all came back to her, now—there was the little matter of just having discovered she was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy worth a quarter of a million dollars.
She burst into tears.
“Oh, hell, honey…Oh, shoot, I wish I was there! Talk to me, baby. Get it out, that’s it, get it all out.”
So, between assorted choked sobs and blubbers, she did.
Cora went understandably, if uncharacteristically, silent for several seconds. Then she said, “And you had no idea?”
“N-none. And I have no idea how she did this, why she did this, where she got the money to make the payments on the policy…” Galen shook her head, pushing that stray wisp behind her ear. “I suppose I’ll never know, now. Thing is, though, I keep thinking I’m reading it wrong.”
“Okay. Tell me what it says. Word for word.”
She did.
“You’re not reading it wrong,” came the dry pronouncement across the wire. “So can I hit you up for a loan? This house I bought’s about to bleed me dry.”
Good old Cora.
“So…what’re you going to do with all that money?”
Galen blew out a sigh, stared again at the policy. Heavens. She was rich. Well, maybe not rich. But certainly not poor. She realized she was shaking. And that her head felt like a fly was caught inside it. “I have no idea,” she said over the buzzing. “Buy some new underwear, I suppose.”
“Don’t knock yourself out, now.”
Galen felt a smile twitch at her mouth.
“Hey! How about blowing some of it on a plane ticket?”
“To?”
“Here. For Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving? Oh, yeah…that was next week, wasn’t it? Galen’s stomach knotted. “Oh, goodness, Cora. I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it.”
“Now, don’t you tell me you were planning on spending the day alone?”
“I hadn’t planned on anything. Besides, people do, you know,” she said, only to be cut off by an indignant hmmph.
“Give me one good reason why you can’t come up here.”
A harsh, startled laugh tumbled out of her mouth. But no excuses.
“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. Look, my girls can’t get out here—Willa’s too busy and Lynette’s too pregnant—and I can’t go to either of their places without putting the other one’s nose out of joint, so I’m staying here, and I hate spending Thanksgiving alone. Gets too damn depressing, buying one of those pathetic little turkey breasts just for yourself. So, you wanna come out Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Galen felt the corners of her mouth lift. Right. Knowing Cora, she probably had a million friends she could spend the holiday with. But leave it to her to twist things around to make it sound like Galen would be doing her a kindness, not the other way around.
The house did suddenly seem extraordinarily empty. And quiet.
But…
She shifted in the chair, making it squawk again. “Oh, I don’t know… I’ve still got so much to do. About Gran’s stuff ’n’ that.”
“It’ll still be there when you get back, baby.”
True enough. “But what about getting plane reservations this late?”
“Hey, if it’s supposed to happen, the way will be made clear, you hear what I’m saying?”
Then the dog propped her chin on the edge of her basket, gave her doleful. Right. “I can’t leave the dog.”
“What dog?”
Galen let out a weighty sigh the same time the dog did. “This mutt of Gran’s.”
Doleful turned to indignant.
She tucked the phone to her chest. “Well, you are,” she said, only to realize she was justifying herself to a dog. An ugly one, at that.
“Last time I checked,” Cora said, “they allowed dogs in Michigan.”
Michigan. Crikey. Galen couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of Pittsburgh, let alone to another state. Something suddenly leeched all the air from her lungs. “Oh…I don’t know. This just seems so last minute—”
“For heaven’s sake, girl—you ever hear of the concept of spur of the moment? Besides, you live alone now. You can do things just because, and nobody’s drawers are going to get in a knot about it. So. Tuesday or Wednesday?”
Galen stood up, stretched, looked around the bleak little room. Realized she could go. Or she could stay. It was completely her decision.
That, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to answer to a living soul.
“I’ll…call you back after I make the reservations,” she said, then laughed, nervously, at Cora’s squeal in reply.
Mirroring his increasingly dreary mood, a cold light drizzle began to mottle Del Farentino’s truck windshield as he pulled out of the Standish’s driveway. Two days before Thanksgiving, with four clients wanting/needing/demanding Del complete their remodeling projects by this afternoon.
He shoved his perpetually too-long hair off his forehead, glancing at the dashboard clock. Ten-o-three. Not bad, actually, considering he’d had a devil of a time getting his four-year-old daughter Wendy dressed and out of the house this morning. Something about the purple sweater—which had been her favorite up until five minutes before he tried to get it on her body—being itchy, and she only wanted to wear the pink one, which was buried underneath several strata of dirty clothes in the laundry basket. It had not been a pretty scene, but the last thing he needed this morning was to be late for his eight o’clock appointment with the Goldens, potential new clients with a large house out past Shady Lakes.
Now there was a bright note. Hot damn, would he love to get his mitts on that one. A complete redo, not just a kitchen remodel or add-a-room project. The architect had been there—a youngish woman who understood how to blend practicality with innovation—and the plans made his mouth water. A job like this would be a real feather in his cap. Prove to the world he was more than a handyman. Not that he was complaining about all the smaller jobs that seemed to drift his way. Between Wendy’s special classes and what-all, not to mention full-time daycare, the kid ate up his income faster than a dog ate steak. Money was money, and he’d take whatever he could get. But it sure would be nice to move up to the big leagues. Which, if these people accepted his bid, just might happen.
Damp gravel crunched underneath his tires as he pulled up in front of Cora Mitchell’s mongrel house, close to the center of town. It had a porch and some eaves and a gable or two and a couple of stories, more or less, but you couldn’t exactly call it anything. Except old. Cora, a long-widowed, vociferous, black earth mama in her late fifties, had worked
