And Then There Was You (Serenity House Book 2) Read online

  Angry, Jennifer reached forward and smacked the power button on the TV.

  “The woman is an icon and all they can talk about is her son’s social life?” she asked, so disgusted she was actually shaking.

  “It’s the way the media works. You know that,” Deb said, her big brown eyes sympathetic behind her glasses.

  “It’s not the way I worked,” she insisted, furious on Annabelle’s behalf. “The last serious story about Annabelle and her husband was mine. Ever since then it’s been nothing but tabloid garbage. The story is Annabelle, not her—” her voice broke “—son.”

  “The boy’s gone wild.”

  “Boy!” she cried. “The guy is my age and he’s acting like a teenager.” Jennifer shook her head, wondering how much her son’s behavior must have wounded the intensely private Annabelle. “So disrespectful. Remember last year when he showed up drunk at the White House when his father was getting that medal for public service.”

  “Oh, I know. The whole thing was being televised and he showed up with that actress who doesn’t wear underwear.”

  “It’s just so gross,” she said, baffled that a woman like Annabelle could have a son like Ian.

  Her skin began to itch and buzz, starting at her scalp, working down her neck across her back to her arms—an old indicator that she sensed a story here. She could do a follow-up, the right kind, one that focused on Annabelle. Her life. Her lessons.

  Stop. Stop it. Jennifer put her head in her hands, counted to ten until the feeling stopped. You are not that person anymore.

  In the past year it was like she’d developed this wicked sword and any time some part of her started reaching for the person she’d been, or the way things were before Doug died, that sword cut off the inclination at the root.

  She didn’t do hard news anymore.

  “I’m so sorry this had to add to an already bad day,” Deb murmured. “I know you really liked her.”

  Jennifer laughed, a short burst of grief and incredulity. “I barely knew her,” she said. “She was Doug’s godmother. She came to our wedding and then I didn’t see her again. Not until—” She sighed. The interview. The interview a year ago that had inspired her to utterly change her life.

  “You have to embrace the dark things in your life,” Annabelle had said, looking so regal on her sunporch in New Hampshire. “You have to embrace the sadness and the anger and the hurt or you have to cut it out. Remove it from your life or it will take over everything. But if you embrace it, live with it, it just becomes a part of your life. A part of you.”

  Jennifer put her head in her hands. One interview, a two-second sound bite and Jennifer changed everything.

  Changed? She nearly laughed. Changed didn’t even begin to describe what she’d done with her life.

  Massive overhaul was more like it. Extreme Makeover, Life Edition.

  She’d sold the condo in Baltimore with all of her furniture, most of her clothes and anything Doug ever wore, used or touched.

  Moved to Asheville.

  Quit her writer-producer job at the NBC affiliate in Baltimore. A job she’d loved. A job that had been a huge part of her identity. In fact, with Doug gone, it was all she had left. Besides Spence. And she knew, as a single parent looking for a new identity, the job had to go.

  Now she wrote women’s magazine articles about home spa remedies and natural household cleansers so she could go to every soccer game of Spence’s. So she could be home every night to help with homework. So she never ever had to think of who she’d been and what she’d lost two years ago.

  She reinvented herself instead of facing what was left of her life without Doug.

  And the craziest part was it worked.

  The Oprahs out there in the world might have a beef with Jennifer’s methods, but it was the smartest thing she’d ever done. Bar none.

  And if she were really smart, she’d write a book so other widows could do the same thing. Why try and pick up the pieces of a shattered life? Why not get new pieces?

  “My son is going to be so sad,” she said, covering her eyes with her hands. “He loved her books.”

  “Shonny’s beginning to get in to them, too.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. And Jennifer was grateful for Deb’s quiet company even though the woman no doubt had a million other things to do. In fact, Jennifer needed to get back to work. That deadline wasn’t going to meet itself.

  A knock on the screen door interrupted her pity party and both women turned to look over the back of the couch at the man standing on the front stoop.

  “Can I help you?” Deb asked, walking to the door.

  “I am looking for Sam Riggins, J. D. Kronos or Deb Barber.”

  “I’m Deb,” she said, popping open the screen door.

  A blue envelope of paper flew through the open door, landing on the hardwood floor and skidding over to the couch where Jennifer sat.

  “You’ve been served,” the man said with a smirk and then walked away.

  2

  “This is from the Conti family?” Jennifer said, trying to make sense of the outrageous claims made in the nearly undecipherable legal language on the court papers.

  “Looks like it,” Deb agreed, from over her shoulder. “Frank Conti is in jail but it looks like Mom Conti is coming after us for…damages and the loss of a diamond ring?”

  That’s what it looked like to Jennifer, too. Doug had been a lawyer specializing in media law and when he got carried away with lawyer talk she tended to zone out unless it had something to do with one of her stories.

  Now she wished she’d studied every word he’d said. The bad news was piling up around Serenity and as the person who was supposed to be helping take care of things, she wished she could make this go away.

  “I knew that girl was going to be trouble,” Deb said, clucking her tongue. “Coming in her with her fancy jeans and lies.”

  Last year Christina Conti, the pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter of Frank Conti, who was a thug in the Gamboni crime family, had arrived on Serenity House’s doorstep.

  Jennifer had been way too wrapped up in her own breakdown to take much notice in the girl, but Christina and Spence had become friends of a sort. And according to Spence, Christina had lied about her age and her identity, but she was running from real trouble and Sam and J.D. did everything they could do to make sure she and her baby were safe.

  Including getting Christina and her boyfriend into the witness protection program. In return, Christina and her boyfriend gave the FBI all the information they had on Frank.

  It was enough to put the guy away for life.

  Spence had watched the news religiously all last fall.

  And Jennifer, trying to amputate the hard-news journalist in her, had turned her face away from the screen so she wouldn’t die of envy.

  Even now, just thinking about the Conti story made her jealous. The stupid story unfolded right under her nose. She could have scooped everyone. She could have scooped everyone to a Peabody.

  But that was a different life. A different person.

  And you don’t care, she reminded herself. Not anymore.

  “You know what we need to do,” Jennifer said, stroking Deb’s shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Deb said, nodding her head so her rhinestone glasses slipped back on her nose. “I do. Go get the number.”

  Minutes later, Jennifer sat at the desk in the cluttered office, the cordless phone in her right hand. The scrap of paper with the handwritten, magic number in her left.

  “You talk,” she said, trying to pass the phone to Deb, feeling a sudden attack of nerves. “I’ll dial.”

  “No way,” Deb said, sitting back, holding her wrists out in front of her, a hot pink phone barricade. “You talk. You’re a journalist, for crying out loud. You’re better with words than me.”

  “Okay.” Jennifer licked her lips. Took a deep breath. “What do I say?”

  “That our pipes are broken. We got legal trouble a
nd Gary’s too slow with our air-conditioning.”

  “All right. Here goes.” She dialed the number and cleared her throat while it rang.

  “Leave a message,” a robotic voice said then there was a long shrill beep.

  “Hi. Ah…this is Jennifer Stern, at Serenity House. Sam Riggins is on vacation and her assistant Deb and I are in charge of things here while she’s gone.” Deb whirled her hands in a universal signal to get on to the good stuff. “Right. Anyway. We’re having some problems with pipes and the air-conditioning and don’t have the funds to cover both. So, we need some money. I—”

  How much? she mouthed.

  “Five grand,” Deb said and Jennifer scowled. “Time we got central air,” Deb insisted.

  “A few thousand should cover it,” Jennifer said into the receiver. “But more importantly, the shelter got served today with some legal papers that we are ill-equipped to handle and we—”

  Jennifer was cut off by another shrill beep then the phone went dead.

  She removed the receiver from her ear. “Should I call back?”

  Deb shook her head, leaning back in her chair with a heavy sigh. “You said enough.”

  “So? That’s it?” Jennifer looked at the phone and the number as if there should be more involved. Magic potions or something. Chanting. Spells.

  “That’s it. Makes you think Sam’s got a screw loose for not calling that number more often.”

  “Well, it does seem pretty easy.”

  And frankly, pretty exciting. Her hands tingled and Jennifer couldn’t remember the last time she’d been nervous about something.

  “Anyhow—” Deb looked up at the wall clock “—I’ve got a class on pregnancy and nutrition in ten minutes.”

  “And I need to get this article done. I’m going to be pushing hard for my deadline as it is.”

  Jennifer met Deb’s eyes and smiled. Shrugged. “We just wait for our knight in shining armor to call back?”

  “Shouldn’t be long. Two hours tops.”

  Upstairs in Sam’s old apartment, Jennifer checked the phone for the third time in the past hour and a half to make sure the thing worked.

  Ringer was on.

  Dial tone working.

  But it had been silent since she’d made the call.

  Two hours, she reminded herself. It still hadn’t been two hours.

  She forced herself to focus on the task at hand—edifying the women’s-magazine-reading public of the untold benefit of using olive oil in your hair.

  She kept out the part about how it made her look like a greaseball for three days. And her son had wondered what that smell was every time she’d come in the room.

  An instant messenger balloon popped up on her screen.

  KerryWaldo: Stop hiding from me.

  Jennifer’s heart stopped at the message. Her old producer. Her old friend, from her former life. Even seeing the name brought back memories she didn’t want—a job she loved, work she was good at, a life she adored.

  The pain was excruciating. Just as it was every time Waldo contacted her. Two weeks of ignoring Waldo’s phone calls and e-mails and the woman still didn’t get the picture.

  But that was Waldo and Jennifer was going to have to deal with it. Mentally, she unsheathed the sword and typed:

  I’m not hiding. I’m busy.

  KerryWaldo: I read your last story about how to get rid of soap scum in your shower. Life-changing.

  Jennifer smiled. Waldo would think she’d fallen a long way, but the truth was Jennifer made a choice. She chose soap scum because it was easy.

  Stay tuned. Working on a fascinating piece about the many uses for olive oil.

  KerryWaldo: And I’ve got a piece on a teenager starting a business to clean up Chesapeake Bay. Contract work. Two days in the office. Come on. I need you.

  A barrage of questions filled Jennifer’s head. A teenager? How? Why? Is it working? Was she funded?

  But then, with brutal sword efficiency, she stopped. She stopped the questions, the curiosity, the skin-itching enthusiasm to get to the heart of a story.

  The sword methodology would be discussed in chapter three of her new widowhood book.

  I’m busy, she wrote.

  KerryWaldo: You can’t be happy. Writing that fluff? No way the Jennifer Stern I knew is happy.

  Happy? Jennifer nearly laughed. Oh, man, Waldo had it so wrong. This wasn’t about happy. It was about survival. About not going crazy.

  I’m busy. Fluff doesn’t write itself.

  KerryWaldo: You hear about Annabelle Greer? I’ll give you carte blanche for a follow-up on her life.

  Jennifer’s heart stopped and it took a while, but with shaking fingers she typed:

  Gotta go.

  She closed the messenger window, shutting down the program. She almost closed her computer and threw it out the window.

  That’s how much she was tempted. That’s how much she yearned to tell the Annabelle Greer story.

  But opening up that door would let in any number of memories and nightmares. And she hadn’t worked this hard to cave now. She had a new life. She was a new person.

  And she had a job to do. It wasn’t her old job. It wasn’t the greatest job, but it was hers. So, after a couple of deep breaths she stayed in her seat and finished a thousand words on olive oil. It wasn’t much, but it was something to be proud of.

  An hour later, she e-mailed the story to her editor at Ladies’ Home Journal, and quickly distanced herself from the computer as if it were a snake that might bite.

  The temptation to do a little research, surf the Net about the New Horizons Foundation and Annabelle Greer hadn’t faded in the past hour.

  Leave. It. Alone, she told herself. But the demand didn’t help with the craving.

  Instead, she faced Sam’s empty apartment, searching for distraction. The unit on the top floor of the community center had been emptied when Sam moved out a year ago. At the same time Deb and Sam decided to focus more of their attention on community day programs rather than offering shelter to women, since the demand had diminished.

  And since that decision the shelter had radically changed. Gone were the security cameras and bullet-proof doors. Cops no longer spent nights on patrol outside, watching for angry husbands and boyfriends. Now there were screen doors and a vegetable garden. Kids played in the front yard and women held evening book-group meetings and cooking clubs. The floodlights on motion sensors were still around, although now only raccoons and other nocturnal animals set them off.

  Twice last night, to be precise. Not that Jennifer was counting.

  There were still three bedrooms downstairs. But instead of the protective haven they’d once been, the rooms now served more transitional purposes. Women newly arrived or between jobs. They still housed women leaving relationships but only on the condition the former partner would not hunt them down. And when someone was living in one of the rooms, either Deb or Sam stayed in Sam’s old apartment.

  Jennifer and Spence had that privilege for these two weeks. A bed. Dresser. Pull-out couch. A card table. A broken coffeemaker. That was the sum total of the apartment’s contents.

  Home sweet home, she thought, smiling. Oddly, enough, the sparseness was all right. There was something about Serenity that superseded the lack of material comforts.

  The skin on the backs of her arms itched. Now, she thought, that’s a story. The life of a shelter. How Serenity had changed and adapted to the needs of the community.

  Stop. Just stop.

  That was the last time she responded to Waldo. Conversing with her made the door on the past that much harder to close. And shone a spotlight on the fact that soap scum and olive oil weren’t satisfying in the least.

  Phone in hand, Jennifer ran down the stairs and found an empty kitchen and an empty common room. Pushing through the door toward the classrooms she heard the shrieking laughter of a bunch of kids.

  Smiling, her heart like a bubble high in her chest, she found Spence, S
honny and three other kids playing Twister on the colored mat in the middle of a circle of watching women.

  “Hey,” Deb said, coming to stand next to her. “Heard from our knight?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Not yet. Should I call again?”

  Deb wrinkled her nose. “Let’s not be pushy.”

  Spence howled and fell sideways, right into the legs of a blond woman sitting next to a little girl Jennifer hadn’t seen when she’d walked in the door.

  “Sorry,” Spence said, pushing his mop of red curls off his forehead. “Wanna play?” he asked the girl.

  The girl seemed to shrink, despite the mother urging her forward. After a little struggle the mother smiled sweetly at Spence. “Maybe later. She’s just a little shy.”

  “She’s my sister!” a girl about Spence’s age with the same white blond hair said as she reached her right hand out for a red circle. “She never plays.”

  Spence gave the smaller girl another look. “You can do the spinner.”

  The girl shook her head, practically crawling into her mother’s side.

  Spence shrugged and took over spinner duties.

  “What’s this class?” Jennifer asked, filled with pride over Spence’s efforts.

  “It’s sort of an empowerment class for kids,” Deb said.

  Jennifer rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. Empowerment class for kids? Really? Was that necessary? Sometimes Deb and Sam got a little “feel good” for her tastes.

  “Jennifer,” Deb said, her voice a shade tight. “All the women in this room have been beaten by men they loved and their children saw that. These women got out but who knows what’s lingering in their kids’ minds? Who knows what kind of damage has been done? These women are trying to make sure their kids don’t fall into the same traps they fell into.”