him, so she’d avoided him. Even then, it was better not to cross Blake.

Lucas brought his glass and plate to where they stood. “Better be careful, Nancy,” he warned, “who you let in here. There’s no telling what’s in their blood.”

“Go back to your office, Lucas.” Her voice was frosty. “We don’t have time for this.”

Landy looked past her former father-in-law at where Micah still sat at the table. He was watching, his gray eyes expressionless. He spoke to his father in a low murmur, but his gaze never left the scene at the sink.

“Landy.” Micah’s voice was still quiet, but it carried easily to where she stood. “Jenny said you were a Realtor. Could you show me some houses? The bed and breakfast is comfortable, but I need something permanent.”

Landy almost grinned. She was, indeed, a licensed Realtor, but her sole contribution to the field was answering the phones at Davis Realty when the receptionist didn’t show up for work.

“Of course,” she said, and some devil made her add, “Any particular area?”

He got to his feet, reaching for his coat. “Yeah, I was thinking about something on the River Walk.”

He hadn’t been thinking that at all, but it was worth the lie to see the look of dismay on Lucas Trent’s face, the quick shimmer of glee that crossed Landy’s features. “Are you free now?” Micah asked. “I could buy you a cup of coffee and give you an idea what I’m looking for.”

Mrs. Burnside took the pitcher Landy was drying from her hands. “She’s free, but you buy her some dinner, too, Micah. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

“You kids go ahead.” Micah’s father spoke. “I’ll help finish up here.”

Landy looked as though she wanted to argue, but Nancy Burnside was holding out her black pea coat expectantly. “All right,” Landy said finally, slipping her arms into the extended sleeves.

Micah put a hand under her elbow as they ascended the basement stairs. She had a hitch in her walk, and he wondered if she was on the tail end of a sprained ankle. He didn’t ask, but when she pitched slightly sideways at the landing, he tightened his hand.

“I really don’t do much with real estate,” she said. “Taking the course was just one of the things I did to keep busy at a time in my life.”

“I know you don’t.” Jenny had told him that much.

They crossed the church foyer, and he kept his hand under her arm, liking its warmth, the way the heat moved through his own veins.

In a few minutes, they were seated across from each other in the back booth of the café, Jenny’s fresh coffee steaming between them.

“What kind of house do you have in mind?” asked Landy.

“Old. Big. Near the river.”

“Sort of ‘in your face?’”

“Not really, although I’m sure the Lucas Trents in town will take it as such.” He shrugged. “I can’t help that.”

“Tell me about you,” she urged, lifting her cup to her mouth. “What have you done with your life?”

Her hands weren’t like he remembered them, either, not that he’d paid that much attention to them twenty years ago; her other parts had been much more interesting. In addition to the short, unpolished nails and the fingers’ lack of rings, the hands were thin and capable-looking. A few of the knuckles were more prominent than the others, one of the little fingers crooked. She didn’t flutter her hands or fidget with them the way nervous people he knew did; nevertheless, he felt tension emanating from her.

“I went to college,” he said, “at the University of Kentucky and stayed in Lexington after that as a reporter and a columnist. I loved what I did, even though it didn’t leave a whole lot of time for a normal life. Then a year and a half ago, my mom died. My dad was lost without her, and the only time he ever showed any interest in anything was when we talked about Taft. The paper was for sale, so here we are.”

“It’s nice to have you back,” she said politely. “Do you want to look at some houses now? I can pick up keys and take you to ones that are empty. I’m afraid I don’t know what’s available, but we can look at the listings.”

Micah wanted to touch her pale cheek, wanted to murmur, “It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you now,” and convince her the words were true. He kept his hands wrapped around his cup.

“At least with this rain, you’ll be seeing the properties at their worst, so there won’t be any unpleasant surprises later.” Her tone was businesslike and crisp, and her eyes avoided his.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Let’s look.”

Narrow and tortuous, the Twilight River flowed slow and lackadaisical between wooded hills and dumped itself unceremoniously into the Ohio. Just before reaching the Ohio, the Twilight widened and splattered, looking on the map like nothing so much as a human fist with a short, extended thumb. Taft nestled in the V between the thumb and the fist, beginning toward the end of its second hundred years to meander around the edge of the curled fingers of the river.

Some of Taft’s earliest inhabitants—the richer ones—had made a walkway around the thumb, complete with a narrow bridge that spanned the appendage. The corridor’s cobblestones had been carefully maintained over the years, its gaslights eventually replaced by electricity, 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.