Helen Brenna - Her Sure Thing

The phone stopped ringing and indicated a voice mail had been left for her. Then, surprisingly, the house landline rang. She hadn’t given that number to anyone.

The answering machine speaker sounded through the house. “Dammit, Grace, pick up.” Suzy Lang’s unique accent, not quite British, but not entirely Indian, echoed strongly through the house. “Okay, fine. Be that way. I ordered you some groceries because I have this sneaking suspicion that you have nothing but celery to eat in that house. Believe it or not, that Newman’s store had some decent organic stuff. So eat, okay? Don’t make me come there and force-feed you.”

At that, Grace smiled as she pulled on a pair of white capris, topped with a T-shirt over her compression garment and finished off with a dark heather-gray hoodie and a lightweight scarf around her neck, effectively hiding the rest of her scars.

“You know I don’t have the time. The photo shoot for that new magazine spread has me running around like a runway wannabe.” Her long, soft sigh came over the line. “I miss you already.”

Grace missed her best friend, too. Apparently, there was one thing left in L.A. that Grace still cared about and that still cared about her. She answered the phone. “Hey, Suze.”

“I knew you were there. What the hell?”

“Sorry. Having an awkward time settling in here, I guess.”

“Amanda called me,” Suzy said softly. “What are you doing back on Mirabelle?”

“I needed some R & R.”

“R & R, my ass. You’re going to be bored out of your mind in a week.”

“I’ve been working full-time since I left this place. I think I’m due for some time off. Besides, my dad needs the company.”

“Okay, okay.” Suzy sighed. “Amanda’s worried about you.”

“Oh, really?” Grace was a paycheck to her assistant. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Grace, don’t be that way. You do have people in your life who love you.”

Bullshit. Suzy had been the only one who truly cared. The rest had all been using her. Designers wanted her to wear their latest lines. Friends wanted appointments with her agent for their daughters, nieces, nephews, you name it. Editors wanted exclusive photo ops. Photographers wanted in with up-and-coming models. The truth had been revealed when her usefulness to them had ended with her accident.

“I’m serious,” Suzy said. “You’re not just a boss to Amanda. She really cares.”

“If you say so.”

“She said you were supposed to have a doctor’s appointment the day you left for Mirabelle. I know you’re sick of doctors, but you may still need some attention.”

“I know.” She wasn’t entirely out of the woods yet, and she didn’t want to be ninety and still wearing this compression garment.

“So what are you doing about it?”

“Well, believe or not, this tiny island has a wonderful clinic. I promise I’ll make an appointment for some time in the next couple of weeks with Doc Welinski.” He’d give her a new prescription for any medicated cream she asked for and pain meds, if needed.

“Is he any good?”

“The best.”

Grace had never met a sweeter, more compassionate man than old Doc Welinski, except, quite possibly, for her father. Doc had tenderly and with unexpected humor put on her cast when she’d fallen out of the McGregors’ apple tree and broken her arm. When she’d gotten violently sick to her stomach after French inhaling an entire pack of cigarettes, he’d given her antacids and kept the secret from her mother. And when other mothers, mothers like Mrs. Miller, had complained about Grace and the trouble she always seemed to be getting into, Grace could still remember Doc Welinski standing up for her in the school lobby. She’d be in good hands here on Mirabelle.

“All right,” Suzy said. “I’ll tell Amanda she can stop worrying.”

“I gotta run. Talk to you again soon.”

“Don’t wait to answer the phone next time.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Smiling, Grace disconnected their call. Then she went downstairs and brought in the groceries the Newman’s delivery boy had left on her porch. She set the bags on the kitchen counter and put everything away.

The selection of groceries indicated Suzy was well aware that Grace snacked rather than cooked full-fledged meals. Tomato juice, low-fat yogurt and breakfast bars. Pita bread, hummus, sprouts and shaved roasted turkey. Romaine, feta cheese and an olive oil vinaigrette. Shrimp and fish. Blueberries, raspberries, avocadoes and an artichoke, all of them fresh. There were a variety of organic soups. And, lastly, a special treat. Two pints of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.

Grace grabbed a spoon and dug out a chunk of ice cream before putting the containers in the freezer. As the chocolate melted on her tongue, she groaned. There were benefits to no longer modeling.

Grabbing a hat and sunglasses, in case she encountered any tourists, Grace grabbed a breakfast bar, left the house and set off down Mirabelle’s residential streets toward the house she’d grown up in. A strange sense of déjà vu filled her as she walked down the street. She’d spent far too much time here on Mirabelle for these neighborhoods to feel like anything other than home, but the trees were taller and many of the houses had been painted different colors.

In her head, she listed off the names of every family who used to live in every single house, but strangers mowed the lawns and picked up the mail. People had moved, died and retired. Mirabelle had changed. If the Duffys had moved out of their farmhouse, then it was also possible that the Setterbergs had, too. For all she knew the Grotes may have relocated, as well as the Hendersons and the Millers.

But as she approached the cotton candy-pink Victorian next door to her parents’ home, it was apparent Shirley Gilbert still owned the bed-and-breakfast. The grand old house was still in tip-top shape as were the gardens already overflowing with pink, white and purple petunias.

The house where she’d grown up couldn’t have looked more different from the Gilberts’. Grace turned up the front sidewalk to the modestly sized, but classically designed Victorian and noticed that very little had changed with either the structure or the yard in the years since she’d left home. The house still looked terminally white. What else could you call white shutters and trim on white siding? Virginal?

Her mother had even ensured the landscaping didn’t step out of line. Bridal veil spirea bushes. White petunias in the pots on the front porch. A white crab apple tree in full bloom on the front lawn. Other than the grass and leaves, the only color in the entire yard came from the shingles on the rooftop. Green, naturally, so as not to clash with the vegetation.

She glanced up to her old bedroom window in the second-floor turret to find white—of course—sheers hanging in the window. The pale pink polka-dotted curtains she’d had to stare at for most of her teen years were gone. Thank God. She’d always hated those damned frilly things.

A large honeysuckle—white again—climbed up the trestle near the corner. How many times had she climbed down the drainpipe outside her window? If she hadn’t been escaping off into the woods to meet some boy vacationing from Chicago, she’d been meeting up with groups of kids to hang around a fire and drink stolen liquor out at Full Moon Bay.

One childhood memory after another tumbled through her mind. More often than not her memories involved boring gatherings with boring guests. Their front door had practically revolved with the comings and goings of visitors. There were some fond memories, some of them involving Carl. Most of the time, she and her older—perfect—brother argued whenever they’d gotten within twenty feet of each other, but there’d been a few times when they’d connected.