Happily Ever After Read online

Mona surrendered to a hug. “Thanks, Mrs. Draper.”

  She drew back and waggled a finger in Mona’s face.“Oh no. I’m Edith now. I’m going to be your neighbor.”

  Mona smiled warmly. She couldn’t help but be drawn in by Edith’s enthusiasm. “Okay . . . Edith.”

  “I ordered you a coffee,” Liza announced as Mona slid onto a high stool and hooked her heels on the bottom bar.

  “You look harried, dear.” Edith put a wrinkled hand onto Mona’s arm.

  “I’ve had a horrible day,” Mona replied. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She scanned the restaurant before returning her gaze to Edith. “Where’s Chuck?”

  The older woman waved her hand and shrugged.“You know how men are—have to use the bathroom wherever they go.”

  Mona smirked and spied Chuck Parson emerging from the men’s room. Hitching his black jeans around his basketball stomach, he looked uncomfortable in his own skin. Poor guy. He was out of his element.

  “Mona!” he called out from halfway across the room.

  Mona saw a waitress glare at him. Sliding off her stool, Mona met him two steps from the table. He wrapped her in a bear hug. “You’re looking better than ever.”

  She sighed. She had them all fooled. Her insides were in knots, and her knees wanted to give out. If this thing really happened, her dreams were just a skip away. She kept pinching herself, waiting to wake up. God was so good to her to give her this miracle. She planned to grab on tightly to this chance and never let go. Now—to remain calm and focused. She had her heavenly favor, and God expected her best effort to make it happen. One shouldn’t look lightly on the Lord’s grace. Besides, God helped those who helped themselves.

  She untangled herself from Chuck’s embrace, and they climbed onto the stools. A waitress approached, balancing sodas and a steamy coffee. Mona didn’t bother to look at the menu. “Chinese chicken salad and a side of plain toast.”

  Liza also ordered her regular—double-bacon cheeseburger and curly fries. Mona shook her head. It wasn’t fair. Liza had legs that reached to her chin. The woman didn’t know what it was like to just look at a Twinkie and see it appear on your thighs. Mona monitored her every bite with precision. She couldn’t afford to buy new clothes. But she and Liza had been roommates for nearly a decade, and Mona had learned to live with the envy.

  “I brought the layout and some pictures.” Chuck hauled up a vinyl briefcase dated from the seventies. “Now don’t get discouraged. It has potential. You just need eyes to see it.” He dealt the photos on the table like playing cards. “The porch might need a little hiking up here and there, but the foundation is good. There’s a cozy apartment above the garage and an outbuilding, just like you wanted.” He paused and scanned Mona’s face with unmasked anticipation.

  She picked up a photograph. It was perfect. The two-story Victorian answered both her prayers and her wildest dreams. “I’ll take it.”

  Edith clutched her arm. “Dear, are you sure?”

  Mona nodded and glanced at Liza. Liza’s black eyes sparkled as she grinned wildly. Mona read the look.“Yep. I know what I’ve been waiting for, and this is it.”

  Edith sat back in the chair, a smile of satisfaction on her face. “I can’t wait to tell your mother.”

  Mona fought the urge to roll her eyes. The last thing she needed was Edith Draper giving her mother in Arizona a chapter-by-chapter chronicle of her life.

  Liza leaned close, her exotic perfume running over Mona like a wave. “This is it, Mone. The place where dreams come true.”

  Mona felt fear ripen in her stomach. Please let Liza be right.

  “Oh!” Edith cried, clapping her hands together. “You have to see what I picked up today at the Mall of America.”

  Mona crossed her arms over her cashmere-clad chest and sighted a smudge of oil still staining her fingers. She grimaced. “I have to wash my hands.”

  “No, wait.” Edith snared a bag at her feet. “I caught a book signing today.”

  “Who was it?” Mona grabbed a napkin and attempted recovery.

  “I forget his name. He’s that really famous writer . . .”Edith snapped her fingers as if she were a genie, waiting for the answer to poof.

  “John Grisham?” Mona offered.

  “Tom Clancy?” Chuck suggested.

  “No, he’s that one that was attacked a couple of years ago . . . in Chicago, I think. I read about it in USA Today. Some article about dangers to celebrities.

  Reminded me of something out of a Stephen King novel. A fan cornered him in the men’s room and robbed him . . . stole his boots or his hat. . . . I think he even ended up in the hospital.” Edith dug into her bag and pulled out a hardcover. She cocked her head as she examined the cover. “Not a bad-looking fella, either, the author. Even if he does need a good haircut.” She plunked the book on the table, front cover down. “Reese Clark!”

  Strikingly handsome in a forest green, plaid flannel shirt, a smiling man in a black Stetson stared back at her from the back cover. His brown curly hair dragged on his shoulders, and his blue eyes spoke of some hidden mystique. Reese Clark, Mona’s favorite author. Authors aren’t supposed to be that good-looking, Mona thought as she squinted at it. She wasn’t great at remembering faces, but it seemed she had seen that one before.

  Suddenly the memory hit her, and she cried out in shock.

  “What is it?” Edith went ashen and put a hand to her throat.

  Mona pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m a complete idiot.”

  Liza leaned forward. “Well, besides the fact you just painted your nose black, why?”

  Mona looked at her fingers and grimaced. “My car broke down at the mall. The guy who put it back together was Reese Clark.”

  She could have buried herself inside any one of the three astonished gapes.

  “And you didn’t get his autograph?” Edith looked at her as if she had sinned.

  Mona shrugged. “I didn’t recognize him.”

  Liza stifled hysterics. “Mona, you wouldn’t know your own dog if it came up and bit you.”

  She made a face at Liza. But her roommate couldn’t have said it better. Despite Mona’s infatuation with his ongoing hero, Jonah, Reese Clark could have popped her a fairy-tale kiss and she wouldn’t have known it was him. She groaned. “I actually invited him out for coffee. He probably thought I was some goggle-eyed fan trying to invade his privacy.” After Edith’s story, it was no wonder he had backed away from her at the speed of light.

  “Oh, well,” Mona murmured, heading for the ladies’ room, “some things just aren’t meant to be.”

  1

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  Mona leaned over the steering wheel of her Chevette and gunned the hatchback up the shoreline climb. The car nearly sailed over the top of the hill overlooking Deep Haven, but Mona didn’t care if she touched down right into a speed trap. Delight drove her foot into the floorboards as she spied the town spread out before her like a red carpet—the place where years of dreaming and planning would reach their vivid finale. After ten long years she’d made it back. Finally, she would find peace. Thank You, God.

  Mona stomped her brakes as she entered the forty-mile-per-hour zone and narrowly missed a pale-haired grandmother pumping her arms on a morning power walk. The woman glared at her. Mona returned an apologetic look.

  As she motored along Main Street, Mona decided Deep Haven had changed little over the years. The lighthouse on the craggy point needed a paint job, and she noticed a number of new gift shops. Essentially, however, the population seemed intact—tourists and retirees. She turned off Main, clung to the shoreline drive, and headed for World’s Best Donuts. She would spend her first moments back in this slice of heaven sitting on a boulder, propping coffee between her knees, and folding a sugary elephant ear into her mouth. It was an adolescent treat, but Mona wasn’t quite ready to give it up.

  She parked in front of the dime store and trotted over to World’s Best. Squ
eezing into the packed bakery, she got in line and fifteen minutes later emerged with a crispy ear wrapped in a grease-dotted napkin.

  Mona headed straight for a jagged outcropping on the shore of Lake Superior. Settling herself on a rock, she inhaled deeply, losing herself in the crisp, pine-laced lake air. Indeed, peace could be had in Deep Haven. She only had to inhale the fresh aroma of the forest and hear the scrape of waves on the beach to revive her father’s memory in her heart. Finally, she could live the dream she’d waited a decade for already. Finally, nothing stood in her way.

  She hoped her business instincts hadn’t betrayed her

  .Although only a microdot on the Minnesota map, Deep Haven represented the only place to wrestle away a few days of privacy and calm from the stress of life in Minneapolis or St. Paul. When traveling the five hours north on I-35, tourists set their cars on cruise and started their holiday in the driver’s seat, enjoying the jeweled countryside. Following the crisp Superior breeze, most vehicles found their own way to the tiny village nestled among the birch and maple trees, Norway pine, and balsam fir.

  Very few people actually lived in Deep Haven. The town functioned like a large outside mall, where everyone met to slug down coffee and a donut, swap tales, and bemoan the horrors of life in the city. A few homes dotted the hillside, but Deep Haven had outlawed private building permits anywhere along the shore, except by approval of the local planning committee: Edith Draper.

  Mona sipped her coffee—black, no sugar—and said a prayer of thanks to the good Lord for giving her mother, Verona, the sense to become Edith’s friend thirty years ago. Mona checked her watch. Thirty minutes until Chuck’s Real Estate opened and she picked up the keys to her future. It was all clicking together according to plan—from Edith’s approval of her living quarters above the shop; to the down payment the size of her nest egg

  ;to the agreement of her roommate, Liza Beaumont, to be her business partner.

  Mona watched dawn spill across the water, turning the lake a sparkling indigo. Lake Superior’s waves lapped easily a stone’s toss from her feet. Oh, how her father would have loved it. He would have been beside her, swilling his own java—two creams, no sugar—and gesturing with a half-eaten chocolate cake donut at the seagulls dipping about on the waves. “Mona,” he would have said, “there’s a little bit of heaven to be found here. We just gotta keep our eyes out for it.”

  I’m looking, Pop. A gull, brave and cocky, landed near her and waddled close, its white head bobbing and its beady eyes fixed on the scrap of elephant ear. Mona tossed it to the scavenger, and the bird caught it before it hit the ground. She brushed off her sugared fingers and picked her way back toward the street.

  “You all set?” Chuck sat behind his desk, a corduroy jacket over his plaid flannel shirt, appearing infinitely more at ease than he had eight months ago. Sunlight skimmed off his shiny head from the side window, and he had the gentle eyes of a man who’d spent his life serving people. The roller chair creaked as he leaned back.

  “I think so.” Mona smiled and held out her hand, palm up.

  “Not so fast.” Chuck stood and rubbed a chubby hand over his balding head. “I know you’re excited, and frankly, it is a good idea, this bookstore thing. But I know how much it means to you, and I just want to make sure you know what you’re in for.”

  Mona lowered her hand. “And what’s that, Chuck?”

  He met her eyes with a fatherly gaze. “The house is in rough shape, Mona, rougher than I thought. You have a lot of work ahead of you to be ready by tourist season.”

  Mona flexed her arm. “I’ve got Norwegian blood in me!”

  Chuck smirked. “That you do. Okay. If you need some help, give me a call.” He yanked out the drawer of his metal desk and rustled around until he found a long silver key. He held it out to Mona.

  The Footstep of Heaven Bookstore and Coffee Shop.

  She had known that would be the name since the day she had sat on the beach with her father. Wrapped up in a best-selling hardcover, he had glanced up at the gathering fire on the horizon and said, “This place is the footstep of heaven.” Somehow that phrase wound around Mona’s heart and strengthened her during his funeral and over the past ten years.

  Mona stood on the wide steps of the two-story Victorian, heart pounding, and knew this place was perfect.

  She could see it clearly in her mind: the wide porch would be filled with intimate round tables covered with lacy tablecloths that fluttered in a fresh lakeside breeze

  .Sitting at them would be a handful of contented tourists, drinking freshly brewed coffee out of Liza’s handcrafted mugs, eating gourmet muffins, and diving into classics they had unearthed in Mona’s bookstore. Strains of Brahms or Chopin, as gentle as a whisper, would drift from the house and float along the street, and all of Deep Haven would bless her for bringing a little bit of heaven to their shores.

  Mona hummed as she bounded up the steps of the house. She leveled off in a high-pitched scream as her foot sliced through the top step and sent her sprawling

  .She heard a car door slam, then laughter. She winced.

  “Some place, Mona!” Liza Beaumont caught Mona under the arms and hoisted her to her feet. “Glad I made it for the grand tour.”

  Mona wrinkled her nose at her best friend. “Just one step, Liza. That can be fixed.”

  Liza propped her hands on her hips and nodded, brows arched. At least she clamped those ruby lips together.

  Mona dusted herself off and stepped up to the door. The key worked, and she pushed the door open. A shaft of sunlight flooded in over their shoulders and lit a dusty hallway. Mona made a face and shivered when she spotted a wide spiderweb stretched from banister to ceiling.Liza pushed her into the house, whistling approval

  .

  Mona whirled, and the smile on her roommate’s face bolstered her sagging enthusiasm. She nodded and held her breath as Liza raced up the steps two at a time.Thankfully, they didn’t break.

  Mona wandered to the family room on the first floor, envisioning floral arrangements on the oak mantel and a cushion on the bay window seat. Over there, in the dining nook off the family room, she would install her coffee bar, where patrons could belly up with a frothy mocha and swap quotes from their favorite literature. Mona would set up Liza’s pottery in the other side of the house, in the parlor, with the two windows that seemed gateways to the sun. Liza’s trademark bold colors would sparkle and draw customers like bears to honey.

  A sense of gratitude filled her. So the place needed some elbow grease. It was still the only property along the shore to be offered that year, and she had been fortunate to land it. And soon, with Edith’s help on the zoning papers, the lakeside home would become a legitimate business. Her business.

  “Come up, Mona!” Liza leaned over the banister.“There’s a bathroom for each of us!”

  “Finally!” Mona answered with a playful laugh. She climbed the stairs, registering the squeaks for future notice, and found Liza lying spread eagle on a bright orange shag carpet in the master bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” Mona leaned against the frame of the French doors and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Dreaming of furniture,” Liza said, sighing. Mona’s roommate looked the part of a French Indian princess, with her black hair splayed out, loopy gold earrings glinting in the sunlight, and her fuchsia, fake-leather jacket akin to a brilliant royal robe. Mona shook her head teasingly and grinned.

  The other room upstairs included two dormer windows that overlooked the slanting verandah roof, with a window seat built into each alcove. “This is my room,” Mona declared, delighted.

  Liza poked her head in. “You sure? The other room’s bigger.”

  “Yeah, but the other room has a bathroom built onto it—perfect for cleaning all that clay off your body.”Mona wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  Liza’s eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. “You just don’t want to clean up the gigantic water stain I found under the sink.”


  That night, as the birch trees hurled shadows into the furnitureless bedroom, Mona and Liza huddled in their sleeping bags and counted the Victorian’s casualties.

  “Two broken windowpanes, a leaky kitchen sink, that big water stain on the dining-room ceiling, and the rotted floor under the fridge,” listed Mona.

  Liza buried her head into her folded arms and continued where Mona left off, her voice muffled from the folds of fluffy down. “A broken front step, three rotten boards on the verandah, two useless electrical outlets in the parlor, and did you notice my bathroom door won’t close?”

  Mona groaned in reply.

  “But—” Liza popped her head up like a jack-in-the-box—“the good news is that most of the problems are cosmetic. And we can work around the rest.” She flopped over onto her back. “I hope you know how to hammer because I’m doing the painting!”

  Mona grinned at a cobweb on the ceiling and tried to ignore the idea that a spider winked back. Six weeks ’til opening day. Six weeks to remodel, paint, buy furniture, and assemble her lifelong dream.

  But it would be all right. A little spit and polish was all they needed to turn the place into the Footstep of Heaven.

  Two days later, Mona was ready to blame Chuck for selling her a Victorian from nowhere but south of its heavenly name. Two shutters had fallen off, another front step splintered when the movers arrived with the industrial oven, and an entire section of plaster cracked around the stain in the dining room. Liza heard it, and like Henny-Penny, she flew out of the room screaming, “The sky is falling!” A minute later the section gave way and littered the floor with chunks of rotted plaster.

  If that weren’t enough, Mona created a miniature. OldFaithful in her kitchen when she stripped the nut on the faucet in an attempt to stop a leak. She managed to dam it up with some plumber’s putty, but the plug looked iffy at best.

  Then Liza walked in with the zinger. “You got a parking ticket, my unlucky friend.” She tossed the offensive yellow slip at Mona. It drifted toward Mona’s feet, and she stomped it to the planked floor.