a deep breath for courage, Libby reminded herself that the transition was bound to be frightening. Just as so much of Meghan’s life had been these past months since Rick had announced he was filing for divorce.
When Meghan started pleading again, Libby didn’t argue. But she wasn’t about to give in, either.
“Mommy!” Meghan’s voice was anguished. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home.”
“We said we were going to make a go of it, remember?” Libby said, and before her daughter could bring up every argument she’d raised in the six weeks since Libby had decided to come to Cleveland, she held up one hand for silence. “We talked about this, Meghan. We decided it would be a new start. An adventure.”
“You decided.” Meghan crossed her arms over her chest. It was clearly a case of the proverbial line in the sand, and Libby wasn’t in the mood.
“It’s the best thing,” she reminded her daughter. “For both of us.”
“For you, maybe. Not for me. I should be home right now. I should be sitting by the pool at Jennifer’s. Or Rollerblading with Emma. Or going to dance class with—”
“There are pools and Rollerblading and dance classes in Cleveland,” Libby told her as she’d told her a hundred times before. “You’re a great kid. You’re popular. You’re a good friend. You don’t have trouble mixing in and you’d be starting high school back in Cranberry, anyway. Instead of meeting new people there, you’ll meet new people here when you start at Central Catholic. You know you will, Meggie. Pretty soon you’ll make lots of new friends in Cleveland.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my old friends.”
Libby let out a slow breath. “You’re absolutely right. They’re great kids and you can e-mail them every day and see them on vacations and on the weekends and holidays when you visit your dad. But here, here is where we’re going to start over.”
“Daddy’s starting over and he didn’t have to leave Pittsburgh to do it.”
It was a low blow, and just as Meghan had calculated, it slammed into Libby like a fist. She stopped herself from sniping back. Oh, it was tempting, but it wasn’t fair to blame Meghan for the pain that gnawed her insides.
“What Daddy’s doing is…” Libby almost let her emotions get the best of her. Immature, selfish and just plain boneheaded were not words she should use to describe Rick. At least not in front of her daughter. Meghan had heard enough of that talk. It was time to turn over a new leaf.
“Daddy’s starting over is different,” she told Meghan instead and she congratulated herself. If Libby pretended she wasn’t talking about the last three months and how her life fell apart and her daughter’s world crumbled, she could almost make herself sound logical and objective about the whole thing. “He’s got a new wife and he and Belinda are going to have a new baby. We’ve got each other and—”
“And this trashy place.” Meghan turned her back on Barb’s Knits. “Did you ever even consider that it might be a dump before you moved us all the way here?”
Of course Libby had. She would have been crazy not to.
But she never imagined it would be this bad.
The thought settled inside her, and even though she knew it wasn’t fair, she automatically compared Barb’s Knits to the rest of the neighborhood.
The rest of the neighborhood won. Hands down.
Once upon a time—and that must have been a very long time before—the building had been not commercial but residential. It had a stone path that led from the sidewalk where they stood, and on either side of the path, flower beds where dandelions poked out of the soil, reaching for the summer sunshine.
Four steps led to a porch where the paint was chipped and a front door that was so caked with dirt it was hard to tell what color it might once have been. The front window was too dirty to see inside, as were the windows in the apartment above the first-floor retail space.
Home, sweet home.
Libby shook her head, clearing it of the fog of doubt that had settled over her with every mile she put between herself and her old life. She knew better than to be surprised by anything she might find inside or outside the shop. To pretend otherwise would be to admit she was both foolish and naive.
But that didn’t mean she thought she hadn’t made the right decision by coming to Cleveland.
Libby put on her game face. She wasn’t fooling herself and heck, she probably wasn’t fooling Meghan either. But maybe if she pretended hard enough, one of these days she’d convince herself it was actually possible to feel alive again.
“It can’t hurt to go inside and look around, can it?” Libby asked and—thank goodness—at that moment a man in the park across the street waved to them, and Meghan didn’t have a chance to answer. From the look in her eyes to the lower lip thrust out just enough for the world to know she was a martyr and a long-suffering one at that, Libby had no doubt what her daughter would have said.
With a quick look both ways, the man hurried across the street. In one hand he held a red leather leash with an overweight poodle on the end of it. With his other hand he gave Libby the thumbs-up.
“I’m guessing you’re the new owner, right? You must be. There hasn’t been another person who’s taken a look at Barb’s old place in as long as I can remember. Unless…” He narrowed his eyes and gave Libby the once-over. “Now that I’ve opened my mouth, you’re not going to tell me you’re from the drugstore chain, are you?”
“You sound as if that’s not a good thing,” Libby said.
The man’s expression grew sour. “I guess it’s progress, but…”
“But you’re not thrilled with the idea of the big-box drugstore taking up most of this block.”
“Me and everyone else around here. Well, almost everyone else. Peg over at the beauty shop—” he looked that way “—she says she’s not going to budge, but I don’t trust her. Barb’s Knits sits smack-dab in the center of the block, and the whole entire block is what those Tip-Top folks are after. Everything hinges on the sale of this property, and I’m betting that if Barb’s Knits goes, Peg will pull up stakes and go, too. Then there will be nobody stopping those Tip-Top folks. Peg!” He snorted. “She always was one to think of herself first and everyone else dead last. So fess up! You one of them? Or one of us?”
Libby grinned. “One of you. I think. If you’re talking about me being the new owner of the property, I am.” She introduced herself and shook the man’s hand. “And, just so you know, I’m planning on opening the store again. I told the drugstore folks I wasn’t interested.”
“Hear that, Clyde?” The man bent to rub the dog’s head. “That ought to get Peg’s knickers in a twist. Told you this nice lady looked like one of the good guys.” He stood and smiled at Libby before he hurried along with the dog. “Thanks for not selling to those drugstore creeps.”
Watching him go, Libby gave Meghan a playful elbow in the ribs. “See that? We’re already superheroes and we just got here. They’ll probably change the name of the park in our honor.”
“Whatever.”
