First and Again (2 page)

Chapter Two

“Come on, sleepyhead, you’re going to be late.”

Rebecca burrowed deeper into her blankets, wrapping the pillow around her head. “I don’t want to go to this stupid hick school.”

Bridget sighed, resisting the urge to groan out loud. For the two weeks they’d been in Paradise, Rebecca had remained holed up in her bedroom or in her grandmother’s living room watching TV, her moods shifting between sullen silence and outright anger. She’d overheard a couple of Rebecca’s phone calls to her father begging him to bring her back to San Francisco. He’d turned her down flat. Though she knew the rejection had broken her heart, she was grateful Ben’s indifference meant her daughter remained with her in Paradise.

Rebecca rarely ventured outside despite Bridget’s urging to get some fresh air and exercise. Even her cousins’ invitation to go swimming with them at the local pool hadn’t moved her. Now the first day of school had arrived and she couldn’t even roust her daughter out of bed.

She considered her options. She could let Rebecca continue to wallow in misery, or she could drag her kicking and screaming out of bed and into school. Bridget gritted her teeth. Option number two it was.

She took a firm hold of the blanket and yanked it from the bed. Rebecca let out an indignant cry.

“Hey! Leave me alone. I want to sleep.”

“You’ve slept enough. Get in the shower.”

“You can’t make me!”

“Wanna bet?”

Rebecca sat up, pulling her knees close to her chest. “I don’t know anybody at that school. They’re probably all weirdos.”

“You know your cousins. And I’m sure all the kids in school aren’t weirdos.” She sat next to Rebecca and put her arm around the girl’s thin shoulders, smoothing the thick, curly hair that her daughter had inherited from her. “I know this has been hard, but you’ve got to move forward. Nothing’s going to change if you stay locked up in this room.”

“I liked my old school, and my old friends. I miss my riding lessons. I miss Daddy. Why do I have to start all over?”

Because I screwed up.
She took a deep breath before answering.

“Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we plan. We have to make the best of what we’ve got.”

“Why didn’t you make the best of what you had with Daddy? Maybe if you had we wouldn’t have ended up here in this dump.”

Rebecca’s words struck her like a physical blow, robbing her of speech and breath. What hurt the most was that it was true. If she hadn’t let Ben down, perhaps he wouldn’t have strayed and they’d still be a family.

“I’ve made mistakes,” she said after regaining her voice. “But I’ve done the best I could. Everything I’ve done has been for you.”

“For me?” Rebecca laughed bitterly. “Please, don’t do me any more favors.”

“I don’t want to argue anymore—”

“Why couldn’t I have stayed in San Francisco with Daddy?”

Because he didn’t want you.
“Your dad doesn’t have room for you at his place.”

“It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not. Come on,” she said wearily. “It’s time to get ready for school.”

“No!” Rebecca jumped out of bed with more energy than she had seen from her in days. “I want to go back to my house in San Francisco, and my old school, and my riding lessons. Why did you get rid of everything? I want my old life back!”

Exasperation brought Bridget to her feet. “I didn’t sell the house, Rebecca, the bank repossessed it. And that fancy private school of yours wouldn’t give us any more extensions on the tuition. They threw you out. The same with the riding lessons. I hate to break it to you sweetheart, but we have no money. Zip. Nada. We’re lucky Grandma Mavis offered to take us in and give me a job. I know you’re not happy and that things haven’t turned out the way you wanted them to, but my life hasn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries either.”

She stopped abruptly, angry at herself for taking her frustration out on her daughter. Rebecca was a child; it was her job to worry about finances, not her daughter’s.

They’d done nothing but fight in the months preceding the move to North Dakota. Rebecca had fallen in with a bad crowd at the public school she’d been forced to attend after they’d run out of money for her private school. She’d been caught smoking pot at school, and then when she was picked up for shoplifting, it was the last straw. Bridget had known she had to get her daughter out of the city before she was dragged into something that irreversibly altered her life.

Rebecca sat on the edge of the bed once more. She stared at her hands in her lap, her thick mane of hair hiding her expression. Bridget scrambled to say something to lighten the mood, anything to get her to smile again. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that. When life throws you curveballs you’ve got to learn to swerve, but unfortunately I’m a slow learner. I got beaned in the head a few too many times.”

Rebecca glanced up at her, a hint of smile on her lips as she rolled her eyes.

“That is so lame, Mom.”

“If it convinces you to go to school, I’ll be the queen of lame. So what’ll it be? Are you going to get up and get moving or do I have to drag you to school?”

She held her breath, not sure if her bravado would hold up if her daughter refused to go.

Rebecca sighed. “Fine. I’ll go to the stupid school.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

The expression on her face said she was torn between needing her mommy and not wanting to appear like she needed her mommy. After a moment she shook her head.

“No, I can go by myself.”

Bridget smiled and touched Rebecca’s hair once more. “Okay. I’m making pancakes for breakfast if you’re interested.”

“Blueberry?” For the first time since they moved to Paradise, a spark of interest lit her daughter’s eyes.

“Is there any other kind? They’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“It won’t take me long to get ready. It’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone.” She dragged herself off the bed and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. Bridget sighed in relief. Round one went to her.

But it was no real victory. She might be able to convince her daughter to go to school today, but she couldn’t pick her friends for her, or make her follow school rules. She certainly couldn’t force Rebecca to be happy or forbid her from missing her old life.

Moving from the city was no guarantee that Rebecca would stay out of trouble. Even back when Bridget had been in high school, drugs were available if you knew where to look.

She pressed her hand against her aching heart. The thought of her beautiful, sensitive, intelligent daughter falling into a life of drug abuse and crime kept her awake at nights.

She prayed Rebecca would find a nice group of kids to hang out with. If she got into trouble again, they had no place left to run.

* * *

Bridget scoured the toilet bowl, inhaling the disinfectant smell of the cleaning solution. Thank goodness there were only two washrooms in the bar, one male and one female. The job was tedious and at times a little disgusting, but a bar, like a restaurant, was judged by its cleanliness.

Her new job was certainly a change from her old one. She missed the fast pace and excitement of working in her catering company’s kitchen. She’d loved coming up with new items for the menu, and got a thrill seeing her customers enjoy them. She longed to be creative again. She plunged her brush into the bowl and scrubbed a little harder.

When she emerged from the women’s washroom with her bucket and pail, several people were in the bar even though it was barely midmorning. Two tables of older, retired men sipped the coffee her mother poured for them, gossiping in loud voices. Mavis had explained that the bar had been filling a gap in the community ever since the coffee shop had burned down.

Bridget took her bucket to the utility room off the kitchen to dispose of the contents, washing her hands thoroughly when she was done. The kitchen had once been part of a working restaurant attached to the bar. When she was a kid, her great Uncle Frank, who’d owned the motel back then, ran the restaurant. She’d loved watching Uncle Frank work in the kitchen, then helping him when she got older. He’d been her first cooking teacher.

But after Frank died, her mother closed the restaurant. She didn’t cook, and running the bar and the attached motel were more than enough for her to handle alone.

Bridget ran her hand over the smooth surface of the red Formica counter, and smiled. Like everything else in the motel, her mother kept the kitchen spotless. It wouldn’t take much to get it up and running again. With a few minor renovations, new appliances and some supplies, the restaurant could be in business again. If it were hers, she’d play up the fifties decor, with a black, white and red color scheme. She’d keep the intimate booths and the revolving stools that formed a straight row in front of the counter. The menu would be simple but fun, a combination of big city chic and down-home country. Ideas exploded in her head.

What if she made somebody sick again?
What if somebody died this time?

Her head suddenly throbbed. Her palms began to sweat and she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs.

It was your fault.
Somebody could have died.

She hurried from the restaurant and quickly passed through the bar, not making eye contact with any of the customers. She needed to breathe fresh air, to exorcise the demons that had haunted her for over two years now.

Once outside, she took off at a brisk pace. The motel was on the main highway, a short distance from the rest of the town. She took a side road away from Paradise, and hoped no one would see her.

She walked until her frightening thoughts passed and she felt more in control again. Stopping abruptly, she bent over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. After a moment she straightened and looked around. The motel looked very small in the distance. There was nothing to do now but to turn around and go back.

She’d asked herself a hundred times what she’d done wrong. But the answer was always the same. She’d taken the same precautions with the food on that day as she had every other day. She had no idea how she’d caused so many people to become ill. The frustration of not knowing still gnawed at her.

The sound of an approaching vehicle made her cringe. The driver would likely stop and ask what had happened and whether she was all right. The thought of having to explain her actions made her feel slightly queasy. She prayed for the person to keep on going, to ignore the woman in a pink apron walking alone down a gravel road.

No such luck.

She heard the vehicle slow to a crawl as it pulled next to her. Righteous anger bubbled in her chest when she glanced over and saw Jack Davison roll down his window.

“Going for a walk?” he asked.

“Something like that.”

“Need a ride back to the motel?”

“No thanks. I don’t accept rides from people who laugh at me.”

She kept on walking, her head high. To her dismay Jack continued to follow her slowly with his truck.

“When did I laugh at you? I’ve only seen you once since you got here.”

“Once was enough.”

“You mean the night Tina gave you a hard time?”

Bridget didn’t answer. Perhaps it seemed petty to others, but Tina and Celia had humiliated her, and Jack had laughed at her. She wasn’t likely to get over it quickly.

“I wasn’t laughing at you. I enjoyed seeing Tina get taken down a peg. It doesn’t happen often, and frankly, I was impressed.” He paused a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”

She glanced toward Jack and he grinned back, all innocence and boyish charm. Despite herself, she returned his smile. He was a hard man to stay angry with, and she really didn’t want to walk back to the motel and risk having other people pass her on the road.

“Fine. I’ll ride with you.”

He stopped the truck and gestured toward the passenger door of his half-ton. “Hop in.”

She climbed into the cab, slammed the door shut, then buckled her seat belt. She smoothed the apron over her lap, suddenly feeling stupid and regretting her decision to accept the ride. Jack probably thought she was crazy, or at best, unbalanced. There was no way she could explain the fear that had controlled her life the last two years.

“I have a punching bag,” he said, his eyes on the road ahead.

“Excuse me?” she said, confused. Had she missed part of this conversation?

“When I can’t get things or people to do what I want them to do, or when I’m just plain pissed off, I go down into my basement and beat the hell out of Bozo the Clown.”

She stared at his profile. “Bozo the Clown?”

“I have an old Bozo punching bag, you know, one of those toys that’s weighted on the bottom so it keeps popping back up. Bozo takes a licking and keeps coming back for more.”

“Oh, I see,” she said cautiously.

He turned and flashed a dazzling smile. “No, I’m not crazy. At least no crazier than you. Everybody needs some way of getting out their frustrations or they’ll eat you alive. Mine happens to be beating the crap out of Bozo, and I suspect that yours is walking briskly down country roads.”

She relaxed against the seat. “Maybe.”

“Next time lose the apron. You can’t pretend you’re a serious jogger if you’re wearing a frilly pink apron.”

“No, I suppose not.” She grinned, the weight of embarrassment lifting from her shoulders. Jack’s quirky sense of humor had always intrigued and delighted her. “Next time I feel the urge to take a hike I’ll throw on some jogging pants and tell everyone I’m training for a marathon. That ought to stop the gossiping.”

“Sorry to disillusion you, but nothing’s likely to do that. Gossip and Paradise go together like peanut butter and jam. Most of the time it’s harmless, but if you’re smart you’ll try not to draw too much attention to yourself.”

“Trust me, that’s the last thing I want to do.” She untied the apron and pulled it over her head. “Doesn’t it ever get to you? The life in the fishbowl? Are you and your wife happy living in Paradise?”

He glanced at her, and she saw a momentary look of surprise in his expression before he turned his attention back to his driving.