скачать книгу бесплатно
There was a time when I thought I’d had it all. A husband I loved who adored me. Two beautiful, healthy little girls. A life as shiny as the diamonds twinkling on my wrist. This would have been our thirty-second Christmas together. I smiled softly—and a little sadly. By now, Charlie would have been able to afford to buy me something from Ivan for Christmas. Something I’d wear when we went out on New Year’s Eve.
I held my arm out. The bracelet draped just right. But my nails—what a mess. It would be a travesty for a woman like me to own a bracelet like this. There was a time I’d taken better care of my hands—when Charlie had been here to hold them.
I took off the bracelet and handed it back to Ivan. “I’m sure your customer’s wife will be very happy with it.”
When I left the jewelry store I kept thinking about the shape my cuticles were in. How shameful they’d looked next to that bracelet. Iris’s House of Beauty was across the street. It had been years since I’d had a manicure.
“Hey, kid,” Iris said. “Did you come in here to sell raffle tickets or something?”
I laughed. “No—I actually thought about treating myself to a manicure.”
Her eyes widened. “What’s the occasion?”
“I was feeling nostalgic.”
Iris looked puzzled. “Nostalgic for a manicure?”
“Something like that. Can you fit me in?”
“You better believe it. I’ve been trying to get my hands on your cuticles for years. Why don’t you let me highlight your hair today, too? And maybe shape your brows.”
“Don’t push it. Just be happy I’m getting a manicure.”
“Honey, I’d jump for joy if these boots weren’t killing my feet.”
The place was buzzing with gossip, as usual. Iris had three stylists and a manicurist working for her and they relished regaling the customers with details about their various love lives, diets and favorite soap operas. If anyone had gained weight in town, was on the verge of bankruptcy or divorce, this was the place you heard about it first.
It was, “Girl, did you see those hips in those boot-cut leggings?” or “They say the balance on her MasterCard has more digits than her phone number.” I’d always felt a tiny bit uncomfortable with it all. Probably another reason I tended to avoid the place. Plus, I wasn’t fond of having so many mirror images of myself to look at and be judged. I didn’t need any reminders that my chin was getting slacker and my laugh lines were turning into crow’s feet.
Sally, the manicurist, had graduated a year ahead of me so we knew each other only slightly. Still, I got every detail about her brilliant grandchildren.
“I told my son, you’d better start saving your money. The oldest is going to wind up in one of those expensive Ivy League schools out east—you mark my words.”
I assured her I would.
She leaned closer. “Say, is it true what they say about Mary Stillman?”
I had no idea who Mary Stillman was, but Sally gave me the complete picture on what was being said about her, anyway.
An hour and a few dozen confidential tidbits later, I walked out with a set of fake nail tips elongating my fingers. I’d given in to Sally’s choice of polish—a purplish red that looked even more garish out in the cold afternoon. And now I was really running late. I had two more clients to drop in on and I still wanted to start my Christmas shopping.
As did everyone else in the county, apparently. When I finally got there, the discount store was packed. I lost a fingernail nabbing the last of the most popular video game of the year off the shelf for Matt and I’d hovered near a woman who was deciding over a sweater that I knew would be perfect for Natalie. When she put it back down and looked away, I swooped in like a hawk on a field mouse. Before I got into line at the checkout counter, on impulse I turned down the music aisle and started to search. There it was—our prom theme—on a compilation disk of seventies soft rock. I dropped it into my cart.
The checkout lines were long. By the time I made it back to the car, I was exhausted, but I wrestled with the frustrating CD packaging anyway, losing another nail tip in the process. I wanted to hear that song again. Now.
I sat in the parking lot, puffs of my warm breath visible in the cold car, and listened to the song. Twice. I felt like I wanted to cry. Was it for the loss of the girl who’d danced with such hope in her heart? Was it for the woman who I was supposed to have become who’d never quite materialized?
God, this was insane, I thought. Sitting in a cold car—a rusty station wagon no less—listening to love songs from my high school years.
I popped the CD out of the player. It immediately switched to a radio station playing all Christmas music. I bit the bottom of my lip and shook my head. “Abby,” I whispered into the icy air, “you picked a great time to have a midlife crisis.”
I drove home, hauled the packages into the house, stowed them in the front hall closet and went into the living room.
“Well, it’s about time,” Gwen said from the sofa. “I’m starving.”
Natalie looked up from her magazine. “I’m starving, too. And, Ma, the kids keep asking me when you’re going to decorate for Christmas.”
“Yeah, don’t you usually have a tree by now, Mother? By the way,” Gwen added, a secret little smile on her face, “David called seven times today. I think your answering machine is almost full.”
The kids suddenly ran down the stairs, squealing, and Nat shushed them. “Daddy’s napping.”
You know that saying I saw red? Well, it’s true. I saw red. And we’re not talking festive lights here. I think it was the red of my blood boiling up to my eyeballs.
“What does Daddy have to nap for?” I asked testily. “He’s not working. And he’s certainly not doing anything around here.”
Natalie got up and quickly glanced at the stairs. “Ma—shh, he’ll hear you.”
“Nat, I think Jeremy already knows he’s not working. And he sure as hell knows he’s not doing anything around here.”
She cocked her hip. “What the hell has gotten into you?”
“That’s another thing. Will you please watch your mouth? You gripe if anyone else uses bad language in front of the kids but you’re the worst of all.”
Gwen, wearing yet another expensive nightgown and robe ensemble, snickered from the sofa.
I swung around to face her. “And you. You’re a grown woman. Isn’t it time you got dressed and started doing something around here, too? Like maybe, for instance, making dinner?”
From the look on her face you’d think I’d asked her to sign up for boot camp.
Nat gave a short laugh. “Princess Gwen doesn’t cook, Ma. She orders.”
“Then what about you? You can’t make a damn box of macaroni and cheese for your kids?”
As if they’d been cued from offstage, the kids came running through the living room again.
“Grandma! When can we get a Christmas tree?”
“Do you know where my skates are?”
“Can I have a sleepover this weekend?”
“Aren’t you going to put stuff up outside this year, Grandma?”
“You know what,” I said as I eyed the other adults in the room, “I think you’d better start asking your parents those questions—or Auntie Gwen—because as of right now, Grandma is on strike.”
“What?” Both Nat and Gwen asked in unison.
“I am going on strike,” I enunciated clearly. It wasn’t something I’d planned to say. But while my blood boiled, the story Mike had told us on Friday at the diner bubbled up with it. If a man could go on strike against his wife for lack of affection, why couldn’t a woman go on strike against her family for lack of cooperation? “As of this moment, all of you are on your own. For meals. For laundry. For Christmas.”
There was a collective gasp.
“That’s right,” I reiterated. “No tree. No decorations. No cookies. I. Am. On. Strike.”
I crossed the hall, passed through the dining room, went through to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, poured cereal into a bowl, added milk, grabbed a spoon and took it into the maid’s room where I sat in my mother’s old rocking chair and dined on Special K and silence.
Except the cereal lasted longer than the silence. Soon the kitchen just outside my door erupted into the noise of six hungry people who weren’t even sure where the butter was kept. I listened to them as I crunched, willing myself not to go to their rescue. One question kept running over and over again in my brain. When a woman finally decides that her time has come, where the hell is she supposed to spend it?
CHAPTER 3
By the second day of my strike I knew I was in trouble. It was going to be impossible to keep from crossing the picket line if I stayed under the same roof as the rest of my family. For one thing, the maid’s room was far from soundproof. I could hear the chaos going on around me as I rocked in my mother’s old rocking chair, trying to talk myself into staying put.
Mealtimes were the worst. I tried to secrete myself in my office before anyone showed up looking for food. But I was forced to be an auditory witness to breakfast for two days in a row now because I’d overslept. It was like listening to a bad sitcom without the picture. I kept wondering why I didn’t just go out there and make them all some damned eggs. Although maybe Natalie got some of her defiance from me because, ultimately, I refused to budge, unpleasant as it was.
My family needed to learn a lesson and I needed—what did I need? Space, certainly. Although the confines of the tiny room weren’t exactly what I had in mind. I needed to not be taken for granted. And, above all, I needed to not be needed for a change. To just be. Peace and quiet. Ah, what a luxury that would be I thought just as the doorbell rang.
I was on strike so I didn’t make a move to answer it.
It kept ringing.
I kept rocking.
Finally, whoever it was started to bang on the front door. Where was everybody? I looked at the alarm clock on the small table next to the bed. It was already after nine in the morning so the kids were probably in school. Nat was probably working an early shift or running to the store for a few more gallons of peanut butter. That still left Jeremy and Gwen. Gwen was undoubtedly up in her room waiting for me to come to my senses and show up with a tray of food and some sympathy. And if Jeremy wasn’t slumped on the sofa, he had his head in the refrigerator. One of them would eventually act, wouldn’t they?
The pounding went on.
“All right, all right,” I yelled. “I’m coming!”
I didn’t run into anyone while I made my way to the front hall. Someone could be upstairs yet I’d never know it because of the racket our visitor was making on the front porch.
I flung the front door open, but when I saw who was standing on the other side of it I wished I’d stayed in the maid’s room where I belonged.
“Where the hell is my daughter-in-law?” Cole Hudson demanded as he swept past me without waiting to be asked in.
“Beats me,” I said, as I waved at Ernie, the cab driver, waiting in the town’s only cab idling at the curb. “Did you ask Ernie to wait?” I asked as I shut the door. “Because he’s the only cab in town and—”
“Good God, how can anyone live somewhere that has only one taxi? And the closest damn airport is two towns away.”
“For some reason, inexplicable as it may seem, Mr. Hudson, Willow Creek doesn’t attract a lot of men who fly their own jets,” I said, then turned to head back to my room.
He stepped in front of me before I made it halfway through the dining room.
“You don’t know where your own daughter is?” he demanded.
I’d forgotten how hard his face could look. All etched lines and sharp angles. He had silver hair that fell to nearly his shoulders and light gray eyes beneath uncannily black eyebrows. He was taller than me, but not by much. He probably stood six feet or so. I could practically look right into those stormy eyes.
“She’s a grown woman, Mr. Hudson. She comes and goes as she pleases. Besides, I’m on strike. I’m no longer responsible for knowing where anyone in this family is.”
His frown grew even deeper. “On strike?” His voice rumbled with incredulity. “I thought you were self-employed.”
“Oh, it’s not my clients I’m striking against. It’s my family.”
His gray eyes shot to the ceiling. “Heaven help me, I’m dealing with another one of the Blake women.” He looked me in the eye. “Tell me, are you all crazy?”
I felt my natural instinct to protect start to rev up but I eased off the pedal. I wasn’t going to get in the middle of this. I was on strike.
“My daughter’s room is upstairs. First door on the right. You might find her there.” I shrugged. “You might not.”
I stepped neatly around him and passed through the dining room and kitchen then went into the maid’s room and shut the door. I heard his footsteps on the stairs and I peered up at the ceiling. I won’t say I wasn’t curious to know what was going on up there. I was. But I wasn’t going to break my strike to find out.
As it turns out, I didn’t have to. Moments later, the door to my room burst open.
“Mother,” Gwen demanded, “how could you let that man come up to my room?”
“I’m on strike,” I reminded her.
She stared at me. “Well, I’m not going back to Chicago and nobody is going to make me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.
She stared at me some more. “I mean it.”
“So do I. Now please shut the door on your way out.”
I half expected her to stamp her foot like Scarlett O’Hara. She settled for slamming the door.
I could hear them talking, though the conversation was muffled. They must have gone into the living room. Then there were footsteps running upstairs—probably Gwen’s—and the slamming of another door—probably Gwen’s.
I couldn’t help it. I smiled at the situation. Cole Hudson was an intimidating man but I was pretty sure he’d gotten nowhere with Gwen. This was the girl who had won the title of Miss Willow Creek two years in a row and graduated valedictorian of her class. Riding on floats in parades all over the county and giving a speech before practically the whole town hadn’t even caused a flutter in her toned tummy. Nothing—or no one—ever intimidated Gwen.
The door to my bedroom opened again.
Cole Hudson glared down at me. “So you find this amusing, do you?”
“Ever heard of knocking, Mr. Hudson?”
“Would you have let me in?”
“No.”
“Well, then,” he said, his light gray eyes boring into me, “let’s not play games. I need your help. For some inexplicable reason my son is in love with that woman up there—” he thrust his cleft chin at the ceiling “—and he wants her back.”
“And you think I could help…how?”
“By intervening, of course. By convincing her that the right thing to do is to go back to Chicago.”
“And how do I know that’s the right thing for her to do? She told me she’s unhappy with David.”
His face hardened. “She was happy enough until he had to cancel that blasted cruise!” he bellowed. “She’s acting like a spoiled brat.”
