Life is Sweet (3 page)

Chapter 3

“I don't see why you have to work like a dog around here,” Erin said. “It's not like you own the place anymore.”

Becca maneuvered a wheelbarrow around a gopher hole. She'd never considered herself an owner of Butternut Knoll Stables, even though she'd lived here the six months of her marriage to Cal. The whole time it had felt as if she had been playing at being a wife. At first, in full denial mode, she'd attempted to compensate for what she felt in her heart had been a mistake. She'd ironed Cal's clothes until they were cardboard stiff, baked fresh bread on weekends, and made new curtains for the farmhouse. She would become super-wife.

But the harder she tried, the more they argued. When such a loose thread had knit them together, it only took a few tugs for the unraveling to begin.

“I didn't marry you for your housekeeping skills,” he'd told her when she complained that he hadn't noticed all the little improvements she was making.

“Why
did
you marry me?”

“Didn't you hear the man? ‘To love and to cherish,' ” he said.

She was too embarrassed to admit she didn't remember exactly what the justice of the peace had said that night. She vowed never to overindulge again. She even attempted to reform Cal, until she realized that her nagging just made them both miserable. And then she'd discovered a series of flirtatious texts Cal had been sending to female clients, and she realized he'd probably just been playing at being a husband. Deciding to leave had been surprisingly easy. It was the only honest thing to do.

There's something the matter with me.
She needed to look before she leapt, and then had to leap back out again.

She grunted, trying to make it seem as if the wheelbarrow pushing caused it. The exertion was real; the new compost pile was farther from the barn. “Think of it this way. If I didn't do this, Cal would have to hire more people. And then he'd raise boarding prices.”

Her friend minced around a more fragrant obstacle and took a swig of Diet Coke. “Still, you should have let Marv handle your divorce. He's done a good job for everybody I know, including Bob.” Bob was Erin's husband, who gave Becca the creeps. “Your lawyer let you walk away from a gold mine.”

Becca laughed and gestured toward the ancient barn, and then to the farmhouse, which needed painting. “You call this a gold mine?” The setup was beautiful, but not wildly profitable. After expenses, the money Cal made from Butternut Knoll probably wouldn't even cover Erin's yearly shoe bill. “There's more money in cupcakes.”

“I suspect Cal isn't the most careful with the books,” Erin said.

She suspected right. From what Becca had witnessed during their short marriage, “the books” usually just ended up being receipts tossed haphazardly into a drawer in Cal's kitchen. Which was another reason Becca had wanted no part of the farm in the divorce, in addition to the fact that she didn't feel she deserved it.

“It's enough of a headache worrying about my own business,” Becca said. “When I'm here, I just enjoy riding and getting in some physical work.”

Erin shook her head. “With all you do here, it's like you've got two jobs.”

“It's all stuff I enjoy.” She thought of her mom, coming back from the end of a day working in a busy office, catching a snatch of a show she'd recorded, and then sometimes heading out for a second shift of retail or telemarketing . . . She'd even cleaned rooms in a hotel once.
That
had been hard work. “My life is a picnic.”

Erin studied Becca as she dumped the wheelbarrow onto the pile. Then she cracked up. “Only you would say that as you're hauling around horse shit.”

Becca laughed. When she had moved to Leesburg without knowing anyone, she worried about making friends. But she'd met Erin and Pam at Butternut Knoll soon after her arrival, and they'd invited her to join the book club they attended. Within a month or two, the three of them had started skipping book club, preferring to hang out together rather than with a bunch of people straining to come up with things to say about
Ulysses,
which none of them had finished, much less parsed. They'd dubbed their own get-togethers “Not-Book-Club.”

When they returned to the barn, Erin headed for her car. “I'll drop by the shop tomorrow and check on you and Pam, okay? I feel so out of the loop now that you two are coworkers. It sounds like such fun.”

“For work, it is.”

Erin's life didn't involve nine-to-five. Her grandfather had been a Wall Street tycoon, and had married three times. When he'd died, his fortune had been distributed among his many progeny, but what had managed to trickle down to Erin enabled her to live a life without worries. She'd quit her hated office job and never bothered to find another one. This was about the same time she'd married Bob the Despicable. It all seemed very unfulfilling to Becca, especially since Erin didn't have her much-wished-for kids yet. Lately Erin didn't seem as happy with her charmed life, either.

Becca deposited the wheelbarrow in the barn and then strolled to the fence. Harvey's milky white coat made him stand out in the dusk light. Seeing her, he trotted over, tossing his white mane in expectation of the customary farewell treat. She dug a carrot out of her pocket and clasped it in her closed fist. Harvey halted in front of her and extended his neck over the fence, attempting to nuzzle the treat from her hand. She opened her palm for him, getting that blast of hot breath and horse slobber as he took the carrot from her. He chomped contentedly and she gave him a final pat for the evening, lingering to rub her knuckles on that soft nose before turning and strolling to her car.

At the shop today she had told that customer she was horse-mad, and it was true. Sometimes when she was with Harvey, she wondered if this was the way people felt when they looked at their homes, or even their children. She'd craved a horse since she was tiny. While some girls her age had mooned over boy bands, she'd been into
Black Beauty
and
Misty of Chincoteague
. Getting a horse—a real thoroughbred—had been the miracle of her life . . . even if she hadn't understood the real cost of that miracle at the time. She understood it now, and appreciated it more than ever. Life and cynicism might harden her exterior to a brittle rocky crust, but the gooey center of her would always be that little kid gasping at the sight of a horse of her very own.

Driving home, she felt spooked. Thoughts of the past had been creeping up on her all day—ever since the Tina fan had turned up. And now it seemed almost as if there were a ghost following her. The ghost of her mother. Becca actually flicked her gaze toward the rearview mirror a few times, expecting to see Ronnie Hudson there in the backseat, watching her, humming her favorite tune, “Till There Was You.” Her mom had hummed it all the time, so that Becca had been familiar with the melody long before she'd heard The Beatles sing the lyrics, or had seen Shirley Jones in
The Music Man.

What would her mother think of her now? Becca honestly didn't know, but she suspected she'd be glad she was in business for herself. And she would have approved of baking. Becca's love of cake had come directly from her mom. Not fancy ones—Ronnie Hudson hadn't had time for baking from scratch, and probably preferred boxed layer cakes anyway. As long as there was cake, Ronnie had said, you had a little happiness on a plate.

For all her mom's hard work and sacrifice, they had never gotten into specifics of what Becca's future should be. Her mother had never nagged her about finding a man or becoming a big star. Nothing like that. “When you're older, you'll have an incredible life,” she'd occasionally told Becca when she'd whined about not getting whatever instant gratification she hankered after at the moment. As if she'd
needed
anything. “Don't be so impatient.”

An incredible life. Her mother made it sound as if someday Becca would have a Jimmy Stewart movie moment and suddenly find herself surrounded by angels and do-gooders. But her mother had been a hardworking optimist, a practical romantic who loved to sing sappy love songs to herself while she worked till she dropped.

Becca hadn't inherited the optimist gene. So far the most incredible thing about her life seemed to be how steep a nosedive it had taken since her teens. But even after Becca had dropped out of acting and then, later, dropped out of college halfway to her business degree to try to sidestep her way back into the entertainment industry, Ronnie hadn't uttered a word of criticism, or reproach, or even too much disappointment. Ditto when she became a culinary school dropout. “It all adds up eventually,” she'd said.

After Becca had reached her majority and got her sitcom money and her own place, Ronnie never said Becca hadn't visited enough—she hadn't—or invited her over enough, even though her mom loved her condo. She remembered exactly how her mother had looked sitting on the white couch—a peacock in Becca's tasteful, too-grown-up-too-fast monochrome world. Even though Ronnie had loved visiting, she'd never overstayed her welcome. She hadn't had time. Until nearly the end, she'd kept busy working. And then she was gone, leaving behind so little, aside from the aching emptiness in Becca's heart, and so many regrets.

Some days, like today, it was as if her mother was right there trying to tell her to pay attention to something.

Becca shivered.
It's just my imagination.
All day she'd felt uneasy, as if something momentous had happened and she'd missed it. But it had just been a normal day.

She glanced down at her gas gauge needle touching the red. Okay, that was one thing she'd definitely missed. Outside town, she pulled into a gas station. She usually filled up at the place around the corner from her apartment, but she didn't want to risk having to walk partway home if she ran out of gas. It was already dark.

The outer pumps were all full, so she slid into the one closest to the door, hopped out, and began to pump her gas. Her thoughts continued to sift through the non-events of the day until someone burst out the gas station door, waving his arms at her as if she were about to blow the place up.

“You can't do that!” The guy wore a blue vest with a name tag that read
Steve—Manager.
He looked like a teenager.

“Can't do what?”

“Pump your own gas. This is Full Service.”

Was he kidding? He'd nearly given her a heart attack. “Should I hand the reins over to you, then?” she asked.

His eyes bulged. Evidently she'd just committed another service station faux pas. “I'm the manager. I don't pump gas. I shouldn't even be out here now. We have another guy . . .” He put his hands on his bony hips and turned in a circle, scanning the premises. He finally caught sight of his coworker dozing on the grass not far from the air pump. Steve loped over to the guy and nudged him with the toe of his sneaker.

The man bolted up and Steve started yelling at him.

Good help really is hard to find,
Becca thought. Thank heavens she had Pam.

The gas station guys came back toward her—the formerly sleeping employee followed by Steve, who was barking at him like a drill sergeant berating a lax recruit. The slacker lifted his doleful gaze to meet Becca's. She sucked in her breath as recognition hit.

“Ma'am, I'm sorry, but—”

Whatever Steve was saying, she didn't hear it. Under the lights of the station, there was no denying the other man's distinctive features—the slightly stooped posture, the sad eyes, the hat. It was the old guy from this morning. Walt.

As he recognized her, too, his face twisted in discomfort. “Oh.” He shuffled. “Hi.”

Steve caught up to them. “Never mind, Walt—I said you were fired.”

“Fired!” Becca couldn't believe it. “That's idiotic. I pumped my own gas—so what? I didn't even know this place was full service.” Who knew full service existed anymore?

“You're going to be charged for full service,” Steve warned her.

“Fine. I can live with that.”

“Good.” He turned to the old man. “You're still fired, Walt.”

“Are you crazy?” Becca asked. Walt started to mumble that it wasn't necessary for her to defend him, but she was too angry at the little pipsqueak to stop now. She didn't want to be responsible for a man's being fired—especially not by some pimply, service station Napoleon. “I'm going to write a letter to the owners of this place to let them know how unreasonable you're being.”

Steve sneered at her. “Write my boss and tell him I fired an employee for sleeping instead of doing the work he's paid to do? I'd appreciate it, ma'am. Might even make Employee of the Month.”

Twit. Becca squared her shoulders. “No one I know will ever buy gas here again. I'll tell everyone. I'll post signs. I'll”—she cast about for a dire warning—“I'll start a Twitter campaign!”

“Never mind, Rebecca.” Walt shrugged off his employee vest. “I'm done here.”

She removed the nozzle from her tank and slammed it back in its slot at the pump. “You can count that as one good thing that's happened to you today.” She glared at Steve while waiting for the machine to spit out her receipt.

“Your check will be mailed to you,” Steve told Walt.

A shadow of worry passed across Walt's face, but he nodded curtly. “Okay.”

The manager turned and strolled back into the station, making a show of shaking his head in disgust.

Jackass.

Becca took a deep breath. “I'm so sorry, Walt.”

“It's my own damn fault,” he said.