She pulled the wheelbarrow away from the stump and sighed. She was ticked at her new landlord, true. But she couldn’t work up as much steam as was currently billowing into the air before her. The man was infuriating, but at the same time, he was so different than she’d expected that she was kind of intrigued. Different wasn’t something that happened a lot in Comeback Cove. She was usually okay with that. Her life had been thrown into chaos once. Stability and routine were her good friends now.
She didn’t want that to change just because J. T. Delaney had skated into town, even if he was the most interesting thing she’d seen in ages.
She gazed up into the blue sky, focusing on a wisp of long, thin white cloud. “Glenn,” she said softly, “remember when you bought me that really awesome necklace for Christmas, and then you forgot all about it until I found it, like, two years later? Well, is there any chance you could have done that with some off-shore bank accounts, or—”
“Mommy!”
Lyddie’s focus jerked back to earth and the sight of her youngest child bounding across the yard with a cell phone in her hand, pigtails bobbing in time with her leaps.
“Slow down, Tish. These coals are hot. You don’t want to fall in them.”
“Mommy, I’m not a baby. I’m almost seven. I know how to walk.”
“Humor me, okay?” Lyddie walked around the steaming stump and met Tish on the safe side of the yard. “Who’s on the phone?”
“Aunt Zoë.”
“Thanks, kiddo. Go back inside and tell Sara to start your bath. I’ll be there soon.”
“Can’t I skip? I don’t want a bath.”
“Nope. School night. Hop to it.” Lyddie bestowed a loud kiss on Tish’s soft cheek, then patted her daughter’s denim-clad bottom before lifting the phone to her ear.
“Hey there, fertile one.”
A long groan was her answer, deep and painful enough to make Lyddie’s heart do a quick thud.
“Zoë? What’s wrong, are you in labor? Talk to me, Zo.”
“No.”
“No, you won’t talk to me, or—”
“No, I’m not in labor.” Zoë sounded more like her normal overwhelmed self now. Whew. “It’s these stupid Braxton Hicks contractions. Who invented them, anyway? I mean, what’s the point of a contraction if you’re not in labor? Is this supposed to be like the previews at the movies?”
Lyddie laughed and picked up a long stick to poke at the still-simmering coals. “This is your third kid. You don’t need a preview.”
“Damn straight I don’t. It took me years to forget what labor feels like. I don’t need reminders.”
“Cheer up. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Zoë moaned and called Lyddie a name that would have earned her a bar of soap in the mouth if their mother had heard it. Lyddie merely giggled.
“So what’s up?”
“Nothing.” Her sister’s voice was a sound portrait of frustration.
“Nothing? That’s why you called?”
“Kevin left early this morning and has a dinner meeting tonight, and Nick has a cold so he’s clingy and miserable, and Dusty decided that today was the perfect day to see what would happen if you cook Play-Doh in the microwave for ten minutes on high. I hurt all over. I can’t breathe. I’ve been having these stupid Braxton Hicks all day and it’s hotter than Hades here and if this baby doesn’t come out the minute Sara gets off the plane, I’m grabbing a knife and giving myself a homemade Cesarean.”
Lyddie pushed a coal farther over on the stump. “Congratulations. You’re having your eight-month breakdown.”
“You don’t have to sound so damned happy about it!” Across the miles, Zoë burst into tears. Lyddie sighed and sat on the ground. Might as well get comfortable.
Five minutes of soothing, empathizing and commiserating later, Zoë finally stopped crying.
“You okay now?”
“A bit.” Sniff. “It helps to hear another adult voice. I should have kept working right until I popped. I wasn’t made to be a suburban housewife. Tell me stories of the real world.”
Despite herself, Lyddie laughed. “The real world? Have you forgotten that I live in Comeback Cove?”
“It beats the hell out of the ’burbs. At least people talk to each other there. Tell me—anything. Make something up. Anyone interesting come into the store today?”
This time it was Lyddie’s turn to groan.
“That sounds promising. Now use words.”
“They won’t all be nice,” Lyddie warned, and after glancing around the yard to make sure none of the kids were lurking in the evening shadows, she gave Zoë the scoop.
“So that’s where I am,” she said. “You have a spare hundred grand or two tucked away with your cookie stash?”
“Sorry, I blew it all last week on nursing bras. But seriously, are you sure you want to buy the place?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Why? Wasn’t it obvious? “This is home now.”
“Is it? I mean, I know you like it there, but geez, Lyddie. Do you really want to tie yourself to a place where they call you the Young Widow Brewster?”
Oh. That.
“Not everyone says that.”
“But they think it,” Zoë pointed out, and Lyddie realized that what had intrigued her most about J.T. was the way he’d talked to her. There’d been none of the deference that characterized so many of her interactions with her fellow residents. Other than his brief condolences, there had been no mention of Glenn, no pity in J.T.’s gaze. It had been, well...refreshing.
Still, even if she sometimes felt a bit stifled by the way people dealt with her, she couldn’t discount the way she and the kids had been embraced by the town. “This is a good place. The kids need to be here.”
“That’s debatable. Sara seems awfully excited about coming here for the summer.”
“Sara is fourteen. Of course she wants to get away, it’s part of the adolescent code.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
The question was so un-Zoë, so very much like something her mother-in-law would say, that Lyddie had to laugh. “Did Ruth pay you to do this?”
“Oh, my God. You mean Ruth and I actually agree on something?”
“Not precisely, but...” Lyddie sighed and leaned back until she was flat on the ground, staring at the pink-tinged clouds floating through the darkening sky. “Look, you know why I’m here. I agree it gets a little, um, claustrophobic at times, but everyone is really very nice. Plus it’s the closest I can come to keeping Glenn alive for the kids.”
“And there’s no other way that could be done?”
“Not nearly as well.”
There was a moment of silence, during which Lyddie could easily visualize her sister perched on the edge of her bar stool, one finger twirling her hair while the other tapped against the phone—Zoë’s favorite thinking position.
“Is he married?”
“Excuse me?”
“The landlord.