Page 20 of Spark of Attraction

On Tuesday, I was cleaning the numerous windows in the garden room. Mindless chores like cleaning, or dusting, or even loading the dishwasher often helped me work through thorny issues. And boy, did I have an issue.

I hadn’t lied when I told Malcolm I planned to tell Josh about us dating during the family Sunday brunch, but I’d never managed to get a word in edgewise. Josh had been buzzed about some new client he’d acquired who would bring a lot of business. He and Mom had spent the whole brunch discussing how to keep the new client as well as how to find more. I’d ended up leaving early, and from the text I’d received that evening they hadn’t noticed I’d left until hours later. I’d tried phoning Josh the next day, but he’d been brusque, promised to call me when he had a chance, and hung up.

“Tax season. You know how it is,” he’d explained.

I did, but he hadn’t phoned so I used the bonus time to figure out exactly how I’d tell him about Mal, and how to ensure Josh realized it was none of his business.

When the doorbell rang, I wiped my hands on one of the rags, tossed it onto the counter and hurried to the front door.

Staring out over the road, with a peace lily tucked under one arm, was a woman with gray liberally sprinkled through her dark hair, and Malcolm’s dark eyes, though she had a lot more laugh lines at the edges.

“Hey, Louise! Come on in!” I opened the door wider and stepped back to allow Malcolm’s mother entry.

Where my mom favored business clothes—dark suits, white blouses and low-heeled pumps, Louise always wore loose shirts with flowy sleeves straight out of the seventies. Today, in addition to a flowery tunic, she wore black yoga pants and a pair of brown leather Birkenstocks. With hand-knitted socks. And, as usual for her, a chunky necklace made up of green and gray stones that probably had some sort of meaning behind them and matched the dangly earrings that completed her outfit.

She held out the plant. “I bought you a housewarming present.”

I blinked. “But you…” I glanced through the living room to the peace lily Malcolm had brought over. The one he’d said was from his mother.

She must have followed my gaze. “Oh, you’ve got one already. Well, now you have two. You can never have too many peace lilies in a house, especially a place this size. They’re supposed to be great air cleaners.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that about them.” From your son. As I took the plant and placed it on the mantel beside the other one, she followed me.

Once I faced her again, she tilted her head. “How have you been, sweetie?”

She had that tone everyone greeted with me these days. The “I’m so sorry you’re a widow” tone.

“I’m fine,” I stressed. “Seriously, don’t worry about me.”

I don’t know why I didn’t stop there. Maybe because I trusted Louise more than I did most people, and now I’d started, the truth surged out of me like the water over Niagara Falls. Besides, it wasn’t fair to expect Malcolm to keep my secrets. “Things weren’t great between Gareth and I toward the end anyway. I was planning on asking him for a divorce. To be honest, him dying was easier for me than if I’d had to divorce him.”

She blinked and her mouth formed an O, but she didn’t say anything, simply took my hand and squeezed it lightly. “Does your mother know?”

“She knows.”

Did Louise know I was dating her son? Or similar to how he was waiting for me to inform my family we were dating, should I wait for him to inform his? Maybe I should text him to ask. I straightened my shoulders. “Would you like some tea or coffee? I picked up some butter tarts from Portside Pastries.”

Louise beamed. “Portside? I am not about to turn them down.”

She followed me into the kitchen and while I waited for the kettle to boil (plugged into a different outlet than the microwave this time) and she plated a butter tart on each of the plates I’d handed her, I filled her in on my plans for the house.

“When I was a little, I used to imagine buying it when I was grown and how I’d turn it into a B&B.” It wasn’t until after Gareth and I were engaged that I learned it was owned by Gareth’s grandmother. She hadn’t been able to make it to his funeral, so she’d invited me to visit her when I felt up to it. Which had been a month after my first visit with my therapist. Ruby had been so happy to see me, probably to have any visitors since she’d been housebound her final days. We’d spent hours chatting about what it was like to grow up in Port Paxton during the war, about her husband and his family who had built Hauser House. And, occasionally, about Gareth’s father, who apparently had been nothing like his son. One visit turned into two, then a third, and soon dropping in for tea became a regular occasion every time I visited my parents, which had become a weekly trip. When Grandma Ruby died eight months after Gareth, I’d been shocked to learn she’d left her entire estate to me.

Louise frowned. “My friend Bea, the lady who made that quilt I gave you for your thirtieth birthday? A couple years back, she and her wife tried to get the zoning on their place changed. They went through hell trying to jump through all the town council’s hoops. Never did end up getting permission.”

“That’s what I discovered. Plus, there’s the whole having-to-let-strangers-into-my-home thing and I realized I can’t do it. I’ve been here less than a week and I feel safer here because I’m alone.” I frowned at how that made me sound paranoid. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Maybe because your husband isn’t likely to walk in the door?”

I shrugged. “That’s what my therapist suggested, too.” We’d talked a lot during our last video session, about Malcolm and my fears about letting someone else in my life. I decided not to think about that while Louise was watching me. I made my voice light and said, “I could always set up some yurts on the back field and rent them out in the summer.”

Louise laughed. “Oh honey, the way the storms come across the lake? They’ll pick up those tents and send them flying clear over to Rochester.”

“There is that.”

As we sipped tea and nibbled on the butter tarts, we chatted about the changes to the town since I’d last lived here. Changes like the big box store being built on the outskirts to satisfy all the cottagers who surrounded the lake when they came back in the spring to discover they needed to do repairs after their cottages had been empty. How the bakery had changed hands and the new owners had added a couple of tables and served coffee and sandwiches too, mainly to the tourists. Louise gushed over the used bookshop, and the new wool shop that also gave lessons on how to spin yarn. Which was her latest obsession.

In the middle of her description about a visit she’d made to an alpaca farm the previous year, she stopped mid-sentence, placed her hand on mine and said, “Here I am yammering on. I never asked if I was interrupting you. You work from home, right?”

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