Change of Life

Daisy had finished her dinner. Nora had no doubt she’d licked the bowl clean. All at once she charged around the kitchen doorway, tail waving like a pennant, bright eyes flashing. She aimed for Johnny, a personal favorite, then Savannah. When she’d absorbed another round of hugs and scratches, she finally settled down at Johnny’s feet.

“I saw Mark late today,” Savannah said too casually, leaning back against the door, her dark blue eyes—the eyes she had gotten from Nora—avoiding hers. “He said you’d been in before me. I thought he seemed a little…down, somehow. Did you notice?”

“No,” Nora said with a flicker of guilt. Mark, depressed about something? He’d seemed his usual cheerful self to her. But then Nora had been preoccupied. Maybe she’d overlooked something.

“I’m sorry we missed each other,” Savannah said. “Why were you there?”

Nora’s heart jerked. “Just routine. You?”

She wouldn’t mention Mark’s “diagnosis,” didn’t want to worry them with the words that Nora had decided to ignore. Besides, those two had something in mind. If anything was wrong with Savannah, she and Johnny wouldn’t be toying with her like this, as they so obviously were doing. Would they?

“We have some news,” he admitted.

“Good news? Or bad news?” Nora didn’t need the latter.

“We think it’s good,” he said.

“We’re not sure about you.” Savannah reached for his hand. They were still hovering by the front door, as if they didn’t know whether to come in.

A thousand possibilities flashed through Nora’s mind. As she’d suspected, the invitations must have been printed with the wrong names, time, or God forbid, date. Or Savannah’s wedding gown could not be finished on time. The reception hall had been double-booked by someone else with a prior claim. Savannah’s brother couldn’t be Johnny’s best man after all because Browning was off to Borneo for the government for six months.

“Angels, I can’t stand the suspense. You’re afraid to tell me, aren’t you?”

“We’re not afraid,” Savannah said, “but maybe you should sit down.”

Nora’s pulse took a tumble. “Everything else may have gone wrong today, but my daughter is about to marry the most wonderful man on earth for her, and vice versa. I’m over the moon already. Nothing has given me more pleasure than to help plan your wedding.”

“Help?” Johnny echoed. “Is that what you call it? As soon as we got engaged, you ran with the ball. ‘Let me take care of everything.’ There’s been no stopping you.” But his tone was teasing, his favorite attitude with Nora.

She reassessed him and Savannah. “Please don’t tell me there’s some problem with your absolutely perfect match.”

“No, of course not.” Savannah worried her lower lip. “It’s just that I’m—”

“We’re—” Johnny said at the same instant.

“—pregnant,” they both finished. “Nora—Ma—you’re going to be a…”

Savannah’s next word failed to register. Nora was speechless, stunned. Her gaze dropped to Savannah’s flat stomach. She had laid a hand over it, protectively, covering her still-slim figure in her skinny jeans, and Johnny reached out to enfold her fingers there with his. His chin lifted as he returned Nora’s stare, but she saw his left eye begin to twitch, a sure sign that he was feeling stressed.

Still she didn’t move. For years she had entertained the happy fantasy of her daughter one day becoming a mother, too. Nora loved her family. She had two children of her own, and on his wedding day Johnny would make three.

Wasn’t it only yesterday that Savannah had been a little girl in pigtails, playing jump rope during school recess? Crying over her first boyfriend? Giggling with her girlfriends? Learning to ride a horse? Trying on her prom dress? And always, always after Nora’s divorce from Wilson, drawing her primitive stick figures of their family, together again? For a second or two, Nora let the sweet and poignant memories drift through her mind.

“Say something,” Savannah murmured.

And at last Nora came out of her trance.

“Ohhh!” she shrieked. Startling Daisy, she sidestepped the dog, crossed the room, hauled Savannah into her wide-open arms, then Johnny, too. “Oh, my God! You two…”

She told them how pleased she was, then turned her first, shocked silence into the kind of Hallmark occasion that sold greeting cards by the millions. Daisy was more than eager to join in the expressions of joy. She shimmied and jumped up on people and gave a short, sharp bark of delight. The bright blue metal tags on her collar jingled like a nursery mobile.

“Can you believe it, Ma? Eeeek!” Savannah shouted.

Nora’s eyes misted. How many such moments came along, after all, in anyone’s lifetime? She and Savannah surrendered to their tears and clasped each other close, erupting now and then as only women can in support of each other on such a happy occasion.

Soon they would talk, as only mothers and daughters knew how to do, together. They would go shopping. For now Johnny was here, and he was a man, excluded by his sex from their female circle. He gazed helplessly from Nora to Savannah and back again with a baffled expression on his face at their display. He, in particular, wouldn’t understand such up-front emotion, and Nora finally took pity on him before she and Savannah went crazy all over again, unable to help themselves.

Yet underneath, Nora felt a strange mix of powerful emotions all her own. One minute she was stepping back to think, It’s too soon. She had wanted this some day, but years from now when she would be ready. In the next instant, she was laughing and crying and holding on to Savannah for dear life. New life.

Her baby was having a baby.

Nora felt close to being hysterical, actually. Even in the company of the people she loved more than her own life, it had been quite a day.

“I’m going to be…what?” she murmured.

CHAPTER 2

“Y ou sure don’t look like any grandmother I ever knew,” Nora heard Johnny say as soon as the restaurant hostess had shown them to their table, “including my own. Both of them.”

She struggled not to blush at the compliment.

“You think so? Really?”

“Character is my business, Nora. I’m thinking—” he assessed her for a long moment “—Sandra Bullock for the part.”

“She’s only forty.”

She felt grateful for his flattery, but Nora had lived on a roller coaster of emotion for the past two days, obsessing over Savannah and Johnny’s surprising news. Sometimes she found herself smiling at the prospect, then fighting the urge to run and look in her mirror for any obvious signs that Mark Fingerhut could be right. This morning she had called Johnny to arrange one of their regular brunches, and seized the chance to get away from herself.

Besides, she owed him something. The other night when she and Savannah had done their happy dance all over her living room, Johnny had stood there with a somewhat puzzled expression. What are they screaming about? She’d seen that male look on his face but, considering his emotionally deprived background, she hadn’t known how to include him then. Almost shyly now, she pushed a small jewelry box toward him.

But Johnny hadn’t finished. With barely a glance at the box, he left it where it was.

“Fifty is the new forty,” he pointed out.

“How about thirty? Could you see me as, say, Catherine Zeta-Jones?” She was teasing, yet Nora felt cheered. “I’d certainly like to think so, and it’s true women do take better care of themselves these days. Preventive maintenance.” If only Nora could do a better job of that, but there were always other people who needed her. Maggie, for one. And now there would soon be a little one to cuddle. Still, she couldn’t resist saying, “In theory, you realize, I’m too young to be a grandmother.”

Johnny had the audacity to laugh.

“Too young? Savannah said last night that she has no idea how we’ll get all those candles on your cake next week.”

Nora choked on her Bloody Mary.

His grin grew. “It’ll be a conflagration, a forest fire raging out of control.”

“I’d rather ignore it.” She waved a hand, dismissing the topic of her upcoming birthday. Dismissing the unattractive bouts of ambivalence she’d suffered for the past few days. “Johnny, seriously. My birthday aside, I can’t wait to dispense hugs and kisses, read stories, and even bake Christmas cookies for your child, not that I intend to put on a frumpy apron while I’m doing it.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? Savannah won’t give birth for six more months.”

“I like to be prepared.” In fact, she’d done just that before she met Johnny for brunch. Thanks to a friend who owned a beautiful shop in the Silver Sands Mall, she’d been able to get the gift ready for him on time. This would be her way of making Johnny feel like an even bigger part of the celebration and their family. Idly, he spun the gift box in the center of the table. He still hadn’t opened it.

“Please,” she said.

But Johnny had lost his smile. “I can’t quite believe it myself, you know. We’re having a baby.” He shook his head. “Do you realize that less than a year ago I was still living with Savannah’s best friend? Trying to get Kit on track in her life while I neglected my own? Keeping her kid from turning into a future juvenile delinquent in that crazy household? Not to mention that mother of hers…” He rolled his eyes over Kit’s demanding parent. “Now Kit’s back in school to finish her degree, Tyler’s still a great kid, I’m with Savannah and she’s—we’re—pregnant. Just call us The Incredibles.”

Nora reminded him of something else. “A year ago Savannah was pining away over you, fretting that you’d never see how right you were for each other. You didn’t know that? Well, she did. She was working for that awful temp agency—until I finally persuaded her to take a few clients of mine.” Before the second round of hurricanes, Nora thought, before her workload diminished. “But you forgot the rest.” She felt a fresh glow of approval for her future son-in-law. “You love Savannah with all your heart. And it’s a big heart, angel.”

This newly revealed side of his personality thrilled her, because Johnny had been the king of suppressed emotion for most of his life. Savannah had opened him like a can of beans, and in Nora’s view the change was all to the good. For his benefit, as well. No, especially for his benefit.

Johnny hadn’t had the best upbringing, she knew. His father had abandoned his mother early on, leaving her to raise their son by herself, and even after she’d married then left Wilson (she’d been his second wife), it had been hard going. When Savannah came home the first time, dragging Johnny like an abandoned cat, Nora had immediately taken him in. Their bond remained fierce, like a mother tiger with her cub, like Johnny’s with Savannah, and Nora felt lucky to share that.

He didn’t even try to wiggle out this time. “Sure, I love her,” he said. “What’s not to love?”

Nora blinked. “You love me, too. Admit it.”

“Yep. I do, angel.” He used her favorite endearment, still without smiling, and Nora’s inner alarm system went on alert. Despite this enjoyable brunch, Savannah was conspicuously absent today, and Johnny hadn’t bothered to explain why. “Savannah would have liked to hear me say that,” he added.

“Is she all right?” Nora asked. “Feeling well, no problems now that she’s expecting?”

Johnny frowned. “She’s a little under the weather. Especially in the morning. Apparently, it’s my fault.”

Nora smiled but she couldn’t bear for Savannah to be ill. “The women in our family don’t get morning sickness. She shouldn’t, either. I’m joking, of course. I do worry about her. Still, she has plenty to do with the Larson job I gave her to design their family room and sun porch. The contractors haven’t exactly been cooperative.”

His green eyes brightened. “You wouldn’t admit to having morning sickness if you were hung over the bathroom bowl like a Christmas ornament every day. And I bet you’d be wearing your best three-inch heels with a string of pearls.”

She couldn’t help answering his faint smile. “So true.”

Johnny moved the jewelry box closer to his plate. But he left it there, and leaving him room, Nora attacked her eggs Benedict. At the luncheon with Starr, or for the past two days, she hadn’t been able to eat a bite. Today she felt ravenous. She knew Johnny didn’t easily accept gifts—or love, at one time. She didn’t know anyone, however, who needed it more.

“So,” he said, addressing his vegetable frittata, “what’s new with you? We didn’t have time the other night to talk. But Savannah told me you’ve lost some more clients.”

Nora sighed. And thought of Starr Mulligan. “Starr keeps horning in on the rest of my people. I’m sure she’s feeling the pinch, too, with so much hurricane destruction everywhere, but this morning my first phone message was from a woman in Royal Palms. I’ll see her late this afternoon. Starr and I are battling over the chance to redecorate her ten-thousand-square-foot home. Do you have any idea how much money I’d lose if I don’t win this job? Which, yes, I do need.”

Johnny named a figure. Very close to accurate, in Nora’s estimate.

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged. “I listen to Savannah. She’s considering your latest partnership offer in Nine Lives. Royal Palms would be pretty good dough, Nora. Better than the first screenplay I sold to Wade Blessing for his initial Razor Slade film.”

“You can’t be serious. You earn a ton of money.” Wade Blessing, the actor, was Hollywood’s newest Arnold Schwarzenegger—before he decided to save the state of California from the governor’s office. Wade’s continuing action films about a mercenary with a heart of gold could be too graphic for Nora’s taste, but that didn’t matter to Johnny’s bottom line.

“I said the first one. Wait until Wade sees my new script.” He grinned. “I’m gonna hold him up like a stagecoach bandit.”

A few months ago, after Johnny had walked out on Kit Blanchard and she had turned to Wade on the rebound for a while, the two men had suffered hard feelings, but they had since repaired their friendship.

“I thought you were writing something different.”

“That, too,” Johnny murmured, looking embarrassed. “It’s what Stephen King calls a ‘toy truck’ project. Just for me right now.”

“Johnny, it will be a movie. Tell me. When it gets released, the whole world will see it. How private can that be?”

He looked even more uncomfortable.

“Yeah. I know. But that’ll be Christmas a year from now at the earliest. I figure I’ll be too busy changing diapers to notice the public reaction. Or the reviews. I don’t want to talk about it. Wait until wide release.”

When Johnny picked up the jewelry box, obviously as a diversion, Nora held her breath. Embarrassed in turn, she fussed with her napkin, waiting for him to at last remove the wrapping paper from the gift. Would he like it?

“I may have overstepped my bounds with Starr,” she admitted, returning to their earlier conversation about her own career to distract herself. “We had a run-in recently, and I may have made an impulsive remark or two about that potential client I mentioned, Geneva Whitehouse.”

“Earl Whitehouse’s wife?”

Nora felt a twinge of unease. “Yes. Do you know him?”

“Only by reputation. He’s a pretty big developer in this area. He built a few of the houses in my compound at Seaview. Didn’t you do some work for him a while back?”

“Briefly,” Nora said, not wanting to discuss Earl Whitehouse, who, despite his stellar standing in the community, was not one of her favorite people. “We were talking about Starr. She and I seem to bring out the worst in each other. Now I wonder if at our monthly business luncheon this week she decided to retaliate for what I’d said.” Had Starr’s pointed reaction to Nora’s hot flash been exactly that? Payback?

Johnny gauged her expression. “Then why not cut her some slack? You might even come to like her.”

Nora doubted that was possible, but she didn’t say so. And maybe he was right. She and Starr had struggled with each other long enough, and it was up to Nora—always the ready helper—to take the first step. Then she saw that Johnny had removed the paper, lifted the top of the box and pulled out the gift.

“Uh, Nora.” He choked up, and she saw him swallow. “This is for me?”

“It won’t suit anyone else, angel.”

He slipped the eighteen-karat gold signet ring on his finger. And stared at it. The fine script flowed across its surface, caught the light streaming through the restaurant windows and shone on the one simple word. Five letters that Nora had hoped might mean the world to him.

Johnny’s voice was thick. “Sometimes you break me up.” Then his gaze met hers, and his smile beamed. “Thank you. You sure know how to get a guy.”

The gold ring’s inscription read simply: Daddy.

Riding on a wave of euphoria long after her brunch with Johnny, Nora decided to take his advice to see Starr that afternoon before Nora met with Geneva Whitehouse. With luck, they, too, might reach some kind of rapprochement.

First, Nora swung by Nine Lives, Inc., where she found a pile of mail waiting on her desk. Her longtime client, Leonard Hackett, one of her most lucrative accounts, was also in her office. Typically, he didn’t look well.

Most of the mail was routine, with the exception of an invitation to a charity dinner in Fort Walton Beach for the Heart Association, and ordinarily she didn’t mind Leonard’s unannounced visits. But why was he here?

Nora tried to listen but, bent upon her meetings with Starr and then Geneva, her mind refused to take in the details. In her experience, it was always better to empathize with Leonard’s latest bout of severe hypochondria than to try talking him out of his newest ailment. All she needed to do was make soothing noises.

“I tell you, I’m not long for this world. It will be almost a relief.” Leonard slumped in a chair across from her. “I’ve been ill for years.”

“Clearly, it’s taken a toll.” His neurosis had definitely shredded her nerves and, suppressing a sigh, Nora lifted her gaze from the charity invitation to give him her best look of sympathy.

“I see you’re letting your hair grow,” she said, hoping to distract him.

Leonard ran a hand over the top of his head where a barely visible fuzz had sprouted. She’d never cared for his—so Leonard had believed—trendy baldness. Now, his gleaming skull struck her as preferable to the gray-brown stubble that took its place.

“I won’t need to maintain my looks,” he murmured. “I only dropped by—with the utmost effort, I might add—to say goodbye.”

Nora’s heart lurched. “Leonard, don’t be ridiculous.”

Needing to discharge her nervous energy, she jumped up from her desk to pour a glass of water from the silver carafe on the sideboard. She held the Waterford tumbler out to Leonard.

“Here. Drink. I have whiskey, if you’d prefer.”

“Not good for my liver. My function is marginal, you know.”

Nora did sigh then. Leonard frequently tried her patience to the breaking point. Others might laugh at him, but she kept trying in her usual way to—what, save him from himself?

Dutifully, obviously stalling, he took a few sips of water, then set the glass aside. On her cherry end table. Without a coaster. Nora whipped one in the shape of a seashell from the drawer and smacked it down.

“Please, Leonard. No rings.”

He stretched his legs out, then crossed them at his bony ankles. If he had ever been the playboy he imagined himself to be, Nora hadn’t seen it. To her, he was more like Greta Garbo in drag, playing Camille.

Still, everyone had his illusions, and she maintained a certain fondness for Leonard. He could irritate her to distraction, but he had gobs of inherited money which he didn’t mind spending on the houses, condos and co-ops he’d purchased with astonishing regularity over the years.

It was a neurotic cycle, Nora suspected. Leonard became “ill,” he managed to survive the deadly disease, then bought himself a new place to live like a fresh lease on life. She had to admit the very notion of his leaving this earth now, after years of threats to do just that, would make her weep.

On second thought, she couldn’t continue to agree with him.

She tried to cheer him up. “Your color’s good today,” she pointed out. “That navy polo shirt makes your eyes look even more, um, blue.” Actually, they were almost colorless, but Nora wouldn’t be unkind—one reason, she supposed, why Leonard kept showing up without an appointment. He must know he could count on Nora for support. “If I don’t miss my guess, whatever illness you contracted during your weekend in the Caymans must be encountering all those little antibodies by now. I’d say that by tomorrow—”

Leonard shifted. “I’ve talked to Starr Mulligan.”

Uh-oh. Here we go. This was the real reason for Leonard’s latest impromptu visit. The rest had been a cover-up.

Nora’s voice chilled to the temperature of the water in the silver carafe crammed with ice on the sideboard. “I see.” He had, as usual, engaged her sympathy for his current illness, taken advantage of her kindness. Now he would tell her the truth. Nora didn’t want to hear it.

“Starr?” she said, already rethinking her earlier intention to make amends.

“I wasn’t expecting her when she turned up at my condo yesterday afternoon. I was napping, trying to preserve my strength, and not properly dressed to entertain.”

“Starr brings her own show with her.”

“Yes, well.” Leonard cleared his throat. “I think you should know she plans to underbid you on the design for my new house.”

“You bought another house? So this medical crisis—” she circled a hand in the air “—was just a ruse.”

If he’d purchased yet another home, Leonard intended to live for a while. That was good news. Yet he’d almost put one past her and Nora’s focus sharpened. If he hadn’t been her most constant client for the past fifteen years, if she didn’t need him now, she’d feel tempted to throw him out.

“I didn’t bid on your job, Leonard. I didn’t know about it.”

He adopted a contrite expression like a basset hound. “Can you possibly forgive me?”

“I’m not sure. How did Starr learn about this property in the first place?”

Leonard looked away. “Her cousin is a Realtor. He’s, uh, my Realtor.”

“I never knew that,” Nora said.

“He mainly handles commercial property. I wasn’t even in the market when he phoned to tell me he had this marvelous listing at Impressions right near Seaview.”

“Charming.” Nora didn’t mean the gorgeous new development at the shore, a few miles from Destin, and not far from the other planned community where Johnny owned a beach home. “You’ll be too far from the pharmacy,” she informed Leonard, “and the mall. And probably from the water.”

“I can practically walk from my kitchen into the Gulf.”

“I see,” Nora said again. If her life kept going this way, she wouldn’t need to worry about her presumed perimenopause. She’d have a stroke. “So you’ve gone behind my back, bought a marvelous new home—and Starr has great plans for it.” Nora couldn’t help the next words that came from her mouth, Maggie’s long-ago teachings aside. “Well, congratulations. When she fills the place with hideous pseudo pre-Columbian art and charges you a fortune, please don’t call me.”

Leonard sounded like a little boy. “Nora.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead, easing the frown that wanted to form. Her latest Botox injections were supposed to be at their peak effect, and her forehead shouldn’t show a ripple, like the surface of an unused swimming pool in the sun.

She took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m hurt, Leonard.”

How could Starr steal her most lucrative and ever-present client? Just as she wanted to take Geneva Whitehouse? What would Nora do without Leonard? It seemed worse than her usual question: What to do with him? He had been the pain in her ribs for years, but she was, well…used to him. He had his gentler side, and until now a certain loyalty, although it wasn’t showing today.