Isabel Sharpe Read online

  At Melanie’s desk, she powered up her daughter’s laptop after removing a stack of People and Vogue magazines from the chair so she could sit. Maybe she would have done better by the girls if she’d surrendered them earlier to their gran and grandad. Maybe she should have taken her parents up on their offer to move in here so they could supervise both the girls and their own mess of a daughter.

  Tricia lowered her chin glumly onto her palm. No regrets? Yeah, but being back home made it pretty hard not to speculate on all the “what ifs.” Still, Melanie and Alana were beautiful, vibrant, intelligent young women in spite of having had Tricia for a mother. Alana had found real love with a wonderful man. After Tricia helped Melanie do the same, she could move on to Florida for her next stage of making amends—being there for her parents in their old age.

  Computer warmed and ready for action, she found some dating sites on Google and checked out a bunch of them. Most were expensive, a few of the free ones didn’t seem to have many people signed up, another couple featured a small percentage of men seriously looking for relationships and a large percentage seriously looking for sex. Including one guy whose main profile photo was a close-up of his crotch in a G-string. Charming.

  When she found Milwaukeedates.com, Tricia knew she’d hit pay dirt. Nice-looking guys and a good selection. All she had to do was type in her search criteria. Minimum age: twenty-four. Maximum age: thirty-four. A neat ten-year span. Education: graduate of a four-year college, so he’d be on Melanie’s level. Nonsmoking. English speaking. Photo required with profile. Living within twenty miles of their zip code.

  A list popped up in seconds; Tricia started giggling. Shopping for men! This was a hoot.

  An hour later, she had compiled a short list after carefully examining each man’s introduction, keeping those who were decently articulate, preferably with a sense of humor, discarding paunchy cavemen atop Harleys, men in eye-hiding dark glasses, anyone with cliché-ridden profiles: “Know how to treat a lady right” and “Love long walks on the beach” and “I’m looking for that special someone.” Honestly. Was there some dating-site phrase book they all used? What happened to originality?

  Though she supposed the women’s ads were no better.

  List made, noting each profile’s username so Melanie could check them out later, Tricia paused.

  Were there men her age on the site?

  She wasn’t looking; she’d promised herself no dating while she was here in Milwaukee with the girls, and only in Florida well after she’d gotten herself settled and the air cleared between herself and her parents.

  All the same she was curious what mainstream dating looked like for women her age. Here in Milwaukee she’d known everyone in the party set, including Jake, the guy she’d followed to Berkeley to get out of town. After that relationship collapsed, she’d met men at parties, at bars and/or clubs, through dubious friends…she cringed just remembering. Amazing she still had her health. Amazing she was still alive. No career, no retirement savings. But alive.

  Minimum age: forty-eight. Some women might go for boy toys, but Tricia liked them closer to her stage of life. Maximum age: fifty-eight. Education: college not necessary. She’d never been, so why would she require that of the guy? Smoking, no way. She’d quit, didn’t need that temptation. Better they didn’t drink, too, though she craved alcohol much less frequently than nicotine. Within ten miles of their zip code.

  When her own personalized list appeared, Tricia scanned the first page of photos, oddly nervous. A few weren’t bad. One was appealing enough that she checked out his profile. Seemed like a decent guy. Maybe when she was ready to date this would be the way to go.

  She clicked to the second page of photos and froze.

  No. Way.

  Absolutely no way.

  Yet there he was—she recognized him immediately even without his beard, though he still had the ponytail.

  Jim Bronson. Melanie and Alana’s father’s best friend, who’d been as wild as Tom in most every way, except underneath he had a solid sensitive core that Tom lacked. Naturally, then, she had fallen madly in love with Tom, though as his treatment of her worsened, she’d found herself once in a while looking wistfully at Jim, wondering why she’d made such a stupid choice. Ironic that now she was looking wistfully at his picture, wondering why she’d gone on to make so many more.

  Here he was, still in Milwaukee. Single, apparently. Posing with his Harley, familiar phoenix tattoo visible on his left bicep. He looked good. Healthy. Strong. Clear-eyed. Graying hair and a few extra pounds like her, otherwise the same.

  A memory came—of her, Tom and Jim wasted after some party, lying in the back of Jim’s old VW van, inexplicably named Frieda. Tom had tried to interest Jim in “doing her” while he watched. She remembered being appalled that Tom thought he had any right to pimp her. And also…well, she remembered holding her breath, waiting for Jim’s reaction. He’d seemed to sober up immediately, raising himself up on one elbow over them. Tricia had never forgotten the hungry look he’d given her. Nor would she forget in the next instant the look of scorn directed at Tom. And there went that plan.

  A wave of emotion rushed over her, a complicated mix of nostalgia and recoil. She wanted to talk to him, to relive the old days, maybe make some sense of them. She also wanted to run and hide, bury those memories deep where they belonged, forget they ever existed. Jim.

  She hit the back button away from his profile to the original list of thumbnail pictures. A symbol appeared next to Jim’s member name. Online now.

  Just like that, she could reach through cyberspace and reconnect. As a friend, of course, an old friend. Maybe seeing him would help put some of her past to rest. Maybe through him she could find a way back to her daughters. He’d lived through her first wild days with her; he might have insights she could use to communicate some of the whys of her choices to Melanie and Alana. Maybe she could even get up the nerve to tell them more about their father.

  There were no accidents. If she’d come across Jim’s profile tonight, it meant Tricia was supposed to contact him. She’d have to set up a profile on Milwaukeedates.com before she could, but that was hardly an impasse.

  As quickly as she could, she filled in minimal information, pulled up an e-mail on the site, typed in Jim’s username, Fotoman, then sat at a loss.

  What would she say?

  Hi, Jim. It’s Tricia, back in Milwaukee for a while.

  Spare, but anything else she thought of sounded awkward or overeager or went on too long. She jabbed the send button and collapsed back in the chair, feeling as if she’d set something huge and irreversible in motion, and not sure why. Jim was a friend. Tricia was writing to say hi. Nothing about that would scandalize her children, nothing about that would betray who she had finally managed to become, nothing about that would involve changing her plans or—

  TRICIA!!!!

  The e-mail leaped onto her screen, and a cold place in her heart she didn’t even know was there started to thaw. She’d made friends in California, most based on the partying they shared, but some true friends, like Dahlia, who’d taken her in when her life collapsed this latest and last time. But Jim had been there from her childhood, through high school, when they’d started together down the slippery slope of delinquency, inseparable friends until Tom left her. Eight years later, she’d surrendered the girls to her parents and fled to California, unable to face what she’d done, but not at the bottom yet. That took her another fifteen years to reach.

  Wasted, wasted years.

  414-555-2967. Call me!

  The second e-mail popped up on the screen and made Tricia jump.

  Call him? She put a hand over her mouth. What had she expected, that she could contact an old friend and then not talk to him?

  Betty Boop was within five feet of her, posing next to her phone in her bright red dress with pouty allure. All Tricia had to do was get up from the chair, take three steps toward Melanie’s bed, pick up the receiver and dial.
r />   She felt like a girl in junior high, terrified to call a boy she had a crush on.

  But this was Jim!

  Get up. Check. Three steps. Check. Pick up receiver…dial…

  “Tricia.”

  She grinned at the sound of his voice, deeper and gruffer than she remembered, but then a lot of time had gone by. Twenty-five years. After Tom had left her, she hadn’t wanted to be around anyone that reminded her of him, especially because all their mutual friends had assumed Jim would be next in her dating lineup. For sanity’s sake, she’d frozen Jim out of her life and out of her heart, too.

  No regrets, right? Sometimes that rule was harder to keep to than others. “Hi, Jim.”

  “You could have knocked me over with a dust bunny. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”

  She was still grinning. “I always resurface. Like a bad cork.”

  He chuckled. “It’s damn good to hear your voice, Tricia.”

  “Yours, too.” The simple words seemed unbearably intimate. Maybe it was experiencing warm memories in her shadowed old bedroom, or calling him late on a humid, fragrant summer night; maybe it was too many months alone, but all the feelings she’d stuffed down when she knew him started resurfacing.

  “You in town for long?”

  “Several months. I’m here to try and make peace with my girls for being the worst mother ever.”

  “You gave up your children for their sakes. The worst mother wouldn’t have had the guts to do that.”

  How did he know? She wasn’t speaking to him then. “Okay, second worst.”

  He laughed. He’d always laughed easily—even when he wasn’t stoned. “We’ll have a lot of time to spend together while you’re here?”

  Her heart sped up. “Sure. I’ll have to get a job, but…yes.”

  “I’ve thought of you a lot over the years, Tee. I kept track of you for a while through Katie until she left town, too.” His voice was gentle. He’d always had an easier time expressing emotion than Tom. “After you were gone I almost picked up the phone to call your parents a dozen times, trying to find you.”

  “But didn’t.”

  “I had reasons. For one, I wasn’t sure how glad you’d be to hear from me.”

  “I’m not sure, either. I was a mess for a long time.”

  “Same here.” He sighed heavily. “Though I’ve been dry and straight going on ten years now.”

  “Ten years.” She felt deeply ashamed it had taken her so long. “A lot less than that for me. More like one.”

  “That’s one more than people who are never able to punt the habit.”

  She smiled. “I suppose. I still feel like I could go around apologizing for the rest of my life to everyone I ever knew and it wouldn’t be enough. Especially my girls.”

  Her voice broke. She hadn’t been able to talk about this with anyone other than her therapist. Her parents had been good role models, but for whatever reason, she’d been born with an insatiable craving for attention—even negative attention—and excitement. Her therapist thought Edith and Edwin’s undisputable virtues had something to do with it. Neither drank, smoked, swore, spoke ill of others. Both attended church, did community service—the good-person pressure was enough to make a daredevil only child go nuts.

  It didn’t help that there were millions of kids who would kill for the upbringing she’d so callously rejected.

  No regrets.

  “Meet me on Monday and I’ll absolve you of your sins in a mysterious and sacred New Age cleansing ceremony.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “New Age who what?”

  “It involves good food, good conversation and maybe a long walk if it isn’t too hot.”

  “That sounds more like a lunch date.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. Are you free?”

  She sank onto Melanie’s bed. Her first date clean and sober. Well, not date date, just a friendly get-together. “I’m free.”

  “Noon at Beans and Barley. You remember where it is?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll meet you there at noon.”

  Grinning, Tricia hung up the phone. Remarkable to be able to see someone she’d known so well in one incarnation, after being reborn into a new skin, a new chance, a new life.

  Three hours later, midnight, she was sitting up in bed, staring at a painting for her best-yet idea for a kids’ book—about a naughty witch who stole all the holidays from the calendar, and the brother and sister who convinced her to give them back. Tricia wasn’t in the mood to work as she often did when she couldn’t sleep. Her mind wasn’t focused enough; it was doing cartwheels somewhere in outer space.

  She should have waited until morning to contact Jim. Insomnia had become a problem even when life was calm, a by-product of stopping the self-medicating long enough to get back in touch with herself. Her therapist in California assured her once she’d slain all her family demons, sleep would return. In the meantime she’d made friends with exhaustion.

  Finally giving in to the urge to be up and around, she went downstairs, made herself a cup of lavender tea to try to relax, practicing her deep yoga breathing at the kitchen counter, making her eyelids heavy, her body heavy, concentrating on the warm fragrant liquid, imagining it filling her body with—

  Bang, bang, bang. Tricia jumped a mile, sloshing hot tea into her lap. Who was pounding on the back door at midnight on a Satur—?

  “Melanie. You there?”

  Tricia closed her eyes in exasperation. Oh, super. One of Melanie’s wackos come to claim her for an evening’s entertainment.

  She went to the back, peeked through the storm door; her mouth formed an O of surprise. Who… This couldn’t be…

  Psychic intuition hit.

  This was Edgar.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  So the man had passion. Good. She parted the curtain so he could see her, and put her finger to her lips. She wasn’t going to open until she was sure it was he, and not some guy high on something that could make him violent. She’d had plenty of experiences in that department. Fine by her never to have another.

  He raised his eyes—which were very blue and oddly beautiful—and caught sight of her. His fist froze in midair, then his five fingers flew open in surrender, his expression turned to sheepish dismay. Yup. Edgar.

  She unlocked the door, pulled it open. “Hi, Edgar. I’m Tricia, Melanie’s mom.”

  She held out her hand, which he pulled himself together enough to shake. Tricia liked him right away. His grip was warm and firm, and in spite of the fact that he seemed over-wrought, and had obviously been startled by her appearance, he managed a polite smile, which transformed his face further. Something very, very appealing about that face. Though the hair…

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs.—”

  “Tricia.”

  “Mrs. Tricia. I forgot you were back. I was—” He clamped his lips shut, looking desperate for a second, then resolved. “Is Melanie here? She’s not answering her cell. She’s out with…I’m afraid she… I don’t want her to…”

  “Why don’t you come in, Edgar? I’m having lavender tea. Maybe you’d like some to calm down. Melanie isn’t here, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

  “Thanks. Yes. Okay.”

  She let him into the kitchen, noticed him looking around curiously. “You haven’t been here before?”

  “Oh. No. Melanie and I mostly see each other at work.”

  “Well, welcome to her home. I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of the place.” Tricia couldn’t be surer. What a waste of time looking online—except for finding Jim. This was the man for Melanie. As soon as she did something about his hair. “I take it you’re worried about her?”

  “Oh. Um.” He rubbed his forehead wearily. Under the horrible helmet hair it was smooth and high. “She’s out with my brother, and—”

  “Stoner.”

  “Yes. Stoner. He’s playing a gig. She was going to see him, but then they didn’t come back, um,
to my place….” He blushed, looking supremely tortured by his confession. “So, uh…”

  “Have a seat, Edgar.” Tricia filled the kettle, put it on the stove. “You thought she might bring him here?”

  “God.” He slumped onto a counter stool. “I probably seem crazy to you.”

  “No more than any man in love with a woman who can’t see it.”

  Edgar’s mouth dropped about four inches. She smiled peacefully at him and got down another mug.

  “How did you know?”

  “Gee, something tipped me off about the way you were completely out-of-your-mind frantic because she’s out with your brother.”

  “Yeah. That.” He laughed humorlessly. “Dead giveaway, huh.”

  “Love is nothing to be ashamed of.” She wouldn’t confess to the irony that she didn’t consider any of her passions to have been love. Tom came closest, but…no. Her bar was considerably higher now. “On the contrary.”

  “I couldn’t bear them to be together. Not after we…the other night.” He let his forehead drop on his hands. “I’m not making sense to you. I’m sorry. It’s complicated.”

  The other night? Tricia’s instincts perked up as she got down the lavender. “Thursday night, by any chance?”

  He looked startled. “Yeah…”

  Bingo. The night Melanie came home from being with “Stoner,” thinking she was in love. “She was with you that night.”

  Edgar paled. “How do you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Tricia shrugged and put dried lavender blossoms into a mesh tea ball. “Things just come.”

  “Does Melanie know it was me?”

  Tricia’s mouth curled into an immensely satisfying grin. “Deep down, undoubtedly. But she’s not admitting it. Denial is a powerful force.”

  “Denial. Oh, God.”

  Tricia sat opposite him, hands itching to run through that hair and test its length. At least three inches off the sides, only slightly less on top, forget the bangs, get the wiry mass off his fine forehead, give those dynamite eyes a chance to shine. Thinning shears applied liberally, but keeping a cool, spiky-tousled look—take off too much and his nose would seem bigger. Short sideburn to emphasize the strong shape of his cheekbone and jaw. Oh, yeah.