his neck back to look at the tidy little cottage. “Ouch.”
“Melba, I’m not the first person in the world to lose my job,” Charlotte told her dear friend as they sat at her table after dinner that night. Charlotte had managed to avoid the topic of conversation with Melba for days, but tonight Clark was down at the firehouse for the evening and her friend had cornered her in the kitchen. “I wasn’t even the last at Monarch—there were three other envelopes on Alice’s desk.”
Melba had Maria settled in the crook of her arm. “I’m just worried about you. Are you okay? You seem to be taking it well, but...”
Charlotte kept telling herself that she was handling it as well as could be expected, but she also spent too many moments stuffing down a deep panic. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not you. You’d never go to pieces, even at something like this.” She caught Charlotte’s eye. “But you could. I mean, don’t feel like you have to put on any kind of front with me. I’ve gone to pieces enough times in front of you.”
While Charlotte was sure Melba meant what she said, the idea of giving in to the fear—even for a moment and even with a dear friend—felt like opening the big green floodgates at the end of town. Best to keep that door firmly shut. “I’m okay. I think I’m okay. I mean, I’m scared—you’re supposed to be in my situation—but I can push through this. I’m choosing to feel more like I’m waiting for whatever God’s got around the corner than I’ve been broadsided by a job change.”
Melba leaned in. “The best part is you get to wait here. I’ll be so happy to have you around.”
“Well, part of the time. I expect I’ll need to take lots of trips back to Chicago for job-search stuff and interviews eventually. Only it’ll be great to have the cottage as a distraction. All the books say to take on inspiring new projects so it doesn’t become all about the job search. This is a great time to get a serious creative groove on. I need a place outside of my résumé to channel all this energy.”
All that was true, but there was still a small corner of her chest that felt as if she had planted her flag at the top of a very high mountain with no idea how to climb back down. She nodded to the thick file of plans, the one she’d taken from her desk on her last day at Monarch. “I wonder if Mima had any idea the incredible gift this is going to be. To get to fix this place up exactly the way I want it? To have enough to do that after I bought it? Debt free? It’s a huge blessing.”
Melba gave her a cautious smile. “I know you got it at a great price, but it needs so much work.” She thumbed through the file of clippings and swatches with her free hand while Maria gave a tiny sigh of baby contentment in her other arm. “Don’t you think it’s a big risk to take at a time like this?”
Charlotte shrugged. “Yes, it is a big risk. But it’s a worthwhile risk. Just the thought of being able to do this up right gives me so much energy. I don’t care if I have to buy shelving instead of shoes. Or stop eating until October.”
“You’re not going to fix up the whole place and decorate it all at once, are you?” Melba turned to a magazine page showing chintz kitchen curtains. “Won’t that cost more than you have?”
“I have to do some of the fixing up as soon as possible. The stove, the heating, the upstairs bathroom—they need renovation before they’ll be usable, and all that stuff has to be done if I’m going to be able to live there. Do I need the designer concrete sink right away? Well, I don’t know yet. It’s probably smarter to get exactly what I want now—once you start ripping stuff out, you might as well do it right the first time rather than rip stuff up again a year later.”
“Charlotte...”
“I know, I know. Stop worrying—I’m not going to take my aggressions out at the home decorating store. I should probably have the home improvement channels blocked off my cable service for now. But since I don’t have a job, I can’t even afford cable television, so that solves that anyway, doesn’t it?” She leaned back in her chair, as if the sheer weight of Melba’s doubts had pushed her there. “This is going to be fine. Really. I won’t let this get out of hand.”
Melba pushed the file back across the table to Charlotte. “Easy to say now, but these things have a way of snowballing. Even the remodeling costs for the house I inherited from Dad sent Clark and me reeling.”
When Melba’s father had died last year after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, it left Clark and Melba to remake her childhood home into the one that now housed her new family. The transition had been complicated and expensive—going beyond what it would have cost in both time and money to start fresh with a new house—but it just proved Charlotte’s point: the house gave off a palpable sense of history. She’d felt something like it from the cottage that first visit. The once-charming cottage seemed to beckon to her, begging to be restored. She knew it was a risky prospect, but she couldn’t make herself feel as if she’d made the wrong choice. She’d chosen a challenging path, yes, but not a wrong one. “I’m going to be fine, Melba. Now let’s drop the subject and let me hold that baby.”
Melba stood up and handed Maria to Charlotte. As Maria snuggled in against her shoulder, Charlotte breathed in the darling scent of baby-girl curls. “You’ve got the best of both worlds, Maria. Your mama’s curls and your daddy’s red hair. You may hate it when you’re five, but guys are gonna follow you like ducklings when you’re seventeen.”
Melba laughed as she warmed Charlotte’s tea and set down a plate of cookies. “Clark’s already informed me Maria will be banned from dating until she’s thirty. And no firefighters.”
Charlotte applied an expression of false shock. “Well, I’ll back him up on the ‘no firefighters’ policy, but that’s kind of a tough sell. He’s the fire chief, isn’t he?”
Sitting back down, Melba laughed again. “I think it’s because he’s chief. He’s seen a little too much of the department’s social life or heard a little too much in the locker room.”
“They don’t seem that rough around the edges to me. As a matter of fact, Jesse Sykes seems like a stand-up guy.” Charlotte could feel Maria softening against her shoulder. Melba was right—the world was always a better place with a baby drooling on your shoulder.
“He’s an original, that’s for sure.” Melba selected a cookie and dunked it in her tea. “I don’t know about stand-up, but he sure stands out. You can trust him, though. He did some of the work here on the house. Good work, if you don’t mind the singing.”
“The what?”
“Jesse has a habit of breaking out in Motown hits. If you haven’t heard him yet, you will. Don’t you remember he sang at Alex and JJ’s wedding?”
“That was Jesse Sykes?” Charlotte recalled a rather impressive version of “My Girl” at her cousin’s wedding. She tried to imagine Jesse’s soulful voice echoing in the cottage living room, but she couldn’t conjure up the image. “Mostly he just made wisecracks when I talked to him this time. Funny guy.”
“Oh, he’s a cutup, that’s for sure. And a good firefighter. Clark wouldn’t put up with his antics otherwise.” Melba got a conniving look on her face. “You should hire him. I think he’d be good for you. An upbeat guy to have around in a tight spot.”
Charlotte
