Storm Season. Charlotte Douglas
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to Seattle and took their daughter Melanie with her.
And she’d broken Bill’s heart. He had still loved her and eventually had come to realize that she’d loved him, too, and the only way she could end the marriage that was destroying her emotionally had been to put a continent between them.
At first, Melanie had returned to Tampa for summer visits with her dad, but as she reached adolescence, she had wanted to remain in Seattle with her friends—and her stepfather. Trish’s new husband, an accountant, had a nice safe job where no one would try to kill him, unless he was caught cooking the books by a client with a temper and the means for murder—highly unlikely for the straight-arrow Harvey in his safe suburban practice.
So over the twenty-three years since the divorce, Bill had lost touch with both Trish and Melanie and, to my amazement and delight, had fallen in love with me. Even when Melanie had married and had had children, she hadn’t encouraged her father to participate in their lives, a crying shame since Bill would have been a first-class grandfather.
“What about Trish?” I asked.
My first thought had been that she’d died. She was Bill’s contemporary, after all, and not everyone lived to the ripe old age of the Lassiter sisters.
He spread his hands in a gesture of either appeal or frustration. I couldn’t tell. “She’s back.”
“Back in Tampa?”
He shook his head, looking more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him.
Roger, sensing the tension crackling in the tiny cabin, sat up and looked from me to Bill and back and whined softly.
A devastating second thought hit me. “Trish is back with you?”
“God, no,” Bill said immediately and with such emphasis, I exhaled in relief. “But it’s complicated.”
“Apparently,” I said with too much sarcasm, “or I’d have some clue what the hell is going on. You said Trish is back. Exactly where is she?”
The pained expression returned to Bill’s face, but he raised his chin and looked me in the eye. “She’s living in our house.”
CHAPTER 3
“What?” I shook my head, thinking I’d heard wrong.
“I left her there until I could talk with you.”
“You left your ex-wife in our house?” I couldn’t believe it. The entire exchange sounded like the script for a bad soap opera. “Why?”
“Harvey dumped her for a younger model.”
“So she’s come running back to you?” Insecurity gripped me. Bill had loved Trish, she was the mother of his only child, and now she wasn’t just a distant memory three thousand miles away. She was right here in Pelican Bay.
In our house.
“She called late last night, hysterical,” he explained. “Not only did Harvey leave her for a younger woman, but he’d planned every detail of his escape before Trish had a hint that anything was wrong. The creep cleaned out their joint accounts and canceled her credit cards. The deed to their house was already in Harvey’s name only, and he demanded that she move out. What could I do? Trish had nowhere to go.”
“She has a daughter.”
Bill pushed his fingers through his hair and frowned. “Trish called Melanie, but Melanie sided with Harvey. Said if Trish had been a better wife, Harvey wouldn’t have left her. Trish asked Melanie if she could stay with her until she can get back on her feet, but Melanie told her that in her present emotional state, Trish would upset the children.”
Years ago, Bill and I had often discussed how Trish had spoiled Melanie, as if trying to make up to her daughter for the divorce. Now Melanie’s resulting self-centeredness was coming back to bite her mother.
“Trish was desperate, or she wouldn’t have called me,” Bill said. “And she is the mother of my only child. What else could I do?” he repeated.
He could have hung up on her, I thought, like I would have. But Bill was a better person than I’d ever be, another of the reasons I loved him so much.
“I wired her money for a plane ticket,” he continued, “picked her up at the Tampa Airport at noon and left her at the house until I could talk to you.”
“You could have taken her to a motel.”
“I tried, but Labor Day weekend’s coming up. Every decent motel or hotel in the area is booked solid.”
“How long do you intend for her to stay at our place?” I tried but couldn’t keep the hostility from my voice.
Bill rose from his chair, crossed the cabin, sat next to me, and took both my hands in his. “I love you, Margaret. Whatever there was between Trish and me is over and done. Dead. I’m not the same man I was all those years ago.”
But he’d loved Trish before, a nagging little voice in my head insisted. And if he’s around her long enough, he might love her again.
“If you don’t want her in our house,” he said, “say the word. I’ll find someplace else, even if I have to rent Abe Mackley’s guest room.”
Abe, now retired, had been a detective with us in Tampa. I doubted his wife wanted Trish around any more than I did.
“What’s your plan?” I knew Bill wouldn’t have brought Trish all the way across the country without some thought of what to do with her once she arrived.
“First, find her another place to stay. Our house is only temporary until she can locate an apartment. I’ll loan her some funds until she can get a job and pay me back.”
“What kind of job?” Breaking into the workforce at sixty was no easy feat.
“Trish was a secretary in a law firm before we married,” Bill said.
“Typewriters ruled in those days.” I shook my head. “She’ll need training, unless she’s already learned computer skills and the necessary programs.”
“Then she can sign up for courses at the Clearwater campus of St. Petersburg College.”
Knowing Bill, he’d pay for that, too. Here I was, figuratively rubbing my hands with glee over what-goes-around-comes-around, while he, the person Trish had hurt the most, was bending over backward to bail her out of deep doo-doo. I should have been ashamed.
But I wasn’t.
“It’s up to you, Margaret,” he said.
“Why me? She’s your ex-wife.”
“Because you’re the most important person in my life, and I won’t do anything that would hurt you or make you uncomfortable.”
Great. All I had to do was say the word. Bill would leave Trish to fend for herself, and I’d spend the rest of my days feeling like the world’s most selfish bitch.
I tried to shove emotion aside and let reason reign. What harm would it do to let Trish stay in our house a few days until she could find her own place? Bill and I hadn’t planned to move in for a few more weeks. And just because Trish had been heartless all those years ago didn’t mean I had to follow her example. If Bill could forgive her and show compassion, so could I.
“You’re right,” I said, feeling magnanimous. “We’d be cruel not to help her.”
He enveloped me in his arms, and his lips brushed my ear. “I knew you’d understand. You’re a good woman, and I’m a damned lucky man to have you. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”
I wished I shared his optimism. I saw potential disaster no matter what decision I made, and I wouldn’t rest easy until the glamorous Trish was once again out of our lives and, preferably, at least three thousand miles away again.
Bill