Luck of the Draw (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 1)(8)
Kate let her head sink to the washer, the metal cool and hard beneath her forehead as tears seeped through her lashes. She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, her fingers instead finding a folded piece of paper that had already gone through the wash.
She peeled it open, recognizing the raised letterhead at the top, and her hands shook as she smoothed it out on top of the washer.
Dear Ms. Mitchell,
It is our pleasure to inform you that your application for admission to the Fine Arts Program has been accepted…
The words blurred. She’d carried the letter around in her pocket for days, rereading it, not quite believing how neatly life was working out. And then she’d gone to drop off some things at Randy’s apartment. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but she had.
I’m happy for you, he’d said. I know you’ll do great. I always loved how you could do anything you set your mind to.
She’d hugged him then, her spirits buoyed by his unexpected support. She never intended to kiss him. Never intended to let it go further. But as he’d pulled her tight against him, all she’d been able to hear were the words …I’m happy… and …I always loved you… even though neither was true.
“Katie, you still in there?” Nana knocked on the laundry room door, and Kate straightened and wiped her eyes. “Liam wants to know if he can watch Bob the Builder, your mother’s left and I think Sandy needs to pee.”
Kate cleared her throat. “Just a minute.”
She picked up the letter, running her fingers over the softened folds, rereading it one last time. It seemed like yesterday she’d opened the envelope, her heart fluttering with excitement, her future unfolding like sweet promises and fresh starts.
She let out a long, shaky breath… then tore the letter into tiny, confetti-like pieces.
Sweeping it into the trash, she started the washer and opened the door.
CHAPTER THREE
FOR THREE YEARS THE SAME HORRID poppies and sunflowers had blinded her. If cataracts didn’t ruin her eyesight, those god-awful flowers would. June sipped her gin and tonic, held her cards close to her chest and squinted against the blinding riot of flowers on the vinyl tablecloth that Lydia insisted they use whenever poker night was at her house. At least the woman made good brownies. It was worth the stop in Sugar Falls before she left for the Quilt Show in Portland the next morning, just to have these brownies. June reached across and snagged another as her friend, Ruth Pearson, placed an edge-weary photograph on the growing pile in the middle of the table.
“All right, June,” Ruth said. “I’ll see your granddaughter with that darling great grandchild and raise you one eligible grandson who owns his own business.”
June waited for Ruth to bite her cheek—it was one of her tells.
Ruth reached for a brownie instead.
Sugar. Ruth must have a good hand. She always reached for sweets when she was feeling victorious. June dropped her cards to the table. “I’m out of luck and relatives. I fold. What do you have, Ruth?”
“Read ‘em and weep, ladies!” Ruth fanned her cards face-up in front of her.
June sloshed gin and tonic on the tablecloth. “Ruth Pearson, if you weren’t chair of the Gifts for the Greater Good campaign, I’d swear you were cheating. You’ve won five hands in a row!”
“Oh, stop your belly-aching.” Ruth gleefully pulled the pile of photographs toward her as if it were cold hard cash and not the winning pot in their own personal twist on poker. She’d only won the right to talk about anything she wanted for the evening—old stories or new—but it was exciting nonetheless. “Did you see my cards? Don’t you know what that means?”
“A royal flush—?”
“In hearts!” Lydia chimed in meaningfully, her silver bangles jingling excitedly.
“They think it’s a sign.” Claire tapped the deck and slid the playing cards into their box.
June looked at her friends as if they were showing signs of early dementia, which was entirely possible given they were all well past menopause. “A sign of what?”
“That someone in the pot will get married!” Lydia tittered.
June snorted indelicately. “What kind of hooey is that?”
Ruth continued to sort photos. “Not hooey. Don’t you remember? It happened before with Claire’s son, Barry. Within three months of lying in the winning pot next to Lydia’s niece... married.”
“Oh, I can barely breathe!” said Lydia. “Who do you think it’ll be this time?”
Ruth scanned the photographs in front of her. “Hmm. After I take out all the children and married men, I’m left with my grandson. But the only woman is your granddaughter, June, and she’s in mourning, poor dear.” She swept her small pile of photos into the box on her lap and sighed. “Oh, well.”
“So much for fortune-telling cards.” Claire muttered, wiping a brownie crumb off the front of her late husband’s bowling shirt.
Lydia reached across and picked up the two pictures, her coral-polished fingertips shaking slightly as she looked at them through her bifocals. “Too bad, too. They would have made a handsome couple. See?”
June peered over Lydia’s shoulder. “Hmm. I shouldn’t be saying this, him being dead and all, but I wouldn’t be disappointed to see Katie move on to someone more reliable than that deadbeat she was married to, may he rest in peace. She was planning to kick him out, you know. And none too soon, if you ask me.”