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Chapter
One
Beatrice Callahan’s stepssent vibrations up her legs and through her core.The mailman had just arrived, and she may or may not have been standing at the window for the past several days, watching for a particular piece of mail.
She’d seen it, and the large, official letter had triggered something inside her.What, she didn’t know.She simply felt different now than she had before she’d seen that envelope.Then she’d grabbed her keys and purse and gone into the garage.
“Afternoon,” the man called from down at the end of her drive, and Bea lifted her hand in a wave.After all, he wasn’t the one who’d taken his sweet time signing the divorce papers.He wasn’t the one who’d insisted that Bea could have either alimony or her car, but not both.He wasn’t the one who’d wanted to go through their assets one by one and make sure everything came out fair.
Fair.She scoffed as she got behind the wheel of her SUV—the same one she’d had for the past three years, thank you very much.Norton, her now-ex-husband, if that envelope meant what Bea thought it did—had filed for divorce fourteen months ago.He’d moved out the day before that.He’d been fighting with her over ticky-tack things every day since.
There was nofairafter twenty-five years of marriage.Not in Bea’s book—and thankfully, not in the State of Texas either.She had plenty of friends around the Sweet Water Falls area in Texas, and one of them happened to be a fantastic divorce attorney.
Vera had gotten the alimonyandthe SUV, and before Bea had seen her brilliance in front of a judge, she hadn’t understood why Nort wanted to “settle things on their own.”
Oh, she knew now, and it had nothing to do with him being fair to Bea.
She went down the dirt lane and past the mail truck, where the mustached man who came every afternoon still stuffed flyers and other useless mail in her box.She didn’t wave this time, her memories of when her oldest son, Ted, had built the red-brick pillar for the mailbox.He’d been fifteen and trying to earn his Eagle Scout award.He’d called friends and neighbors to come help; he’d gone to the local hardware store and talked to the owner to get the supplies donated; he’d built not only their mailbox tower, but five others along the highway north of Sweet Water Falls—one for everyone who hadn’t yet been able to fund their own construction.
Tears pricked her eyes at her sweet Teddy Bear.He wasn’t so young anymore, and he’d listen to her tell him the news that the divorce was final later that day.He wouldn’t like it, but he’d listen.
Then he’d ask her what she was going to do next.
Bea wondered that herself, her eyes drying up before any real tears fell.Thankfully.She couldn’t show up at the salon with red-rimmed eyes and a crazy demand for the hairstyle she’d been planning for the day when the divorce papers arrived.
“You don’t need to wonder,” she told herself.“You made a list.”
And she had.The list of things Bea had put together hung on her refrigerator, and she hadn’t grabbed it in her haste to leave the house.She’d stuffed her feet into the first pair of shoes she could find, grabbed her purse, and strode out of the house.
She’d get the mail later.Get the proof that the nightmare she’d been enduring for over a year was really done.
Then, she’d get her life back.
“All of it,”she said a half-hour later.Her slate-blue eyes met the hazel-green ones of her stylist, Mae.
Mae’s expression showed shock, and she released Bea’s as she kept running her fingers through her hair.“It is starting to go gray in some spots.”
“I don’t want to color it anymore,” Bea said.Her part-sandy, part-golden blonde had been coming from a bottle for decades.She’d done it mostly to keep up appearances at church, be the arm-candy Nort required for his ritzy financial firm, and to keep the other women in her Thursday Night Supper Club from guessing her true age.
All idiotic reasons, in Bea’s opinion.And seeing as how Bea was now single, and all three of her children were out of the house, living their lives at various colleges and in towns across Texas, she didn’t have to dye her hair anymore.
“And yes,” she said, smoothing her hands down her thighs under the drape that would become very important once Mae started cutting.“I want it all gone.I want that.”She nodded to her phone, where she’d brought up a cute, classy, and sophisticated cut.One she’d seen on older actresses as they aged.
At forty-five, Bea wasn’t heading into a retirement home, but she was the second-oldest in her Supper Club.They’d all been guessing her age for years, and when they got together later this week… Well, Cass would be thrilled to know she was younger than Bea by five months.
“We can do a pixie,” Mae said, looking up into the mirror again.She kept smoothing her hands through Bea’s hair.“You have beautiful hair.It’s not too thick, so it won’t poke out strangely.”
“That sounds like a plus,” Bea said with a small smile.At this point in her life, she’d take all the positives she could get.
“Bangs?”Mae asked.“I think you have a great face-shape for short hair.But I think we should go easy on chopping off too much up here.We can always take more off.I can’t put it back on.”
“Okay,” Bea said, admiring the shape of her jawline.She did have a nicely shaped face, with jawbones that tapered into a soft point at her chin.She usually wore makeup to accentuate her cheekbones, but today wasn’t one of those days.
“You can do an up style, or down,” Mae said, holding her longer hair closer to the scalp.“I’ll show you how to style it both ways.”
“That would be fantastic,” Bea said, and Mae got to work.Without having to color her hair first, Bea simply watched as Mae sprayed it down with a water bottle and started cutting.Ten inches hit the floor, and then Mae got out the clippers.
Bea swallowed hard.There really was no going back from this.Like so much else in your life right now, she thought.
