A Soft Place to Fall Read online

  "You're lucky it's a buyer's market," Susan had told her when she first mentioned putting the house up for sale. "No offense, Annie, but your place is falling down around your ears. You'll have to replace the windows and put on a new roof if you expect to even come close to getting top dollar."

  It took three months for the house to sell and then, as Susan had predicted, the price was well below the going rate for big old houses on large lots of land.

  "We could have done better," Susan lamented after the Flemings went to contract. "You should've listened to me about those windows, Annie. You would've earned back the costs three times over."

  Annie nodded and tried to look suitably disappointed but the truth was she was grateful the sale had gone through before she ran out of options and ended up with nothing at all. Of course she wouldn't tell Susan that. She wouldn't tell anybody. Kevin's secrets were safe with her, same as they had been right from the start.

  #

  "I think Anne's making a terrible mistake," Claudia said as Susan backed her minivan down the driveway.

  Susan, never one to consider her mother's feelings, rolled her eyes and groaned. "And why do you think that, Ma? Because she's moving out of that white elephant of a house or because she didn't want you to stay for lunch?"

  "I don't appreciate your sarcasm," Claudia said with a slight lift of her chin. She chose to ignore the lunch remark, even though there was more than a touch of truth to it. "Anne loves that house. It's where she and Kevin were happiest. Why on earth would she want to sell it and move into that -- that shack out by the water?"

  "Don't let Annie hear you call her new home a shack."

  "Of course not! I would never hurt her." Claudia was stung that her daughter thought she was capable of such thoughtless behavior. "I blame it all on Warren Bancroft for taking advantage of Anne this way." She glanced over at her eldest child. "You must know she's lowered her standards with this move."

  "Ma, there are times I wish I was adopted."

  Susan screeched to a halt at the corner stop sign, barely missing the rear end of another minivan. Claudia gripped the edges of her purse and forced herself to keep her remarks on visual acuity and reflexes to herself. Her daughter was forty-six years old and her eyesight wasn't what it used to be, but Claudia knew better than to comment on her daughter's driving, weight, or marriage. Not if she wanted to keep peace in the family.

  "Annie doesn't need three bathrooms," Susan went on as if they hadn't come this close to calamity, "and she definitely doesn't need all those memories. I just wish she'd done this sooner."

  "There's nothing wrong with memories," Claudia said, fixing her daughter with a sharp look. "There will come a time when a woman is very glad she has them."

  "Annie isn't you, Ma."

  "Watch the road." Claudia refused to acknowledge the statement. "We don't need an accident."

  "You know what I'm saying."

  "I don't pressure Anne to do anything. She makes her own decisions." Selling the house was certainly proof of that. Claudia would never sell the house where she and John had spent their married life. Selling it would be like losing him all over again. His spirit still filled their house the way it had when he was alive. Her children didn't know it, but she talked to him sometimes. She didn't expect an answer; it was more like a running conversation that was part monologue, part prayer.

  If the kids knew she did that, they would think she was crazy. Claudia had seen the looks Susan and Eileen exchanged when they thought she wasn't looking, one of those Mother-is-losing-her-marbles-looks that Claudia hated. They would make an appointment with that fancy therapist John Jr. was seeing and she would have to waste fifty dollars of her late husband's hard-earned money to find out what she already knew: she was lonely and she was old.

  Why was it nobody seemed to understand that without being told? She didn't have to work four days a week with Annie at the flower shop. John had been very careful with their money and, while she wasn't rich, she was certainly comfortable by anyone's standards. She tried to keep up with the financial news by listening to the experts on the radio and following their advice when it felt right to her. So far, thank the good Lord, the market had been kind to her. If her children stopped racing through their lives for just one second and thought about it, they would realize she worked at the flower shop because sometimes she needed a reason to get up in the morning, someone to smile at her when she walked through the door. They laughed at all of the seminars she took on topics as diverse as money management to ikebana and never one considered that maybe she just needed the pleasure of being among people.

  It was the same with the house. She and John had moved in on their wedding day. Every significant event of their married life had happened within its four walls. Living in the house where she and John had raised their family made her feel connected to him even though he was gone. Love filled her heart each time she walked through those dear and familiar rooms. Oh, there were too many rooms by half. She would be the first to admit that. She couldn't keep to her old standards of housekeeping any longer. Dust lingered a little longer. The floors weren't as shiny as she might like. She told herself it was all part of getting old, the letting go, the giving up, turning a blind eye to the same things that drove you mad when you were young and strong.

  Last Christmas her children and their spouses had converged at the old house to celebrate the holiday, same as they did every year, but with one small difference. This year they were determined to convince her it was time to move on.

  "It's time to simplify things, Mom," Eileen, her youngest, had said to her as she served the eggnog. "This house is way too big for one person. You'd have so much more free time if you didn't have this barn to take care of."

  "And where would the lot of you stay if I didn't have this barn?" she had tossed back. "You'd be sleeping in tents in the front yard."

  Of course, Eileen's was only the initial salvo in an assault designed to open her aging eyes to what they considered to be reality. Terri commented on how difficult it must be to keep four bedrooms and two baths clean and sparkling, which made Claudia smile into her eggnog. It was certainly easier now than it had been years ago when the house was bursting at the seams with toddlers and teenagers and John's hobbies. The boys talked about taxes and upkeep and how the plumbing was going to need repairs before next Christmas rolled around and why hang onto a money sink as if she didn't have the right to make up her own mind. Finally she had to stand her ground.

  "This is where I lived with your father, it's where you grew up, and it's where I'm going to die," she had said in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. "Now, who'd like another piece of pie?"

  Annie was the only one who understood what Claudia was talking about. In an unfair twist of fate, Kevin's death had united the two women in a way not even Claudia's flesh-and-blood daughters could understand. Annie knew how it felt to lose the man you loved, how it felt to sleep on his side of the bed because it made you feel less alone. Annie knew without being told that time didn't heal a broken heart, it only helped you learn how to live with it.

  You can't run away from your memories, Annie, she thought as Susan barreled into the parking lot at full speed. The world wasn't big enough. Better to stay in the house where they had been happy and comfort herself with the dear and familiar. Didn't Annie know that she would still see him in every shadow, hear his voice when the room was still, feel his touch where no one had touched her in a very long time.

  It was enough for Claudia. Sooner or later, it would be enough for Annie, too.

  #

  Annie was wiping down the sink in the master bathroom when she heard the Flemings pull into the driveway. They drove one of those minivans that sounded like a thousand hamsters spinning one gigantic wheel. The neighbors would hear them coming three blocks away. She glanced down at her watch, visible above the worn cuff of Kevin's old denim work shirt. It was only ten minutes to three.

  "You're early, " she muttered as s
he pushed her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. What kind of people were they? Didn't they know that being early was every bit as rude as being late. She still had to vacuum the bedroom, coax George and Gracie into their cat carriers, and then make sure the felines hadn't left any personal messages behind for the new owners to discover. She would need every single moment of the nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds she had left.

  She tossed the paper towel into the garbage bag she'd been dragging from room to room then moved to the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway. The Fleming children were already in the backyard. She could hear their shrieks of excitement over the groan of the tree swing that had been Kevin's last project the summer before he died.

  Joe and Pam Fleming were leaning against the passenger door of their minivan. Her head rested against is chest and he stroked her hair while they talked. Soft whispers of conversation floated up toward the second floor window where Annie watched them from behind the pale green curtains. It hurt to look at them but she couldn't seem to turn away. She wanted to tell them to hang on tightly to each other, that life wasn't always fair or kind, but they would probably think she was crazy. They were young and in love, with their whole lives stretched out before them like a summer garden on a sunny day.

  Down in the driveway the Flemings stole a kiss. The sweetness of that gesture made Annie turn away from the window. She missed the touches, the whispers, the laughter that smoothed the bumpy patches every marriage encountered. She missed the lovemaking, that sweet escape from reality. She missed being the other half of someone's heart, and the temptation to barricade herself behind a wall of memories was hard to resist. Staying, however, was a luxury she couldn't afford and, in a way, she was grateful. She might never have gathered the courage to leave if she had a plump bank account and endless prospects.

  It was time to go. She had known it for months now. One morning she woke up and the house no longer felt like home. Suddenly the old ways, the old routines, didn't fit and she found herself dreaming about starting all over again in a place that was hers alone. She had had that dream before but this time was different. This time she was free to do something about it and so, against everyone's advice, she put the house up for sale and began the painful process of finally letting go of the past. She paid off the last of Kevin's debts and bought the tiny Bancroft cottage with the cash that remained. Warren tried to lower the price three times but she stood firm when it came to accepting charity and they negotiated a figure that satisfied both his kind heart and her need to stand on her own two feet. The four room cottage near the water was a far cry from her sprawling Victorian on an acre of land but it represented a triumph of sorts to Annie.

  Her dreams of a family of her own had died with Kevin but she still had a future, and for the first time in years, that prospect made her happy.

  How long had it been since she had felt deeply happy? She couldn't even begin to guess. For a long time she had known happiness only in fleeting bursts: a beautiful sunset, a well-told joke, a good hair day. She missed that deeper sense of joy that had been as much a part of her as the rhythm of her heartbeat and she wanted it back. This move was a step in the right direction.

  Sometimes she wondered how Claudia did it, living all these years in that big old house without John by her side. As it was she saw Kevin everywhere, in every room, around every corner. She heard his car in the driveway, his footfall on the steps, the wail of the ambulance on that last night when nothing, not even love, could save him. He had died in their bed, the big brass one they had fallen in love with and couldn't afford, died before the emergency crew could slap the paddles on his chest.

  He died before she had a chance to say goodbye.

  Before she had a chance to say, "I still love you."

  She couldn't remember the last time she had said those words to him. She had been angry with him for so long that love was more a memory than the living, breathing sacrament it had been at the start. There were times when she had thought about leaving him -- throwing her clothes into a suitcase, grabbing the cats, and starting new someplace else, some place where the phone didn't ring in the middle of the night and strange men didn't wait on the porch in the darkness for her husband. He had taken everything they had worked so hard to achieve and thrown it away on horses and cards and the spin of a roulette wheel -- and in the process, he had thrown away her love as well.

  "Give me time, Annie," he had said not long before he died. "I know I can make it all up to you."

  Why hadn't she told him that she still loved him, that she wanted to believe in him, that if he met her halfway maybe they could find their way back to the life they'd dreamed about when they were high school sweethearts and the world was theirs for the asking? Instead, she had simply turned away from him and, after a few moments, the front door closed softly behind him and the distance between them grew a little wider until three weeks later, he was dead and there was no turning back.

  Susan and Eileen found her on the morning after the funeral, alone in the bedroom, slamming an old wooden baseball bat against the tarnished brass. "I hate you!" she'd screamed with each slam of the bat. "Why did you do this to us?" They'd tried to grab her arms, to hold her still, but she was wild with rage and anger, stronger than she had ever been in her life, and she broke free. She smashed mirrors and lamps, pulled his clothes from his side of the closet and threw his running shoes against the wall.

  Her sisters-in-law tried to reason with her but Annie was beyond their reach. It wasn't until they helped her drag the mattress, box spring, and dented frame down the stairs and outside with the rest of the trash that her adrenaline-fueled rage ebbed and she sank to the curb, buried her face in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

  There had been times when she hated him, times when she wondered why she stayed, but through it all she had never once stopped loving him. She knew that now, two years too late, when it no longer mattered to anyone but herself. Maybe if she had loved him a little less and helped him a little more, she wouldn't be a thirty-eight year old widow with two cats, bad credit, and the feeling that after today nothing would ever be the same again.

  Chapter Two

  If somebody had told Sam Butler last summer that the following Labor Day weekend would find him sharing the front seat of a used Trooper with an aging yellow Labrador retriever, a stack of banker's boxes, and the remnants of a Big Mac with fries, he would have settled back on the deck of his shorefront rental and laughed.

  Twelve months ago he was still the top guy in the Personal Investment division at Mason, Marx, and Daniels on Wall Street. He had the fat salary, the fancy car, and the great apartment that went with it. He was the one they called "the natural", the kid who had started in a boiler room making cold calls, then worked his way up to a corner office with a window and a list of accounts that was almost legendary. "If we could bottle what Butler's got, we'd rule the universe," Franklin Bennett Mason had said to the assembled troops at the last Christmas party. Nobody had Sam Butler's drive, his determination, his ability to convince strangers to hand over their life savings to a man they'd met only fifteen minutes ago.

  He was the best of the best, Sam Butler was, and everyone in that tightly-knit world in which he operated knew it. He was the one you wanted on your team. He kept his emotions out of the work place. He was everybody's pal, but nobody's friend and that touch of mystery only served to burnish his glow. The truth was, he hadn't had time for friends. He'd been too busy raising five brothers and sisters.

  Sam never lied to his clients. He never encouraged them to take risks he wouldn't take himself but if a client was looking for a walk on the wild side of investing, Sam would clear a path and serve as bodyguard. He understood responsibility in a way few people his age could and he took his clients' plans for the future as seriously as he took his own. People responded to Sam. They always had. And in the narrow universe called finance, he was a rising star. One of the cable money channels had given hi
m a ninety second spot one Tuesday night a few years ago and that minute and a half had turned into a daily three-minute closing bell gig that polished his reputation to the same high gloss as the one on his leased BMW.

  When he first began to suspect something was wrong, he told nobody. He was pulling in the same amount of business, but his cumulative numbers were going down. The market was bullish, bonds were soaring, neither recession nor inflation were anywhere on the horizon. His closing bell reports were sunny and bright, visibility unlimited. The economy was about as good as it could get and the fact that his clients weren't raking in the bucks disturbed him but he did nothing about it. At least they weren't losing money. Not yet. One more year, he told himself. That was all he needed. One more year and the last of his siblings would be finished with college and ready to tackle the world on her own. Maybe then he'd have time for niceties like ethics.

  He spent a few long weekends at the office going through his files and an unsettling trend began to appear through the endless streams of data. His clients were actually beginning to lose money. Nothing significant -- at least not yet -- and nothing that couldn't be explained away with terms like profit taking and seasonal adjustments but Sam could easily see the pattern being established. Someone was quietly shifting small quantities of blue chips into high risk ventures that, in Sam's eyes, had FRAUD written all over them in capital letters and signed with his name.