There's Always Plan B

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

COMING NEXT MONTH

“I
don't know why you always have to torture me,” fifteen-year-old Tiffany Spencer said as she folded her arms over her chest and stared out the passenger-door window. “Some moms actually like their children. Some moms care about their happiness. Why can't you be like that?”

Carly Spencer tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried to figure out why she'd ever complained about her daughter asking, “Are we there yet?” when she'd been younger. Given a choice between that question and the one currently on the table, “Are we there yet?” seemed amusingly simple to deal with.

“I care about your happiness,” she said, even though she knew it was a huge mistake to engage her daughter. At this point it was obvious Tiffany simply wanted to be the martyr to all decisions parental.

“Ha! Oh, sure. Because dragging me away from all my friends and my school and Justin Beakly, who looks just like Matt Damon and who was probably going to ask me to the Spring Carnival dance, is going to make me faint with happiness. Here I am. Fainting.”

Tiffany collapsed against the door. Carly hoped her daughter would stay mock-unconscious for at least ten minutes or until the headache remedy Carly had popped a few minutes before had a chance to kick in.

But it was not to be.

“And if we had to leave all that because you're so determined to ruin my life,” Tiffany said seconds later, “you could have at least let me get my belly button pierced. I mean what's the big deal? It's
my
body. I bet I'll be the only high school girl here, too, without one. Although maybe not. Have they heard about piercing at the ends of the Earth?”

Her daughter was certainly bright enough, Carly thought, as she desperately searched for a silver lining in what felt like the world's largest dark cloud. Eventually Tiffany would learn to use her highly developed verbal skills for good instead of mother abuse.

“I don't know what they've heard,” Carly said cheerfully. “It's possible they're still existing with horse-drawn carriages and cooking on an open fire. Maybe we'll be so modern, they'll think we're aliens from another planet and they can worship us like goddesses.”

Tiffany rolled her eyes. “You're not helping.”

“Ditto.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You're not helping, either,” Carly said. “This move is tough on me, too.”

“But it's your fault we have to go.” Tiffany sounded outraged. She turned in her seat and glared. “If you hadn't made Dad leave, we wouldn't be doing this.”

Carly drew in a deep breath and counted to ten. When that didn't work, she counted to twenty, then promised herself no matter what, she would go to the grocery store later, buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream and eat the entire thing by herself.

Tiffany was still a child, she reminded herself. Under the carefully curled blond hair, the formfitting clothes and too much makeup lurked a young teenager not yet prepared to deal with the realities of the world.

“Your father and I divorced by mutual decision,” she said slowly, going for an “I'm so calm” voice instead of the shrill tone that lurked just beneath the surface. “There were a lot of issues, some of which are private.”

“He quit his job.” Tiffany sounded both shocked and scared. “Just like that. He says he's sailing to Hawaii.”

“I heard that, too.” At times she thought her soon-to-be ex was a complete mystery. Other times she hoped he got lost at sea.

“I should have stayed in L.A. with Dad,” Tiffany mumbled. “I could have moved into his apartment and not had to change schools.”

Carly ignored that mostly because she didn't know what to say. In truth, Neil hadn't been interested in sharing custody of his daughter. It was as if once he'd decided to leave, his only child no longer existed for him. Carly couldn't understand that, but in the past few weeks she'd realized that Neil had become a stranger to her. Maybe he always had been. Maybe she'd been fooling herself throughout their marriage.

What she didn't know was how it was possible to live with a man for sixteen years, have his child, sleep with him, talk to him, plan a future with him and find out she'd been wrong about almost everything. Her mind spun every time she thought about it.

“Are we there yet?” Tiffany asked.

Carly chuckled. At last a question she could answer. “About another forty minutes.”

Now that they were north of San Francisco, Carly found herself studying the changing landscape. The Northern California coastline was as rugged as it was beautiful. She remembered the narrow, rocky beaches, the high cliffs, the storms that would blow through. But mostly, she remembered the beautiful bed-and-breakfast/house where she'd grown up.

Chatsworth-by-the-Sea had once been an elegant English manor with a different name. Her great-great—however many greats—grandfather had made his fortune during the gold rush in the 1850s. Determined to leave a legacy, he'd bought a massive house in England and had it brought over stone by stone.

For Carly, Chatsworth-by-the-Sea had always been
home.
With everything going on in her life, she longed to return to the comfortable welcome she'd always found there. And yet she felt unsettled.

“I can't wait to see the old place again,” she said. “You always liked it, too.”

Tiffany shrugged. “To visit. I never thought we'd live there. Is Grandma going to make us do work and stuff?”

“You'll have a few chores, but nothing worse than you had before.” Carly almost said “at home” but stopped herself in time. The last thing she needed was Tiffany in tears again. Her daughter's blue eyes were still swollen from that morning's crying jag.

Not that Tiffany was the only one upset about leaving behind their house in Santa Monica. Change was never easy. Given the choice, Carly would have stayed put. But she hadn't had a choice. The difference was she'd kept her pain and sadness to herself. After all, she was the mom and it was up to her to be the strong one. Carly didn't mind that so much. What made things really hard was the sense of being trapped by circumstances she couldn't control.

“Are you going to run the bed-and-breakfast for Grandma?” Tiffany asked.

“That's the plan. I'll learn the family business and take over responsibilities. In two years, Grandma will move to Las Vegas.”

Carly's mother had already bought a town house in a complex she liked and was renting it out until she was ready to retire there. After Rhonda left for the wilds of Nevada, Carly would claim the wonderful B and B as her own. She would have a secure job, an income and an inheritance to leave her daughter. It was really the perfect solution for everyone.

Carly knew she should be grateful that everything had worked out so well. She had a job and a place for her and her daughter to live, while her mother would be able to move somewhere warm and go to bingo every day.

So why did she feel so lousy? Why did it seem that less than two months from turning forty, her life was already over?

“What would Grandma have done if you and Dad hadn't split up?” Tiffany asked. “Would we still have moved here to run things?”

“I don't know what would have happened,” Carly said, which was both true and a lie. She and Neil had never discussed the fate of the B and B because he'd made it more than clear he wasn't interested. But there was no way Carly would have let her mother sell it. Not after it had been in the family nearly a hundred and fifty years.

“I still would rather live in Santa Monica,” Tiffany said. “It was great there. This is going to be totally gross.”

“‘Gross' is harsh. I know moving to a small town is going to be different for you,” Carly told her daughter. “But there's still a lot to do. The mall's not that far away. There are movie theaters and lots of after-school activities.”

Tiffany wrinkled her nose, but didn't speak.

“I had a favorite place high in one of the towers,” Carly continued. “I used to take a book up there and read on rainy afternoons.”

“Oh, yeah,
that
sounds thrilling.”

So much sarcasm dripped off the words that Carly half expected to see a puddle on the car mat.

“There's also the ghost,” she reminded her daughter.

Tiffany only looked bored. “I never saw the ghost except for that stupid painting in the dining room. Are you sure it's real? I don't think anyone believes in ghosts anymore, Mom.”

“I do. At least I did when I was your age.” The ghost was one of Carly's favorite memories from growing up. Like the way the house looked at Christmas or on a stormy night.

In truth, she was willing to admit that while the ghost had been very real to her when she'd been Tiffany's age, now she had a little more trouble believing. But she wasn't willing to let the idea go completely.

“I used to read up in the tower room and sometimes I'd look up and see a pale, shimmering essence right there, next to me.”

“I don't think a ‘shimmering essence' counts as an actual ghost, Mom,” Tiffany said. “Besides, Daddy always said it was bogus. Whoever heard of a ghost named Mary?”

“He never came to the B and B, so he wouldn't know. We're in all the ghost registries, including the national one. They're very fussy about who they register. Chatsworth-by-the-Sea is famous for our spectral phenomena. We've had scientists and ghostbusters visiting for as long as the house has been here. No one has ever been able to prove there
wasn't
a ghost.”

Tiffany frowned. “But she's like nice, right?”

“Of course.”

“I don't want her hanging around when I'm getting dressed and stuff.”

Carly grinned. “I thought you didn't believe in ghosts.”

“I don't. But maybe, I don't know, there's something.” Tiffany glanced at Carly. “How did she die?”

“I don't know. We couldn't find out that information about her. I know your great-grandmother did a lot of research on Mary and never discovered much about her. The theory is she somehow came over with the house. The documentation about her says her clothes appear to be from the Regency era. That's around 1811. She's young—maybe twenty-two or so. She likes flowers.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw her in the garden once.” Or she'd seen something. It had been close to midnight, on a perfect summer evening. Carly had been around her daughter's age and hating life as much as Tiffany did when things didn't go her way. She'd been crying and there'd been some kind of…

“More shimmering essence?” Tiffany asked.

“Yeah.” It could have been moonlight or shadows.

Tiffany shook her head. “She's not
real.
”

“I know, but she's still entitled to her privacy.”

Carly shrugged. Okay. Maybe it
was
a stretch to think there was a real ghost, but the possibility was there. To her mind Mary had always been a wary and benevolent presence. Almost a friend. After all she'd been through, Carly figured she needed all the friends she could get.

As soon as she and Neil had started telling people they were getting a divorce, Carly had been stunned by all the supposed friends who had disappeared from her life. It was as if she had a contagious disease they were desperate to avoid. Suddenly women she'd known for years weren't returning her calls and were too busy to have lunch. She'd felt more and more isolated. Then Neil had moved out and Tiffany had gotten even more difficult.

When Carly's mother had called to offer her the chance to take over the B and B, Carly had accepted. Moving north would give Tiffany a chance to finish her education in an excellent high school in a charming town. Carly could still work full-time while being around for her daughter. Both of them would have a chance to start over.

The only potentially troubling aspect of the plan was that Carly and her mother had never exactly been close. There was too much friction between them.

“I'll make it work,” Carly murmured. She had to. There weren't a lot of other options.

“Are you talking to yourself?” her daughter asked.

“Yes. Does it make you nervous?”

“No. It's just weird.”

“Which you expect from me,” Carly said.

“Pretty much.”

Carly nodded. Not a surprise. She'd always wanted to be one of those cool moms, but somehow she hadn't figured out how. If being cool meant letting her daughter get her belly button pierced or stay out until midnight or date older guys, then Carly was willing to be weird and difficult.

They exited the highway and turned toward the ocean. Chatsworth-by-the-Sea stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Wooden steps led down to the beach below. There were beautiful grounds, a few hardy vineyards and some fruit trees, but for Carly, nothing compared with the wonder of being able to watch the ever-changing ocean. She liked storms best, although sunny days were great, too.