Wishing for Wonderful (Serendipity #3)(20)

“Why not before? Why didn’t you tell me before last night?”

“Because you haven’t been home. A number of times I suggested you come home for a weekend, but you were always too busy. We haven’t had more than a ten-minute telephone conversation for almost two years.”

“But now it’s different. You knew I was coming home to live. Why couldn’t you have at least warned me ahead of time?”

“I didn’t plan it this way. I thought while you were here for a Labor Day visit—”

“Visit? This isn’t a visit! I gave up everything and moved back because I thought you were lonely, because I thought you needed me.”

John gave a heartfelt sigh. “Maybe this isn’t what you want to hear, but be honest with yourself, Lindsay. The real reason you came home is because you were unhappy in New York. I can understand that and it’s fine, but don’t lie to yourself and say it was because I was lonely.”

For a long moment Lindsay said nothing. She just sat there with her lower lip quivering and her eyes filling with water. John reached across, took her hand in his and tugged her closer.

“Eleanor’s a good woman,” he said tenderly. “She’s someone who can make both of our lives fuller and richer. Please trust that I would never do anything to make you unhappy and at least give her a chance.”

There was no answer. Lindsay leaned her head into John’s chest and began to sob.

John wrapped his arms around his daughter and held her for a long while. When the tears finally began to subside, she mumbled, “I’ll try.”

The words didn’t come from her heart; they were simply what she felt obligated to say.

Believing the controversy to be over, John bent and kissed Lindsay’s nose as he had done when she was a child. “Once you girls get to know one another,” he said, “everything will be just fine.”

Lindsay answered with a hint of smile, but moments later she scurried off to her room.





Once upstairs she closed the door to her room, threw herself on the bed and allowed the tears to come.

“How could he?” she said with a moan. “How could he do this to me? To Mom?”

A big ball of resentment settled in Lindsay’s chest as she thought of the stranger pushing her way into their life. She thought back on the words “getting married” and came to realize this woman would one day sleep where her mother had slept and sit in her chair at the dining room table. In time all the things that were once Bethany’s would be gone and the house would be filled with this Eleanor. Such a thought settled in Lindsay’s heart and caused her to miss her mother even more than she had in the days following the accident. For a long while she lay there wallowing in a pool of sorrow thick as pudding. By the time she rose from the bed and stepped into the shower, she had built an impenetrable wall around her heart.





That evening the three of them came together for dinner. A smiling John sat at the head of the table, Lindsay on one side and Eleanor on the other. Lindsay stared across the table with a glare that had bits of ice sprinkled through it. Eleanor focused her eyes on her plate, twirling strands of spaghetti so slowly that at times she seemed to come to a standstill.

“It’s wonderful to have my two special girls here together,” John said.

Lindsay moved her icy glare over to him.

Eleanor lifted her eyes for a moment, smiled at Lindsay, then refocused herself on a meatball.

“Well, it’s wonderful for me to be here,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you, Lindsay, and I’ve been looking forward to—”

“I hadn’t heard a thing about you,” Lindsay interrupted.

“Lindsay,” John said, not angrily, but with an easily understood intonation.

Softening her glare, Lindsay said, “Yeah, it’s nice.”

After that most of the conversation was either between John and Lindsay or John and Eleanor, never between Eleanor and Lindsay.

~

As you can see this is not going well, and it didn’t get any better on Saturday when Lindsay woke to the sound of pots and pans clanging in the kitchen. She surmised it was Eleanor, and the thought slammed into her like an angry fist. Lindsay pulled on a robe and tromped downstairs. Sure enough, there was Eleanor scurrying about the kitchen like a woman who had lived there all her life. She was wearing an all-too-familiar apron and seemed to know the precise location of every condiment, dish, pot or pan.

“Good morning, honey.” Eleanor smiled.

“Please don’t call me honey,” Lindsay said coolly. “My name is Lindsay, and I really don’t like to be called anything else.”

Despite the crustiness of Lindsay’s words, Eleanor’s tone remained the same.

“Okay then,” she said cheerfully, “Lindsay it is. I’ve got some sausage and pancakes ready—”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You ought to eat a hearty breakfast, since you’ll be skipping lunch.”

“Why would you think I’d be skipping lunch?” Her words were pointy and sharp-edged. They had the sound of an accusation rather than a question.

“I’ve got tickets for you and your Dad to go to the Phillies game,” Eleanor answered. “It’ll be close to dinnertime when you get back. So I figured we could have dinner about—”