Rexanne Becnel: Blink Of An Eye

“Humor, smart women, adventure, and danger all add up to a book you can’t put down…Constant surprises and characters that will win your heart.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Payback Club

“Becnel deftly captures the way actual women think…. Brisk and entertaining, with a welcome focus on middle-aged sexuality, this tidy tale proves that Becnel is just as much at home writing high-quality contemporary fiction as penning the historical fiction for which she’s known.”

—Publishers Weekly on Old Boyfriends

“Rexanne Becnel skillfully weaves multiple storylines with lively characters and unexpected plot twists in an emotionally satisfying book.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Old Boyfriends

And other praise for Rexanne Becnel

“Ms. Becnel creates the most intriguing characters.”

—Literary Times on The Bride of Rosecliffe

“Becnel skillfully blends romance and adventure with a deft hand.”

—Publishers Weekly on When Lightning Strikes

“Rexanne’s stories stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.”

—Literary Times on Heart of the Storm

Rexanne Becnel, the author of twenty-two novels and two novellas, is a charter member of the Southern Louisiana Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and founded the New Orleans Popular Fiction Conference.

Rexanne’s novels regularly appear on bestseller lists such as USA TODAY, Amazon.com, Waldenbooks, Ingram and Barnes & Noble. She has been nominated for and received awards from Romantic Times BOOKreviews, Waldenbooks, the Holt Committee, the Atlanta Journal/Atlanta Constitution and the National Readers’ Choice Awards.

Blink of an Eye

Rexanne Becnel

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

As many of you know, I live in New Orleans, in an area that flooded after the levees broke. As we struggled both as a family and a community to put ourselves back together, I wasn’t sure I could write about the storm and everything that followed. I wasn’t sure I could write again at all.

But writing has proven to be my salvation. The routine of going to a coffeehouse (once I found one that was open!) and writing my daily pages turned out to be the only “normal” part of my life for a very long time. In addition, it was cathartic to write about Jane and her fight to survive in a world turned inside out. I am not just like Jane, but I put a lot of me in her. There was no way not to.

As for my beloved New Orleans…we were flooded, but not drowned; devastated, but not defeated.

To the people who refuse to abandon their hometown, I love having you as my neighbors. And to the people everywhere who supported us through our very worst days and continue to do so, I hope to see you here someday.

Remember, you can’t not have a good time in New Orleans!

Love to all,

Rexanne

For the Pizzolato family and for Joanna Wurtele who helped us in our hour of greatest need.

For David, Rosemary, Brian, Valerie, Chuck and Karen who weathered the storm with me.

And for Katya and Mike, and all the rest of my family, friends and neighbors who lost so much but refuse still to give up.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

I didn’t evacuate New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina despite the desperate exhortations of our mayor, our governor and every other public official who paraded across the television set during the three days that led up to the storm. They could have done cartwheels naked across the screen and I still would have switched channels in search of The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family reruns.

The reason? I like stories about happy families. Oh, and I’d already decided to commit suicide.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about cutting my losses and taking that leap. From the time I was sixteen and my mother made her first attempt (failed, fortunately), it has always been at the back of my mind as a way out if life got too tough.

I held it against Mom for a long time—all her life, actually—which lasted an additional fourteen years until she died suddenly in a freak car accident. After that, I felt guilty for never forgiving her, for always showing her by my exaggerated gestures of benevolence that I was so much better than her, that I could cope and even thrive, while all she could do was fold.

The fact is, she had a boatload of reasons to give up. Being abandoned by her husband to raise two kids alone had changed her from a sunny, happy person into a prematurely old, overworked and mainly sad woman.

Even though I was only nine, it had changed me into a cynic. Not that I’d known what the word meant. I didn’t learn that until the seventh grade when I should have won the spelling bee, but the principal’s daughter did. I had to spell atrophy. She had to spell peanut.

But I digress.

I’ve lived most of my forty-seven years moving from crisis to crisis. My great-uncle Dan used to call Mom Little Orphan Annie, and me Calamity Jane, and I guess he was right. I was Calamity Jane, never meant to be happy for long. My college boyfriend—the love of my life—turned out to be gay. Then after I married, I couldn’t get pregnant, even with the help of every fertility clinic in the Deep South. My husband went to jail for insurance fraud. My wonderful boss died suddenly of a heart attack, and his replacement tried to seduce me.

And of course there were my own spectacular screwups, which cost me my profession and my self-respect.

Anyway, by the time Hurricane Katrina was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, expanding swiftly from a Category One to a Category Five monster, I’d long gotten over my disdain of Mom’s weakness. I was no better than she was. In fact, I was a lot worse. At least when she’d first attempted suicide, she’d known I would be around to take care of Clark. He’s my Down syndrome brother. But if I committed suicide, who would be there for him?

Sure, Clark is happy in his group home. But he’s a Medicaid patient and the way money is always being diverted from the system, who knows what could happen to him? That’s why last year when I won the Super Bowl lottery at a bar where I’d once worked—six thousand dollars!—I took a major chunk of the money and bought a big, fat life-insurance policy for myself, and set up a trust fund with a medical trustee to handle the money for Clark if I should die.

Clark might lose a sister, but he’d gain a personal aide to take him on outings and provide other opportunities that a state-run group home just couldn’t do.

Like most insurance policies, though, mine has a suicide clause, which didn’t bother me too much at the time because I was more or less in love, had a good-paying job by bartending standards, plus extra money in my pocket and no clouds on my horizon.

I guess I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t last. The good times never do. That’s why I hadn’t told my so-called boyfriend, Hank, about my winnings or the insurance policy. He would have wanted us to party with the proceeds until nothing was left. That’s how he went through his electrician’s pay every two weeks. Why not my money, too?