Barbara Bretton, Romance Author: A SOFT PLACE TO FALL Preview at The Romance Club

MonaVie

Drink It ~ Feel It ~ Share It

A Soft Place To Fall
by Barbara Bretton
Berkley (division of Penguin Putnam)

Labor Day weekend

Annie Lacy Galloway stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched as the two impossibly skinny young men maneuvered the huge sleigh bed through the narrow upstairs hallway. She winced at the sound of wood scraping against wallpaper. She knew it would be a tight fit but she hadn't let herself consider that it might be impossible.

"How'd you ever get this up here anyway, Mrs. G?" Michael, the one whose voice still hadn't made up its mind between soprano and tenor, called down to her. "This is like shoving an elephant through a keyhole."

She'd found it at a yard sale six months after Kevin died, a wreckage of wood that looked much the way she'd felt inside. "I feel bad taking your money for this," the man had said as they loaded the pieces into the back of her Jeep. She spent weeks sanding the elegant curves and flat planes, stripping away years of neglect and damage, not even sure if the pieces could ever be put back together again into a recognizable whole. It still wasn't finished yet. Come spring, she intended to stain the sanded wood a deep cherry wood then coat the whole thing with a satiny finish that would grow more lustrous with the years.

"Turn it toward the window," she said. "Once you clear the top of the railing, you'll have it made."

Danny, her nephew-by-marriage, crouched down near the foot of the bed. "It comes apart," he said, fingering the supports. "Maybe we could --"

"No!" Annie forced her voice down to a more acceptable volume. The poor boys looked downright scared. "I mean, feel free to remove the stair rails, if you have to, but please don't touch the bed."

She turned in time to see a third moving boy grab for the cardboard box near the front door. The box marked Fragile.

"Not that one." Annie raced back downstairs. "I'm taking that one in the car with me."

"You sure?" Scotty had been Kevin's top student, the one who was on his way toward bigger and better things. He was smart and funny and built like a two-by-four, all straight edges and long lines. Scotty nailed the Bancroft Scholarship, Kevin. You would've been so proud of him. Years ago, she had been the one with the Bancroft and the big dreams of studying art one day in New York. It seemed so long ago, almost as if those dreams had belonged to somebody else. The sight of the young man in her foyer awoke so many memories of Christmas parties and summer barbecues when they opened up the house to students and their parents. Kevin loved those parties, loved being at the center of all the activity, laughing and joking and --

"That's okay, Scotty," she said, wondering when he had started shaving. Wasn't it just yesterday that he was raking their lawn for two bucks an hour? "I'll take it over in my car." Her life was tucked away in that box: old love letters, wedding photos, newspaper clippings, and sympathy notes. The sum total of her thirty-eight years on the planet with room left over for her best wineglasses and her journals.

He hoisted it on his shoulder with a theatrical grunt. "See you at the new house."

"The new house." Claudia Galloway appeared in the doorway to the living room. She dabbed at her eyes with a linen handkerchief, one of those flimsy bits with the hand-crocheted edging that were her trademark. "It's not too late to change your mind, Anne."

Annie thrust her clenched fists deep into the pockets of her bright red sweater. "Claudia, we've gone over this before. I --"

"This is your home," her former mother-in-law broke in. "This is where you spent your entire married life. My God, you're even sold most of your furniture. How can you turn your back on everything Kevin meant to you?"

"Is she at it again?" Susan, Claudia's oldest daughter, poked her head in the front door. "Ma, you already built a shrine to Kevin. Annie doesn't need to build one too."

Annie shot her best friend a look of pure gratitude. I owe you big time, Susie. Godiva, if I could afford it, or Dom Perignon. "Are they finished in the garage?"

"Really, Susan." Claudia frowned at her daughter. "A bit less colorful language, if you please."

"Mother, I sell real estate for a living. I am a master of the colorful metaphor."

"Coming through!" Michael and Danny had found a way to maneuver Annie's sleigh bed downstairs without major architectural damage and had it aimed at the front door.

"That ridiculous bed," Claudia murmured as she stepped aside. "Really, Annie. I don't know what you were thinking."

I wasn't thinking, Claudia. You've been there. Don't you remember how it was? I hurt too much that first year to think of anything at all.

"Mother," said Susan, "why don't you go have lunch with Jack and the boys. I know you love the chicken sandwich at Wendy's. We'll see you later at the new house."

Claudia looked from Annie to her daughter and in that instant Annie regretted all the sharp words she had bitten back. She was family to Claudia, same as any of the children of her body, and that gave her the right to annoy the daylights out of Annie. Suddenly her redoubtable mother-in-law looked small and old and vulnerable and Annie's heart twisted in sympathy. She loved Claudia dearly even if sometimes she wished for a bit more breathing room.

"I have a better idea," Annie said, putting an arm around Claudia's fragile shoulders. "Why don't both of you have lunch with Jack and the boys and we'll meet up at the house."

"We can't leave you alone," Claudia said and for once Susan agreed with her mother.

"Sure you can." Annie started moving them toward the door. "I'll be fine. I promise."

"Are you sure?" Susan asked. Her eyes were wide and dark-brown and she looked so much like Kevin that there were times when Annie had to turn away.

"Positive." She waved goodbye to them from the top step then closed and locked the door. The movers were gone. The only thing she had left to do was sweep the floors, coerce the cats into their carrying cases, then load everything into her ancient four-wheel drive. She grabbed the broom and began to move living room dust into one central pile. The Flemings were due to arrive at three o'clock and by nightfall this quiet old house would be bursting with laughter and children, the way it was always meant to.

"We're crazy," Annie had said the night they moved in. They were lying on afghans in front of the fire place in the living room, watching the flames flicker and dance. "You know we can't afford a house like this." They were only a handful of years out of college. Neither one of them was established in a career. He had only just started teaching and she had yet to sell one of her paintings, much less study in Rome. It would be a long time before they could even think about putting down roots.

"We can't afford not to buy it," Kevin had said, filling her wineglass from the jug of chianti they'd purchased at the discount liquor store near the state line. "Face it, Annie. This house has family written all over it. We're going to grow old here." They clicked glasses for the third -- or was it the fourth? -- time. "One day our grandchildren will play in that backyard."

"Kids or bedrooms?" She loved the way he was stroking her hair, her shoulder, the warmth of his lips against the side of her neck.

"Both," he said, sliding his hand under the hem of her sweater. She gasped when he cupped her breast. He murmured words of praise, wonderful, honey-drenched words against her skin, the kind of words that melted a woman's bones. He could talk a statue to life with those words, turn cold marble into warm flesh. He had been doing it to Annie from the very first.

"We should wait another year or two," she whispered, struggling to stay reasonable against the sensual onslaught of his hands and mouth. "We don't even have furniture yet."

"I love you, Annie Rose Lacy Galloway. I love the family we're going to have together. Life is short. We're young and strong and healthy and we love each other. Let's make a baby, Annie Rose. Let's start tonight."

Annie turned away from the empty living room. The ghosts were everywhere. There wasn't a corner of the house that wasn't filled with them. They had made love that first night with a sense of sacred abandon and Annie had been sure they had made a baby. A son with Kevin's dark brown eyes and ready laugh . . . or maybe a daughter with his strength and kindness. They were so young then, so innocent. Believing in miracles came as naturally to her back then as breathing. Why else would she have stayed with Kevin until the very end?

"There's nothing to worry about," her doctor had said to her as the months passed and there was still no baby. "The test results are all unremarkable. You're healthy. Kevin's healthy. Give it time, Anne. You'll have your baby."

But it took two to have a baby. A man and a woman who loved each other and shared the same vision of their future. A man and a woman who shared a bed and made love with tenderness if not passion, not two strangers who lived alone in the same house. He refused to listen when she suggested they look more deeply into their infertility problem. He turned a deaf ear when she spoke about adoption. Months turned to years and after a time she began to believe that it was for the best. You didn't bring a child into uncertainty and chaos. Not if you had a choice in the matter. There was so much she hadn't known about her husband until it was too late.

Nobody ever told her that you could fall in love with a boy only to wake up one day and discover you were living with a man you didn't really know at all. A man whose problems ran deeper than your solutions, to a place not even love could reach.

But then she probably wouldn't have believed it. Kevin had taught her to believe in happy endings and right up until the moment he drew his last breath she had thought they still had a chance for happily-ever-after.

She knew better now. They'd never really had a chance for happily-ever-after. Kevin had seen to that the day he placed his first bet.

George's and Gracie's plaintive yowls sounded from somewhere upstairs and reminded Annie that she still had a lot to do before the Flemings arrived to take possession of the house.

She swept out the living room, the foyer, the kitchen. She wiped down the counters, cleaned the sink, dried the faucets carefully until they gleamed. She wiped a handprint off the door of the fridge then stood back and scanned the kitchen with a critical eye she had rarely brought to housework before. The house was over forty years old and unfortunately so were most of the appliances. At first the ancient heating system and outdated refrigerator had been a source of amusement for Kevin and Annie, two of the many things they would take care of some day in the far-off future when their bankbook recovered from the shock of home ownership.

The only thing was, it never did. She put aside her dream of pursuing a career in art and opened a flower shop instead. Annie's Flowers took awhile to get on its feet and for some reason Kevin's salary didn't increase the way they had hoped. Every month it seemed to Annie that the number of unexpected bills went up and their checking account balance went down and no matter how hard they tried to keep up with the house's demands, their income couldn't keep pace with the required outgo.

"You're lucky it's a buyer's market," Susan had told her when she first mentioned putting the house up for sale. "No offense, Annie, but your place is falling down around your ears. You'll have to replace the windows and put on a new roof if you expect to even come close to getting top dollar."

It took three months for the house to sell and then, as Susan had predicted, the price was well below the going rate for big old houses on large lots of land.

"We could have done better," Susan lamented after the Flemings went to contract. "You should've listened to me about those windows, Annie. You would've earned back the costs three times over."

Annie nodded and tried to look suitably disappointed but the truth was she was grateful the sale had gone through before she ran out of options and ended up with nothing at all. Of course she wouldn't tell Susan that. She wouldn't tell anybody. Kevin's secrets were safe with her, same as they had been right from the start.

"I think Anne's making a terrible mistake," Claudia said as Susan backed her minivan down the driveway.

Susan, never one to consider her mother's feelings, rolled her eyes and groaned. "And why do you think that, Ma? Because she's moving out of that white elephant of a house or because she didn't want you to stay for lunch?"

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm," Claudia said with a slight lift of her chin. She chose to ignore the lunch remark, even though there was more than a touch of truth to it. "Anne loves that house. It's where she and Kevin were happiest. Why on earth would she want to sell it and move into that -- that shack out by the water?"

"Of course not! I would never hurt her." Claudia was stung that her daughter thought she was capable of such thoughtless behavior. "I blame it all on Warren Bancroft for taking advantage of Anne this way.” She glanced over at her eldest child. “You must know she's lowered her standards with this move."

Susan screeched to a halt at the corner stop sign, barely missing the rear end of another minivan. Claudia gripped the edges of her purse and forced herself to keep her remarks on visual acuity and reflexes to herself. Her daughter was forty-six years old and her eyesight wasn't what it used to be, but Claudia knew better than to comment on her daughter's driving, weight, or marriage. Not if she wanted to keep peace in the family.

"Annie doesn't need three bathrooms," Susan went on as if they hadn't come this close to calamity, "and she definitely doesn't need all those memories. I just wish she'd done this sooner."

"There's nothing wrong with memories," Claudia said, fixing her daughter with a sharp look. "There will come a time when a woman is very glad she has them."

"Watch the road." Claudia refused to acknowledge the statement. "We don't need an accident."

"I don't pressure Anne to do anything. She makes her own decisions." Selling the house was certainly proof of that. Claudia would never sell the house where she and John had spent their married life. Selling it would be like losing him all over again. His spirit still filled their house the way it had when he was alive. Her children didn't know it but she talked to him sometimes. She didn't expect an answer; it was more like a running conversation that was part monologue, part prayer.

If the kids knew she did that, they would think she was crazy. Claudia had seen the looks Susan and Eileen exchanged when they thought she wasn't looking, one of those Mother-is-losing-her-marbles-looks that Claudia hated. They would make an appointment with that fancy therapist John Jr. was seeing and she would have to waste fifty dollars of her late husband's hard-earned money to find out what she already knew: she was lonely and she was old.

Why was it nobody seemed to understand that without being told? She didn't have to work four days a week with Annie at the flower shop. John had been very careful with their money and, while she wasn't rich, she was certainly comfortable by anyone's standards. She tried to keep up with the financial news by listening to the experts on the radio and following their advice when it felt right to her. So far, thank the good Lord, the market had been kind to her. If her children stopped racing through their lives for just one second and thought about it, they would realize she worked at the flower shop because sometimes she needed a reason to get up in the morning, someone to smile at her when she walked through the door. They laughed at all of the seminars she took on topics as diverse as money management to Ikebana and never one considered that maybe she just needed the pleasure of being among people.

It was the same with the house. She and John had moved in on their wedding day. Every significant event of their married life had happened within its four walls. Living in the house where she and John had raised their family made her feel connected to him even though he was gone. Love filled her heart each time she walked through those dear and familiar rooms. Oh, there were too many rooms by half. She would be the first to admit that. She couldn't keep to her old standards of housekeeping any longer. Dust lingered a little longer. The floors weren't as shiny as she might like. She told herself it was all part of getting old, the letting go, the giving up, turning a blind eye to the same things that drove you mad when you were young and strong.

Last Christmas her children and their spouses had converged at the old house to celebrate, the holiday, same as they did every year, but with one small difference. This year they were determined to convince her it was time to move on. "It's time to simplify things, Mom," Eileen, her youngest, had said to her as she served the eggnog. "This house is way too big for one person. You'd have so much more free time if you didn't have this barn to take care of."

"And where would the lot of you stay if I didn't have this barn?" she had tossed back. "You'd be sleeping in tents in the front yard."

Of course, Eileen's was only the opening salvo in an assault designed to open her aging eyes to what they considered to be reality. Terri commented on how difficult it must be to keep four bedrooms and two baths clean and sparkling, which made Claudia smile into her eggnog. It was certainly easier now than it had been years ago when the house was bursting at the seams with toddlers and teenagers and John's hobbies. The boys talked about taxes and upkeep and how the plumbing was going to need repairs before next Christmas rolled around and why hang onto a money sink as if she didn't have the right to make up her own mind. Finally she had to stand her ground.

"This is where I lived with your father, it’s where you grew up, and it's where I'm going to die," she had said in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. "Now, who'd like another piece of pie?"

Annie was the only one who understood what Claudia was talking about. In an unfair twist of fate, Kevin's death had united the two women in a way not even Claudia's flesh-and-blood daughters could understand. Annie knew how it felt to lose the man you loved, how it felt to sleep on his side of the bed because it made you feel less alone. Annie knew without being told that time didn't heal a broken heart, it only helped you learn how to live with it.

You can't run away from your memories, Annie, she thought as Susan barreled into the parking lot at full-speed. The world wasn't big enough. Better to stay in the house where they had been happy and comfort herself with the dear and familiar. Didn't Annie know that she would still see him in every shadow, hear his voice when the room was still, feel his touch where no one had touched her in a very long time.

Annie was wiping down the sink in the master bathroom when she heard the Flemings pull into the driveway. They drove one of those minivans that sounded like a thousand hamsters spinning one gigantic wheel. The neighbors would hear them coming three blocks away. She glanced down at her watch, visible above the worn cuff of Kevin's old denim work shirt. It was only ten minutes to three.

"You're early, " she muttered as she pushed her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. What kind of people were they? Didn't they know that being early was every bit as rude as being late. She still had to vacuum the bedroom, coax George and Gracie into their cat carriers, and then make sure the felines hadn't left any personal messages behind for the new owners to discover. She would need every single moment of the nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds she had left.

She tossed the paper towel into the garbage bag she'd been dragging from room to room then moved to the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway. The Fleming children were already in the backyard. She could hear their shrieks of excitement over the groan of the tree swing that had been Kevin's last project the summer before he died.

Joe and Pam Fleming were leaning against the passenger door of their minivan. Her head rested against is chest and he stroked her hair while they talked. Soft whispers of conversation floated up toward the second floor window where Annie watched them from behind the pale green curtains. It hurt to look at them but she couldn't seem to turn away. She wanted to tell them to hang on tightly to each other, that life wasn't always fair or kind, but they would probably think she was crazy. They were young and in love, with their whole lives stretched out before them like a summer garden on a sunny day.

Down in the driveway the Flemings stole a kiss. The sweetness of that gesture made Annie turn away from the window. She missed the touches, the whispers, the laughter that smoothed the bumpy patches every marriage encountered. She missed the lovemaking, that sweet escape from reality. She missed being the other half of someone's heart and the temptation to barricade herself behind a wall of memories was hard to resist. However, staying was a luxury she couldn't afford and, in a way, she was grateful. She might never have gathered the courage to leave if she had a plump bank account and endless prospects.

It was time to go. She had known it for months now. One morning she woke up and the house no longer felt like home. Suddenly the old ways, the old routines, didn't fit and she found herself dreaming about starting all over again in a place that was hers alone. She had had that dream before but this time was different. This time she was free to do something about it and so, against everyone’s advice, she put the house up for sale and began the painful process of finally letting go of the past. She paid off the last of Kevin’s debts and bought the tiny Bancroft cottage with the cash that remained. Warren tried to lower the price three times but she stood firm when it came to accepting charity and they negotiated a figure that satisfied both his kind heart and her need to stand on her own two feet. The four room cottage near the water was a far cry from her sprawling Victorian on an acre of land but it represented a triumph of sorts to Annie.

Her dreams of a family of her own had died with Kevin but she still had a future and, for the first time in years, that prospect made her happy.

How long had it been since she had felt deeply happy? She couldn’t even begin to guess. For a long time she had known happiness only in fleeting bursts: a beautiful sunset, a well-told joke, a good hair day. She missed that deeper sense of joy that had been as much a part of her as the rhythm of her heartbeat and she wanted it back. This move was a step in the right direction.

Sometimes she wondered how Claudia did it, living all these years in that big old house without John by her side. As it was she saw Kevin everywhere, in every room, around every corner. She heard his car in the driveway, his footfall on the steps, the wail of the ambulance on that last night when nothing, not even love, could save him. He had died in their bed, the big brass one they had fallen in love with and couldn't afford, died before the emergency crew could slap the paddles on his chest.

She couldn't remember the last time she had said those words to him. She had been angry with him for so long that love was more a memory than the living, breathing sacrament it had been at the start. There were times when she had thought about leaving him, throwing her clothes into a suitcase, grabbing the cats, and starting new some place else, some place where the phone didn't ring in the middle of the night and strange men didn't wait on the porch in the darkness for her husband. He had taken everything they had worked so hard to achieve and thrown it away on horses and cards and the spin of a roulette wheel and, in the process, he had thrown away her love as well.

"Give me time, Annie," he had said not long before he died. "I know I can make it all up to you."

Why hadn't she told him that she still loved him, that she wanted to believe in him, that if he met her halfway maybe they could find their way back to the life they'd dreamed about when they were high school sweethearts and the world was theirs for the asking. Instead, she had simply turned away from him and, after a few moments, the front door closed softly behind him and the distance between them grew a little wider until three weeks later, he was dead and there was no turning back.

Susan and Eileen found her on the morning after the funeral, alone in the bedroom, slamming an old wooden baseball bat against the tarnished brass. "I hate you!" she'd screamed with each slam of the bat. "Why did you do this to us?" They'd tried to grab her arms, to hold her still, but she was wild with rage and anger, stronger than she had ever been in her life, and she broke free. She smashed mirrors and lamps, pulled his clothes from his side of the closet and threw his running shoes against the wall.

Her sisters-in-law tried to reason with her but Annie was beyond their reach. It wasn't until they helped her drag the mattress, box spring, and dented frame down the stairs and outside with the rest of the trash that her adrenaline-fueled rage ebbed and she sank to the curb, buried her face in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

There had been times when she hated him, times when she wondered why she stayed, but through it all she had never once stopped loving him. She knew that now, two years too late, when it no longer mattered to anyone but herself. Maybe if she had loved him a little less and helped him a little more, she wouldn't be a thirty-eight year old widow with two cats, bad credit, and the feeling that after today nothing would ever be the same again.

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