“Pretty good at it too, if I do say so myself.”
“What if you move away and you don’t like it?”
Miss Florrie laughed. “Baby, that’s easy. I’d sell the house and the restaurant and try someplace else, and I’d keep trying until I find my happy place.”
* * * *
Later, when I sat in the cold cookie-cutter house Albert insisted would be a great investment, I thought about what Miss Florrie said. I thought about finding my happy place. If I was honest with myself, I hated the house. I’d always hated it. Almost all of the houses looked exactly the same. The same builder built most of them, and there were only three different plans in the entire subdivision. The same house, but with different color siding, shutters, or brick façades. I hated the fact the house had very few windows. I hated that the neighborhood association dictated my life, right down to the type of plants I could have, and refused to allow a fence. They even had rules about the type of Christmas decorations I could put up. I’d always wanted a dog, but the association would only allow invisible fences. At one time, I thought about fighting them, but Albert was allergic to dogs anyway, so it all became a moot point and I eventually gave up. If I moved, I could get a house with a fence and I could get a dog. Heck, I could get several dogs if I wanted. The children were grown and had both moved away, Stephanie to Chicago and David to New York City. There was nothing holding me to Lighthouse Dunes. No job. No husband.
The idea of moving away and starting over had sounded scary on the train. However, in the still silence of an empty house, the idea took root and started to grow. I walked through the rooms, full of furniture and memories of a life that was no longer my reality, and realized I didn’t particularly care about any of the furniture. The pictures of the children were the only things I valued, and I could take those with me. At that moment, I decided to take control of my life and find my happy place.
“But where to go?” I spoke into the cold, dark, empty house and waited. Thankfully, there was no answer. I sat at my computer and typed, Where should I live?
I didn’t honestly expect an answer. However, my browser returned a list of sites with quizzes to determine the best place to live, based on my responses. I was pleasantly surprised and spent several hours taking online quizzes. I got responses for everywhere from Spain to Texas. One of the sites provided a list of ten best cities based on my answers, including climate, housing, and demographic information. I browsed the list and was excited when Chattanooga, Tennessee, showed up in my list as one of my ten places. I clicked on the link and stayed up until the wee small hours of the night looking at houses and jobs and reading as much as I could. Spain sounded exotic and fun, but my Spanish was malo, muy mal.
Chattanooga had a lot going for it. It was in the United States, for one, and I wouldn’t need a passport or shots. Like several other states, Tennessee had no state income tax. The cost of living seemed a lot lower than in Indiana. Plus, it didn’t snow very often. Add that to the fact I knew at least one person in Chattanooga, which catapulted it to the top of my list.
It turned out the Internet was good at finding long-lost friends too. I tracked down an e-mail address for my friend Scarlett Jefferson. Scarlett and I met during our freshman year of college and had been fast friends. She was a southern belle with a wicked sense of humor and a sharp mind. Her mother had been a huge fan of Gone with the Wind, so much so she’d named her two children Scarlett and Rhett. Despite the moniker, Scarlett got along well with the Yankees at Northwestern University and made tons of friends. Everyone called her Dixie, and we’d remained friends and roommates for our full four years. However, after college she moved back to Tennessee and married her high school sweetheart, Jeremiah Beauregard “Beau” Jefferson, and I fell in love and married Albert. We wrote for a few years and talked on the telephone, but Dixie and Albert never got along. Albert thought she was too opinionated and outspoken. Dixie never trusted Albert. Turned out she was right. While I was still riding high from the excitement of my decision to start over, I fired off an e-mail before my courage failed, stating I was thinking about moving to the Chattanooga area and was curious if she could recommend a good Realtor. I pressed send and promptly shut down my computer. I wasn’t sure if anything would come of this, but I was determined to find my happy place.
CHAPTER 2
I fully expected the crazy idea of moving to Tennessee would have faded in the bright light of a new day. However, the next morning I found myself even more excited than I was the previous night. In fact, when I sat down with coffee, I noticed a new e-mail had arrived. It was from Dixie. She was ecstatic to hear I was considering moving to Chattanooga. There were a lot of capital letters and exclamation marks, along with an entire row of happy face emoticons. She declared it fate that she was actually only a few hours away attending a Poodle Specialty, whatever that was, in Lansing, Michigan. She was going to be staying in the area for another week to attend an Obedience workshop and would drive down and maybe we could have lunch or dinner.
I promptly responded I would love to get together and sent my address, my cell phone number, and directions. I had plenty of room and invited her to stay here while she waited for the workshop. Message sent, I drank my coffee and tried to remember the last time I’d seen Dixie.
Later, I called Stephanie and told her what I wanted. Initially, she was unsure, but when I shared my plan to move someplace warm and sunny and start over, she thought it was a great idea. She told me to leave all of the legal arrangements to her, which I was happy to do.
I got dressed and started on my tasks. My next-door neighbor was an elderly retired police officer who suffered from dementia. Bradley Hurston had retired from the Chicago Police Department and moved to Lighthouse Dunes to stay with his sister after her husband died suddenly. Mr. Hurston had once been very active, coaching the boys’ baseball team and teaching self-defense classes to the women in our neighborhood. I still remembered his suggestion to S.I.N.G. if we were ever attacked. SING was the acronym he used to help us remember the four areas to attack—solar plexus, instep, nose, and groin. He was now confined to a wheelchair, where he spent his days looking out his front window with a pair of binoculars.
I got the lawn mower out of the garage and cut the grass. It had been a very wet spring, and now that summer had arrived, the grass was growing very rapidly. When I finished my yard, I cut Mr. Hurston’s grass, as well. His son usually cut his grass when he was in town or arranged for someone to do it, but he was a cop, too, and I knew he was often tired when he got home from work. Plus, he had a family and a yard of his own to mow. So, I’d made a habit of cutting Mr. Hurston’s yard whenever I cut mine. Besides, it was the least I could do for someone who’d been so committed to serving and protecting our community.
When I was done mowing, I edged both yards and swept up the grass clippings. The neighborhood association frowned on grass clippings left on the sidewalk. Three hours later, I was hot, sweaty, and covered in grass clippings, but both yards looked great.
The front door opened, and Marianne Carpenter, Mr. Hurston’s sister, smiled and beckoned me to come in.
Marianne Carpenter was a petite woman, barely five feet tall. She was probably in her mid-sixties but looked older. I suspected that was due to her hair, which was thinning but which she dyed a vibrant orange, along with an excessive amount of makeup, which highlighted rather than concealed every wrinkle. She was a timid woman who liked flashy clothes, large gawdy pieces of jewelry, and pink slippers. “You must be worn out. Come inside and have some lemonade.”
I was itchy from the grass clippings and suspected the odor that made its way to my nose every few seconds wasn’t something being carried by the wind, but was me. Nevertheless, I’d learned that declining Marianne’s offers was in poor taste. Her eyes filled with tears and she became offended. So, I made my usual half-hearted protests and went inside.
Bradley
