Better Than This: A Nine Minutes Spin-Off Novel Read online

  I flipped over and buried my face in my pillow hoping it would help me forget. Jake’s expression hadn’t revealed judgment or distaste at my cattiness. He hadn’t aimed a frown of disapproval or a smirk of reproof at my window. No, it was much worse than that. Once Dolly settled herself behind him, he paused before driving off and leveled a gaze my way. He appeared crestfallen, and I was horrified to realize that I could’ve handled any other expression than the one I saw on his face. It was a look of sheer and utter disappointment.

  Chapter 5

  A Chance to Make Amends

  I didn’t know how I’d let the notion consume me that the new caregiver at the assisted living facility was the long-dead Kenny Pritchard. I apologized to Sheila when she called asking after my health. She readily accepted my request for forgiveness and didn’t seem surprised when I asked which days Jake had off. I very much wanted to visit with Jonathan again, and it was obvious I didn’t want to run into Jake while doing so. I also had another more personal matter I needed to address. She told me I should stop by the following Sunday or Wednesday.

  Several days passed, during which time I kept myself busy with my part-time work at Dr. Tucker’s clinic and concentrated on my many DIY home projects. It seemed that every time I repaired or updated one aspect of my place, something else broke. Darlene and I spent the weekend scouring flea markets for fixtures that suited my style. I hadn’t yet found a decent kitchen faucet, but that was no longer an issue. The dripping had miraculously ceased. Darlene considered it Divine intervention. I figured I’d never tightened the levers sufficiently when turning it off. I did manage to find some perfect light fixtures and was going to make an appointment the following week for an electrician to install them.

  After one of our excursions, I asked Dar if she wouldn’t mind taking a longer drive. I had something on my heart and wanted to deal with it. Darlene readily agreed and gave me a curious look when we arrived at a Harley-Davidson dealership a few towns away.

  “Are you getting something for your motorcycle man?” she asked.

  “Just c’mon,” was my reply as we exited the car.

  The following Wednesday, I pulled into the Hampton House and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see a bike in the parking lot. Like Sheila had told me, it was Jake’s day off. I grabbed my purse and the item I’d purchased at the Harley dealership and made my way inside. I stopped at Sheila’s office and apologized for a second time. Her eyes were warm when she assured me an apology wasn’t necessary. She told me she understood the stress I’d been under and how stress manifests itself in unusual ways. I agreed.

  My second stop was Jonathan’s room to say hello. He wasn’t there, so I set out to track him down. I was told by one of the resident volunteers that Wednesday was bingo day and I would find him in the game room. I stood in the doorway unnoticed and watched him. He was sitting at a table with a young lady who had Down syndrome. Every time she or Jonathan heard a number that matched their cards they squealed and high-fived each other. I couldn’t contain my smile at seeing him so happy.

  “Her name is Cindy and she’s Jonathan’s best friend. And other than checkers with Jake, bingo is his favorite game.”

  I hadn’t heard her come up behind me, but I was glad she did. I turned around to face Dolly. Before I could say anything, she smiled warmly and said, “I’m glad you’re okay, Dr. Anderson. You scared us last week.”

  “Thank you, Dolly. I’m fine. I don’t know what came over me.”

  She giggled and said, “A couple of us speculated that you got a case of the Jakes. You almost hit the floor right after he tried to shake your hand.”

  I gave her a sheepish grin and asked, “Is that what the women around here get when he shows up? A case of the Jakes?”

  “Oh yeah. Not only is he handsome, but he is such a gentleman. He’s always going out of his way to open doors and carry stuff. If he’s sitting at a table in the cafeteria and a woman walks over to him, he stands before offering her a seat at his table. My momma instilled manners in my older brother, but I never remember her teaching him to do that. Heck, Jake even pulls out chairs!”

  I hadn’t been around Jake enough to comment, and didn’t reply as I shifted the bulky parcel I was carrying, balancing it on my hip. She noticed and gave me a curious look and I remembered why I’d brought it.

  “Oh, I have something for you.” I held out the package and indicated for her to take it from me. She hesitated at first, but then extended her hands.

  “For me?” Her eyes were wide.

  When I smiled she walked over to a table and set it down. I watched as she noisily removed the box from the loud, crinkly plastic bag. Her eyes lit up when she realized what it was and thanked me profusely as she removed the item from the box.

  “If it doesn’t feel like a good fit, the store will take it back,” I informed her.

  “I just can’t thank you enough. I’ve been meaning to get one.” Her eyes were warm. “I don’t know why you bought this for me, but I appreciate it.”

  “No thanks are necessary, Dolly. Just promise me you’ll wear it.”

  She started to answer when we were interrupted by a loud scuttlebutt in the bingo room. She gave me an apologetic smile and I nodded understandingly before taking my leave. I was almost out the door when I remembered what I had in my purse. I was going to leave it with Sheila when I first arrived but changed my mind. After seeing Dolly had no hard feelings I was feeling a bit better about it and started to do an about-face when the sliding doors opened, and Jake appeared.

  I must’ve looked startled because he said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I thought you were off today,” I replied a little too quickly and instantly regretted it.

  “How did you know I was off? Were you looking for me?” He gave me a brilliant smile that made his dimple appear almost bottomless.

  Crap.

  I didn’t want to admit that I’d specifically asked when he wouldn’t be there. I also didn’t want him to know that I’d delivered a small gift for Dolly and had something for him as well. I planned on leaving it with Sheila and limiting my future visits with Jonathan to Wednesdays or Sundays. I tried not to stammer a response and quickly collected myself. I was a mature, successful woman. An exceptional trauma surgeon who dealt with life-threatening situations without warning. I could handle an ex-con with a showstopping smile.

  “Actually, I was going to leave something for you with Sheila,” I admitted. He raised a brow and watched me reach into my handbag.

  “I saw this, and since you’re the only person I know who wears them, I bought it.”

  I couldn’t read the expression on his face as I placed the do-rag in his hand. It was wonder mixed with gratitude, and something else I couldn’t read. The smile disappeared and he looked almost flustered. I couldn’t imagine someone like Jake being tongue-tied, but he appeared to be at a loss for words. I almost wished he’d stayed that way.

  “Let me take you to dinner?” he asked.

  Now it was my turn to be flustered. Dinner? With the man I referred to as the disgusting pig just days ago? He must’ve felt he’d overstepped because he immediately followed up with, “Or how about coffee? To thank you for this.” He held up the gift.

  What could it hurt? I’d obviously gotten off on the wrong foot with Jake and it was a chance to make amends. It was an opportunity to show him that I wasn’t a small and catty person. It might also prevent future visits from feeling awkward were we to run into each other. I must’ve been tense because I felt my shoulders relax. I was getting ready to accept his invitation to coffee when a loud shout interrupted our conversation.

  “Jake!”

  We both turned to find Dolly heading our way carrying the gift I’d delivered. “Look what Dr. Anderson gave me.” She didn’t give him a chance to reply when she came to a stop and looked at me. “It fits perfectly. Thank you again.”

  I could feel Jake’s eyes on me. I avoided looking at him as
Dolly rambled on about how she would always wear it and was glad she didn’t have poufy hair because a helmet would flatten it out.

  “You bought a helmet for Dolly?” Jake asked, his voice soft.

  I chanced a glance at him and warmth invaded my veins due to the adoration written all over his face. I nodded. I couldn’t see her but could tell through my peripheral vision that Dolly looked at him, then at me, and back at him. She interrupted the moment saying, “Dr. Anderson, my mother wanted me to tell you hello.”

  Jake and I turned to her, giving her our attention, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at him. “Dr. Anderson went to school with my mother.”

  Jake acknowledged her comment with a smile.

  “But they weren’t in the same grade.” She put her finger to her chin like she was thinking. “Dr. Anderson is older than my mom. By about two years, right?” she asked, giving me a sideways glance.

  And there it was. The claws were out. I hadn’t misjudged Dolly’s work ethic, but I had miscalculated her prowess as a woman. A woman who saw me as a potential rival. She was making sure Jake knew I was old enough to be her mother. I could almost hear her thoughts, what man in his right mind would choose a fifty-two-year-old divorcee over an attractive and vibrant twenty-one-year-old?

  She didn’t wait for me to respond but jumped to the next topic that was meant to discourage any romantic notions she’d imagined were brewing between me and Jake Chambers.

  “I can’t wait to wear this on our date tonight,” she said while holding up the helmet.

  Jake shifted and I thought I saw his jaw go rigid.

  “It’s not a date, Dolly.”

  “When a man goes to a woman’s house to pick her up, it’s a date, Jake,” she replied with a laugh. She turned to me. “Right, Dr. Anderson? Wouldn’t you call that a date?”

  I adjusted my purse on my shoulder and smiled at her. I stepped in between them as I headed for the sliding door and called over my shoulder, “Give my best to your mother, Dolly.”

  It wasn’t until I pulled into my driveway that it occurred to me that Jake had shown up on his day off. I couldn’t help but wonder why, but immediately dismissed it. I fell asleep that night telling myself I was grateful I’d never accepted his invitation to have coffee.

  Chapter 6

  The Original Brangelina

  Days later, I stood on my front porch, hands on hips, and watched the electrician I’d hired drive away. He’d just finished installing a new light fixture over my dining room table and wall sconces on each side of my front door.

  Before going back inside, I took a moment to appreciate my view. Directly in front of me, on the other side of the dirt road, were fields as far as the eye could see. Andersons had owned this property since before the Civil War. My ancestors were cotton farmers who worked their land and paid for outside labor during harvest. Staunch abolitionists of slavery, my relatives paid dearly for their refusal to support the South. It cost some their lives. The home I was living in and restoring was the third one on this site. The first two had been burned down by angry town folk.

  To my right was a huge wall of forest that separated our fields from the Pritchards. It was a good thing I couldn’t see their home from here. If I could, I would’ve bought their land and leveled the old farmhouse.

  Movement to my left interrupted my musings and I sighed inwardly when I recognized the fiery red Mercedes XL 550 creeping its way up my road. I knew where it would stop and I cringed at the thought of spending even one minute with Frenita Anderson.

  “I see you’ve done wonders with Grandma’s place.” Fancy’s tone was filled with sarcasm as she wobbled on high heels toward my front porch carrying a plastic red bin that matched the color of her car. The overwhelming scent of her perfume reached me before she did as an unexpected breeze lifted up her skirt.

  “What are you doing here, Frenita?” I asked. She hated when anyone called her Frenita.

  “Uh!” She rolled her eyes as she stepped up, thrusting the red box in my hands. After glancing around my front porch with disapproval, she said, “I cannot imagine what prompted our mother to insist on naming me that awful name.”

  “You know exactly why she named you that. She was trying to earn a tiny bit of approval from Dad’s mother. Grandma hated Mom. Remember? All we ever heard was how our mother stole her only son away.”

  The name Frenita was a combination of our paternal grandparents’ names, Fred and Juanita Anderson. I guess they could’ve been considered the original Brangelina of the seventies. Our mother had been a trendsetter when she named my sister Frenita, but she would never live long enough to know it.

  Fancy rolled her eyes and said, “You’ve always made our grandmother out to be a horrible woman, Barbie.”

  “She was a horrible woman, Fancy.” I set the box down on a battered Adirondack chair and crossed my arms. “She made my life miserable when we moved here.”

  “You’ve always had a chip on your shoulder because she liked me more than she liked you. I don’t see what the big deal is. I didn’t get all bent out of shape because you were Granddaddy’s favorite.” She held her left hand out and concentrated on her manicure.

  I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation again, and like all the others before it, she was in complete denial. “There’s a big difference between favoring one child over another versus treating one like pure garbage. Granddaddy loved you just as much as he loved me, Fancy. He spent more time with me because he felt sorry for me. He knew Grandma couldn’t bear to look at me.”

  It was true and my sister knew it. I was the spitting image of our mother—the woman who our father fell in love with and married after a three-day whirlwind romance. They settled in the seaside town of Cape May, New Jersey. It hadn’t mattered that Dad had left Pumpkin Rest a couple years earlier. Our grandmother always had high hopes of him returning. When he married, she saw those hopes dashed. And she never forgave our mother for it. When our parents died in a fire, and Fancy and I were forced on our only living relatives, that lack of forgiveness was transferred to me and eventually manifested into pure and unadulterated hatred. Juanita Anderson was a witch.

  “She wasn’t always good to me, Barbie. She had her mean moments.”

  Fancy was probably remembering the one time she’d gotten in trouble for playing with matches and almost burned the house down. Our grandmother had tanned her bottom good. Considering the home’s history and that our father had perished in a fire made it almost understandable.

  “I remember one time she took a switch to you, and other than that one time, she doted on you. You were two years old when we moved here and she took pleasure in spoiling you rotten.” I couldn’t bring myself to repeat that she found most of her pleasure, not in spoiling my sister, but in watching me suffer as I stood on the sidelines and observed it. My grandmother was a bitter and evil woman.

  “Fine, fine. You win, Barbie. Again. Okay? Grandma loved me and hated you.” She shifted and adjusted the bodice of her sundress. “You’re coming up on the fourth quarter, Sister. Maybe it’s time you moved past it.”

  I didn’t see how I’d won, but I wasn’t in the mood to tangle with her again. I tilted my head to one side. “The fourth quarter?”

  “Yes, darling sister. The fourth quarter. You’re pushing sixty,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “I am not pushing sixty, Fancy. I’m fifty-two. And if you’re referring to the fourth quarter as my life span, I’ve got a long way before I hit seventy-five.”

  “I guess you’d think that if you thought you would live to be a hundred. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say the average lifespan of a woman is eighty. Then from sixty to eighty is the fourth quarter and you’ll be there before you know it.”

  She was right about that and I’d known it. I just hadn’t assumed she was smart enough to know it. I wasn’t sure what irritated me more—that she’d made an intelligent observation or that I’d dumbed down for her sake and was the
one who sounded stupid. Or worse yet, the nagging thought that she was right.

  I was approaching the fourth quarter. That thought stuck in my craw as I rolled my eyes and asked, “Why are you here, Fancy?”

  She let out a dramatic sigh and said, “It’s hotter than a blister bug in a pepper patch. Can you at least invite me in? I assume you have air-conditioning.”

  I reluctantly turned, opened the door, and waved her inside. As she walked past me she said, “You might want to grab that bin. It’s for you.”

  She headed for the kitchen, but I didn’t miss the arrogant shake of her head as she walked through the living room, dismissing my taste in furniture. I’d bought just enough for comfort until I finished the renovations and decorated it more to my taste. It was used, but in good shape and sturdy.

  She sat in a kitchen chair and asked, “Do you have any sweet tea?”

  I plopped the box down on the table and made my way to the fridge. After filling a glass with ice cubes and tea, I asked, “Do you want a straw?”

  She scoffed and her accent became exaggerated when she said, “No self-respecting Southern woman sips iced tea from a straw.”

  “Hmm. I suppose if we leave the self-respecting part out you might be right. Do you want a straw or not, Fancy?”

  “You are such a snob, Barbara Jean!” she spat, while straightening up in her chair.

  I ignored her and handed her the glass. I took the lid off the plastic red container and my breath caught. “Why did you bring this stuff?”

  “Because it’s rightfully yours,” she said, her tone calm.

  “I don’t want it, Fancy. None of it.” I sat in the chair across from her and pulled my hair into a ponytail, but without a band to hold it, I let it fall.

  “I don’t want it either, Barbie. It just feels.” She paused and shook like she’d gotten a chill. “Wrong.”

  “This,” I spat while waving my hand toward the bin, “feels wrong, but seducing Richard away from our marriage didn’t?” I was making a serious effort to prevent my voice from rising an octave.