Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(3)

“I wanted to get you something more, but . . .” But he was sick, and money was growing tighter by the day.

“I don’t want anything more. I don’t need anything but these.” And you. I need you, Sam . . .

“Your Christmas present is going to be great,” he promised her. “I already know what I’m getting for you, so don’t worry.”

She did worry. Not about Christmas presents. About Sam.

She can hear his voice amid the swaying wind chimes, calling her his “Bella Angelo—my beautiful angel,” the literal translation of her name. His version of it, anyway.

Her ancestors were from Sicily, and her maiden name was Angelo. Her given name is Isabella, but Sam never called her that.

To him, she was Bella Angelo—that, or Bella Blue, she remembers, staring at the gently fluttering curtains he said exactly matched the cobalt color of her eyes. She’d made them from fabric remnants, using a sewing machine in the domestic arts classroom at the middle school where she taught science.

“Why are you so good at everything you do, Bella Blue?” Sam was so impressed, you’d have thought she’d just hand-stitched a designer gown.

“Oh, please. You’re the only one who thinks so.”

“Not true.” He ticked on his fingers the people he felt were equally enamored of her: their friends, her colleagues and students, and, of course, Frank Angelo, her own doting, widowed dad, still alive at the time.

Conspicuously missing from the list: Sam’s mother.

Millicent Jordan had made up her mind long before Bella even met her that no woman could ever be good enough for her son. The fact that she lives almost a thousand miles away in Chicago was a blessing throughout Bella and Sam’s marriage. Sam loved his mother, but Bella privately called her Maleficent—after the villainess in Sleeping Beauty.

Now, however, life would be easier if she were nearby. For all her faults, Millicent’s the only family they have left. She’s a lousy mother-in-law, but she was a good mom and would probably be a decent grandmother, given the opportunity.

Which I’m about to give to her.

Sam was young and brash enough not to have made life insurance a priority and had accidentally let his meager policy lapse. Even with health insurance coverage, expensive treatments for his illness had consumed the money they’d been saving to buy a home of their own one day. On the heels of losing him, Bella lost her teaching position to budget cuts. As she began a futile job hunt, the landlord decided to put the house on the market. A wealthy buyer snapped it up, planning to turn it into a majestic private home.

Her lease expires at the end of June. Which is tomorrow. With nowhere else to turn, she and Max are driving out to visit Millicent for the summer and figure out their next step.

If only she didn’t have to uproot Max after all he’s been through. This is the only home he’s ever known, the only home that’s ever mattered to her.

She’d grown up in rental apartments all over New York City. She was a new bride when she moved into the first-floor apartment of this Victorian triplex in Bedford, just eight short tree-lined suburban blocks from her first teaching job and three to the commuter railroad that carried Sam to his Manhattan office.

Even now, whenever she hears the rumble and whistle of an evening train, her heart stirs with expectant joy: He’s coming home!

But he isn’t, ever again.

She and Max are alone now.

With a wistful sigh, Bella steps out the screen door to deposit the broken glass into the garbage pail—and trips over a lump of gray fur with black ticking. Somehow, she manages not to fall and even keeps the shards from flying through the air.

“Well, we meet again,” she tells the fat tabby cat perched in a patch of dappled doormat sunlight. He was here yesterday morning, too, but darted into the bushes as she stepped out the door, scaring the heck out of her. Later in the day, she glimpsed him stalking chipmunks in the yard, and last night around dusk, he was snoozing under a shrub.

“Are you lost?”

He seems quite certain that he isn’t, looking up at her as if he belongs here.

He doesn’t, of course. The landlord has a strict no-pets policy. That’s always been fine with Bella, whose last apartment came with a neighbor’s dog that barked twenty-four-seven. Besides, Sam is severely allergic to dander.

She expects the cat to bolt as she steps around him and dumps the broken glass into the metal garbage can, but he doesn’t even flinch at the clattering din. Impulsively bending to pet him, she’s rewarded with loud purring.

Hmm. He’s wearing a red collar, so he’s not a stray.

“Mommy?” Max calls from the kitchen.

“Out here.”

“Can I watch TV?”

“Nope. You know the rule.” Only an hour a day, and only in the early morning or before bed, unless it’s raining.

“Then can we play Candyland?” he asks.

She sighs. Playing the interminable game is questionable anytime. But now?

Sam would have dropped everything to play Candyland with Max.

“I was an only child, too. I get it,” he’d say.

Bella had been an only child as well, and of course, she got it, too. But she and Sam each had their forte when it came to occupying their son. Books and puzzles were her department; board games and anything involving wheels or a ball were Sam’s.