Their Last Second Chance
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Shirley Jump
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Chapter One
Melanie Cooper told her first lie at the age of five. Or, at least, the first lie she remembered. She’d been playing in the creek a quarter mile away from home—a forbidden destination, but too tempting to avoid. The creek was her favorite place in the entire world, chock-full of crawdads and little minnows that flickered like silver coins.
She’d heard her mother calling her and had run for the hole in the fence, hoping to sneak in as if she’d never left. Her knee connected with the fence, and by the time she’d scrambled into the yard, the gash had become a geyser. When her mother asked her why she had taken so long to come in, Melanie had made up an elaborate story about a lost puppy and tripping over the curb trying to bring him back to his owner. Her mother had ignored the leaving-the-yard violation and made a big deal about Melanie’s big heart, delivering a rare dose of praise. In that moment, Melanie had learned that lying was the best way to get out of trouble—and win her hypercritical mother’s approval.
So it stood to reason that she would end up working at City Girl magazine, where lying was part of the job description. She spent her days writing articles about how to lose twenty pounds in ten days, filling them with tips like drink green tea, grab an extra workout, take the stairs at work, and the editor would plop a miracle-promising title on the cover and sell twenty percent more copies to all those people wanting instant weight-loss results.
As she pulled into Stone Gap, North Carolina, heading down Main Street and across town to her sister Abby’s house, Melanie knew she was going to have to be extra convincing when she lied to Abby. Her older sister wasn’t some gullible reader in the grocery store looking for the untold secret to erasing cellulite. She was smart, and she knew Melanie well. Too well. If Melanie’s story faltered one bit, Abby would see the truth.
And the last thing she wanted Abby to know was that Melanie’s hard-won perfect life had fallen apart.
Her throat closed, and she forced herself to take in a deep breath. Another. It would be okay. She’d turn this around, somehow. Plus, she had a job offer waiting for her at a prestigious online news magazine, if she could prove that she had the chops to write about more than just diets and mascara. That’s why she didn’t need to tell Abby—all would be set to rights again soon. Besides, Abby was getting married next weekend, and she had Ma staying with her, which was a herculean task unto itself. The last thing Abby needed to worry about was her little sister’s latest crisis.
Or crises, plural, considering she’d lost her marriage, her home and her job in relatively quick succession. Melanie’s entire life had become a string of empty promises and false leads, as if working in a fiction-creating world had colored her own reality.
Melanie took a right, then swung down the tree-lined cul-de-sac and into the driveway of Abby’s bungalow. It was the perfect little house, ringed by red geraniums and decorated with a porch swing that made a lazy arc in the breeze. A blue bicycle leaned in the shade of an oak tree, and a football waited in the sun for a game of catch. The fall air carried a sense of home as foreign to Melanie as a nor’easter to a Floridian. Years ago, she’d thought—
Well, it didn’t matter. Years ago was done and over.
Melanie tipped down the mirror, checked her makeup, then straightened her T-shirt and brushed invisible lint off her jeans before she got out of the car and strode up the stairs.
Jacob came running out of the house first, wearing a Transformers T-shirt in bright yellow that made him look like a minibus. “Aunt Melanie!” He barreled into her legs.
Melanie let out an oomph, then bent down and swung her five-year-old nephew up and into her arms. “How’s the best Jacob in the world?”
“I’m playing soccer! Mommy says I’m really good. And Dylan is my coach and we have lots of fun and we won our first game!”
Melanie laughed. “That’s awesome, buddy. Goodness, you’re getting big.” She lowered him to the ground—her nephew seemed to have grown six inches and added twenty pounds since the last time she saw him two Christmases ago. He slid his little hand into hers and pulled her up the stairs and into the house, talking nonstop the whole time about school, soccer and his new puppy. The simple affection of Jake’s tiny fingers in hers tugged at Melanie’s heartstrings. Emotion choked her throat, but she pushed it away just as she entered the kitchen.
Abby was pulling something out of the oven. She set the casserole pan on the stove top, then turned, a ready smile on her face. “Melanie! You’re here. How was the drive? I can’t believe you drove all the way from New York.”
A yellow lab puppy scrambled to his feet and bounded across the kitchen, all feet and tail, before skidding to a stop in front of Melanie. “That’s Dudley,” Jake said. “He’s got a dinosaur name.”
“A dinosaur name?” The puppy nudged Melanie’s hand, his tail thwapping on the floor.
“Yup. My dentist, Dr. Corbett, gave me a book ’cause I was so good when I got my teeths cleaned. And the book had Dudley the Dinosaur in it. But he wasn’t a scary dinosaur. He’s not the kind that can bite you. He’s the kind that eats his vegetables. And brushes his teeth.”
Melanie laughed. “Sounds like a very smart dinosaur and a very good name for a dog.”
“Dylan got him for us.” Jake hugged the dog’s neck and kissed his forehead.
“Well, he’s adorable.” Melanie set her purse in an empty chair, then set her phone on the table. No calls, no texts, no miracles on the notification screen. That was okay. Just walking into Abby’s house eased some of the tension in Melanie’s shoulders.
“He’s trouble is what he is,” Abby said with a laugh. Undoubtedly, she was taking the puppy in stride, as she did everything else. Abby had always had this easy casualness about her, in the way she looked, the way she parented, the way she got through life. Today, her brown hair was back in a loose ponytail, and she was wearing a pale lime V-neck T-shirt with dark blue skinny jeans. A small round diamond sparkled on her left hand. Abby smiled, a genuine glad-to-see-you smile, but Melanie could see the strain in Abby’s eyes, the stress of the last few days since their mother had arrived. “You got the entire fur-and-little-person welcoming committee.”
“And got to hear all about soccer, the puppy and how much he likes his teacher, just in the walk down the hall.” Melanie ruffled Jacob’s hair. “Sounds like he’s been a busy boy.”
“Busy should have been his middle name.” Abby opened her arms and drew Melanie into a tight hug. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” Melanie held on a little longer to Abby than Abby held on to her. A part of Melanie wanted to open up, to let the tears fall, to tell Abby the truth. Maybe she should. Maybe Abby would have just the right words of wisdom. “Oh, and congratulations again. I’m so happy for you.”
“Thank you. Dylan really is an amazing man. I’m incredibly happy to be marrying him.”
When Melanie drew back, she caught the joy in Abby’s eyes, matching the sparkle of the ring on her finger, and Melanie couldn’t do it. All her life, Abby had been the one to protect Melanie, to bandage her wounds when she fell down, to comfort her when a date stood her up, to bail her out when she got in trouble. How could she dim the look in Abby’s eyes? Tell her that her finally well-adjusted, settled little sister had completely upended everything?
Again.
Melanie couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment that would follow. Those eyes that would say here we go again and be followed by constant fretting and advice. She’d thought—they’d both thought—that those times were behind them. The days when Melanie was brought home by the cops for underage drinking or caught skipping school or sneaking home at three in the morning were in the past.
Back then, Abby had been the one to cover for her sister, to sit Melanie down, time after time, and stress the importance of graduating high school, going to college, getting a job, being responsible. It had taken a couple years for the message to sink in, and even then Melanie had slipped off the path more than once, coming close to ending up in jail and nearly making a decision that would have ruined her life. Slow to grow up was what her mother had called her, and maybe Ma was right. But she really thought she’d done it—that she’d figured out the rule book and been rewarded with success. It had all been perfect...until it wasn’t. Because here Melanie was at twenty-nine, alone, jobless and adrift.
Not exactly a shoo-in for the Most Successful award at the next high school reunion.
“So...how’s Ma?” Melanie asked, then lowered her voice. “Driving you nuts?”
Abby sighed. “She’s retired now and bored, and telling the whole world about how terrible her life is. I love her, Mel, but...”
“She sucks all the fun out of the room like a social vampire?”
“Exactly.” Abby laughed. “Anyway, Ma is taking a nap right now. She should be down for dinner.”
Just as well. That gave Melanie a little more time to avoid the double sister-mother inquisition. Together, they might be able to ferret out the truth. “How’s the wedding planning going? And please don’t tell me you’re one of those brides who is filling tiny Mason jars with homemade jam and sending a dressed-up baby goat down the aisle? Because I wrote a story about that, and I’m just saying, goat wrangler is not part of my maid of honor duties.”
Abby laughed, slid a cookie sheet filled with biscuits into the oven and then stirred a pan of vegetables, while Jake peeled off and headed for the living room and a mountain of Legos on the carpet. “Not quite. But I do hope stress reduction is something you do, because the caterer got the flu, so I had to find someone else, and the band has dropped off the face of the earth. Thank God Meri Barlow is helping me. She’s photographing the wedding and has been a great resource for finding replacement people, like her sister-in-law Rachel, who is a part-time wedding planner. I swear, planning a wedding is more stressful than being a mom.”
“Well, you don’t have to add worrying about me to that list. I’m great. Couldn’t be better.” Yep, lying in person was almost as easy as lying in print. Maybe she could write an article about that. Except she no longer had a job at a magazine and nowhere to publish something like “Ten Tips for Hiding Failure from Your Family.”
“And Adam? How’s he?”
“He’s...good. Busy with work. Said he’d try to visit next time.” She hadn’t seen her ex-husband in over a year, when she’d sat across from him in the judge’s chambers and signed her name on the final divorce decree. He and his pretty face and magazine-ready smile had walked away without a backward glance. Last she knew, he was living in a condo in the Bronx with Cheri, the twenty-one-year-old receptionist at his agent’s office. One of those girls who put a smiley face over the i in her name was prone to giggling fits.
Melanie had been intending to tell her sister and mother about her divorce. But she hadn’t been able to find the words, especially when Ma went on and on about how proud she was of her married writer daughter. It had been easier to continue pretending everything was fine than to admit her life had been crumbling for a long time. That she’d gone back to being the family failure.
“You know, you don’t have to stay at the inn,” Abby said. “I can put Jake into Cody’s room and Cody can take the couch if you want to take his bed. It’ll be a little cramped, but they’re boys. They’ll be fine. Besides, between school and work, Cody is hardly ever here.”
Staying here and disrupting Abby’s teenage son, as well as little Jake, would mean seeing her mother at all hours, not to mention talking to Abby on a daily basis. Melanie could only keep up the everything’s fine charade so long. Doing it from breakfast to bedtime would be impossible. And though she could ill afford the room fee for the inn, she knew staying there would make it possible to keep the truth from becoming obvious. “Aw, thanks, sis, but I’ll be fine. I’ve got some work to do, anyways, so even if I stayed here, I’d be holed up in my room most of the time. I’m sure you have a zillion things to do for the wedding, and this way, you won’t have to worry about me, too.”
Abby cocked her head and studied her little sister. Melanie held her ground and put a bright smile on her face. Everything’s fine, everything’s fine.
“Okay, if that’s what you want. But if you change your mind, you always have a place here,” Abby said.
“Thanks.” Melanie gave Abby a quick hug. “You’re the best.”
They got busy setting the table, with Jake buzzing around the oval shape like an airplane and Dudley nipping at his heels. Cody ambled in a few minutes later, followed by Dylan, Abby’s fiancé. The last time Melanie had seen Cody, he’d been a sullen, withdrawn teenager, angry at the world. Today, the seventeen-year-old walked in with a smile on his face, ready with a hug for his mom and then one for his aunt. “Hey, Aunt Melanie. How was your trip?”
She blinked back her surprise. Cody was engaging with adults? To her shock, there was no trace of the teenage angst she’d seen when Abby and the boys had visited New York a couple years ago. Clearly, settling down in Stone Gap and adding Dylan to their family had been a good influence on the boys. “Great. Thanks. I hear you’re working at the community center now.”
“Yup. Dylan’s got me doing some maintenance,” Cody said, his face filled with pride and excitement, a mirror to Jake’s earlier, “and helping out with the basketball program. We’re planning a job fair kind of thing for next month, too.”
“He’s practically running the place now.” Dylan grinned and clapped a hand on Cody’s shoulder. Dylan was a tall, lanky man with brown hair and a ready smile. He clearly loved Abby and the boys, and Abby loved him, given the joy that lit her face as soon as Dylan walked into the room. Any man who made her older sister that happy got Melanie’s immediate stamp of approval.
Cody blushed and ducked his head. “I’m just helping.”
“Well, you’re doing a great job.”
While Melanie exchanged small talk with her nephews and Dylan, Abby excused herself, went upstairs, then came back a few minutes later. “Ma isn’t feeling well, Mel. She asked if you’d bring her a plate and then you two can visit. I think she got too much sun today, walking downtown with me. We got lunch and planned on some window shopping, but...” Abby shrugged.
“Ma complained about the noise and the heat and you gave up?” Melanie said. “I get it, sis. I’ll take her some dinner.”
“Thanks. It’s been a stressful few days, and right now...well, I appreciate it. We’ll wait until you come back down so we can eat with you.” Abby filled a plate with chicken and potatoes, then gave Melanie a set of silverware and a napkin. “First room on the right.”
“Thanks.” Melanie swallowed her nerves, then climbed the stairs to face her harshest critic.
Cynthia Cooper was a strong woman—anyone who met her would walk away saying exactly that. She’d raised two girls alone, after their father had died in a car accident when Melanie was a baby, and for years she’d worked two jobs to support her family. She’d weathered widowhood, financial crises, a cancer scare and a dozen other issues with a stiff upper lip. To the outside world, she was the epitome of strength. To Melanie, strong was just a euphemism for high expectations with no warm fuzzies.
Melanie knocked on the open door, then stepped into the room. “Hi, Ma. I brought you some dinner.”
“It’s about time you came and said hello.” Her mother sat up in bed, and had arranged the pillows to keep her back straight. For being in her late fifties, Cynthia had aged well, thanks to regular yoga sessions, fastidious application of night creams and unrelenting attention to every aspect of her appearance at all times. She kept her hair dyed blond, wore minimal makeup and even in bed had her hair curled and wore recently pressed pajamas.
Melanie put the plate on a floral bed tray sitting on the ottoman, then set the tray over her mother’s lap. “Abby made chicken and potatoes. It smells amazing.”
“Hopefully your sister didn’t burn this dinner. Last night’s was atrocious.” Cynthia shook her head. “I swear, it’s like you girls haven’t retained a single thing I taught you when you were young.”
Melanie bit back her first reply, about how hard it was to pay attention to a parent who criticized more than she taught. “Not all of us are good at cooking, Ma.”
“Clearly not. I suppose you’d say that you are good at ordering takeout.” Another head shake. “Such a waste, especially in today’s world, when you can easily eat at home.”
Melanie put a smile on her face, because she’d never win the battle over ordering Chinese food versus making her own pot roast. “So, how have you been?”
“Terrible. This heat is killing me. I can’t wait to go back to Connecticut, where the weather is reasonable.” Ma waved a hand at the air in the room. “It’s positively stifling. I can hardly breathe.”
North Carolina could get hot, but today had been in the mid-seventies, with low humidity and partial cloud cover. In Ma’s room, a ceiling fan spun a lazy circle, and the breeze danced with the edges of the open curtains. “Well, I’ll let you eat your dinner,” Melanie said.
“Stay.” Ma patted the side of the bed. “Visit with your mother for once. You live one state away and I have to go all the way to North Carolina to see you for five minutes.”
Melanie perched on the edge of the bed. Her mother speared a piece of chicken and ate it. She tried to think of something she could say that her mother wouldn’t turn into a criticism. “Abby’s pretty excited about the wedding. And Dylan seems like a really great guy.” Maybe if Melanie focused enough attention on her sister, Ma wouldn’t think to ask about Melanie’s life.
“Yes, far better than that loser she married the first time.” Ma made a face. “Anyway, enough about Abby. What have you been up to? Have you been promoted to editor yet? You really should be, you know. You’ve put in enough time at that magazine.”
“Uh, no promotion yet. And I’m doing fine.”
“And Adam? How is he? When are you two going to give me a grandchild? Your sister has already had two children.”
“I’m aware of how many children Abby has, Ma.” How long had she been in the room? Five minutes? Already, her patience had worn thinner than a piece of paper. “I’m not ready to have kids.”
“Well, you need to start thinking about these things. You aren’t getting any younger. And once you lose your figure, men won’t be so interested in making babies with you.”
Melanie got to her feet and worked another smile to her face. “Your dinner is going to get cold if we keep talking. We’ll visit later.”
Like ten years from now, she thought as she headed out of the room and back downstairs. Maybe by then she’d have done all the things that checked off approval on her mother’s list.
Somehow, Melanie doubted that. From the minute she’d been born, Melanie had been a runner-up to Abby, and if her mother knew the truth, Melanie wouldn’t even be running a close second to her sister, who clearly had it all.
Melanie returned to the sound of happy chatter in the dining room. Jake was telling everyone about his day at school with Cody interjecting with comments about work and Abby and Dylan filling in the blanks. The puppy sat to the side, tail swishing against the floor. The room was filled with the merry sounds of a family.
As happy as Melanie was for her sister, who deserved a good man after divorcing the ex from hell—about that, her mother was right—a part of Melanie was jealous. Maybe things might have worked themselves out if Adam and she had tried for kids...
Wishful thinking. Actually, it was more like unproductive, stupid wishful thinking. Adam had turned out to be a self-involved, cheating jerk—the fact that he was a model should have been her first clue that he might be more narcissistic than considerate—and if they’d had kids, she would have wound up tied to him for the rest of her life, in one way or another.
Either way, Adam was out of her life, and if he stayed with Cheri or Shari or whoever she was, he was probably going to make babies who’d have names that would be dotted with little hearts.
Except there’d been a moment when she was eighteen when she had imagined a future with a baby, a husband. A totally different man than the one she married, a man who had made her feel like the most special person on earth—until he’d shattered her heart and the future she’d pictured fell apart.
“Melanie, what do you think?”
She drew herself back to Abby’s question. “Uh, sorry. I was daydreaming.”
Abby laughed. “Probably thinking about work. How’s that going, anyway? I saw the latest issue of City Girl when I was at the market. I looked for an article by you, but didn’t see one.” Abby turned to Dylan. “Melanie writes for a women’s magazine. I’m so proud of her, because she grew up to be exactly what she wanted to be.”
“Yep, exactly.” Unemployed and with a résumé filled with frivolous articles—that was every girl’s dream, right? Melanie had been writing ever since she learned how to hold a pencil. She’d once thought she would grow up to be someone writing important things that people would read and remember. She wouldn’t call 750 words on mastering under-eye concealer an important thing. She’d taken the first job out of college that offered a steady paycheck and had told herself that it made her happy. At least, it had until last year.
“I didn’t have anything in the last issue because I’ve been, uh, busy researching a big piece.” Yeah, researching a job that would pay enough for an unemployed writer to afford New York City rent. Even in a sublet with rent control, Melanie had blown through almost all of her savings. She needed to secure that job at the hard-news online magazine by the end of the month or she’d be eating ramen noodles for every meal for the foreseeable future. The editor at the online magazine had said bring me something worth publishing and I’ll hire you, but thus far, Melanie hadn’t found anything that fit what he was looking for.
“Too bad you don’t live here.” Dylan took a second helping of chicken, then added a buttered roll. “Saul Richardson, who puts out the Stone Gap Gazette, just lost his only writer. He’s getting up there in age, and he’s totally overwhelmed with writing all the articles himself, along with doing the layout and the printing and distribution. He’s been looking for a new journalist but hasn’t found one yet.”
Melanie’s interest perked. Given the size of the town, the Stone Gap Gazette likely had a budget far lower than the multimillion-dollar one at City Girl. But then again, the cost of living in this North Carolina town was also far lower. She had no interest in taking on a permanent job here, but maybe she could get some work for the next couple weeks, at least until the wedding was over and Abby was off on her honeymoon. That way, Melanie could start adding more than she was subtracting from her checking account. And buy herself some time to come up with that great idea the other editor wanted. “Maybe he would let me write an article or two. Might be fun to do a piece while I’m here.”
Abby leaned over and cut a big piece of chicken into smaller bites for Jacob. “It’d be pretty cool to see an article written by my sister in the local paper. I can buy a hundred copies and run around town bragging about you.”
Melanie’s cheeks heated. She’d known her sister bought the magazine, and she would often text or email about Melanie’s latest article. But she’d never imagined her older, accomplished, never-got-in-trouble sister would be that proud. “Thanks, Abs.”
“I’m just glad you’re here,” Abby said. “I didn’t think you could get that much time off. Adam must be missing you like crazy. Adam is Mel’s husband,” she explained to Dylan.
“I couldn’t stand to be away from Abby for eight hours, never mind eight days.” Dylan met his fiancée’s gaze with a tender, quiet connection. “But then again, I’m still in head-over-heels-for-her mode.”
Abby laughed. “You’ve been in that mode since the day you met me.”
He gave her a soft, special smile. “That’s because you’re amazing.”
“Ugh. You guys, there are children at the table,” Cody said, but a hint of a smile played on his lips.
Melanie had never looked at Adam that way, and he’d never looked at her like that, either. She’d married him because she’d thought she should, because they’d been dating for two years and it seemed to be the expected thing, the next rung up the respectable-life ladder.
Dylan passed the rolls to Cody and snagged another one for himself. “One of these days, Code, you’ll be just as crazy over a girl.”
Cody glanced at his mother and then his soon-to-be stepfather. “Yeah, maybe.”
There was such happiness here, such a beautiful sense of family, and it seemed sacrilegious to bring falseness into that. But Melanie didn’t know any other way to operate, any means of untangling the web she had woven over the past couple of years. The continual stories about her fake happiness with a husband who was gone, about her successes at a job she had already lost, had become so big, all Melanie could do was hope she left town before the edges frayed.
“I should get back to the inn and get checked in,” Melanie said. She got to her feet and picked up her half-empty plate. “Sorry to eat and run, Abs, but I have an article to work on tonight.”
“Oh, I hate to see you go, too.” Abby took the plate from Melanie, then drew her into a hug. “But we have all week to get caught up, and it’ll be such a welcome break from the stress of Ma being here and trying to get the wedding details sorted. I plan on spending lots of time with you, little sister. I want to hear all about your adventures in New York, the crazy people you’ve been interviewing and how that hot husband of yours is sweeping you off your feet.”
Melanie’s smile wavered. “Sounds great,” she said. If nothing else, it would be interesting. It was going to be like reading a novel without scanning the back cover first—she had no idea how the story was going to turn out.
