Page 31 of His Best Friend's Baby

Please be Holmes Landscaping. Please be Holmes Landscaping.

Someone picked up the phone midring. Moments later Julia heard footsteps and then the soft swish of the door opening.

“Julia?” Agnes said. “Phone’s for you.”

“Thank you,” Julia said past dry lips. She reached for the extension beside the couch.

“Hello?”

“Julia? This is Lisa down at Hair Expressions.”

“Hi, Lisa,” Julia said into the phone, her stomach in minor knots. They’d been looking for an afternoon receptionist with experience. Julia had lied about the experience.

“I just wanted to let you know that our usual summer receptionist decided not to go away to band camp this year, so we aren’t considering anyone’s applications.”

Band camp? Every job she’d applied for had been filled by one of the two hundred high school students starting summer vacation in a week.

It was disheartening to be turned down in favor of a band camp dropout. Not the most disheartening thing in her life, but quickly climbing the charts.

“No problem, Lisa, thanks for giving me a call.”

“Hey, are you really Mitch Adams’s widow?”

“I am.”

“I went to prom with Mitch,” she said and Julia sighed. Everybody had a Mitch story. “He was a great guy, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Everybody in this town loved him, but no one really knew him.

Jesse’s words echoed around her.

“Thanks,” she murmured, the words sticky in her throat.

“They’re looking for servers out at the Petro by the highway,” Lisa’s voice wasn’t patronizing, just helpful. “You might try there.”

“I will,” Julia said, swallowing. “Thanks.”

She hung up, all too aware that Agnes had stood behind her during the conversation, listening to her further failure.

“Honey, I don’t know why you’re so set on getting a job.” Agnes sat in the stiff wing chair to Julia’s left. “There’s no need for you to do that.”

Julia bit her lip to stop the fast and ugly retort that expressed all the frustration she felt.

“I stayed home with Mitch. That’s what mothers do,” Agnes said.

That’s what good mothers do, was what she meant.

The words hung in the air solid and tangible.

Good mothers, the kind you clearly are not.

“I would feel better,” Julia said, slowly turning a yellow block in circles on the faded flowered rug she and Ben sat on, “if Ben and I could support ourselves.”

“What about the money from the army?” Agnes asked the personal question as though she had the right and Julia burned a little hotter inside. “I’m sure Mitch made provisions for his son.”

Julia faced Agnes, incredulous. Surely the woman had to be joking. This whole town and their hero worship had to be joking!

“Mitch left debt for his son.” The words came out before she could stop them. She’d never intended to tell Agnes this.

Agnes’s gray eyebrows clapped together. “What debt?”

Julia debated her response for a split second. The truth would only hurt Agnes—no mother wanted to hear about her son’s mistakes.

“Mitch wasn’t that kind of man.”

Agnes had no clue what kind of man her son had been, and Julia felt a small amount of pleasure enlightening her.

“He made two bad investments while in California before the war and…” Agnes blanched and Julia swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable with her vindictiveness. “He gambled. Not a lot, but…enough.”

Enough that she’d had to max out her credit card with cash advances to pay just half of his outstanding losses. A significant portion of her monthly check from the army went directly into a bank account set up to pay back Mitch’s “buddies” in the army.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Agnes laughed, but there was no humor in it, only sharp anger aimed at Julia. “Mitch was never a gambler.”

“Maybe not when he was eighteen but he sure was the last few years.”

Agnes stood, bristling with anger. This was the woman Julia had met when she and Mitch had gotten married. This judgmental woman glaring down her nose was the woman who’d called her a gold digger.

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