Second Chance Love (8 page)

Steve scratched the side of his head. Elizabeth put her hand on his arm and said softly, “Oh, Steve, let her have it. That’s ridiculous.”

Steve nodded, raised his paddle and said, “Seven thousand dollars,” winking at Elizabeth. She did not wink back.

The crowd looked expectantly at Chelsea, who seemed to be considering. Elizabeth caught her glancing at Margaret Larson, who wore a smile of grandmotherly innocence. Chelsea stood up, raised her paddle again and said “Seventy-one hundred.”

“Good,” Elizabeth whispered urgently. “Now let it go.”

Steve raised his paddle again. “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

A small gasp ran through the crowd. Even for charity, and for all their wealth, it was not their custom to pay ten times what something was worth—God forbid. Steve locked his eyes onto Chelsea.

“Excuse me, did I hear that bid correctly, Mr. Larson? Twenty-five thousand?” Thom Goodson asked.

Steve nodded.

“Wonderful! Our bid is twenty-five thousand. Does anyone want to go twenty-six?”

Chelsea sat back down. She wasn't smiling any more.

“Going once, twice...
sold!
Congratulations, Mr. Larson, that’s quite a prize.”

Applause burst out, particularly from the representatives of the Inner City Literacy

Group. Steve smiled, nodded and turned to Elizabeth, who shook her head at him a little sadly.

“What’s wrong?”

Her voice was very low and serious. “It’s a great cause, and I’m sure they can use the money, but do you always throw your money around like that? That’s not the Steve I remember.”

Steve sobered. “No, I don’t. It is a good cause, and I felt like Chelsea was bidding just to stop me from being able to take you to The Cottage Grove.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows jumped up. “Oh, really? I don’t recall being asked.”

“Well, I haven’t asked you yet, but I just won the bid thirty seconds ago. Will you come with me?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No, I won’t. I was afraid of this, and it's why I asked you not to keep bidding. It’s too soon. This is the second evening we’ve spent together after twenty years apart, and you’re asking me to go on a romantic weekend at a fancy B&B? No. Thank you for the thought, but no.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, flummoxed, when Jim Scott rescued him. “Steve, the mayor is waving us over. We really need his support on that zoning issue.”

Steve scowled, then nodded. He leaned first toward Elizabeth. “Lizzie, we can talk about it later. If you don’t want to go with me, you don’t have to. I just wanted us to have a chance to get away by ourselves for a few days, and enjoy the peace and quiet. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go talk to the mayor for just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

“Fine,” Elizabeth said, meaning it. She turned to talk to Helen Scott, but saw that she was gone, too, leaving Elizabeth alone at the table.

“Okay, folks,” Thom Goodson said, “that’s it for the first half of the auction. We’re already nearing a record for money raised and we’re only halfway through. I’m going to go wet my whistle, and in fifteen minutes we’ll have the second half of the live auction. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out all the wonderful items up for bid in the silent auction!”

The band started to play a soft melody, attracting no attention. A hum of conversation rose around her. Behind her, she heard one voice pitched slightly above the others saying… “and did you see that dress she was wearing? I almost died. It looked like something Linda Evans would have worn on Dynasty. Hello, 1980s! I didn’t know they even sold dresses like that anymore, except maybe at Goodwill.”

Elizabeth had always had exceptional hearing.
Chelsea.
Another feminine voice said, “I thought it looked nice. It fit her well.”

“Whatever, Sarah, your taste has always been in your mouth. Look at your first two husbands.”

Sarah quieted, apparently squelched.

“I wondered where she came from,” Chelsea went on, “so I asked Mrs. Larson about her. She said she was a girl Steve knew, who had followed him around like a puppy in high school and that he could never get rid of her.”

I would like to punch this woman squarely in the throat. This is what I hate about places like this. Crowds of people who have convinced themselves their money makes them better than others, and who then prove that you can't purchase class.

“But, listen to this. While they were still in high school, her father got drunk and killed two people at his work. Can you imagine? Mrs. Larson said that she thinks the only reason Steve is seeing her is because he feels sorry for her.”

Elizabeth's blood ran cold. No one had mentioned her father in so many years. She had come to believe that she would never have to face the shame again. It had been so long that she had let her defenses atrophy.

Her father, in addition to a number of other glaring character flaws, had been an inveterate drunkard. When Lizzie was fifteen, his boss had fired him for being drunk on a building site at ten o’clock in the morning. He had stormed off the site in a rage, forgetting his tools. Several hours later, drunker and angrier, he returned for them in his old pickup. They were all he had left, having pawned most of the rest. He was squealing his tires and flinging gravel all over the lot, then lost control of the vehicle and crashed headlong into the work trailer set up onsite. The job foreman sustained serious internal injuries, dying the next day. The secretary was killed instantly and gruesomely; she had just dropped by with some files two minutes before.

The foreman had been popular with most of the workers. The community also knew him as a kind-hearted, encouraging T-ball coach in his spare time, someone who had helped their sons and daughters develop teamwork and love of the game. The secretary left behind two children: a boy of ten, and a girl of eight. The police had arrived to find Bill Coleman stuck in an attempt to squeeze out of the wreckage, blood running down his forehead from a gash in his scalp, screaming drunkenly that his foot had slipped off the clutch and his brakes had failed. An innocent mistake, he insisted. Could’ve happened to anybody.

A jury had not concurred. The lack of premeditation had ruled out first degree murder charges, but the judge decided that Bill's five previous drunk driving convictions had bearing upon the outcome. His Honor handed down an exceptional sentence of thirty-five years, the maximum the law allowed.

Bill Coleman was no longer serving his sentence, though. Within three years, he was dead of kidney failure and cirrhosis. The impact on his family, of course, survived him, as did his impact upon his victims' families.

And now. Now here was Chelsea talking about it like it had just happened. Elizabeth could feel her face growing hot. She remembered Helen Scott's words about the gossip.
Yes, I see exactly what she is doing. I have had enough of it and her, and this pretentious crowd of people, and people buying expensive weekends without the simple damn courtesy of asking me first.

The waiter appeared over Elizabeth’s shoulder and asked, “More Perrier, ma’am?” That caused Chelsea to look up from her conversation, meeting Elizabeth's eye. Chelsea feigned shock and embarrassment at being caught in the act of gossiping, but her eyes were smug and cruel.

That's it.
Elizabeth felt her anger boil over. She stood up so quickly she nearly knocked her chair over. She snatched her wrap off the back of her chair, shot Chelsea a look that would have withered plants, and strode toward the door, leaving a buzz of conversation in her wake. She walked as quickly to the entrance as her heels would allow. Once outside, Elizabeth pulled the wrap around her. It wasn’t enough for a January night, but the burning fury inside her shut out the cold. Now that she had made her escape, she didn’t know what to do. Home was close to five miles away, a long walk in plummeting temperatures. Still, with no cab fare, there was nothing else for it.

As she walked along the edge of the building and past Valet Parking, she saw a small bank of payphones recessed into an alcove, a reminder of an earlier decade. Elizabeth stepped into the alcove to get out of the wind, opened her small clutch and searched the bottom for coins, eventually fishing out two dimes and a nickel. She lifted the receiver, deposited the coins, and had a small panic attack when she couldn't remember the number. After fifteen seconds, it surfaced in her mind, and she punched it into the keypad.

After three rings, she heard a voice answer, “Hello? Somebody better have a damn good reason for interrupting me watching
Titanic
again, because…”

“Gail, it’s Elizabeth. I’m in front of the Men’s Athletic Club downtown and I’m stuck. Can you come get me?”

Chapter Eleven

Steve returned to find their table empty. Assuming Elizabeth had gone to the ladies' room, he sat and waited. When fifteen minutes had gone by, he began to worry.

Thom Goodson tapped on the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re almost ready to resume our live auction, so let’s have everyone return to your seats. We’ll be getting started in two minutes.”

Steve looked at the table behind him and saw Chelsea Stanton. “Chelsea, have you seen Elizabeth?”

“She ran out of here a few minutes ago. She seemed upset.” Her face was pure ignorance and innocence.

Steve’s eyes narrowed. He knew Chelsea too well. “What did you do?”

“Oh, Steve, get off your high horse. We were just laughing and having fun, and she was eavesdropping on us and got upset.”

“Chelsea, if I find out you had something to do with this, if you’re playing your little games like usual, I…”

Chelsea stood quickly, her face flushed with a toxic combination of anger and alcohol. “You’ll what, Steve? Never return my calls? Too late!”

Steve shook his head in infinite contempt, then ran to the outer doors. He burst outside and looked around for any sign of Elizabeth, but the sidewalk was empty.
What the hell do I do now?
Finally he grabbed his phone, turned it on and said, “Suzi, I’ve lost someone. Can you help me find her?”

“Hello, Steve. I can connect you with the local police, or there are four private investigators within two miles of your present location.”

He turned the phone off in frustration and walked to Valet Pick-up, where he turned his parking stub over to Dennis. The attendant set off running to retrieve his Mercedes.

Lizzie… Where did you go?

Chapter Twelve

As upset as he was, there was almost nothing to be done. He drove to Elizabeth’s apartment and knocked on the door, but no one answered. It was getting late, so he didn’t want to keep knocking and bother her neighbors, or perhaps even have to explain himself to the police. He parked in front of her apartment building and waited to see if she came home. He waited an hour; no Lizzie. Frustrated, he gave up and went home to bed.

The next morning, he went by The Prints and The Pauper, but found it closed on Sunday. He went back by her apartment three times that day, but no one answered her door.

At exactly nine o'clock Monday morning, he called the bookstore. The phone rang ten times with no answer before an older man’s dignified voice said, “Prints and The Pauper, can I help you?”

“May I speak to Elizabeth Coleman, please?”

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth is not in today. In fact, she is off for the next two weeks. She had vacation time coming. May I take a message in case she stops in?”

“Do you know, did she go somewhere, or is she still here in town?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say…”

“No, of course not. Yes, will you please ask her to call Steve Larson? I’m an old friend and I desperately need to talk to her.” Steve rattled off his number, thanked him and hung up.

For the next few days, Steve followed the same pattern: drive by Elizabeth’s apartment at lunch and again on his evening commute, knocking on her door with no response. On the second day, he thought to tape a note to the door, begging her to call him. The next day, his note was gone, replaced with a new note: “Please leave me alone.”

He knocked on the door once, twice, three times and waited.

Nothing.

He knocked once more, this time with his forehead, as he slumped against her door.

“I give up, Lizzie. I don’t know where you are, I don’t know what I’ve done, and I don’t know why you won’t talk to me.”

He turned away from the door, put his back to it and slid all the way to the ground, so that he was sitting on the dirty floor, legs akimbo. He held his head in both hands, pushing his hair back. He looked up at the dim lighting fixtures and peeling wallpaper.

“Lizzie, I know I was wrong. I’ve thought about it a lot this past week. You tried to tell me, and I didn’t listen. You told me that you were concerned about the differences in our situations. You asked me not to be so crazy, throwing money around at the auction. But really, there’s a good reason. From the first moment I met you, I never saw any differences between us. I just saw ‘us.’” I knew your family didn’t have a lot of money, and I guess I knew that my family did, but it didn’t matter to me. It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.”

He was not speaking loudly, but his voice went quieter still.

“Elizabeth Coleman, I love you. I always have.”

The door swung open and Steve fell backwards, half into the apartment. Elizabeth was standing over him wearing an expression of cold fury.

“Oh, you love me, do you? Really? Then why would you put me through something like that?”“Lizzie!” Steve scrambled first to his knees, then to his feet. “How long have you been in there?”

“I’ve been trapped in here all week because you keep stalking me and won’t leave me alone.”

“Stalking… stalking you? Elizabeth, come on, you can’t be serious. We were at the gala, I thought we were having a good time, and…”

“… and nothing.
We
weren’t having a good time at all. I was miserable. It was my fault, really. I knew I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to go, but I let Gail and her ‘Don’t be a crazy cat lady’ speech talk me into it.” She took a deep breath and wiped at an eye. “It’s not your fault, Steve. We come from two different places. That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be.”

Steve shook his head. “Elizabeth...Lizzie. You’re not often wrong, but you’re wrong about this. When I see you, my heart sings. When I’m standing with you, even right now, when you’re so mad you could spit, I know I belong here. That 'different place' of mine, and everything in it, means almost nothing to me if we’re not together. I would give it all up just to have a chance to be with you. I can't promise I won't mess up again, but I will never change the way I feel about you.”

“Words are fine, Steve. I know you mean them, but I don’t know if I can ever get over…"

“Get over what? Did Chelsea say something to you?”

Elizabeth shook her head, but didn’t speak.

“This is important. This is the most important thing in both our lives.
What did Chelsea say to you?”

She gathered herself, biting her lip.

“She said that my dress was ugly, and that’s okay. I’m a big girl and I know how women are. She said some other stuff that didn’t really bother me, because by then I was seeing what kind of person she was, but then she said she had talked to your mom and that she had told her about what happened with my dad. She was so
gleeful
about it...and it hurt so bad…”

“What?” Gone was the soft-spoken modern evolution of her old friend. This was an influential man of whom someone had just made an enemy “That is bullshit.” His face colored; he moved away for a moment, then stepped close, inside her comfort zone. He locked eyes with Elizabeth and his voice was the old friend's again. “I’m so sorry that I put you in that position. I don’t know why Chelsea, or Mother, or anyone else, would be dredging up stuff from twenty years ago, but I will find out. Chelsea is not my friend. She never has been, and that bridge just burned to the waterline. She’s just one of those women I took to social and charity events to please Mother.”

Elizabeth didn’t say a word for fifteen long seconds, searching Steve’s eyes. They were the same eyes she had known and loved twenty years before.

“Why is she like that? I really, truly don’t understand it. I’d never seen her before that night, certainly hadn’t done anything to harm her.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Maybe Chelsea thought she and I had something that never existed. Maybe she’s jealous of you. I told Mother how glad I was to find you again and how I felt. She and Chelsea have always been close. It’s possible that’s what set her off. I don’t know. None of it makes any sense.”

Elizabeth slowly shook her head. “She was vicious. She wanted to hurt me.”

“Chelsea’s always had that in her, just under the surface. This is the first time she's used it on someone I love. She will regret that.”

Elizabeth smiled bitterly. “You know it doesn’t change the basic problem, though.”

“What problem, Lizzie? I don’t understand.”

“The problem of you and me and where we are. If I want to go somewhere, I walk. You drive a miniature starship. I can’t even afford a telephone, and you carry some spooky artificial intelligence you call Suzi around in your pocket. Our worlds are so far apart that we can’t even see where the other lives, and that’s what caused all this. It took the form of Chelsea, but if it hadn’t been her, it would have been some other fake, evil bitch that stepped up and took her place. She saw someone stepping out of their place in life and wanted to make sure she put me back where I belonged. Well, she did.”

Steve paused, then shook his head. “You say we’re from different worlds, but I'd like to say that here I am visiting yours, and I’ve been pretty insistent about wanting to be here." He sighed. "Elizabeth, look. I was wrong to bring you there, especially as a first date. I thought you would like it once you got there and, I hate to admit it, I wanted to be someplace where I was in my comfort zone, and that was it. So I can understand you having a different comfort zone. Mostly, though, I haven’t seen this ‘problem’ because I always thought of us as equals. I learned, though, and I won’t put you through that again. If I never attend another high society social event, that's great with me. I’ll be happy eating takeout on TV trays here in your apartment, talking to you. If money and my car and Suzi are what are keeping us apart, I’ll give them up. All I need is you.”

Elizabeth took two steps toward Steve and pulled herself toward him, laying her head gently against his. She put her lips next to his ear and said, “I believe you. I don’t want to change you. What I do need is for you to listen to me when I tell you what I am comfortable with and what I’m not.”

Steve pulled back a few inches so he could look in her eyes. “Thank you, Lizzie. I'll learn.” He kissed her gently, thrilling again to the softness of her lips. He kissed her cheek, then underneath her ear and whispered, “I love you, Elizabeth Coleman.”

Elizabeth didn’t say anything.