A Soft Place to Fall (28 page)

"C'mon, old pal," he said, in what he hoped
was a no-nonsense tone of voice. "You're going to wear out your
welcome around here."

Max busied himself finding exactly the right
scratching spot behind his left ear.

Nothing short of a 7.1 on the Richter scale
was going to move Max until Max was good and ready. Sam turned to
leave the room when his eye was caught by a display of framed
photographs on the long table by the window. Unless he was crazy,
there was one of him right in the front row. He crossed the room
and plucked the photo from the pile and started to laugh. There he
was in all his fifteen year old glory, looking up at the camera
from the pier at the old marina near the World's Fair site. He was
smiling one of those goofy, blissfully unself-conscious smiles that
life usually knocks out of you by the time you're old enough to
vote and looking pretty much like he had the world by the tail.

And maybe he had. His parents were still
alive back then. He didn't have to worry about keeping a roof over
his head and food in his brothers' and sisters' bellies. He skimmed
the surface at school then dove head first into learning everything
he could about the dirty, messy business of repairing boats. There
was nothing glamorous about the work. You wouldn't get rich doing
it. But no job before or since had ever made him happier than he
was in those early days when life was an open road by the sea and
the speed limit hadn't been invented yet.

He glanced at some of the other photos but
didn't recognize anyone. He was about to turn away when a candid
shot of a painfully young bride and groom caught his eye. The guy
couldn't have been more than nineteen, if that. He was tall and
rangy with broad shoulders and a wide smile, good-looking in an
open, all-American way that was foreign to Sam. He looked like the
kind of guy you met on an airplane and spilled your guts to between
Cincinnati and Houston just because he was so damn easy to talk to.
He had a thick head of curly dark hair and movie star good looks
and the best luck in the world because Annie Lacy was his
bride.

Jesus, how young she looked in her long white
dress and veil, like a little girl playing dress up. Her long curly
hair spilled over her shoulders, wild despite the obvious attempts
to tame it. There were no dark circles under her beautiful blue
eyes, no worry lines. She leaned into her husband as if he were her
very foundation. The sight of the dead man's big hand on her
delicate shoulder awakened some complicated feelings inside Sam,
envy and sorrow and anger at a world that refused to allow
happiness to last forever.

Hell, maybe it would have lasted forever. If
Kevin Galloway hadn't died, Sam had no doubt she would still be at
his side, still leaning against his breadth the way she had on
their wedding day. The dark circles and worry lines would be way
out there in the distant future; time enough when she was old and
grey for things like that. She would have had the life he'd
envisioned for her when they met in the parking lot of Yankee
Shopper, a life that included kids and a dog and a big house and
all the things the rest of the world took for granted because they
seemed so easy and inevitable to everyone but people like Annie and
Sam.

#

"You look wonderful, Annie! Did you lose
weight?" Grace Lowell asked, eyeing Annie's hips.

"Wow, you're looking terrific." Bob Haskell's
eyes actually twinkled as he looked at her. "Been on vacation?"

Sarah Wentworth leaned close to Annie's ear
and dropped her voice to a whisper. "I promise I won't tell a soul.
Who's your surgeon?"

Annie waited until Sarah was out of range
before she turned to Sweeney. "What on earth is going on around
here? That's the tenth person who commented on how great I look
today."

"It's called love, honey," Sweeney said with
a big smile. "L-U-V, and it shows."

Annie felt the blood rush to her cheeks. "I'd
rather they thought it was a facelift."

"Sorry," Sweeney said. "Nobody will believe
it, not with the way you two have been looking at each other."

Annie did her best not to cast a quick glance
in Sam's direction but Sweeney caught her.

"See? And he's been doing the same
thing."

They had tried very hard not to make a
spectacle of themselves. She had work to do promoting Annie's
Flowers to anyone who stopped to smell the roses while he had done
an admirable job pretending he was interested in Phyllis Riley's
beadwork and the big display of corncob art that was courtesy of
Marge Rhodenbarr's third grade class at Shelter Rock Elementary.
Warren showed up around two o'clock. He motioned Sam over to where
he stood by the display table and engaged the two of them in an
animated conversation about the museum that focused even more of
the town's attention on the new couple.

Claudia stopped by to use the bathroom in
Annie's Flowers. She managed a hello for Annie but breezed by
Warren and Sam as if they weren't there at all.

"She'll get over it," Warren said. "Tomorrow
it'll be Eileen's new haircut or the way Susan is bringing up her
kids. The woman isn't happy unless she has something to complain
about."

Warren was right but only up to a point.
Annie knew that the reasons ran much deeper and so did the hurt.
Because that's what it was. Claudia wasn't angry. She was hurting
and Annie knew why.

"I'll be back in a second," she said then
darted into the shop as Claudia was ready to leave.

"You look lovely today," Claudia said stiffly
as Annie blocked the doorway. "That sweater flatters you."

"I've been hearing that all day," she said
with a self-conscious laugh. "These compliments have made me wonder
how bad I've been looking lately."

A long, awkward silence rose up between
them.

"I should get back to the booth," Claudia
said, shifting her purse from under her right arm to under her
left. "Roberta couldn't make change if her life depended on
it."

Annie placed a hand on the woman's forearm.
"Claudia, about last night –"

"You don't owe me any explanations, Anne.
You're a grown woman. You can make your own decisions."

"I should have said something," Annie said,
fumbling for the right words. "At the very least, I could have
introduced you."

"Perhaps you had other things on your
mind."

Annie took a deep breath. The easy social lie
was on the tip of her tongue but maybe this was the time to go a
little deeper. "You're right," she said. "I did have other things
on my mind. I'm sorry if I hurt you. That wasn't my intention."

Claudia held her gaze for a moment, then
looked out toward the village green. Annie covered her ringless
left hand with her right. Sounds of laughter and music drifted
through the open door along with the delectable smells of
hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling on the grill.

Please, Claudia, say something. . .
anything. Tell me you were angry. Tell me he's not good enough for
me. If we can talk about this, we're halfway there.

They had been through so many tough times
together. She hated to think that her happiness could ever drive
them apart.

#

"What took you so long?" Roberta demanded
when Claudia returned to the booth. "I've been doing turnaway
business."

Claudia looked at her friend of almost sixty
years. "Am I a bitch?" she asked.

Roberta's round face froze. "What did you
say?"

"Oh, don't act like you never heard the word
before, Roberta Morgan, because I know you have. I've even heard
you use it once or twice."

"That may be but I've certainly never heard
you use it. Not once in all these years."

"Well, you're hearing it now." She glanced
around to make sure nobody was within earshot. "Do you think I'm a
bitch?"

"Good heavens, Claudia, what kind of thing is
that to ask?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable question. I've
been doing some thinking today and I haven't liked some of the
conclusions I've come up with."

"Were you watching
The View
again?"

"None of your business. Now are you going to
answer me or not?"

Roberta looked like she would rather be any
place on earth but there. "That's a terrible question. You've put
me in an impossible spot."

Poor Roberta. She dithered on, never quite
realizing she had answered Claudia's question.

Yes, you're a bitch, Claudia Galloway. It's
official. Are you happy now?

The thought had first occurred to her when
Susan told her she had always been a difficult woman to be around.
It wasn't at all the way Claudia viewed herself. John, bless his
heart, had always told her she was the sunshine in his life, the
one person he could count on to be in his corner no matter what.
They had been through their share of tough times, things she
wouldn't tell a living soul about, but their love for each other
had never wavered. He had thought of her as an even-tempered woman,
good-natured and easy-going. Everything her children thought she
wasn't. Susan would have driven right off the road laughing if
Claudia had ever told her any of that and she had no doubt the rest
of her children would do the same.

Like just now at the store with Annie.

Would it have hurt you to bend just a
little? She was reaching out to you and you wouldn't give an
inch.

It wasn't that she wanted Annie to be
unhappy. What kind of woman would she be if she wished unhappiness
on the girl she'd raised as one of her own? A bitch, that's what,
the worst kind of bitch. Heartless and unyielding. But oh God how
it hurt to think of her with a man who wasn't Kevin. In a way it
was like losing him all over again.

She had never wanted another man after Jack's
death. Oh, she had had plenty of offers from some of the kindly
gentlemen of Shelter Rock Cove but she had spurned all of their
advances. Jack was the love of her life, her only true love, and
there wasn't a man on earth who could compare. She had always
believed it was like that between Annie and Kevin. Kevin had
worshipped Annie. The family used to tease him about the poetry and
the flowers. His brothers and sisters were practical, down-to-earth
types who wouldn't be caught dead knowing the difference between a
couplet and a sonnet. But Kevin not only knew the difference, he
wanted to tell you all about it and he did so in a way that made
his words a permanent part of your heart.

Annie had glowed in those early years. The
whole town had basked in that glow. KevinandAnnie. AnnieandKevin.
You couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Even today
you couldn't look at Annie and not see Kevin, so tall and handsome,
right there by her side.

Tears welled up and she reached into her
purse and retrieved her sunglasses and slipped them on. Last night,
seeing Annie hand in hand with someone who wasn't Kevin – well,
there was no explaining how that had felt.

Had she really been in denial all this time?
It didn't seem possible but what other explanation could there be
for that feeling of utter shock . Up until that moment she had been
able to pretend that Kevin was in the next room, or maybe on the
next block, beyond her reach but not gone. Never that. But nothing
could explain away the sight of Annie, luminous and filled with
joy, as she looked up at that wiry, edgy man who had walked into
Cappy's with Warren.

Get a grip on yourself, Claudia, or else
everyone in town will be talking about the way you fell apart
during the Labor Day festivities.

That would give the town years of good gossip
and she wasn't about to make that mistake.

Next to her, Roberta was chatting away like a
magpie, telling Adele Roscoe and Jean Gillooley all about the Adam
Winters seminar they had taken and how they were thinking of
becoming investors and Claudia all but leaped for her best friend's
crepey throat.

"Now what did you go and blab to Adele and
Jean for?" she demanded the second the women wandered off. "Why
don't you call our children too while you're at it?"

"They saw the brochure sticking out of my
tote bag," Roberta said with a mutinous look in her beady little
eyes. "What was I supposed to do, lie to them?"

"Yes," Claudia snapped. "You could have told
them about the seminar without blabbing our business all over
town."

"Remember that question you asked me a few
minutes ago? I think I can answer it now."

"Oh, hush up," Claudia said. "Why don't you
just –"

Well, of all the nerve! Annie's new friend –
what was his name, Sam Something or other – was heading toward
their display like he had an urgent need to win a mammogram and
help fund the senior center.

Roberta squinted in his direction. "Isn't
that –"

"Yes," Claudia hissed, "and if you –"

"Mrs. Galloway?" He stopped right there in
front of them and stuck out his right hand. "We didn't have the
chance to meet last night but Warren and Annie told me a lot about
you."

She knew his name was Sam Butler and she had
no choice but to shake his hand. His grip was strong but not too
familiar. She was glad he knew his place.

Roberta gave her a poke in her ribs.

"This is my friend Roberta Morgan," she said
although why Bobbi couldn't introduce herself was beyond her.

Roberta eagerly shook his hand. "Pleased to
meet you. I saw you last night with our Annie." She actually batted
her eyelashes at the man. "I must say you make an adorable
couple."

He thanked Roberta but it was clear her
comment had embarrassed him.

"I heard you talking to the other two ladies
about a financial seminar."

Claudia arched a brow. "You were
eavesdropping?"

"Yep," he said with an easy smile. "Afraid
so."

Roberta, ever oblivious to nuance, plunged
right in. "I have an extra brochure if you'd like it."